THE LESSON has rigorous research

THE POWER OF EMBARRASSMENT

Next is Boise to the Brits Science platform Bed and Breakfast Hotel in low orbit for a good meal and some sleep then a quick stop at a geo sync orbit Power Company relay satellite.

The taxi driver proved difficult, even a bit borderline psychotic. He makes me wonder why it is I prefer a live driver pilot. That’s what I get for not taking a robotic handi-cab.

“I could lose my license!” He has been threatening to not take me to my destination since he picked me up at the New Paddington docking portal and yet we keep getting closer. I consider investigating his ass later, or better commandeering his taxi.

“No! No! No! I don’t want to go to that station it’s quarantined!”

“Yes! It’s not quarantined. Your taking me straight there no detours! You‘ll go or I‘ll have my office get your license yanked!” I should have taken a handicab.

“You’re nuts!”

“I was just there yesterday.” I lied. I ask suit to check and the Michelin Guide says it is not quarantined and open for guests with resort class tube suites for short or long term booking.

“I’ll be stuck on a quarantined can! If I get stuck there I’ll sue! You shoulda took the fucking bus! Get your fucking boss on your comz I’m gonna complain about you!”

“How about a tip this big?” I had a monet transfer ready on vid up. He accepted it by tapping a wallet lami on his sleeve. “And by the way I’m my own fucking boss. What’s your Goddamn complaint?”

It’s been going back and forth with him for couple hours now. Fortunately a sturdy barrier separated us. Space just looked on this typical human economic behavior with canine disdain. He argued till we were well past halfway there. I think he was planning on ditching us elsewhere on the way. He got balky as soon as he saw Space hop into his cab with me. “No dogs policy.” he said “Senior Researcher” I said. I had to slip him extra monets for Space too.

“Just what the hell part of the Government are you from anyway?”

“Not exactly the Government…I can investigate the Government…in fact I do frequently even…right now is like…”

“Nothings bigger than the Government! What could be bigger than the Government?”

“History.”

“Oh Shit! Now you’re talking like one of those militant Librarians! Fuck!”

“I know a few Librarians. I got one assigned to me on this right now.”

“Fuck! Now I’m Fucked! To a quarantined can!”

“Better take me where I want to go!”

“Bastard! You trying to set me up?” More tipping appeased his reservations.

Everybody has their own little chunk of power that they hold onto tightly with both hands. They love to get you by the balls, get you trapped in the little sphere they drive so they can fuck somebody more powerless then they are sometime. Here I am trapped at the hands of a psycho taxi pilot again.

Soon enough loomed the shiny docking orifice of TSI the huge power relay satellite station.

“Hello and Welcome to you travelers of Space.” “Arf!” Space had heard his name. How cutie. A bald headed womyn greeter holo had flashed onto the divider screen. The driver his jaw set said nothing in reply to the docking controllers. The monets drained form my accounts to cover the fare and more tipping. “TSI the power sat now has available for transient accommodation fourteen luxury resort spa power suites.” it’s preprogrammed translator glitch’d, “Please of you to check with the serv-o-mat concierge for confirmed of reservation,” So suit confirmed of. “Check out time is 1200 hours Universal time.” Gotta reset my sleeve lami chrono from Galaxy time.

The orifice opened in the gantry tube for our taxi door. It was like jerky industrial sex, highly mechanically un satisfying.

“Sure you don’t want to stay for a bit?” I teased the taxi jockey as he scowled and sealed the door behind me and Space. I noticed right away they had some gravity on this can. I hummed along with Bolero as we strolled towards the two pale figures that awaited us.

“Golly Space they’re nekkid!”

At first intrigued to see two naked women waiting for me I was soon running through possible explanations in my mind. Quarantine means no clothes? Laundry day? Optional Friday? Kinky sex satellite station? I had so many soundtrack choices I let suit choose and got a wah wah guitar porn vid theme. It was then that the burly men stepped up from out of view and with the wymyn grabbed me and my doggy. As I was lifted off my feet one of the wymyn began to explain.

“Welcome. We are the greeting and decontamination team. I hope you find your visit a pleasant one.” 

I begin to feel this is a bad, bad sign.

“Decontamination! I’m not contaminated! He’s been taking worm pills, he’s better! Just check!” One of the men lifted Space’s tail and checked.

“At TSI all potentially contaminating substances must be controlled.” They removed my very favorite shuttle suit tearing out lots of hair with the telemetry lami's. This shuts down the background muzac.

“OW! Ow! Ouch! Ouch! Don’t do that! Hey! No! Easy! No! Ouch!”

“That little bit of hair won’t matter much you’ll see.” How reassuring.

“Put me down! Give me back my clothes! Ya know you could a just asked.”

Space struggled briefly with the wymyn that captured him only to be subdued with an obviously drugged dog biscuit.

“Hey watch it he’ll bite you guys! He won’t let anybody touch me! Get em Space! Get em! Kill!” 

Another biscuit gobbled and he started to purr like a kitten and went limply along for the ride as they un-strapped his little ETAC suit. “Get em! Get em! All that money for attack school! Let me go!”

“Not before your bath’s and shaves.”

“Huh?” Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

The procession of naked people restraining me and Space proceeded into a large sani-cerami tiled chamber with medical looking loungi-cliners where we were placed gently. I decided not to struggle and save some strength for escape.

“First your shaves.”

“What? Huh? Our shaves? What do you mean by ours?” It was then that I finally fully observed that they were all bald, in fact hairless, everywhere. How could I have not noticed this? No eyebrows! No furry lower triangles. No pit patches!

“Wait no! You can’t shave me! I’m Swiss! I’m a Senior Researcher! I’m from the Government!”

“We know who you are Mr. Dvorak your reservations have been confirmed. Everyone that visits this station must be shaved. We leave only eyelash’s and snout whiskers.” I don’t remember that being mentioned in the Michelin guide.

“And naked? Everyone’s naked?”

“Yes and everyone includes your friend here.”

“Huh?”

Space made his “Huh?’ face and began to look a bit desperate. We made eye contact as they came at him with the vacuum razors.

“He sheds anyway. He’s usually naked. But not me! I’ve got a rash! Everyone will stare! Please no!”

“Your taxi is gone and they won’t come here to pick anybody up for some reason and the bus doesn’t come by for three days so you must stay. You must be decontaminated.”

I struggled until the drugged dog biscuit they forced me to eat kicked in and I joined Space in that soapy happy little cloud land where we floated together me, Mr. Freshly Aerodynamic and my rather large flop eared hairless Chihuahua looking dog.

I felt quite tingly everywhere. Later after a hot bath with a thorough scrubbing by a stiff mesh pad performed by the two wymyn we looked squeaky clean slick. We were rubbed with fragrant decontamination oil as the mickey biscuits wore off.

“This was an invasion of my follicles! I’ll sue for hair loss! I’ll investigate!” They again subdued me with drugs. And as Space watched I was then involuntarily educated at the typical toilet and red door orientation. We all got a good laugh at Space using the vacu-john. I learned that the quarantine was not to keep everyone in but to keep everything out, including my clothes and our hair. There were no poly woven wired fiber garments beyond the orientation areas. My suit would be returned to me when I depart. Everything here including small dogs and people is cleaned by air blast abrasive suction which blasts off any new little hairs. There will be no more water baths at gravity within this station. There is no gravity beyond the orientation area, it would affect the flow of energies in the super conductor power transmitters. The residents work out in hyper body chambers and eat bone strengthening supplements and sleep in gravitized Velcro tubes to keep down the zero G effects.

A Luxury suite meant I got two bisecting tubes. It was a double Holiday Inn size area but hardly Ritz luxurious. Well, who needs more room at Zero G anyway. Not like I need closet space or clothes drawers.

This is the only non-Governmental orbital power station where solar energy is transformed into energetic wave forms and transmitted to the Earth’s surface and elsewhere. While it delivers energy to its customers it records usage levels for billing purposes.

“W24 receives charging bursts from us in the far laser frequencies.” Explained my beautiful bald slick tour guide Myra. Her lovely green eyes flashing brightly in warm flora lami light.

“Lemme see the records for these time periods please.”

“Oh, slight spike there. They got three charges in a row when they usually only get one.”

“It used a lot of juice. Why? Maneuvering?”

“I don’t know. The celestial address stays the same. They didn’t change orbit. Its charge got drained quick somehow.”

“A little burst of power needed here too.”

“Yeah an extra charge up, a double charge burst.”

“Wow.” Myra looked me over slowly.

“Couldn’t you have found all this out remotely. Why did you come here personally to get this data when it’s in the cache at Corp HQ?”

“It’s just not the same as this.” Space gave me that rolling the eyes look that tells me he is sure I am an idiot. We all floated hairless and naked in a room full of power company computer equipment. She leads on to the billing records console screens so we can see where the W24 bill was sent. Following her graceful trajectory makes the full body shave worthwhile.

“Isn’t it amazing how bodies react in space.” I’m sure she can plainly see that gravity is not necessary for some things to rise and fall.

The almost war

In the winter of 1975 to 1976 I found myself pledged through contract default of my US Army enlistment deal for Germany to serving 18 months deployed to South Korea. All of Korea I had learned from the TV sitcom M*A*S*H and the Movie that had inspired it. I didn’t watch it much. I hadn't liked the movie. The hair was all wrong. Nobody in 1950-52 had hair like that, like they just stepped out of a shampoo commercial, fluffy headed over the ears 1970s hair. I thought if they couldn’t even get the hair right how much of it could be accurate. Smart Alec-y Doctors make me nervous too.

And now that I had managed by accident to have graduated from Infantry School at Fort Polk Louisiana the Drill Sargent was telling me they had too many buck Privates in Germany and I couldn't go. Technically this put them in default of my enlistment contract. He mumbled that I could get out if I really wanted. The new post Viet Nam all voluteer military could no longer force you to go somewhere you didn't want to go, at least not right out of training.

Well there went my plans to tour Europe while based near a Bavarian town full of large breasted blonde girls handing me giant mugs of beer. I could get anywhere else of course 'just not Germany' he said. A guy in the barracks, a re-enlisted Viet Nam vet, had talked up Thailand a bunch so I blurted out “Thailand” and the Sargent gave me a look like 'yeah right' and said he'd see what he could do. I sat in the hallway on a plastic chair while he pretended to 'request' or 'pull strings' or whatever he would have done if he had actually tried for ten minutes, which was probably how long it took him to smoke a leisurely cigarette, before he called me in to say all he could get me was “Korea for 18 months”. It counted as a 'hardship tour' so I would get more pay. The Army wants me to go to Korea? They need privates there? It's like by Japan right? Like the mash place? He 'yes'd' to all of this while I signed the new contract he had somehow already prepared which gave me the right to sew on the 2nd Inf Division Indian chief head patch for the last week of my stay at Fort Polk. Six of us in my company who all wanted German beer girls got 2^nd Inf Division patches to sew on. Nobody had picked Korea first.

But one guy from my platoon, a returned to the army Viet Nam vet had been there before.

THE LESSON has :



ALIENS SHMALIENS


The military as usual among themselves are split into two opinions on alien involvement in anything unexplainable. There is a sort of sarcastic yet playfully serious theme to responses at any mere mention of aliens. Many officers are adamant deniers, they deny belief in and involvement in operations dealing with the ‘alien question‘. Meanwhile, certain officers are admittedly responsible for anything, reports, rumors, on an operational basis, even though they may profess to be non-believers. Thus the ‘EXTINT’ designation, that means they are assigned to gather information about other people’s intelligence about alleged extra-terrestrial aliens whether they believe them or not. Quite aside from the regular military scuttlebutt structure this acts as a sort of alien specific rumor central network. Lately a big part of the military complex boom is in striving to meet the potential of an as yet un-encountered inter stellar enemy. So, say that you think you had seen an alien to a comrade or superior and soon you would be talking to an EXTINT Officer. To file a report or not is the choice. The choice to not file a report is respected, though noted, basically because no one could be forced to relate what was perhaps not going to be believed by half the military anyway. And so as there is yet no officially discovered enemy that one could have been in contact with, then there is no reason to however gently coerce anything out of a ‘contactee‘. Still the presence of such a policy, of accommodation of these types of ‘events’ and accounts highlights the value placed in the threat that the more paranoid military elements perceive.

The first major alien scare took tremendous hold onto the world popular psyche. It shaped the face of the politics, the structure of society, the military, and the lives of all citizens.
On Tuesday the 12th of May, a date burned into the history of Soltera, a respected popular NA President gave a speech. It was a speech that should have been of the routine political lying manipulative variety. The audience was ten thousand members of an info wars veteran’s organization. Well into the laudatory speechifying he said:

“What I have to say next will ring in the ears of history. I have met a being not of our Earth, an alien creature from outer space. And I am thoroughly convinced that there are other intelligent civilizations aware of our progress. They are not all hostile. I say to you tonight that we must be vigilant and address the threat that any hostile superior technologies represent. War if necessary must be prepared for.”

Speculation had been that he had slipped this into his prepared remarks unbeknownst to his staff of handlers. The immediate spin attempts ranged from confirmation to denial by sweating sputtering nervous press reps that appeared hilarious and desperate. A commission was formed to study commitment to a policy of opening Government files of the event that had been referred to by the President. Another commission was set up to study the President to make sure he was fit and sane. This President was not nearly as crazy as many took him to be. Secretly he had filled out all the proper lami forms relevant to the release of secrets. His reasoning seemed rational. His speech though clearly crazy to give put the right to the military to be prepared. This dropped the contracts worth billions into the hands of a myriad of corporations.

Despite endorsement of a NA President there was still plenty of room for denial, and many thought that this was some potential ‘red herring’ tossed out to distract attention from some truly critical crisis. Several contemporary Senior researchers went to work. Their reports remain un-filed.
That President had thought the world was ready for this knowledge. It was not. The alien anti-alien debate raged throughout the world media. Whether believed or not the fact that such a statement was uttered by a NA President was enough to make everyone talk endlessly about it.

No aliens came forward voluntarily to verify the executive assertion. No comments were heard from other politicians or religious leaders to confirm him. The Christian Roman Catholic Pope in VC IT SE said nothing. Privately the Presidents political advisers severely chastised his public disclosure, he agreed not to mention it again even though he was asked about it constantly.

This Presidents popularity was a roller-coaster. Eventually the true terrible crimes that he had attempted to distract everyone’s attention from came to full light. Resignation, humiliation, prison made his May alien speech seem all the more the desperate ploy of a failing criminal professional elected popular politician.

The military, meanwhile had perceived a potential threat, that pointed out by the Commander In Chief, even a manic depressive disgraced imprisoned one, must be acted upon. This began a contract signing spree competition to acquire military technologies from all the departments and services of all SOLSYS alliance regions. A worldwide economic boom ensued. A total bull market fed by the nun too subtle huge capitol shift into a waiting military industrial complex geared to create the products a Government must use in any war with an ‘alien‘.

The next person elected NA President denied any presence or existence of any aliens, denied having any secret files or artifacts. No one really believed her.

Many years of simmering conjecture absorbed the lesser minds of popular commentary. Two distinct public opinion camps evolved, those that felt that there was a specific threat from space, that there was no verifiable confirm-able contact was taken by these people as evidence of alien dastardly motives, versus those that doubt, doubt, doubt to the point of very violent skepticism.

Over fifty percent of those polled by major opinion organizations have adamantly denied belief in aliens or alien visitation. They aligned with the political party of Ms. President. Denial was the policy statement. They worked hard to undo the anti-alien initiatives of her jailed predecessor.

This set the stage of events for the pro-readiness opposition. They stressed a perceived technology gap between the human world and the aliens. The most glaring gap being that they could apparently travel to here freely while we still didn’t even know who ‘they’ are or where ‘they’ come from.
The pro-anti-alien invader politicians won overwhelmingly at the next elections, fear of the unknown being a great vote getter. The sweeping victories allowed their supporters to join the Government contract signing feast.

A new President would also deny that he had seen any evidence of aliens. But he would later avoid questions by saying that he couldn’t comment for security reasons. This was a denial and not a denial. It was enough to seem a credible endorsement to the pro anti-alien profiteers. They used this security excuse to enrich themselves.

Militarily space had always intrigued and scared the Admirals, Generals, Ministers and Secretaries charged with war preparations. Superiority in space was deemed necessary at all costs. Control of higher ground is an old military adage and no ground is higher than rocks spinning in space.

It seems to me that the alien question is one of memory and repetition. How often the question comes up is the result of the answer that looms the largest to oneself. Answer the way that allows acceptance of belief and soon the reasons to believe pop up everywhere. It’s confirmation bias. It is a self-confirming belief that implores us to look for reinforcement of it wherever. This is part of a natural human mechanism for acceptance. Mention aliens long enough till doubt creeps in. If you attest to belief and offer speculative confirmation or slim solid proof or ambiguous corroborating statements a true believer will look to confirm the premise by the best means of the media milieu or imaginative self experience. Of all of us few will seek through personal experience to confront the unknown of outer space, to do this they must have already confronted the alien question and reconciled the possibilities.

All of this alien talk is a social mechanism to get us prepared for what rational logical thought says is inevitable. After an interval the people who will not accept considering the question become fewer. It is inevitable that we will encounter other than earthly aliens eventually. Whoever makes contact first will surely be famous forever, their story becoming the stuff of legends and myths.

It is as if, that as soon as we, all of humanity are ready the answer will be revealed without a question, the question of it will be moot. It won’t matter that there is no question, the answer, the aliens the reason of it will be obvious and uncontradictable.

Despite the fear of cultural disintegration, destruction of civilization, religious values and traditions we seek the truth of extraterrestrial life. Though some will insist that any artifacts or evidence of aliens must be suppressed and kept completely secret for the benefit of humanity. They fear that advanced aliens would conquer us as easily as Europeans conquered natives of the Earths western hemisphere, though that to do it completely took about a full four hundred years. So now this would make this the most secret of secrets and any rumors are denied to the point of irrelevance as a procedure of policy. Aliens have visited us, yet no one knows. No one knows if post contact social disintegration has already begun. Though knowing human nature and history if aliens were already here we would be selling them either cheap souvenirs or weapons or slaves.

Good topic for a liaison meeting.
“
Aliens! Aliens smaliens! You think some super intelligent advanced life form that can overcome the depths of space would be interested in your worthless life! Ha!”

“Ok so no one knows for certain about aliens. I mean we might have them among us or not. Or, I mean maybe they just drop by to check up on us. They would be much more welcome as tourists then as enemies.” Ya think?

“Aliens! Hey you’re nuts! The President is not an alien! The Government is not controlled by aliens, if it was we would not be making weapons to greet them with but building gift shops. We’ve been buzzing around out there in space …what, quite a while now, right? Still no green bug types anywhere! Just iffy microbes! I say if there were aliens visiting us they’d be vacationing at the beach or hanging around Lupe’s in NNY NY NA.” He said this as: ‘ninny Nye nah’.

“Well how do you know they aren’t there right now? Hanging out sipping a Marstini at Lupe’s? Anyway when were you ever at Lupe’s or at a beach? Hey you could be an alien for all I know!”
“How stupid! If I could fly across the Galaxy and go anywhere I wanted why would I want to sit here with you arguing about this stupid shit? Science? To study us? To steal your mind? Our humanity?”

“Humanity! You clone of a mutant sub-human lab specimen canned minus…”

“Look we’re all valuable our…”

“As a specimen in a jar maybe.”

“I heard that it was the aliens that were keeping us from building good fighting robots and keeping us from flying faster than light. I read that aliens could make duplicates of people on Mars and send them back to Earth. I saw this vid thing all about it…”

The second large alien scare was directly the result of one Major Dirk Larkin retired of the Soltera Space Marines. At the beginning of the episode he was apprehended by police bleeding and delirious after shooting up a ninny Nye nah Central Park Transtube station. No casualties resulted other than Larkin but the place was pretty much destroyed. Major Larkin insisted he had been battling aliens who were intent upon overthrowing the world popular Government to enslave humans as a food source.

Once recovered he proceeded on a promotional publicity appearance tour that crisscrossed the planet. Everywhere he went he said aliens were among us plotting our immanent subjugation and processing. This was a popular distractive propaganda timed to profit from a recent difficult military industrial economic cycle and a long history of alien humi-agriculture stories.

Major Larkin’s weakness was his inability to get any confirming support from anywhere, much like the jailbird ex NA President, no one had as yet been verified to have been eaten. He was challenged to produce a hungry alien or some leftovers. This sparked a wide debate on the ethics of kidnapping by force and displaying an other-worldly person who was just looking for a meal anyway. This seemed to some an awful way to greet someone who had traveled so far to get here. Others said that an alien illegally hunting humans for food surreptitiously entering our Soltera-tory was obviously up to no good and should upon capture if still alive be detained and studied. The military waited for this.

Meanwhile other groups of citizens and scientists without Government funding carry on the long unanswered invitation to friendly communication with anything alien that can answer, even human eating ones. Of course they have only their own expectations to shape the means of communication. They have not been answered mainly because probably no-thing out there in space can hear our primitive squeaks or is itself still too primitive to hear us. At least that’s what the ENTVID show I saw said about it.

www.smashwords.com/interview/grantparachor

In THE LESSON Paul Dvorak describes:


MY DAYS IN SPACE


In this era more than one hundred and fifty thousand people live in space, fifty thousand or more on the moon, the rest on scientific and industrial platforms in the orbits of the moon or earth or Mars or the other planets, thousands on Mars or on other planets moons, and thousands more in transit. The population of space is truly earth surface international. Hundreds of countries and regions are represented with cooperative efforts and flag stations and bases. Many ventures mix any combination of groups generally formed around lines of economic interest. Thousands travel between earth and all every day. Recreational travel in space is widespread as regular citizens with the means buy or build their own craft and fly to orbit and back.

This is my third research investigation involving extensive travel in space; easy for me as my home of choice is the cratered estates of Luna. The last two jobs were long term interview based criminal event studies. They are why the Senior Senior Researchers allowed me to assign myself this puzzle.
I’ve experienced the space adaptation syndrome, the sinus problems, the bones softening, the stature shortens, bouts of nausea, disorientation, sleep pattern disruption, zero gravity vertigo, the low gravity moon stagger gait, which I sometimes blame on the Marstini’s. These are just some of the reasons some people refuse space travel. Many say it is worth it once just to see what it is like and then they decline all other offers to come back up. I endure all the discomforts in order to savor the slim freedoms I enjoy in space. While surface duty at my professional Senior Researcher rating holds a wide range of possibilities for investigation, an open attitude towards travel worldwide or interplanetary sometimes gets me away from the pesky monitoring nets. Inevitably the Senior Senior Researchers have me hooked into a physical and occupational system to keep a record of my alcohol and drug intake, general health, location and activities. Space travel voids some of those signals. Sometimes in space my shuttle suit can’t communicate with my desk at the office. It can talk to my wallet lami or my wrist lami's but not the main office or my tube compartment on Luna. Though while I’m in space my tube can talk to the office but my Vertizontal car can only check in with my tube or my suit which is on me sometimes in the vehicle. My Vertizontal can communicate with my office by calling my suit or the tube or Demarists liaison office which could then call Rudy Moody at the main office but only in the vicinity of a wide bandwidth net. On some spacecraft the powerful fields generated by their systems jam my suits beacons; elsewhere it gets purposefully shut down, like in a theater. Though sometimes on some orbital stations in certain orbits with time and space available on the lami's I can get them all talking at once. And much of the time they are all talking together whether I know it not. Regular phone calls are their own situation of course.

“Thanks suit.” I think my pants like it when I say thanks. “Boop”.

Sometimes it is very comforting that all this electronic jabbering is going on, my wallet lami discussing finances with my suit and my car and my tube. And at least in a reverse moon orbit half of the office is kept out of the digi-com cacophony. At those times when I can’t get a word in edgewise I look longingly forward towards retirement when all my time would be my own. There will be a medical monitoring channel naturally, just in case, but that’s all.

My other comfort in space is Space my loyal hound, though of terrier stature. He’s boarded many a spacecraft smuggled in flight bags to be hidden in closets bins and lockers. And he has boldly proudly trotted down the red carpet beside me in the presence of all sorts of detained subpoenaed dignitaries. He’s been discovered in the wrong place at the wrong time more than once. Little Space has this endearing way of getting into mischief by just being there. It has been a thorn to all who plan the business of life in space that I arrive accompanied by Space. He has wet the deck at the boot of the scariest General.

Space has managed to cope with no-g environments by pushing off of anything including faces and controls and dog paddling leisurely to the next impact with twists and turn attempts to steer. Zero g doggie food dispensers do not slow down his ability to devour his food. Space has his own shuttle suit with brain wave controlled weapons systems, electro-stun defensive capability and 160db amplified bark, water dispenser tube, telemetry and communications links. He eats most anything edible and many things that are not. Space can use the vac u-potties in no-g; it’s quite comical how he squats on the seats and still tries to lift a leg, and how his tail hairs flutter in the gusts of suction and how he strains to keep his tail straight up out of the tube and how he turns and sniffs around afterward. The canine intelligence boost gene I bought him pays off here.

Often and frequently I’m informed that dogs and other pets are not allowed in Space despite the cat station and because of the infamous tragic bunny rabbit fiasco on the ISS Oregon. I’ve been threatened, banned, locked out. Often I threaten back. But I always prevail via the unlimited non-accountability that goes with my job. Government facilities are very unprepared to accept any but humans and specimens. I love busting their bubbles of power and so Space goes everywhere with me. Sometimes they buy the alien sniffer friend foe detector lines. If they complain too loudly I just turn up the suit music and ignore them, none has thrown me off a spaceship yet. No other personal companion dogs have made it so far into space except maybe on the cloud hoppers or the occasional converted shuttle space yachts to the spa satellites.