#bxttyrxss

bxttyrxss

Bruce hated having to say good bye to Betty, but she was needed somewhere else and so was he. He promised he’d call her while she was away and fully intended to keep that promise then things got in the way. He’d managed one call before everything went to Hell.

The Other Guy got off the stealth plane long before it crashed in Fiji. Then he started swimming. His body adapted to the salt water quickly and he swam faster than most people would probably expect. It helped that he didn’t fatigue like people did. It was the middle of the night when he reached the coast. The beach he landed on was empty so he walked to a safe place before sitting down and relaxing. Bruce came to in an alley near a homeless shelter. It wasn’t difficult to get some clothes. He pretended he’d been robbed so the people there were willing to help him. By the morning he was moving. The emergency kit he’d sewn into his pocket helped him get some supplies and he relied on hitching to get where he needed to go. The ease that he slipped back into his life as a fugitive should have bothered him, but the reality was he always expected to have to go back to it.

It took him a day to get access to a computer. He sat in the cafe for a moment trying to decide if what he was about to do was the right thing. He’d made a promise and he knew he should keep it, but there was the niggling thought that she was safe and protected where she was. He finally hit send making it her choice, it was her life and her choice. The email triggered a chain of events that accomplished a few things beyond sending Betty a message.

“Betty, if you’re reading this then something has happened and I need to start running again. I couldn’t send this message directly so I wrote it and had it held until I needed to activate it. If you still want to join me then there’s a bag in the left bottom drawer of the desk with instructions for you on how to do that. All you have to do is reply to this and I will know to wait for you. If you changed your mind and want to stay where you are then I understand. In either case I love you very much. Every moment I have spent with you have been the happiest I could ever expect them to be. Bruce”

As soon as he sent the message, he left the cafe. He kept moving and when he could he checked for a reply. Bruce was quieter than he usually was with people as he traveled. The people he met thought he looked sad and haunted. They didn’t ask him too many questions they just gave him a ride and attempted to make conversation. They weren’t surprised when he would leave without warning when they stopped for whatever reason.

Send me “Dear Diary,” to read my characters would-be journal entry from the day they met yours.

So the new government project doesn’t seem to be as bad as I feared.  They respected my request and kept me away from weapons application.  Though they probably thought that was odd coming from a nuclear physicist, but that’s just how I am.  The applications for radiation resistance go farther than soldiers so I’m very excited to see what we can accomplish with it.

A strange thing happened at lunch today.  Well, strange for me.  I was eating lunch alone with a book and my notebook open when someone approached me.  I was so sure that nobody would ask to sit at my table that it took me a moment to realize she was in fact talking to me.  I quickly cleared her a spot so she could sit down.  She seemed to find my apology amusing which was probably a good thing.  Then when I figured out she was a cellular biologist we had plenty to talk about.  We kept talking after we finished lunch because she was brimming over with ideas and was more than capable of holding her own in the conversation which was a pleasant surprise.  Our work at this point is coming up with ideas so it wasn’t like we were goofing off.