Chapter 2

I had learned that it didn’t do to take the top spot, as that put quite a target on one’s back. Sometimes it was unavoidable, such as with a lion’s pride, but that was solved by driving the male progeny away early enough before they became a challenge. By then habit kept them clear of their former home territory.

It wasn’t as much a problem in some animal societies, and in matriarchal societies such as most whale pods, mastodon and bonobo, troublesome males were either pacified or exiled. It was too much trouble to be bothersome, I know because I have tried it all ways, and paid attention to the ways which caused the most pain and difficulty and the earliest deaths. I have the wisdom of my own ancestry.

So I wouldn’t be the Old Man of the Mountain, father of all assassins, but rather would I be his friend the poet who sat under a tree by the fountain in the royal courtyard, paid a monthly stipend in gold with which to drink and think about sex and to write about thinking and drinking.

After all who now can recall the political reasons or pure greed which motivated the drug addled murders of the hashishins- while every one even now recognize at least two lines of the poet’s verse. “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou, beside me in the wilderness...”

With my advantages I could see more keenly and glean more from what I saw. Sometimes I spoke up to avoid disaster, other times I just faded if it was too difficult to avert or complex to mitigate. Sometimes it’s just time for a town to be wiped out, and trying to evacuate would cause just as much harm as the event itself. Pompeii was that way. I lead the way, encouraging as many as who were willing to, to leave but I didn’t feel responsible for those who chose to stay put. I didn’t have time to waste cajoling or soothing ruffled feathers, so just pulled along every one who was influenced by my charisma, and left it at that. I didn’t look back as our ragged flotilla sailed away, already menaced by random lava bombs.

Although I wouldn’t be a leader of assassins nor would I lightly kill for greed or power or politics, I did have to assimilate a few despots under who’s control I had become enmeshed. I would either self-destruct their empire, or change it’s direction in a more benevolent direction.

Ok, if you caught that, good for you, if you didn’t, I let slip that I can assimilate with out being ingested. I don’t as a matter of course, it is more the exception. I am not a body-snatching vampire! Sometimes you eat the food, sometimes the food assimilates you.

There are people who exist who are not content to live and let live, but who feel they should be in charge of how every one else proceedes as well. They know better than every one else, and they have a plan for every little detail of existence, so you must listen to them and do it their way.

I think we all have some of that in our makeup, if we think we know better we are all apt to say “yer dooin’ it wrong”. But after all, it’s their right under natural law, and I know a thing or two about natural law. Failure is a better teacher than success, especially when your will can survive death.