Sassy parkour runner Scarlett Banks, is mysteriously exiled from Mars. Arriving she collides with Dante Tyrell the Earth's resident gorgeous bad boy. A man so impenitent he doesn't hesitate to share his public dislike for Martians. Scarlett gives...
Dante had asked me in one of the math classes if I wanted to come out and see some 'class stuff'. Io was off to another rally where I would feel embarrassed being a human so having an excuse not to go was a big plus.
The next day Dante had grabbed me and we had taken the Hyperloop to New Mexico. Outside the hyper loop station Dante's motor bike was waiting. It was long and aerodynamic a smooth arrow to push the air out of the way. It looked like a fighter jet had made love to a motorcycle and this was the rather cool love child. The driver and his passenger sat inside mostly glass 'pod' and a reclined seat. The motorcycle had a manual mode which Dante enjoyed switching to. It was early in the morning the sun was strong but everything was still cool. There was nothing but landscape outside, raw rock. It reminded me of mars.
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"What are we doing?" I asked
"Well now with George and Leo, and Io out of the picture, it's been a bit quite. Plus, I wondered if your OK pyjamas?" said Dante over my earrings to my helmet. "This was your idea or Georges?"
"Georges" said Dante "you know I don't care for you. By the way my dentist want's your email address so he can sent you hate mail. Or a big thank you, possibly both I'm not sure... but you've seemed a little down."
"I'm OK. Io has been doing a heavy schedule of gigs. She's been selling out stadium after stadium. People have been selling her tour teeshirts. I've been following her around. I'm just tired." I said as the bike wove around the orderly flow of traffic.
"Stadium of robots" said Dante he had come to corner. "I hear Aunt Mallery can't get a tenth of the humans to listen to the number of robots Io can."
"Robots can't vote, who cares." I said.
"Robots vote on their owner's behalf, most people leave their voting and face book profiles up to their robots." Dante began "If Aunt Mallory was serious about winning she would position her self so she would look like the kind of leader a robot thinks their owner would vote for if their owner could be bothered to vote. If she got one tweet by an opinion leader on one zero dot net then she would be much closer to her seat."
"For someone with no interest in politics you certainly sound well informed" I said looking at the density of cactuses beside the road. Arizona looked a bit like Mars, perhaps that's why Dante chose it to cheer me up.
I could feel him shrug, "I grew up in a house where all this marginal gains stuff was important. It sticks like the taste of last nights pizza. Hang on."
I put my hands around his chest and held on tight. The bike switched from side to side slicing up the snack back curve up the mountain. Mile after mile of raw red rock, climbing up hill. After a few minutes I could see the drops but strangely didn't worry Dante would go over the edge.
"Here we go," said Dante "Look".
We turned a corner and suddenly a huge sight overwhelmed me. A huge dark concrete wall rising out of the desert as far as the eye could see. It was breath takeingley tall, like they had expected to repel an army of 100ft giants in 20 ft high heels welding step ladders. It was like you were in an Ant theme park and they wanted you to know what a road curb was like so they had one for scale. This was big seriously huge lump of concrete.
"Trump's wall all 2,000 miles of it" said Dante needlessly. "Fun fact, it's called Trump's wall but he never built a mile of it."
My breath was taken away. We carried on long enough to be sure it wasn't a mirage then Dante pulled over on a path out of ear shot of the road with a view of the wall.
"I come here when I need to think" said Dante as we stopped.
Dante undid a small travel robot and it got out, unfolded and began putting a picnic out in the shade of a huge rock. You can of stood there distance beyond distance. Something out of scale. I'd seen pictures of Trump's wall it was one of those tourist images of earth, but on a screen in a frame didn't prepare you for the scale of thing. It went from horizon to horizon, so long you could see the curvature of the earth. After a while I went and sat down with my back to a warm rock on the picnic rugs.
"It puts things into perspective for me. Reminds me how small our problems are in the scale of things." said Dante.
I wondered if he knew what my real problem was? I had kept a lid on it. I looked at him. There was something about the journey and now the way he stood it which made me think of those early Mars colonial posters the ones which said 'A NEW LIFE AWAITS YOU ON THE RED PLANET'.
"After lunch we will take one of the tunnels to the other side. The graffiti is much better on that side especially if you know how to read 'ass hole' in Spanish."
"Does it really cross America?" I said.
"Sort of. It used to, a lot has fallen down, cheap materials, shoddy construction, poorly paid and under-trained labour then undermined it by all the tunnels they dug under it. Nearly bankrupted the country doing it. This section is intact, now a world heritage site. "
"It's like a lot of effort to go to to keep the people of the south out." I said.
Dante shrugged ."By the end, it became more useful to keep the people of the North in. You want to know why 240 million people left this country by spaceship? You're looking at it. "
We looked out to the wall and remained mute for a few minutes.
I looked out "One of my favourite things on Earth is the silence" I told him. "On Mars, I never heard the sound silence. There is always a fan, a buzz or hum, or something in the distance. Hearing nothing is such a luxury. You don't know how important nothing is sometimes."
Dante looked over. "What is number two on your list?"
I thought for a moment "the feeling of wind on my cheek. I escaped the visitors centre at one of the deep ocean wind parks. I was caught by the sensation of life touching me. It's felt like the planet wanted to play being my lover. "
Dante tilted his head "You see so much beauty where many do not. Miss Potato head."
I slapped him but not hard.
We had pleasant lunch, sandwiches,wraps, Dante I bought Ginger beer partly because it was George's favourite and he had a large stock left quickly approaching their sell by date. We were picknicking on the edge near a steep cliff. Dante went to the edge went back and that then leapt over. There was a small very deep gap between this ledge and another one. He was fast and big enough to get over it quite easily.
I walked up the edge. There was quite a drop but nearby was sharp rock. I looked at it, on Mars I could have easily jump to it. I had kept up my parkour lessons in Atlanta and knew and could I jump to it even on earth. I stood there and I was still unable to jump over the gap. The drop was bad but even though I knew I could easily make it I couldn't make the jump. And I thought I had been improving but after the marriage proposal from John, I was worse than ever. Would I ever lived dangerously again?
Dante looks at me. "just run and jump I'll catch you, I won't let you fall". He says holding his hand out.
"it's not you I'm worried about it's the local gravitational field" I said.
I looked at the drop my stomach turn to solid lead, and found myself shaking my head. Dante encouraged me but then realise he wasn't going to coax me into leaving. Dante checked his watch and announced it was time to go.
He leapt back. We got on his bike and went down to the valley bellow approaching the wall closer and closer. It was only when you got close you realised just how huge it was. I was completely awestruck. I'd been down the great Canyon on Mars but somehow this felt bigger. It was a hot day but soon we entered the shadow of the wall and it felt more comfortable. Dante pulled off the road, and approached an abandoned factory. As we slowed I noticed a few vehicles and the tracks of lots of cybercars. We parked, got out and walked into the darkness of the large loading bay doors. We walked in to see lots of men dressed in leather and denim. They were so rich in tattoos you thought you were in a picture man convention.
