Chapter 25

Dear Willow,

Looking at your spelling in your last letter I can tell you were overwhelmed as well ... Heh! Web cams substituting for a periscope on a tank! Excellent idea by the way. You asked how rats got on board? I don't know but it seems that someone somewhere out here has ordered a whole pod full of grain. It is in several bins that weren't completely full. They have oats, wheat, rice, barley, corn and several types of dried beans. I guess that they don't trust the replicators to always provide their food. Then again who can really blame them. The whisper is that there was a colony that got hit by an asteroid ... and barely survived. The scuttlebutt is that that event has a lot of people considering how they can make sure that they have food sources that aren't dependent on replicators. Anyway apparently the rats came with the grain. I figured it was inevitable. Indeed I'm somewhat amazed that these are the first rats that have managed to come aboard a spaceship. What amazes me even more is that I haven't found any evidence of cockroaches. Actually if I can find them I want some of them too. They would get to places that rats can't. Even considering that we are transporting in and out and trying to maintain discrete instances there was quite a ruckus when I was picked up and I'm quite sure that if there'd been a mouse there it might have slipped through. The transporter pad seemed to be open for a long time while some groups got organized.

If all we ever did was have sex that would get to the point that we wouldn't even want to have sex anymore. Too much of even the best things in the world palls after a while. So we make up things to do, like I said earlier playing card games or board games or computer games that cause us to interact are all part of building a family. I don't know how other people do it but that is the way Marissa has done it.

You didn't kiss Marilyn did you? I always thought that you might be practicing at kissing with her anyway ... Not that there is anything wrong with that ... Believe me Holly, Beth, Katy and Marissa are not shy about kissing one another very thoroughly. I enjoy watching and participating in those activities. And with the way society is being reorganized in order to meet the threat of the Sa'arm no woman had better be shy about kissing another woman. On the best day every woman who volunteers to be a concubine will be sharing her man with at least one other woman. It could be worse though, I met Bob and his concubines Bill and Dana. You might think that Dana has it good with two guys ... But she came by with them as an escort and asked Marissa's permission to get Dana pregnant. We made sure she felt good about it before she did and afterward ... The AI did warn Bob that he will be required to father at least some of Dana's children but he really looked like he'd rather handle a rattlesnake than to touch Dana... ! Poor girl!

As far as concubines go, may I make a suggestion? Don't look at boys your age. Look at people like that geeky computer teacher. He's really a pretty good guy so far as I know. Or pick out a widower like Mr. Gray ... Be sure to check with the other girls that you don't get someone who will want to run your pod though ... An older woman who has a baby would be a good choice with someone like the college guy who works at the convenience store down the block from our house ... I guess even though I'm billions of miles away I'll still think of it as home...

Damn I was hopping that Major Pervert would have gotten transported to the mouth of a working factory replicator. But I guess that he has just enough sense of self-preservation to keep just inside the lines or an inch back from being pushed off the edge of a cliff.

I really must go and work on writing up my ideas about how to use rats and cockroachs to advance our knowledge of the Sa'arm and to eventually combat the Sa'arm.

Your attentive brother,

Will