The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

Chapter 39/Kissing, Oraschopes and other diversions

Aunt Mallory's election ball was in full swing. I saw Aunt Catherine in the distance in a skiing ball dress and looked for some way to avoid her.  I went past a stands raising funds for Mallorys campaign, including one which promised to do your ora-horoscope by Madam LaStrange and had an idea. Madam LaStrange was quite old and had overly developed wrinkles, a nose you could use to catch a fish with and eyes which looked at you like everything you did or said was somehow wrong. She wore a strange thin dress make from multiple layers of miss matching gossamer thin printed gauze.

Oraschopes were the replacement for horoscopes. Originally people born on earth had looked to the position of planets to help predict the future, and productively fill pages of women's magazines (which otherwise remain disturbingly blank). They did this by looking at the relative positions of certain stars, in relation to their positions at the moment of your birth. The problem started when people were born on Mars. Where was mars in the sky if you were standing on it? What did this new tiny blue dot planet in the sky called Earth mean to people on born on say Mercury?

Fortunately, a man called Jeramy Bald, a 32 unemployed account executive from St Louis and friend of adventurer Morgan Miller had  quite by chance found the answer.  While digging in his back yard to make a home brew swimming pool he  discovered an ancient temple chamber. Venturing in he found  an dusty ancient book which recorded the true  art of Oraschopes. It turns out the original horoscope was a just a simple one planet simplification of Oraschopes  for dumb people. Fortunate indeed was the growing interplanetary population, for now they were no longer cut off from the knowledge of their own futures.

 The new,  I say new but the book specifically said it predated horoscopes,  Oraschopes  were instantly successful. All thanks to the ancients who predicted the future need and the exact point in time  Bald was going to disturb the back yard of future suburban home . A point which obviously they had predicted , I mean how else could it have been there right? A point when computers, and the size of the off planet population needed to cast a ora-horoscopes existed. 

Jeramy Bald had subsequently lined the inside of the stone walls of the ancient temple with breeze blocks, turned half of it into an underground garage and the other half into a man-den. A den where he could devote his time to the complex and difficult art of casting Oraschopes for celebrities of planets across the solar system. After his book had become a best seller the breeze block temple had become a museum, with a very nice visitors centre and was now the number 3 attraction in St Louis. Just  after the grave of a dog who could say 'sausages' and the ruin's of an ancient arch which had been accidentally knocked over by a miss guided drone. It was this ancient art Madam LaStrange offered. 

Madam LeStrange sat untroubled at a table with her charts and cosmological iPad at the ready. I felt rather sorry for her all on her own so went up.

"Can you do me?" I asked.

"Do you know the date and exact time, planet and longitude and latitude of your birth?" she said.

I sat down.

"Sure" I said - Dad was nerdy like that. All births were video recorded for legal purposes any way, I could have got it from that.

"Down to the nearest minute?" said Madam LeStrange.

"Sure but which end do you count as 'birth'? I was a breach birth, so does 'when I was born' mean  when my toe first popped out or an hour later when my head finally popped out?" I said, it was one of those I didn't care but I always wanted to know facts. We decided to try both.

"Now you must cross my palm with silver or the nearest bit coin equivalent" she said holding out her palm. Fortunately my ring came with apple-pay.