Here is "the rest of the story" !
In the meantime though, he was worried about Penny. What was he going to do with her? How could he convince her to do the right thing and save herself years of long term care as an invalid ?
“Come sit down and let’s eat.” He said to her, ignoring the fact that he had noticed her hovering beside him while they fixed dinner.
“I’ll help you with your exercises after a while. It’ll be fun. We’ll put some music on and dance if nothing else, how about that ?”
This got a little smile out of her, she loved to dance. When she was a child and of course not old enough to hover yet, she had taken dancing lessons. She loved the way her body moved and how she could remember the complicated routines. She became the music. It was wonderful. And it was true that hover dancing was just not the same as ground dancing. It was hard to get the rhythms right because when you were hovering you were always just a little bit behind the beat. There were plenty of things that were fun to do hovering, but dancing wasn’t really one of them.
And surprisingly sex was not so great either while hovering. This was one thing that kept some hover addicts from being airborn 100% of the time.
There were entirely new sports developed since the discovery of the Hover Lobe. Hoverball, Air Hockey, Water Walking all had their players and fans. Entire industries had been built up around these new activities.
But even the sports players were not immune from the long term effects of hovering. There were plenty of famous Air Hockey players that did public announcements advocating “Eight hours a day, with your feet on the ground”. Hopefully getting through to the young people enough that when their time came to start hovering, that they would choose to balance out this new pleasure with some common sense walking during the day.
As Jason and Penny ate dinner quietly, sitting there, the nagging thoughts came to him that he had wondered about so often. He wished that the Hover Lobe had never been discovered.
Humans just did not seem to be very good at self-control. Once something is let out of the box, we aren’t able to put it back, no matter how many good reasons there are for doing so. So expecting people not to have the procedure was just not a possibility. It was so revolutionary for people to be able to do the very thing that we dreamt of. “Flying”. It fulfilled a very primal desire. Although hovering was not quite the same as the graceful flight of birds, it was certainly a pretty good substitute for two legged mammals. How could you really argue against it? He felt the old familiar frustration of disapproving of something that was so commonplace. It did make him feel like a “foot on the ground”, a stick in the mud fuddy duddy.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he should just think about something else.
It was exhausting to go against the flow all the time. These thoughts just made him feel depressed. When would humankind ever grow up?
Penny lifted her eyes briefly from her food long enough to see the look on Jason’s face. She knew she was hurting him. She didn’t want to. She wasn’t sure what she really wanted though. It seemed that her life was filled with her work, which was not that satisfying, and coming home to an empty house, well, empty except for Jason. She loved him, but everything seemed so dull. Working at a government job, sitting at a desk all day dictating information into a computer had turned out to be so mind numbing that she could hardly stand it. But everyone wanted a secure job like hers and it seemed ungrateful to be so dissatisfied.
When they were almost finished with their meal, the doorbell rang.
It was Andrew and Tawny and their little girl Zoe. Jason and Andrew strolled into the living room together and left the girls at the dinner table.
“We were on our way home and thought we would pop in for a few minutes. Tawny said, How are you two? We haven’t seen you since the concert in the park last month.”
Zoe stood next to her mother, a shy little thing. She had on a little pink leotard and tights with sweet little ballet slippers and an orange sweater. Tawny caught the look on Penny’s face. “She dressed herself for ballet lessons this afternoon, quite the outfit don’t you think?” Little Zoe, who was 4 years old climbed up to the table and peeked in one of the take out containers. Penny handed her a clean fork and she happily plopped down and started in on what was left of the noodles.
“Actually, we aren’t sure the ballet lessons are going to continue. Tawny said, The teacher just found out she is going to have a baby and will have to stop teaching in a few months. I hope she can find a replacement, Zoe just loves her ballet class.”
Penny stared at Tawny with a light dawning in her eyes. “Really, she said tell me all about it.”
Their company only stayed a few minutes and as soon as Zoe had finished off the rest of the noodles, they said goodnight.
Penny and Jason spent a quiet evening together. Much to Jason’s surprise Penny got out her pamphlet from the doctor and went through all the exercises in it. Jason decided to just keep quiet, but kept looking at Penny who had a strange expression on her face that he could not quite read.
But he didn’t want to interrupt her activities to ask her what was going on.
He was just happy to see her taking the doctor’s advise.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Three months later Jason sprinted up the front steps and opened the front door. His ears were assaulted by high pitched screams. He poked his head around the corner into the living room and there was Penny surrounded by 5 or 6 little girls squealing loudly and jumping up and down.
She looked up, “Hi! I brought them home for a special treat this afternoon, I promise their parents are coming to pick them up in 15 minutes!” Penny said breathlessly. “Aren’t they something? Have you ever seen so much energy in one place in your life?” The little herd of pink tights and tu tus moved off down the hall in search of mischief. Hide and seek seemed to be the current amusement.
Jason walked over to Penny and swooped her up in his arms. “You are the one that’s something.” He said. And kissed her thoroughly.
The girls came streaming out of one of the bedrooms, making a beeline toward Penny and he made a quick retreat into the kitchen to look for a snack. He rummaged in the cupboard looking for something quick. He found a bag of Cheetos and grabbed a handful and popped them in his mouth. His face contorted in mild disgust. “Hey Penny, these Cheetos are stale.” He tossed them in the waste bin.
Later that evening after dinner, he and Penny were sitting outside in the garden. The sun was on it’s way down. It was a lovely warm evening.
He looked over at her and smiled. She looked so content and relaxed.
It warmed his heart to see how much she had changed since taking on the ballet class with the girls. Her hovering was now kept to a minimum so that she was in good physical shape to teach her students. She had never complained or looked back at the way things used to be. He was so happy for her in so many ways he didn’t know what to say.
“Hey Pen, he said, Let’s go up and watch the sun go down.” She looked at him and smiled, “Yes let’s do that.” She said.
They stood up and held hands and slowly drifted up about 100 feet above all the trees in the neighborhood and hovered with their arms entwined watching the orange ball of the sun sink slowly out of sight. The sky was ablaze with pink and mauve and golden clouds. Jason sighed. He turned toward Penny and kissed her gently. Now THIS was worth hovering for! Maybe Dr. Wolfe wasn't such a bad guy after all.
THE END