Canto Twenty-Seven – In the Bio-Dome
The delicate creature was four-legged and long-necked. It looked a lot like Bambi to Alden if Bambi had been a reptilian creature with hexagonal violet-colored scales all over it. It had large indigo eyes that made it look fawn-like and vulnerable.
“It is called a zhar-doe,” said Sizzahl sadly. She was standing next to Alden and Gracie with the creature in front of them. She reached out and stroked the side of its Bambi-like head fondly. “It is the last of its kind, and when it dies, its species will be extinct.”
“Is Zahr-Doe its name?” Gracie asked.
“It is the species. Why would you give it a name? When we had vast herds of them, they were a domesticated food animal.”
“Will you eat this one?” asked Alden. He still had his hands clamped over his private parts, but he reached out with his left hand to touch the thing’s velvety-soft ear. It was an exquisitely beautiful creature.
“Only if it is a last resort. It is too beautiful and precious to be butchered without great need.” Sizzahl was petting the creature tenderly. Hard to believe it didn’t have a name already.
“Is there no way the species can be saved?” asked Gracie, stroking the creatures neck with both hands. Alden had loved Gracie since the moment he had first met her, but now, looking at her standing in the Bio-dome’s artificial forest of dying trees and plants petting the Bambi-thing, he noticed how lovely she looked as a completely nude young girl in the middle of a browning pastoral setting. He was attracted to her in spite of the fact that her body was now a child’s body, but it was so much more than that. Gracie’s simple, loving concern for a gentle creature of another world… well, it was looking more directly at what he knew to be Gracie’s soul than he had ever done before.
“I have the cloning technology at my finger tips,” said Sizzahl. “This place was my parents’ attempt to save our natural world from the predations of the greedy and ruthless creatures that dominated our society. But, the question becomes, should we save the species by cloning it if we cannot feed it and the new creatures will only starve, suffer, and die?”
“We brought you the plants you needed, didn’t we?” Alden asked.
“You did. I thought being on the space station would protect those plants and I could bring them here to grow new food sources.”
“Is something wrong with the plants?” Alden shivered, not with the cold of being completely naked in an alien place, but with a sudden fear that he already knew the answer to the question.
“They are all blighted and dying. I asked he Tellerons to verify it with the instruments, but I’m nearly certain.” Sizzahl was actually crying. Alden saw tears in her snake’s eyes. It was difficult to comprehend a lizard-person crying, but the little-girl alien was so human-like as she was crying…
Gracie, bless her Iowegian heart, wrapped both her arms around Sizzahl and held her in a comforting hug.
“My goodness, girl,” Gracie said, “You are warm and soft to hug. You are more like us than the Tellerons are.”
“My people are warm-blooded just like yours. We are not really reptiles, you know. We are more saurian… like your birds or your dinosaurs on planet Earth.”
“How do you know so much about Earth?” asked Alden.
“Well, I am a genius among my kind. I have what you would call an I.Q. of about 195 in the terms of your science on Earth. Besides, the alien visitors that used to come to our world, like the Sylvani or the Zeta Reticulans have brought specimens of your people here for study and to perform certain special tasks that aided in their off-world agendas.”
“Earth people have been to your planet before?” asked Gracie, cuddling the lizard-girl close to her warm heart.
“Oh, yes, and I imagine some of our people have been taken to your world too. The governments of both our planets have been contacted long, long ago by space-faring races.”
“Really?” Alden was skeptical. Walter Cronkite and Bryant Gumbel never said anything about aliens contacting the government. “Why haven’t we been told about this?”
“Judging by your television broadcasts, I believe your government believes the average person is too stupid and easily upset to comprehend the truth. Our leaders were like that for many years before your leaders even were told. There will come a crisis point one day, though, that people will have to find out. Here it came shortly before we started to destroy ourselves with unending war for profit.”
“You are going to save your planet, aren’t you, Sizzahl?” Gracie asked, suddenly seeming alarmed.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think they are not worth saving. Sometimes a people on a planet can become so self-centered and terrible that they don’t deserve to survive. The alien visitors gave up on us a few years ago and left.”
“We are alien visitors,” said Alden, “and we aren’t giving up on you yet.”
“You are not afraid I might eat you or take advantage of you?”
“Of course not,” said Gracie. She patted Sizzahl on the back in a way Alden knew was meant to be reassuring.
“I do want to take advantage of you, though.”
“Oh?” asked Gracie. “How?”
“Your DNA is somewhat compatible with my own. Not yours, Grace, because you are a simuloid now, not a real person. I want some of Alden’s DNA to use to make a fusion race, half Galtorrian, half Earth human.”
“You mean you want me to make babies with you?” Alden gasped.
“Not the way you think. I want to make them in a sealed jar and grow them in vats. I will just need samples of your blood and tissues. It doesn’t even need to hurt.”
Alden felt a bit shaken. Could he do that? Or was Sizzahl right to suggest her people deserved to go extinct? And what did she mean when she suggested Gracie wasn’t real?
At that moment, Davalon and Tanith came in looking sad. Both were naked. Both were holding each other’s hands.
“We have bad news,” said Tanith. “The plants we saved from the space station are all diseased according to the instruments.”
Sizzahl only nodded, then buried her scale-covered face in Gracie’s shoulder to cry more loudly.
*****
Explaining the Words
I used to have political arguments all the time with my father that would end only in frustration… for me. He was happy to see his offspring boiling over ideas with smoke coming out of both ears. Because no matter what I said, he would always take the opposite position just to oppose me. I know this because I tested it. I would counter an argument he had just made by rephrasing it so that it was in different words, but meant exactly the same thing he had just said to me. Naturally he came up with opposing views immediately. One time I even flat out stated, “I agree with you!” Which naturally led to an immediate and complete reversal of the position on his part. I think now that he was training me to think more deeply about things than just parroting talking points heard on television. Either that, or he really really loved to argue.
The most important thing I learned in the endless arguments about Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Two Bushes, and Bill Clinton was that you have to establish the meanings of the terms you are using. Hence the reason for this post.
The words that made the most difference in my discussions with my father were “liberal”, “fascist”, “conservative”, and “communist”. When my dad used those terms, “conservative” always meant “good guys” and the other three words meant “bad guys”. But when I listened to the policies and concerns he wanted to talk about, whenever he said the word “conservative” he was really saying “moderate”. And because he was pretty much in the center of the political spectrum, he thought of fascists and communists as being the same thing. If my father ever was truly wrong about anything political, it was when he followed Ronald Reagan’s affable, smiling “Morning in America” politics towards the far right and abandoned the moderate principles he held dear. He had been deceived by Nixon, and regretted it… in fact, we all were deceived and we all regretted it. But that did not prevent him from being deceived by later Republicans. We both have had a long-standing admiration for President Eisenhower, Senator Bob Dole, Senator Chuck Grassley, and Senator John McCain. They represent the moderate wing of the Republican Party. But the GOP has marched relentlessly towards fascism and oligarchy of the rich, and we both feel that has tainted both Grassley and McCain. My dad ended up voting for Barack Obama twice. Obama, to him, is Eisenhower reincarnated. The problem, we both agree, has come anytime American politics have moved away from the center.
So let me begin defining terms by ridiculing the Loony Left.
Being liberal means promoting change. Hence, the Marxist devotion to revolution and the desire to have an on-going revolution of constant change. Unfortunately constant change is another way to define chaos. That is the main reason that communist-socialist experiments have generally ended in violence, economic collapse, and fascist-type strong-man oppression. The poor raggedy communist in my cartoon, standing on the left end of the spectrum is always doomed to poverty and violent death. If you don’t believe that, just ask Leon Trotsky if it isn’t so. Oh, wait, you can’t. Stalin had him murdered. Stalin ended the Russian experiment by cracking down on everything, making himself the antithesis of actual socialist ideas. I included the ultra-liberal philosopher and hedonist Alistair Crowley on this end of the spectrum because he fought against all social norms and rules. That sort of religion leads to sexual depravity, vice, and corruption to a degree that got Crowley labeled “the Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived” in a BBC documentary.
Sometimes being liberal is needed desperately. Then you get the kind of liberal change agents that JFK was (and thankfully, LBJ carried out his liberal changes to an American society crippled by racism and xenophobia). Martin Luther King Jr. was also that kind of agent of change. Bernie Sanders is a parallel agent of change to JFK in that Barack Obama’s policies are almost a mirror image of Eisenhower’s in the 1950’s. What the media today labels as a liberal is equivalent to moderate Republicans before Nixon. Very similar changes are needed in social and economic areas today. We have yet to see if Sanders can get elected in 2020 and then assassinated shortly thereafter.
You can probably tell that this article is not yet complete. I have a lot more loony liberal pontificating to do (and please note, I said “pontificating” not “defecating”. I am not a Trump voter.) But I am well past the 500 word goal for today, and so, I must leave the rest of the crap to be said in a part two article. Maybe also a part three. Please stop me before I reach part twenty-six.
I do so enjoy making fun of Trump and his tiny, tiny hands. So here I am sharing another lampoon at the expense of the Great Orange Face of America.
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