Chapter 2

A month passed, and Jill and Jamie's parents were flying over the Atlantic, off to a second honeymoon in Scotland. The seven young women were camping out in the very large living room of Jill and Jamie's house, sleeping bags and air mattresses arranged throughout the room. They had had an early dinner, showered, and were all in their pajamas. The plan was to perhaps chat for a bit, and then sack out early. Everyone was looking forward to early morning hiking in the nearby national park the next day. Jill was sitting on the floor next to Laura at Laura's sleep site, helping her unpack. Jill had been admiring all the different stuffed animals her friends had brought to sleep with, and she wondered with amusement if Laura had one. But when she looked in Laura's duffel bag, all she saw under the clothes was a thick, somewhat dirty book. She pulled it out to look at it, and was not surprised to see that the author was Butkov. Jill glanced up and noticed Laura was giving her a warm smile.

"You carry it around to honor his memory, don't you? As a way of expressing gratitude..."

"Yes" said Laura, happy that Jill knew her story, and thrilled that her closest friend understood her heart so clearly. "It's the only thing I have from my past life. When I ran from my grandfather's house that night, there was no time even to dress. I was in bare feet and pajamas, just clutching a jacket and that book. Fortunately it was summer! After a month in the woods, the jacket was badly torn, and the pajamas were in shreds. I was effectively naked from the waist down when I was rescued. The Dutch troops were so kind, Jill, with such kind respects to avert their eyes while some made a small room for me by holding up blankets, giving me some privacy to change into some of their spare clothing. That book is the only thing I have left; plus all the memories, of course."

"I'll miss you so," said Jill, after a moment. "In another week you'll be at Cal Tech, 2000 miles away. You are so much a part of my life; you've helped me become what I am in so many ways... I think you even helped me get accepted to Carnegie Mellon."

"Oh? How so?"

"It was somewhat amusing. I was touring their campus last winter, talking to a physics professor in his office. He was very pleasant, attentive, but I could tell it was the end of a long day for him. Our conversation wandered to quantum mechanics. He was surprised I was so versed on all the new breakthroughs. I told him how you and I have practically been living together for the last three years, and his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. He started madly dialing on his phone. In a few minutes, we had almost all the physics and math department professors jammed into his small office with us. It turns out a math professor there was doing a final review on your book "A New Mathematics" for the publishers, and the two departments were going bonkers over it."

"It's stupendous!" this one woman professor kept saying. "Calculus advanced from algebra by embodying the concepts of limits and infinity. This new mathematics is just as major a step, embodying the concepts of self-organization and incomputability."

"It'll be the math of choice for studying self-organizing systems," another professor said. "Quantum interface layers, weather turbulence, biological sciences, stellar and cosmic evolution, economic dynamics, the implications are staggering."

"They especially liked your extensions of Lagrangian formalism, with generalized momentum coordinates, and how you called your new math Boltzmann formalism, with generalized entropy coordinates. They laughed that it never would have occurred to them in a million years to model entropy changes as vectors normal to hyper-surfaces of self organization..." Jill then smiled at Laura and said, "The quantum physics professors were asking me about your experimental proposals. I think they forgot that I wasn't you! I tried to tell them all the analogies you told me as best I could. They wanted to know what experimental results you were expecting. Boy, was I on shaky ground! I made a vague explanation on how two interferometers would probably be needed to capture both ends of the interface entanglement.

"But it was your theoretical work they were in love with. "Just three short equations," this one professor said, "proving a self-organizing interface entanglement is computable on the classical side, but must be incomputable on the quantum side due to the counterfactual influences.""

"I quoted you verbatim from the first time you tried to explain this to me: "This is all so obvious! How could you ever hope to compute the effect of what hasn't happened in a self-organizing phenomenon? The beauty of the physics is that all the counterfactuals get absorbed and resolved in the interface layer, resulting in the computability of all classical, immutable processes.""

"Oh, Laura," sighed Jill, "Obvious?! I'm just so glad they didn't push me on explaining your math on this to them. I know what a tensor is, but what your self-enfolding flow tensors are, I have no idea... I made a comment that we were such close friends, I was sure I could get you to Carnegie Mellon as a guest speaker for a talk or two. They were ecstatic! I knew then my acceptance to CMU was a done deal."

"Ha! Amusing indeed... It's so gratifying to delight people with my work, Jill. It brings back memories of my grandfather. Just after New Years when I was 14, I had finished reading the math section of his library, and I kept asking him where the books for the next step were, I wanted to know the answers to how self-organization would be encapsulated into the calculus. We spent half the evening trying to understand each other. He finally realized what I was talking about when I showed him my idea for a feedback contour, and I asked him how I could integrate it."

"He looked delighted, laughed, and said, "Oh, Laura, You won't find those answers here. I think you're the first person even to recognize the question!""

"Such a wonderful man, I miss him so... I'll miss you too, Jill, deeply. You've helped me as much as I've helped you. Socially, you've been a great mentor to me, as well as my dearest friend. I am so shy around people sometimes, especially young men my age. I'm so timid about my femininity. You have such a wonderfully open and relaxed approach to relationships. Well... It'll be great to visit CMU, make the talks on Fridays, and we can share the weekends together."

"Okay... Steve told me how horrible it was for you after your grandfather was killed, being hunted by the paramilitary for more than a month, and being haunted by the war bird... Wasn't there anyone who would give you shelter?"

"Jill," sighed Laura, pausing a long moment, and finally saying: "You don't grasp the insanity of the hatred. My mother was Muslim, my father Christian. It was an unusual combination even before the war. My parents' union and their progeny were abhorrent to the ethnic nationalists on all sides, exactly what they stood against. Their fanatic visions of the future were so dark, Jill, entirely bereft of love. Their hate had stripped the love from their dreams... Hatred... is such a consuming emotion. It consumes your ability to compromise, to negotiate, to forgive. It consumes the inner vision of your empathy, blinding you to your neighbor's perspective. Ultimately, it can even consume your survival instinct, think of suicide bombers. Hate wasn't the only thing my people ever had, but it finally became the only thing they had left. In the end, the society became so insane that no one would accept me, and I became an extermination target for all the warring extremists."

"My God, my God," whispered Jill, her whole body shaking. She gently took hold of Laura hand. "How is it possible you don't want revenge?"

"You should know, Jill. We studied John Milton together in honors English this year. Remember book nine of Paradise Lost? How revenge, seeming sweet at first in contemplation, turns bitter upon execution and recoils back upon itself? Once I recognized this in my dream with the war bird, the desire for revenge became easy to discard. Why would I want to degrade myself?"

"Dearest Laura, I still can't imagine how you held onto your sanity and your faith through that hell... I know you're a Christian. Did your family follow your father's religion?"

"Not exactly. Both my parents took time as teachers. The religion my mother taught me from the Quran was a religion of love, tolerance, and deep reflection. My father's teachings were very similar from the Bible. My brother followed my mother's faith. I felt the need for a redemption I couldn't possibly earn, and followed my father's faith. Katja and Natalie were too young to choose... Did you ever hear Ellie Weisel's Nobel Prize speech, where he made the brilliant observation that the opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy? I think the opposite of hatred is forgiveness. Think of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The decision of the father is to either hate his son, or forgive him. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the choice of the Jericho traveler is to love the wounded stranger, or ignore him. Such keen insight Weisel had, to see that the true opposite of caring for someone is not to care. This is how I held onto my faith through the hell, Jill, with these parables, because I could hear the ring of truth in them, that forgiving and caring is what an infinitely good God would want His children to be."

Laura and Jill got up still holding hands and joined their friends, who were sitting in a circle on the floor, chatting near the living room couch about their high school teachers. After nuzzling both young women, Frodo stretched out and appeared to be taking a nap nearby. The topic drifted to whom the women felt had been the most difficult teacher.

"I would vote for Dr. Livingston," said Emily. "She would pile on the work with no consideration at all for the work loads of the other classes. She ruined my spring break in my junior year with her unexpected term paper assignment. She's a real bitch when it comes to piling on the work."

"Well, what about Mrs. Gouch, in English class?" asked Amy. "The kids used to call her Mrs. Grouch behind her back. Not too much work, but so arrogant. I swear, she would sneer at you if you expressed a different opinion than hers. She was much bitchier than Dr. Livingston."

"Now there's a question," said Katie. "Laura, what's the definition of a bitch, someone who's arrogant, or someone who's being inconsiderate?"

Jill noticed a deep frown cross Laura's face, extremely unusual, before Laura said "You can define it anyway you want, I suppose; as arrogance, as inconsideration, or of course as just the female gender of the dog. It's been my experience though, that the use of the word more accurately identifies the anger of the sender, rather than the attributes of the recipient."

"What do you mean, Laura?" asked Katie.

"I saw it in the war. The men in their hate would start calling each other sons of bitches, as a way of dehumanizing their neighbors. Once you have dehumanized your neighbors, you can start exterminating them. "Oh, life could be so wonderful; all our problems will magically disappear, if only we can somehow kill off our S.O.B. neighbors." That's how they thought, so incredibly stupid..." Laura gazed at Frodo for a moment, then added "... and so tragically ironic, given that Frodo is now demonstrating to me that in loving trust, perhaps he is quite my superior."

"What in the world do you mean, Laura?" asked Amy.

"Take a look at Frodo, Amy. He's totally stretched out, totally relaxed, totally vulnerable. He's awake and alert, lying there watching me, hoping I'll come over and pet him. If I were trapped in a room with seven creatures twice my size, creatures much more powerful than I, creatures who were a lot different than I, creatures with more arms and less legs, creatures who had minds beyond my understanding, could I ever be that relaxed while that vulnerable? Perhaps Frodo offers me a depth of trust beyond my ability to return. With Frodo as my model, perhaps a bitch is something I should aspire to be..."

"Well, with that thought, my dear friend Amy," said Katie, laughing, "let me pay you a fine compliment and say that I think you are a great bitch!"

"Oh, thank you!" said Amy. "My dear friend Katie, you are so kind! But no, I must insist, and I'm sure my dear friends Jill and Jamie will agree, that you are much the greater bitch than I am!"

"Actually, we think you're both great bitches," said Jill laughing.

"What?!" said Katie, in laughing mock anger, "Impossible! I would say that Amy and I are each lesser bitches than either you or Jamie put together!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" said Laura, in a burst of laugher, "I'm not sure I got that, but I am sure I don't want to."

"I would vote that Jill is less bitchy than Jamie, but more bitchy than Sarah," laughed Emily.

"What?" said Sarah, laughing too, "Surely not! I must insist I am as least as bitchy as Jill, and I would be willing to match my bitchiness against Jamie in a bitch duel anytime she finds the courage!"

"I think I would vote that Jill is perhaps less bitchy than Laura, but Amy is definitely more bitchy than Emily," said Katie.

"Oh yeah, well I'd vote just the opposite!" said Amy.

"Oh yeah, well, why don't we prove it!?" challenged Emily with a shout, barely able to speak through her laughter. "Let's all seven of us vote on who is the bitchiest of all!"

"Done!" shouted Amy, accepting the challenge, "and the winner will... the winner will become Frodo's sexy bitch date for the night!"

"Done!" yelled Emily. "You in on this, Jill and Jamie?"

"Oh, but of course!" laughed Jamie.

"You in, Laura?" asked Jill with a smile.

"What?" said Laura, "an inverse popularity contest, and sex with the dog as first prize?! You can't be serious!"

"Oh, you wouldn't have to have sex with Frodo," said Amy, "just a sexy date. Imagine the last really sexy date you had, but one without intercourse. There's a big difference between the two, don't you think?"

"Well..." said Laura, blushing, and looking down at the floor.

"Oh, don't tease her like that, Amy," thought Jill silently, with tender compassion for her friend, "I don't think she's ever had a really sexy date..." As Laura looked down, the other six girls caught each other's eyes, and in an instant all agreed for whom they would vote, if they could get Laura in on the game.

"Well, count me in!" said Sarah.

"Me too," said Katie.

"Well, Laura?" said Jill, smiling at her friend.

The bonds of friendship were too strong to resist. "Okay, I'm in too," said Laura.

"Great!" said Amy, "I'll get seven slips of paper, and we'll have a secret ballot! Laura, you can be the vote reader."

A short time later, Laura was dumping seven folded slips of paper out of a hat. "And the first vote is: Laura! And the second vote is: Laura! Oh, no, I could be getting into trouble here! And the third vote is: Jill! And the fourth vote is..." Laura looked up at her six friends smiling at her. She slowly unfolded the remaining votes, and said, "Me? All six of you think I'm the bitchiest person here? Amy, why did you all vote for me?"

"Well," said Amy, with a warm smile, "you said it yourself. You can define bitch anyway you want. We liked your definition best, the female gender of the dog. As a date for Frodo, which of us would be a better date than you? It's you who are always brushing him. You probably play more Frisbee with him than all the rest of us put together. And you're the only one I've ever seen give him a bath, Jill and Jamie included. You bathed and brushed him today. When we come in from a soccer game, it's your leg he always presses his nose into first, even before Jill or Jamie, and they live here! Frodo loves and accepts all of us as family, but it's you he adores..."

With sudden insight, Jill realized everything Amy said was true. Jill and Jamie used to brush Frodo as needed, but since Laura had been coming over so often over the last two years, he never needed to be. Laura would always find the time to do it first. She got into the habit of giving him a monthly bath too, far more often than the twins or their parents ever would do. It never occurred to Jill's parents to pay Laura for all this work, it was just something Laura really enjoyed doing.

"Well," said Laura, staring at Frodo as he lay nearby, "I'm not sure exactly what I've promised to do."

"Well," said Jill, "first of all of course you don't have to anything you don't want to..."

Laura smiled back warmly, understanding, "Still, what should I do?"

"Well," said Emily, with a mischievous grin, "you could start by dressing more like Frodo. In the dog sense of the word bitch, you should be wearing nothing but a collar!"

"Whoa, Emily!" thought Jill, "I wasn't thinking of anything that explicit!" But before she could reply, Laura agreed to Emily's tease.

"True," said Laura, "but if I take Frodo's collar off, perhaps I won't have to wear mine either! Okay!" Laura stood up and removed her pajama top, and then her sleep halter, becoming completely bare from the waist up. She stepped out of her pajama bottoms, hesitated a moment, and then removed her panties, becoming completely naked. She sat back down on the floor, in a pure L shape, back straight up, bare legs together straight out in front of her. She clapped her hands together and said, "Frodo! Come cuddle with your bitch date for the night!" Frodo bounded up immediately and lay down alongside Laura's bare right leg, pressing his back along her leg, and lifting his head and resting it on her thigh, halfway between her knees and hip. Laura removed Frodo's collar and gently began massaging his powerful neck muscles. Frodo gave her a soft whimper of bliss and closed his eyes.

Laura looked at her friends. "You know, we've seen each other naked in so many locker rooms and showers, I thought this would be easy, but it's a little embarrassing to be so bare while you're not..." Feeling an overwhelming need to support her friend, Jill immediately got up and took off everything she was wearing. The other girls quickly followed. They all sat back down again, feeling the tingle of the sexual situation. They had never done anything remotely like this before.

The minutes rolled by with no one speaking. Laura continued to massage Frodo's neck. "What does it feel like?" asked Sarah.

"Actually, it feels really nice." answered Laura. "Frodo is all soft silk and warmth across my leg, and I feel the breathing in his throat across my thigh. Thank you all for suggesting this date for me, it really is very pleasant."

Laura continued to gently caress the dog's neck. Katie was lost in thought, thinking of dogs and wolves mating, and how their biology might be different than humans. After a while, she asked, "Laura, does the virgin bitch have a hymen?"

Laura, still feeling self-conscious about relaxing naked with her friends, totally misinterpreted the question to be a personal one. She replied, "I the bitch am not sure. I might have torn my hymen, at least partially, doing various spin and pivot kicks last Christmas. But you're right, both in body and experience, I am quite the virgin. How about you, Katie?"

"Me? Oh, yeah, I'm still a virgin, too. Sarah, you, and I are the shy part of the golden nickel, and probably haven't done much with guys except kissing. Am I right, Sarah?"

"Yes and no. I am shy and a virgin too. But Bill and I have been expanding our sexual relationship as our commitment to each other has grown. Bill's very eager, but considerate of my need to do this slowly. How about you, Jamie?"

"I lost my virginity to Mike late last fall," Jamie said quietly.

"What!?" said Katie, "Jill, you never told any of us."

"Hey, I'm not going to gossip about a thing like that about my sister," said Jill.

"I'm sorry I did it, of course" said Jamie, looking at Laura in particular. "Several of you warned me that perhaps Mike was not a good prospect for me. How about you, Amy?"

"Me? I lost my virginity a long time ago. I know I'm considered the black sheep of the nickel when it comes to promiscuity, though I've changed a lot in the last year. All of you have really helped me on this. I've been very fortunate, more than I deserve. I never suffered consequences with diseases or pregnancies. I took so many stupid chances, two, three years ago. Hopefully I'll find somebody at college who will be agreeable to my new, go slow approach. How about you, Jill? You and Steve are so close. Has he popped your cherry yet?"

"No, and we're both very committed to saving vaginal intercourse and possible pregnancies for marriage. We... We have been exploring anal intercourse, very recently, just dancing around the edges of it. Emily, you're the last one who hasn't spoken up."

"I'm not the wild vixen I pretend to be. Still have an intact hymen. Gary is very sweet and is happy petting my breasts as the hottest parts of our dates. We might get more physical at college. The longer we stay together, the more natural sex seems to become."

The conversation ended for a while. The girls were becoming very relaxed with their intimacy, though for all of them, especially Laura, there was a rising level of desire for sexual expression. All of Laura's friends had very kind thoughts for her, realizing this moment was probably the first moment of her life she was exploring her own sexuality with other people, and the fact that she was cuddling with Frodo was welcome in the sense that it was enabling them to be a part of their dear friend's exploration. Jill, though, was feeling a growing conflict of emotion. She wanted very much to support her friend's first attempt at sexual expression, but also had growing concerns about not crossing any boundaries of appropriate behavior with Frodo.

Laura and Frodo both became very relaxed as Laura continued to massage Frodo's neck. Frodo had not stirred in a long time. Laura felt both sleepy and sexually aroused, and she felt a bit bewildered about what she wanted and how to proceed. She finally made one last effort to ignore her sexual desire and said, "It seems my date is falling asleep. Perhaps we should call it a night."

"Oh, no," said Emily, laughing, "You haven't gotten romantic with him yet! Play with him, show him your eagerness for romance!"

"Oh, Emily, No!" thought Jill, grimacing, "We shouldn't push this teasing any further. This would have been the right place to stop!" Jamie also looked very worried, her face a deep frown, and she took hold of Jill's hand.

"Frodo, do you want to play?" asked Laura. Those were the exact words Laura used with Frodo when offering to play Frisbee with him. The dog awoke immediately and gave a joyful bark. His obvious joy woke up the whole group. Laura assumed a classic dog play position for him, kneeling with her arms held out straight in front of her, her head low to the ground, her breasts on the rug beneath her, and her hips held high in the air. Frodo barked again in joy and began to romp around her.

"Laura, are you sure you're okay with this?" asked Jill quietly, feeling very distressed, and noticing the obvious sexual arousal of Laura's body. "You really don't have to do anything you don't want to..."

"I know," Laura replied. "This really is turning into a very sexy date! Is this okay with you? This is my first experience with arousal, and I'm acting without thinking. I don't want to embarrass you by acting sexier with Frodo than you expected me to be..."

Jill and Jamie turned to face each other, both with deeply worried looks on their faces. Jill whispered "It really isn't okay, is it? And we're the ones at fault for pushing her into this... She needs our help, our guidance."

"Yes", whispered Jamie... "You're the one who's dearest to her. Would you be willing to be Frodo for her?"

"Oh, Yes! I really want her to experience how beautiful sexual expression can be. But not with Frodo!" answered Jill. She got up, grabbed Frodo gently by the back of his neck, and ran off with him to her bedroom.