Chapter 17: Walk Funny

I was sleeping in the arms of a tiger and a wolf. In the dream world I was far wiser than in the real world. Answers were easy. Lucid dreamers are aware that we are dreaming. It is one reason my "willing suspension of disbelief" is so difficult to achieve while watching movies. Normal humans enter a hypnotic state when watching movies—and the Bab Lab indicates that our primate cousins, the Olive Baboon, do the same. It's easier to willingly suspend disbelief when hypnotized. Memory is state-dependent for me. I have to be in the same mind frame to relive an experience. Some call it a photographic memory! Despairing of remembering all that I was learning in the dream world I accessed a sleep learner switch to record my dreams. Svetlana moved in her sleep and I adjusted. Calgary and her cubs—and Kimba, the albino lion—shifted as well. Why was that?

AI Ramses let me know that it was time to wake up, a silent alarm clock. As I swam through the layers of consciousness the animals on my sleep pad woke up too.

"How about breakfast?" I asked my four-footed stepchildren. "I have a busy day ahead of me."

I had food replicators in my quarters but seldom used them. Food was everywhere. I could even dine in Conference Room Four, the most-often used of the conference rooms, at least by me. Conference Room One was now nicknamed the Throne Room and Lilith, the station governor, used that one for formal receptions, for visitors both in person and virtual when they came from outside the station. More often used was the food replicator in my office. I dined in the mess hall often, too—but most of my meals were taken in the kennel and stable deck where I regularly exercised with the many animals. Did we have that many?

One place I avoided dining other than token bites was the Baboon Laboratory. I didn't sleep there, either. I was ENEMY to the baboons and well aware of that fact. There were two exceptions: Fannie Mae anytime, and Sally Mae when she was away from the other baboons. Fannie Mae was her own baboon, but Sally Mae followed the crowd—even when the crowd put her down. Have I told you lately that humans and baboons are alike?

The kennels were usually a busy place. The big cats liked their nap time—spent most of every 24 hour period sleeping. The dogs liked to run and bark—social creatures make lots of noise to tell their world—their pack—that the critter exists. The horses liked to eat and run. Herbivores ate low-quality food, nutritionally speaking. It takes a lot of grass to keep a horse healthy.

As I dialed up breakfast for my four-footed family I remembered my dreams, sort of. The Sa'arm were not known to be farmers, nor were they known to practice animal husbandry. They gathered organics and, according to the reports, reduced them to food pellets. I had a declassified report on the Sa'arm recovered in stasis by myself and the crew of Messenger of the Gods. Sa'arm had the ability to hibernate. That wasn't a good thing—but in addition to hibernation, the Sa'arm recovered had been in stasis as well. Hibernation consumed more resources than stasis. Was food their Achilles Heel? Hunter-gathers needed lots of land to live. Human hunter-gatherers required about ten square kilometers for sustained existence—given that the land in question met certain criteria. Very rich land would support more, and the poor lands of the Arctic or Sahara required hundreds of square kilometers to keep one hunter-gatherer fat and happy.

By contrast, "traditional agriculture" would support 500 times the humans that hunter-gatherer technology could. Experimental agriculture could support 5000 people in those ten square kilometers—and possibly more.

Want proof? Many fishing grounds are "fished out." How much of that is due to over-fishing and how much climate change or man-made pollution affected the fish population is a scientific wild-assed guess, nothing more—because no measured baseline is available. When a dozen fishing boats haul in all the fish they can sell and a century later a thousand fishing boats all return with empty nets with significant changes to the ocean, it's not measuring apples to apples. Your proof is going to be hard to find because fish farming saturates the environment and isn't as cheap as simply harvesting Nature's bounty—until there is no more.

A billion Sa'arm unleashed on Planet Earth would quickly denude the land of edibles. Earth could—at most—support about a hundred million hunter-gathering humans. A billion human hunter-gatherers isn't sustainable. It would take more than a billion Sa'arm units to conquer Earth—if we humans got our act together and eradicated the Sa'arm. One quick way would be Scorched Earth—burn everything edible within 100 kilometers of the Sa'arm hive and keep it burned.

Would the Sa'arm adapt to raping the sea like we humans do? I don't know. But my calculations were that a billion Sa'arm would eat everything organic on the land areas within a decade. Fighting against human weapons such as the Roman Plow (salt the fields so that nothing will grow there again), Agent Orange (and other herbicides), Man's first Weapon of Mass Destruction—Fire, and the dreaded nuclear option could starve the Sa'arm out in less than ten months, depending upon how much food the Sa'arm imported from the stars. '

Of course, it wouldn't be a picnic for humans—we'd return to the womb of the oceans and complete the destruction of Earth for the Sa'arm by sweeping oceans clean of life—unless we practiced sea agriculture and the Sa'arm left humans undisturbed.

Fat chance!

Seven billion humans—and at maximum effort, one billion human soldiers—the Sa'arm would have their hands full with an unprecedented challenge. Competition between Sa'arm and humans for food—and oxygen (part of the cycle)--would devastate Planet Earth. And the Sa'arm were predicted to arrive in force in ten years.

Not an appetizing breakfast thought. I dined lightly and it wasn't due to stress—I was working out today with the six Space Marines assigned to the station. A cup of mocha, two big buttered croissants with orange marmalade, and I was ready for prime time! I would eat again in three hours—brunch! Meanwhile my bedtime companions were gorging themselves on their rations.

Six nude, muscular women were taking turns on a large wrestling mat. The other animals watched—and I wonder if the dogs and horses wagered on their favorites. Would betting mean anything to my fur kids? The erotic sight of six naked women practicing different wrestling holds on each other soon had my attention—but not all of it. I noticed a crowd enter the kennels area even over the incessant barking. My attention was on the glistening nude bodies in front of me until the group got within ten meters. Tess—in her burka-like modified Civil Service uniform—was leading Victoria Williams in her own Civil Service uniform. There were nine other people with them—and one wore Space Marine green. The rest were naked. I noted that two were obviously pregnant.

"This is Tom," Tess announced to the crowd. "That's 'Lieutenant Lawrence' to you, Private Martin and 'Master Tom' to the rest of you. Tom, you know Victoria. These are the adult concubines that she selected for herself and her brother. The concubines are in training. Private Martin will be training with you and Ensign Williams."

"You're naked!" Private Martin squeaked. He was staring at my erect penis.

"Private Martin managed to get a 6.8 CAP score," Tess continued, her irritation masked. "I stole your idea and adopted the children at the mission. These other children are fourteen and over—adults in the eyes of the Confederacy—and they volunteered to be CAP tested here and take their chances as concubines. You did that with us a while ago—we volunteered on speculation and CAP tested here in the station. Private Martin is seventeen and he has been taking care of the others. I told you how they stayed alive. Father O'Riley gave them food and shelter and medical treatment—but couldn't keep them out of the sex trade."

"Juan surprised me," Victoria confessed. "He got a higher CAP score than I did."

"He's been taking care of the younger children," Tess explained. "He was their pimp, their protector, their business manager. What's going on here?"

"Gracie Jujitsu," I said. "They are learning advanced scientific wrestling. I was just about to butt in."

"Like that?" Victoria asked, pointing at my jutting prick.

""We like him that way," Bo, one of the Space Marines, said as she wiped her face with a towel. "Besides, the animals like watching us fuck. They really like it when Lieutenant Lawrence does us all doggie style."

"He has an appointment in the Baboon Laboratory," Tess explained. "He is using that obvious arousal as a psychological weapon to intimidate the other baboons. Have you seen a baboon penis?"

"Private, fix your uniform," I had been a US Army sergeant for a long time and correcting uniform violations was a good way to hide my own embarassment. "Your gig line is off. Your cap is supposed to be squared off. You have one trouser leg bloused and the other loose. When you wear your uniform, wear it correctly and wear it with pride."

"Goddess Lilith wants him naked at all times," Tess said. "He's part of Ensign William's platoon and Ensign Williams wants his Space Marines wearing the uniform. Being a former sex worker doesn't make Private Martin a pervert!"

Tess was joking. Normally Tess was nude in line with the station dress code.

"Lieutenant Lawrence sends a message to the animals when he is naked like them," Tess explained. "He shows them that he is no better than they are. They respond to that."

"In twenty minutes I need to be in the Baboon Laboratory," I announced. "Fenton has been modified to specifications and he will rejoin the baboon troop today. Private, you will participate in close order drill because it used to be how armies fought armed mobs—and won even when out-numbered ten-to-one. It will give you insight into the Sa'arm, the best-drilled soldiers in the known galaxy."