Some Romance

Silvia wanted me to do this.  This is only the first part of it.  If you think this opening part is a bit depressing, well, Silvia told me to do it.  It was her idea.  Anyway, here's the story!  See what you think!

“I’m just going to jump,” Hanna reassured herself, “And then it will be over.  Little pain.”  I can do it.  I’m not a coward!”

Then she jumped off the edge of the Windstorm Industries Department of Spaceflight.  It was a much more complicated thing to do on Mars than on Earth.  On Earth, it’s fall a few seconds, and splat! You’re gone.  On Mars, it’s fall for nearly a minute, and hope you get going fast enough in the one third of Earth gravity to die, or else you’re going to be in a lot of pain.  A whole lot of pain.  And for a while after everyone will watch over you and your family will think you’re crazy and they’ll tell you they love you, even if they don’t.

Hanna had made sure none of that happened.  It was 1:00 at night, and few people where around to see her fall.  She was on the tallest building in Olympia, the capital of the Masonic territory and the highest city on Mars.  She was at the top of the world; it was more than enough falling space to die.  She thought about it one last time and jumped.

 

Gene was taking his normal night walk through the city.  It had been an excruciatingly normal day for him with nothing different happening.  Just go in, go out, nothing has changed except now it’s dark, he thought.  He had been suffering from mild depression for years and had been taking medication to somewhat cure it.  Somewhat.  It hadn’t helped much.

However much he felt down and like there was no hope; he always looked up to the city’s founder, Mason.  The famous founder had suffered from clinical depression for much of his life, but had still helped in the terraforming and settlement of Mars.  Many of his ideas had resulted from his rather interesting view on life.  So Gene figured his lucky day would come soon enough.

He was walking past a WI building when he saw some dark object falling from the building.  He figured it was just something that had fallen out a window and easily replaceable until he saw it was had a humanoid shape.  He rushed toward it and saw a young woman, probably only 20 to 25, falling out of the sky toward him.  Thinking it had to be some employee that was recently hired and therefore did not know her way around to the degree she did not know where the floor ended and open space began, he tried to catch her.

What Gene did not anticipate is that if someone has been falling for a long time and they weigh quite a bit over 100 pounds, they are not easy to catch.  He felt a hard jolt of pain rush through him, fell to the ground, and the last thing he saw was the started face of whoever he had partially caught.  The next thing he knew he was in a hospital.