The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

Chapter 43/The Dear John the video or No, and Yes

How much do you know about the number of cables going into the Atlantic carrying the internet or how wifi means you get can that picture on the phone from Eygpt but you still can't get good reception on your phone without the window  ? Me neither it just works right. so I have no embarrassment whats so ever in telling you that's about as much as I knew about relative orbits of Earth and Mars.

Turns out they get close and for couple of days every two years you get like a short distane and very high bandwidth. This way you can send transmissions with very short delay and in full 7D video. Kentro had told me about this a week before and told me that both my parents, my best friends and a mysterious surprise call would be happening at odd hours of the day and night. He even installed two clocks one on earth time and one on mars time to help me time things. They slowly moved out of sync with each other.

I would describe my conversation with my buds back home but it was like this

"Yoh bud. Your pulling Gees with this one bud, Yakwim" said Catz. A minute later.

"Bud Catz - it's so double plus good to see you yakwim live and direct from The Eye" I said.

Entra looked over "Listen to her bud she's like so Earth, you sound so so sophisticated. yakwim"

"Really Bud? I didn't think I was bud, yakwim. I sound Earth? That's a pit stop" I said.

"No it's so cool, you sound totally sophisticated Bud. Like how is all the free air? Yakwim "

"It's breath-alitious" I said quoting a really naff Eye air advert. if I'm going to have to explain all the Eye terms like Naff I will be here all day.

This was followed by a conversation a couple of hours later with my parents. Which honestly included the following lines. 

"No honestly I had no idea what Dante was going to do. He just walked into this hall and started scamming people. I got out as soon as I realised bud. Honest. ".

The third mystery conversation happened an hour later. It was in a hospital ward, I wondered if a relative I knew was really ill. Or something, Dad, Mum had gone to the hospital along with Catz and my other buds. I recognised some of the people from the Markour crew. Who ever I was going to talk to it was going to be in front of everyone. Someone got tapped on the shoulder and they moved out of the way. Suddenly I was looking at a hospital bed with John lying down. The back moved up and John came to a sitting position.

"Hi Scar how's it going bud?" said John.

John was paralysed from the neck down OMG

"Wow John it's great to see you bud. How are you feeling?" I said carefully avoiding adding the words 'the last time I saw you you were falling away from me at 120m per second per second saying 'remember me'. 

While they waited for my signal to arrive I watched a nurse's hand lean over and hold up a drink box with a straw. John tilted his head forward to take a sip. I felt such a bucket of shit over him. You could have taken my guilt and paved a road with it. 

"Well the stem cell injections are pretty painful. I've had a long time on my back to think about everything bud. I've been feeling pretty stupid yakwim. I don't think I'll go back to running over building street tops. The physo is pretty hard but I've had a goal bud, something to focus on. Something to help me pull through everything."

"What was that bud?" I said.

While they waited for my signal to get to them. I heard Catz giggling in the background. Something was up but I was without a clue.

"You Scar. You, you klutz. I was lying there in my bed feeling pretty sorry for myself knowing you were out there in space frozen. My parents told me not to speak to you but that helped me realise what I felt. I realised I loved you Scar, I loved you more than anyone else in the entire solar system. That's 100 billion people and of all those people I found you."

Wow  that was really nice after all I had done to him. Then You know that feeling on a roller coaster when your at the top just about to drop and you realise that getting on was a pretty bad idea. That's how my stomach felt.

"I didn't respond to your emails when you got to earth because I realised I wasn't the man you knew yakwim." John said he might be paralysed but his face move enough to make up " How could you love him because I didn't bud? I felt pretty low about myself but the doctors told me I could get a huge amount of function back. 'Could' being the keyword bud. They said I might never move my hand or stroke a face yakwim. I've been trying so hard over the last few months, but I promised I wouldn't even speak to you bud until I was whole enough to do something. I've been practicing with my physio Helena until I was strong enough to do this "

John leant forward and waved his arm. He strained forward and through a great deal of effort picked something off camera. He lifted a bunch of lilly's up. With his other hand he held up, oh god a ring. Shit.

"Scarlett, Lilly Banks. Will you marry me?" said John holding up the ring with every sinew under his control. He smiled. I had to be quick or he wouldn't be able to keep that up.

Oh crap what was I going to do? Everyone was there. My family, my friends everyone, everyone I knew. If I turned him down now I would be the worst dog poop ever. I could see in the corner of the screen people using their phones to film the whole thing. What ever I said would be recorded for ever. If I told him no there would be no way anyone would speak to me when I went back. I was the bitch who said no to the man who had given his life for me, then crawled back from the grave for me. It's not that I didn't like John. I felt choked by guilt. crap crap I had to say something there was only so much you could blame on space lag.

"Of courseI would" a voice which sounded like mine coming from my lips said "I'd be delighted".

I'm not a monster I told myself, the other half of my elf said 'what have you done you stupid idiot?'. I'd have to be a complete heartless psychopath to say no. I felt angry to be set up like this.

Someone, a nurse, held up John's hand with the ring for the duration of the time it took my signal to get back to mars.

"I'm going to be on Earth for a bit longer, it's all orbital dynamics then there is the travel in hyper sleep" I added. Perhaps he would get bored or something.

I sat and watched the video of John and companies wait. Johns control over his arm was to much for him and the blonde nurse caught his hand.

Five minutes later back on mars John burst into a huge grin, everyone cheered, a champagne bottle was popped open. I smiled as best I could. It was all a bit of a shock. I knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment I said it.

"You've made me the happiest man in the solar system" said John.

'At the cost of making myself the sadist' I thought. 

I smiled to camera and with the time on the signal running out I said my good byes to everyone. Once the connection went down Kentro emerged. I deliberately said nothing about Kentro to my parents and especially my mother. I didn't want her having nightmares of me getting murdered in my sleep, when I had a robot in the flat. It's the kind of thing she would fret about over and over again until she couldn't sleep. So Kentro had to hide for all of the events.

I checked the wall I kept all my social media on. Yep the photos from hospital started flooding in. Would my friends on Earth find out? Oh god what had I done?

I imagined what my earrings would say 'Some more lab results from Jasper - your a really awful person and gee I wasn't even testing for that' 

"Is madam alright. Am I under the impression she is betrothed?" said Kentro tentatively.

"No, and Yes" I sat on the sofa and burst into tears. Kentro came over and held me. 

******

Wow Scarlett's engaged - bet you didn't see that coming ( actually one of you super smart readers did see it coming and left a comment to that effect. Yes you the really smug one that's right you guessed right and it's so integral to the plot we couldn't change it to spite you ( yeah we do change to plot and writing in response to people but we are not that evil)). Feel free to express your shock on Twitter or something - it's best to get it out. See you next week when we see how Io reacts to an audience of Robots not to mention more Kindra Soul nonsense.