Galaxy Cluster MACS J0717

FSF Trooper Part 2.1 By JulieH 20091019 Thank you once again, Katherine Day for suggestion and editing.

 
 
The first night in the mountains I realized that we had not planned very well. We had covered about 25 Km and work up a sweat doing it. That night the temperature dropped below water’s freezing point and we ended up in joined sleeping bags bodies pressed together to conserve heat.

We moved into barracks that were arranged in two-beds per room and four rooms per bathroom/shower. There were two study stations with holo I/O and limited net connections. Sean and I had one room; Suaad and Jo Two-Trees, another survivor of 2051D, were in another. The troops in the other rooms in our quad were from 2051E, another boot company. The wall next to our beds could display images to provide some little bit personal decoration. I had set up a series of windows showing scenes from New Hope, my home planet. Sean had images from the mountains (he called them highlands) of Stewart.

For the next quarter one or two days per 5-day was spent in field problems in all sorts of terrain and the remainder in classes such as Xeno-Cultures, Comm Methods, Ships Systems and a nonhuman language. I got to learn Howler. That’s what we called the language of the m’Gock, one of the first xeno-cultures human-kind came across on our trip to the stars. They are warm-blooded, mammalian in that they give birth to live young. They are ambi-gendered: depending on the circumstances any m’Gock can gestate and deliver baby mGock. They look like giant Howler monkeys in clothes and jewelry. They are very even-tempered, gregarious vegetarians and specialize in first contacts. That’s why they were waiting for us when our first exploratory ship emerged from fold space.

For the first time since setting foot on Smithson, we had down time: 2 days (20 hrs) off every 8th day. I was anxious to keep in shape and hitched rides on hoppers into the range of mountains on the military reservation so that I could hike and camp in the thinner atmosphere. I asked for companions for my outings from our quad. Sean went with me for the first two times. He said the mountains reminded him of home.

The first night in the mountains I realized that we had not planned very well. We had covered about 25 Km and work up a sweat doing it. That night the temperature dropped below water’s freezing point and we ended up in joined sleeping bags bodies pressed together to conserve heat. I enjoyed the closeness and I thought Sean did as well because one of his hands was on my hip as we slept like spoons in a drawer. He was very quiet as we hiked back to our pickup point. I guessed that he wasn’t comfortable with our sleeping arrangements. I didn’t press him because I thought that he’d talk about it when he worked through it.

However on our second trip, Sean insisted that we pack warmer gear in separate bags.

Suaad and Jo joined me on the next hike, this time to a high desert area. I made sure that we had plenty of the right gear.

I planned for us to cover about 20 Km from the drop point to a crater lake where we would swim and hike around the lake before coming back to the pickup point the next evening.

We started off walking at an easy pace so that we could warm our muscles and stretch them before confronting the 300 m rise to the valley where we would camp.

“Should I call you William, Will, Bill, Lee or what?” asked Jo as we settled into a ground covering pace.

“That depends” I said “When I got called William I knew I was in trouble. My sisters called me Lee. No one has ever called me Will or Bill. I don’t care, just don’t call me late for chow.”

“Why don’t we use Lee like your sisters do?” Asked Suaad.

“That’s fine by me” I said.

Neither Suaad nor Jo had brothers but Jo had two sisters: one older one younger and Suaad four older sisters.

“Why do so many guys have sexy legs?” asked Jo.

“I think we worry our legs into strange shapes. Guys don’t think about theirs at all and they look great.” Said Suaad.

“Since I don’t shave my legs, I don’t spend much time looking at them or running my hands over them.” I said

“I could do that for you — running my hands over your legs.” Said Jo.

“I can tell you that he feels good from first hand experience,” said Suaad with a jiggle.

“I think we have about 10K to go before I need a rub down,” I replied

“Lead on,” said Suaad

“We’ll be right behind you enjoying the view,” teased Jo

I had never been the object on anyone’s attention and hoped that my tanned skin hid my blush as I felt the blood rush to my face.

We arrived at the lake shore about solar noon or 1230 FSFT, got our our HUTs (Habitat, Universal, Trooper) linked them together and set about putting together a meal from MRE plus spices and condiments to make them tolerable. A walk around the lake was in order to aid digestion and see what was around the bend.

“There’s fish in our lake! Earth variety Bass and pan fish!” It looked like Jo was almost ready to jump in after them as she announced her discovery.

“What else would you expect from a Terra-forming operation?” I asked. Smithson had been a geologically mature liken- and algae-covered orb a few hundred years ago when the Federation Exploration Service (FES) stumbled on it and started the process to make it fit for oxygen breathing, moderate temperature tolerating beings.

The result of her discovery was 6 fish of various sizes and species became the main dish of our evening meal in place of reconstituted something in the MREs. The way the fish came to the meal was very interesting indeed.

Just after she made the announcement of the presence of bass, Jo took off for a strand of trees that went down to the water’s edge. She collected several long skinny sticks, sharpened an end to a point on each and handed Suaad and me a couple and said “lets go get supper.” And stripped to her skin and headed for the lake. Suaad and I looked at each other, I shrugged and got out of my clothes and she did likewise and we followed Jo into the water.

“OK, just what are we going to do with these sticks?” I asked.

“Spear fish” was Jo’s response as she dove under water.

It turns out that fish that have never seen a human don’t know how dangerous a predator we are. The result was a good super of fish baked over a bed of coals.

The lake water was cold and although refreshing, it was good to get out and head back to camp. I was last out and as I started to dress I noticed that I had panties and short shorts, looked up and saw Jo and Suaad grinning at me. Two (or more) can play the teasing game so I pulled on Jo’s clothes and my shoes and grinned back.

“He is special,” Jo said to Suaad. “I told you so” was her reply as we walked back to camp.

I couldn’t have gotten away with calling their bluff if Jo wasn’t close to my size, but she was and I to the chance to try to pull it off.

It is amazing how close the stars look on a clear night in a place with no light pollution. We lay on our back and talked about our homes and families and what we expected to get from our hitch in FSF.

“Females are just another form of livestock on Persia” was Suaad’s comment.

“You can’t mean that” was my response.

“Do you know what female circumcision is?” she asked?

I was baffled; I had no idea what part of a woman could be circumcised. I had studied female anatomy and a little first hand experience from show-me-yours-I’ll-show-you-mine with my sisters, but what was the skin to be cut off?

“No I don’t,” I admitted

“Take off your underpants,” she ordered me as she started to strip out of her clothes as well.

She came over to me and said; “may I touch you?”

“Sure.” I said. I trusted her completely and was curious to see what she was going to do.

She put a lamp between my legs, reached for my penis and at her touch it started to enlarge. She smiled but said “You aren’t circumcised; see how the skin covers the tip?” I nodded.

“If I pull the skin up and cut it here.” She mimicked a scissors cutting the skin with fingers of her other hand and I reflexively winced.

Then she faced me and opened her legs, arranged the lamp to shine on her crotch and tugged at the hood of skin over her clitoris and repeated the scissors cutting motion on the raised skin.

My eyes must have been big as saucers. I know my mouth had formed an “ooww” as in NO!

“This was my choice: Stay at home and eventually have my ability to have pleasurable sensations before I was forced to marry someone I had never met, who could beat, abandon or even kill me on a whim or leave. I didn’t want to trade one form of hopeless situation for another; which is what would happen if I joined any off-Persia workforce as an unskilled, uneducated worker drone. The FSF gives me the chance to make my own future,” Suaad said as she lay back on her sleeping pad.

“When peoples cut themselves off from the mother, the Creator, they take out their pain and frustrations on those close to hand,” Jo said in the silence that followed.

“On Pueblo we believe that every thing and everyone has a purpose, a reason for being, an intrinsic value, something to offer the world that no other can provide,” she said.

I was amazed at this sophisticated philosophy.

“What about you pretty boy? Why are you here?” Jo asked and I could see her teeth reflect the lamp light as she smiled.

“I want to find out who I am. I know that sounds lame but that’s it,” I said

“I was wondering the same thing the first week of boot too. Is it a boy or girl? It talks and moves sometimes like a boy and sometimes like a girl. Then I thought, so what? What kind of person is this? So I asked Suaad,” Said Jo

“I told her you were OK. In fact better than OK, you were aware of the people around you and what was happening to them and tried to make things better. You let your feelings show. I mean more than just fear, frustration or humor. Those times when you were just there, when you gently squeezed my arm or smiled at me. I wondered whether you were a psychopath or a for-real nice person. As I got to know you I figured out that you are a nice person.” As Suaad said this she moved beside me and put her arms around me. As I reached my arms around her I felt Jo’s arm come around me and saw the other go around Suaad.

We spent the rest of the evening touching, rubbing, kissing and sometimes licking each other. We did get a few hours of sleep.

The next morning Jo asked: “Would you like to wear some of my clothes?”

“Do you want to wear some of mine?” I replied.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then yes for me too,” I said.

We traded shorts and underwear and Jo handed me a sports bra.

For the first time in a long time I felt at peace as we hiked back to the pick-up point. I was reluctant to return her clothing when we stopped a few klicks short of the outpost where we would find our ride.

“Let’s just swap shorts, you can give me the rest when we get back to our quad” was Jo’s answer.

The thing about aliens is that they are, well, alien.

“M’Evans, do you know of any alien cultures on old Earth?”

The question was directed at me by Dr. T’Bahn Pligree, an M’Gock who was lecturing on the characteristic of zeno-cultures.

“I know that almost all of the members of the Confederation of Worlds has a contingent on Earth,” was my response.

“Yes but I said OLD Earth, I meant pre-interstellar travel Earth,” he said.

“I don’t recall hearing of any alien cultures in Earth’s history,” I said.

“Do you have any knowledge of the perspectives of both the expanding cultures and those visited by these 'explorers' in the second millennia C.E. on Earth?” M’T’Bahn prompted.

A light went on in my brain — alien is relative and doesn’t have to be extra-terrestrial. I remembered that in the vids and other materials we were assigned to review told of how, back on Earth, there were thousands and thousands of different cultures and of the difficulties of one culture had understanding the forces shaping another.

“What was one of the fundamental difficulties that impeded the efforts of the North American country, the United States of America, in the 20th and 21st centuries to establish and maintain colonialism on economically smaller countries?” he asked.

“According to what I learned in the course materials, the cultural differences in social organizations such as family and tribe; implicit social hierarchy and indigenous economic structures were pretty much ignored and as a result, in the long run the pre-conflict cultures prevailed.” was my text-book response.

“Say that in Standard,” M’T’Bahn said and seemed to hick-up, which is how M’Gock laughter sounds.

“Well, it looks like there were two conflicts going on. The military conflict where the local forces had the advantage due to knowledge of terrain and the motivation to drive off the invader and the culture war where again the external force was at a disadvantage because it didn’t offer solutions to the needs of the local peoples that meshed with the ways things were always done.” I said.

“Better, but why didn’t occupying a territory cause it to conform to the wishes of the occupying force?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” was my response.

“When one looks at this conquest and occupy strategy, in every case, eventually the pre-existing cultures re-established their supremacy, even if it takes nearly a century to do so. Indigenous cultures that are long lived have addressed and found solutions to the primary questions of survival for that people so when outsiders 'take control' and try to implement changes, unless they meet the same survival issues, they are ignored and-or resisted,” Dr. T’Bahn said.

“The first step to understanding any culture is to learn how that culture addresses the basic requirements for sustaining the culture. First is the survival of the species from generation to generation. Next is the survival of the ecosystem in which the culture exists. There are an almost infinite number of variations that address these issues. The means and ways that a culture solves these requirements form the foundations upon which the culture is built,” he continued.

“Why does a desert culture or a tropical island culture have their particular worldview? The answers can be found in the way resources needed to survive are consumed and as well as conserved within the boundaries of the ecosystem and also the interface with neighboring cultures.

Dr. T'Bahn paused, noticing the puzzled look on my face. I thought I understood him, but I was slow to feel the full impact of his explanation.

“I see you're still wondering, my friend,” he said.

Then he continued:

“Look at my people, the M’Gock for example. They come from a planet that was originally 90% covered by what would be called tropical jungle on Earth. The effort needed to collect sufficient food and shelter for the procreating unit, the extended family in this case from 5 to 10 adults and an equal number of young, was about 4 time units per day. This left a lot of time for other things and according to our histories; it took a several near-extinction events to cause us to produce a means to include population limitations as a necessary component of the family and therefore species survival.”

His voice grew more serious; now, I felt, he was getting to the nub of the matter.

“The basic way that my species dealt with this issue was an evolutionary adaption: we change genders. As the number of offspring approaches the number of adults in the family, the gender of the group becomes homogenous, either all male or female. If there is sufficient external pressure from neighboring families, then the move is to male gender, if the local resources would lead to prolific procreation, the family unit becomes female to enable the nurturing of both the family members and the ecosystem as well.

“Although you humans may think this a most bizarre arrangement, we don’t understand why every species hasn’t come to this arrangement.

“This trait informs our every concept and stereotype and is the basis for our perspective of the universe. In fact we see human’s duality of gender as an evolutionary defect,” he concluded.

The sessions with Dr. T’Bahn didn’t break my stereotypes as much as illuminated them, which also revealed their limits. Stereotypes are good to have otherwise everything you encounter would have to be examined and fit into the way we understand the world. If you had to do that for everything you encounter you would quickly succumb to sensory and cognitive overload. The thing is to recognize when you use stereotype filter and recognize its limits.