The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

Chapter 50/Binary Tears or Strangely uncoincidental

I travelled in a cold solemn silence back to civilisation. I know that love is supposed to be like alightbulb moment on second you're not in love and the next second you are. For me it had been a new unfamiliar tortuous path deep into the woods. I haven't realised how happy I had been in the forest until that was all suddenly taken away from me. Somewhere over the last months I had quite by chance,  fallen in love with Dante. Now he was gone, I realised how desperately I wanted him. I felt like I was some overweight 50 year old heavy smoker having his fourth heart-attack. It was like my heart is shrinking and tearing every ounce of flesh in my chest with it. I tried not to think how much I blown it. Could I ever get Dante back now? I had as much chance as deflecting the earth from it's orbit.

In orbital dynamics there is this manoeuvre called a slingshot. A Small light spacecraft flies at speed towards a big planet. As it approaches to get very close to big planet and if heads very close to the surface but not into it the spacecraft picks up a great deal of extra speed. Then without ever touching the small spacecraft gets flung at very high speeds off in the deep dark recesses of the solar system. This is how I felt my time with Dante had been. Gravity had pulled me towards him I haven't collided and now I was being flung away never to be seen again at speed. Life must be really bad if I'm using orbital dynamics as a metaphor from my life's progress. Let's face it I was roadkill on the highway of desire.

On the way back to distract me Kentro had told me that I had told him not to interfere. He knew I was seriously worried about the whole John wedding thing. He had noticed my spirits had raised like a thermometer in a furnace while I thought I would be unable to go back to Mars. While he knew it wouldn't be for ever the 10 minute without harming a human being rule meant he was unable to tell me the truth, plus if he did he would be breaking my own order. The weight of reality settled it's self down on my shoulder like a massive stone boulder on an unwarily archaeologist.

***

I got back to my apartment  to find that Io was there  in floods of tears. I had programmed the front door to let her in when she wanted.   She could hardly form a sentence and spoke to Kentro in binary while Kentro translated. In my weeks away Zhickararie had clearly go her to cut her hair in a pixie cut in black. She also sported a new elaborate floral compass tattoo on her shoulder blade, shoulder and upper arm. Tiny black mascara rivers of desolation shot down her cheeks.

She buzzed for a while in binary and Kentro sort of nodded.

"Apparently she broke up with Mr Zhickararie or rather he with her" said Kentro.

I must admit I was secretly just a little bit glad, (am I bad?). I wasn't sure Zhickararie was the right guy for her. My mum said we all need to have our shitty relationship  so we appreciated the good one, so I had let her be. He had kept her away from me and told her that humans on this planet didn't discuss things with each other. He had been fairly controlling, but I had the feeling that she in her robot-for-a-mother dumbness had quite enjoyed being told this was right and that was wrong. Where I had managed to tone down some of the sex-goddess look Zhickararie had amped it up. He didn't mind they were the talk of the school, he wanted her as arm candy while he strutted around the building with his hot girl toy. Yet he had been quite tolerant of her and I was hoping I had misjudged him, perhaps he wasn't the evil little runt I thought he could be. Apparently his apartment had some cool art in it. On the other hand  He never went to one of Io's robot rallies for the upchuck charity and it was a strain to think of this in a positive light. I mean even Dante had been along to a couple. Now I knew I was right all along he was a jerk (Zhickararie not Dante).

Io looked very distressed, I wasn't sure what to do. I sent a message on my ring to Kentro telling him to go get Io's tail. Zhickararie had been quite strict about Io's cybernetic tail and this had suited Memphis. Memphis... I'd forgotten about him.

Kentro return with Io's tail. Io immediately left for the restroom to put it on. While she did I spoke to Kentro.

"When is her revised Turin Test?" I asked him I knew it was close. I hadn't worried about it and Zhickararie hand not let me near to coach her. 

"Tomorrow madam" confirmed Kentro.

"He would have to dump her just before she was going to retake her test" I said.

"It seems... strangely uncoincidental Madam" said Kentro.

Strangely uncoincidental was right. Did he do all this deliberately? If it was true I've wiped my ass with stuff with more integrity than him.

A box of tissues and a tub of chunky Monkey later ( Io's comment was does it contain real monkey or is it monkey flavouring?). Io was Ok enough to go to sleep in the spare room. Then she got up in the night and told me she couldn't sleep without her radiation shielding. So we went up to her room and I slept in her spare room while she slept in her space bed. I lay there seduced by a the charms of a soft bed,  feeling guilty  that I could sleep  regardless of listening to Io's sobbing. Tomorrow was a going to be a difficult day.