Introduction:

The complete journals of C. H. Watrrhs contain interesting historical information on life styles and events of the pre-Kortna period. Their principal significance is the thought processes of a managerial individual immediately prior to first contact. Note that there are descriptions of physical sexual interactions which are not suitable for those of delicate sensitivities, for readers who have not attained majority (unless permittive clearance is received in advance from parental units), or certain religious Cult members.

The original text is substantially archaic in vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Update filters are available to modernize, but scholars are warned that translated text occasionally results in anachronistic references.

Only the first few entries in the journal have been preserved in full, as transmission from M2473 to WayLibCon was not complete, and the CenLib Reconstruction Project took priority over non-critical voxscripts. Several of the entries have been reconstituted from the AndLib Archive of the now-defunct AndLibCon. The journals were edited prior to transmission to WayLibCon, and the expunged material has apparently not been preserved, even in the implant used by C. H. Watrrhs at the time of recording. That implant now resides in CenMuseum, the last known functioning example of the Class XLI modular system, which was the precursor of all modern implants.

The CenMuseum obtained the implant of the author of the journals in 7239, through a special grant of the Trix Watrrhs Foundation.
 

Prologue

autospell editoff

Gentle Reader;

I'm starting this journal today, Monday, Day 144 of the year 4278. I'll dictate it on odd moments, particularly while I'm standing in line for a transit, or just relaxing at home with Jord, my mate. I decided to record the journal after reading a journal of one of my forty-seventh great grandfathers, Huldan Watrrhs, written in the middle of the thirty-sixth century, stored in the Archive in the Way.¹

I was fascinated at the differences. Human population was only a "quintill," as he quaintly termed it (the old measure meant one fivill, or  1x10¹⁸), less than a milth of today's population. There were only 45 or 50 mill inhabited stations - almost all terra-formed planets, and the math shows an unbelievable overcrowding, of perhaps twenty-five bill souls per station. There were still three separate languages -- although English was used universally in off-world business, Spanish and Cantonese were still fairly common family languages, at least in the older sectors of the Way. Transport delay was an unbelievable two seconds per light year, meaning a trip across the Way could take up to 48 hours, what with relays and error correction! None of the Clusters had been developed, and of course there were no Deep Probes, as projection technology was limited to jumps of no more than fifteen or twenty lys, useless for long hauls. Andromeda was not projected by planners to be opened for residents until about now – of course they were as wrong as always, failing to recognize the true implications of lengthening life spans and virtually unlimited resources of energy and material.

Other things that struck me – Population growth was strictly controlled at one percent per year (!) through withholding of fertile eggs, children were limited to no more than one per self-supporting person per lifespan, or two per couple per marriage (which contributed to a high divorce rate), and fertile women received no incentives to produce eggs! RJ Cloning had only been around four hundred years or so, and perfected to the point that full memory transfer was possible only three or four generations earlier.

The class wars had ended, since non-contributing members of society were not allowed to purchase eggs. They could take RJ, but the Supreme Council ruled that RJ was not an inalienable right, but a technological tool, and therefore the non-contributors could not use their subsidy credits to pay for their RJ, but had to earn the money just like everyone else. This ruling gradually eliminated the scourge of institutionalized poverty. Crime had also been reduced dramatically, since convicted "felons," which I presume meant criminals who got caught, were denied access to eggs and not allowed to even apply for RJ, no matter how much money they had.

The debate continued on whether or not intelligent life existed somewhere in the Universe, given that the highest level of life found in all the Way had been the insect-like denizens of the Core planet, Dreztor. The Drezts had once used machines, built great cities on their continents, learned how to use combustive power to navigate their vast oceans -- but their civilization had regressed. When we first discovered them, they had a language of less than five thousand words and didn't use any electronics (they somehow never discovered electricity – they burn hydrocarbons for light). There was some crude art, mostly charcoal drawings on a sort of paper made of woven reeds, and a clicking, wheedling sort of music. Despite the protests of the liberals, they were isolated from the Way, and last I heard were still regressing.

There was the discovery of the rest of the Universe – or rather, more of the Universes. How naive of us to have thought that our tiny Universe was all there is! Of course, we still have something like five bill years before the first wave of the closest approaching "Universe" enters the outer shell of our "Universe," and I think I'll opt for termination or suspension of RJ before that! Still, it should be interesting to see the fireworks as the shells collide.

My mind runs in all kinds of circles today. I thought briefly of the mechanics of light, how primitive man had so misunderstood light that it was thought impervious to gravity.  It wasn't until the beginning of the third millennium, I think, that the truth began to unfold. Some guy with an unpronounceable name proposed that in reality a considerable part of the "red shift" that early scientists had postulated as a measure of the speed at which the universe was expanding, was to a large extent caused by the enormous gravity of the still nascent Local Universe. I think it was around that time as well that we discovered that the local universe is a Black Hole to observers far from the outer edge of the universe visible to we creatures inside the Hole, that the Universe rotates around its own Central Hole, and that our universe in turn is part of a cluster of at least six bill universes separated by huns of blys of open space..

I find it strange, the crowd mentality of history.

I'm sure that whomever finds the time to read these notes will find only little of interest, at least until so long a time has passed that this period in Human History appears quaint and hopelessly outdated, as does the time of my ancestor appear to me in his journals.

Incidentally, I spoke with Huldan Watrrhs a few months ago. He's had all the memories from that era wiped in his RJ's, and hasn't even kept his history files intact. He's an employment engineer on York 77, and I saw none of the brilliance in his conversation that showed in his journals. I suspect he's getting close to a decision to retire, as most men of his generation are. His was only the twentieth generation to enter the RJ cycle, and natal cell cryogenics of that era were inadequate to the challenge of true long-term spans.

Easy for me to say, I guess – he's only just over 1500, with already nearly 40 RJ's under his belt (They had to do them more often before the night units became universal health maintenance practice) -- technology wasn't as good then as it is now. Our natal cells are now indestructible – at least for all practical purposes. In theory, a guy could go on forever, since the DNA strings are preserved in at least a bill cells, and only one is needed for each RJ. But who wants to live that long? A few hunthou years is plenty for me, I think!
 

Monday, May 25, 4278

I have a little time here in the lounge before transfer, so a good time to begin. I left home almost an hour early, to let Jord get some well-deserved sleep. The poor guy has worked too many hours this month.  There are queues of people, despite the early hour. Commuters, mostly. A very few vacationers. My meeting on 6843GDG isn't until an hour from now, and I'm not expected to pop through Transport until . . . forty-eight minutes from now. I wake too early when Jord has been away on business . . . he accuses me of being a satyr .. .

My implant was set to wake me as usual at six standard, but I woke an hour early, so it briefed me:

- Station sixty-eight forty-three gamma delta alpha was coming on line, and I had to be there for the official reception ceremony, as the first residents were officially welcomed into their new homes. Company policy - a chief designer had to be there. No matter that we were building four thousand a year in this sector, and had operations in at least two thousand sectors. All my second-line Chief Designers were tied up doing their jobs, which is not just opening up stations, folks! There are eighteen stations opening in the next 24 hours, and rather than take one of them off-project, I decided to do one myself, for a change.

- There was a glitch in one of the hyper-lifts in the nineteenth section, and the doors kept opening at least two milliseconds after the floors were aligned. That was no big deal, I mean people could wait, but it meant the code was faulty somewhere, and there might be some instability in the whole damn system. Headquarters would not be amused if the name Otis was mentioned in the same breath as some reporter's absurd comments about faults in the design. Pyotr Brandeis assured me that the code problem would be fixed before I got there.

- The farms on the surface were already functioning, of course, as were the recreation areas and zoological gardens.

Our stations are known for their natural feel. We almost always achieve one gee exact gravity, using as a core part of a dead dwarf, carved up and purified. Most stable core of all. The mantel is just iron harvested from the cores of the gas giants stripped of their hydrocarbons to make water and air, as well as soil. We always build a good-sized moon, to keep tides flowing to clear effluents and distribute heat. Not as big as the Earth moon, of course, so there are no tectonic shifts, but fairly close. We don't bother with a rock crust, as that takes forever to coagulate. Basalt is fine, easy to work with, and a good heat sink. It's also cheap.

Some of our competitors cut corners, settling for ninety-eight or ninety-nine percent gee, and barely meeting code for a twenty-four hour day and axis tilt, but that's low-grade housing, not our market at all. We've all been to stations where the design population is more than twenty bill, and that's just too crowded – Otis never builds for more than ten bill per station, and uses an eight generation building standard to ensure that population pressures aren't noticed at all until renovation is due. This station, for example, was designed for eight.eight bill, and new arrivals are to be limited to fourhunsixy mill before offworld immigration is halted. As always, the first generation will be mostly newweds, with a ten percent max on couples with more than ten kids at home. That keeps population growth at the optimum, as newlyweds don't have as many kids at first, given the price of eggs and the cost of raising kids.

- There were meetings at four for progress reports on the next hun openings.

- There was a nova in one of the arms of M2473, but the first `port probes are still a couple of days distant, so there was no risk of life loss. Jord and I have talked of moving out there in a couple of decades. It would be nice to get away from the crowds, and the fun of starting a whole new development would add some spice.

- There were three days next week when we'd be opening betweeb ten and fiveen on the same day, which meant I'd spend my whole day on my feet schmoozing or standing around in Port rooms waiting for my transfer. All but two of the fory openings that week were around six sol-class stars in a cluster in the same arm, so transport would be no problem. No problems out of the ordinary, at least.

I leaned over and kissed Jord, long before his implant was set to bring him out of his dreams.

"Hi," he said fuzzily. He'd instructed the implant to let his body laze out, since he was off for the day. Jord came home last night exhausted from a five-day trip to Kilreach 7, in one of the far arms of the Way. I had other, more concrete plans for his body.

"Dream last night?" I said, caressing his chest. He keeps in good shape, grows only a little hair in the middle of his body, making a line from midway between his nipples down to the base of his cock. The night unit machinery keeps us in complete balance, of course. He's sexy, even at ninety . . . three? I can never remember stuff like that. He's getting a few crow's feet around the eyes, but that just adds to his beauty. He complains that he has to work extra hard to keep the love-handles at bay, but we both know that's just a little fib to get me to praise his svelte 7% body fat figure.

"Not really - just a few image dumps," he pulled me towards him for some morning wakeup fun. His night unit pulled out of him, sending the remnants of his last meal back to the processors, taking all unnecessary matter with it. Mine had pulled out just after I wakened. I hate the creepy feel of the things; I don't care if they are the best on the market. I can't remember the last time I actually had a bowel movement, but there are times when I'd rather go through that indignity than sleep with a unit. I know - crotchety, must be getting past due for RJ.

We made out for a few minutes, our passion for one another gradually rising. His morning breath always has a vanillin flavor to it, and his pheromones go right to my groin, pouring basalt into my rocket. His fingertips brushing my back raise my ardor as well as my hackles, making my whole body shiver in anticipation. As he opened his legs and I entered him, the lube from my penis oozed out at just the right time as my implant triggered the flow. His implant sent a little mucous out of the lining of his gut, and we moved together in our familiar but still thrilling intensity. I found his prostate on the first thrust, and used it to measure my motions, slowly at first, then more rapidly as it began to respond. All the whisperings of love and affection are far more important than the mechanics to bringing Jord to full satisfaction, and it never ceases to amaze me how I enjoy telling him how much I love him. Me. The ice-water-in-the-veins, stone-hearted engineer, gets as soft and schmoozy as a horny virgin teen when I'm making love with my Jord. I only do it for him, of course. But then, I'd do anything for him.

His eyes began to dilate as his orgase approached, and I slowed down to prolong his joy of anticipation, making him beg for just a little more, just a bit faster, until he could take no more and crashed through the barrier into heaven. His muscles milked me with his orgase, and brought me to mine. That happens almost all the time, ever since we got married. I barely manage to keep from exploding prematurely, then he overwhelms me. I felt my semen shoot into him, as deep as I could go, and it was really good. We aren't fertilizing any more eggs this year, so there was no collector to spoil the sensations.

His implant almost did the job, but he dribbled a little pre-cum despite its efforts. I know when Jord's really turned on – his implant can't keep up. When he orgased, his implant let his seed shoot out for me to lick off his body. We liked that part of our lovemaking. It was nice to exchange body fluids -- more intimate, I felt. Besides, Jord is a little ticklish, and he likes the rasp of my tongue on his belly after he has an orgase, when his nerve ends are at their most sensitive. I bent down to tease his dick with my tongue, tickle him just enough for a satisfied giggle, then licked his abs. (I stay inside him until he's gone completely limp. He likes the pressure on his prostate while I lick him.)

We know lots of couples that don't like the mess, the need to clean up afterwards, and instruct their implants to only let the semen flow when they are inside their partner.  Dom and Jules take it a step further, and use a different flavor every time, but they're almost exclusively oral. I like the natural taste, and so does Jord, so we don't use the implants much during sex.

I'd noticed, though, that my implant has to turn up the hormone flow sometimes, especially when I'm a little tired. "Oh, well, what do you expect? It's been almost eight decades since my last full RJ, and from the look of it, I'll have to schedule my next one sometime soon." I thought to myself.

My implant informed me that they were due the next week. The damn thing never knows to shut up. It could have at least waited until we'd finished. I told it to can the chatter, but my mood was already ruined. I bent down a little further and sucked on Jord's gradually-softening masterpiece, getting just a little more of his juice. Better than OJ any day, and full of good flavor this morning, slightly acrid from the aspergoli we had last night, I guess.

"Mmmm, good." Jord whispered in my ear as we cuddled afterwards. I slowly slipped out of him, not wanting to still be inside him when the night unit went back inside to make sure the chemical balance was perfect, and to clean whatever needed cleaning. We've fallen asleep a couple of times, without separating, and I had to literally holler at the night units to leave us alone while we slept. Even so, a little before we were supposed to wake up, his night unit started to tickle my balls until I relented and let it in. They have a job to do, I know, and better the night unit than the alternatives.

Jord and I have been together -- let's see, eighty-one years? Something like that. I know it was before the turn of the century. 4197? 4196? It must have been '96, because we met four years after my RJ, and that was in 4190. Okay, eighty-two years in June.

After Jim and I divorced – we somehow just got tired of each other, the thrill was gone, all that stuff -- I batched it for a few years, but that gets boring after a while. Besides, the Company likes to see employees in stable relationships -- it's better for morale, and productivity is higher when gonads aren't in overdrive from dating.

It was only my second RJ, and I was `as horny as a billy goat.' According to my implant, Computer had nothing of import on billy goat, except that it was a male ruminant native to Earth. It certainly didn't look horny to me, unless the reference is to the little horns on its head. It smelled awful – the implant played the scent through my olfactory center. Nonetheless, I've seen the reference in a number of ancient texts, so there must be something to the imputed horniness of a billy goat.

I met Jord in the usual way, through friends who hate to see people alone. My neighbors were having a party, and invited me over for food and drink. Roast Rovarta was on the menu. If you've never eaten this fruit native to Pieta Four in the Way, you've missed something pretty spectacular. I smelled it roasting as soon as I went into the atrium of their house, and followed my nose to the open-air roaster. Jord was already there, and it was thrall at first glance. He'd just reached majority, and it showed. Although with RJ a lot of people look it at any given point in time -- I mean as if they'd just reached majority -- they're jaded underneath, so you can tell. He had obvious character strength as well as that certain vulnerability, shyness as well as garrulousness, unique to the genuinely young; a potent cocktail, totally intoxicating.

We talked for hours about everything. I drowned a thousand times in his golden eyes, was blinded by his flashing white teeth, mesmerized by the intelligence that formed perfect turns of logic. He was training as a nucleaic biochemist at University. My implant confirmed genetic compatibility, psychological balance, sexual preference and emotional preparedness. By evening's end, I knew Jord was my destiny. We were married two years later, the weekend after he graduated. He was still a virgin the first time we slept together, and stayed that way – intact – until our wedding night, and then for two more days, because I was too nervous to take his gift. I haven't slept with another man since we met. I don't know if he has or not, and I don't care. Really, I don't – I just want him to be happy, to enjoy life to its fullest. I love him completely.

My Dad Drake hadn't said anything after Jim and I had divorced after our fiftieth, in 4189, but he had been disappointed. He liked Jim a lot, said he was a good influence on me. Kept me off the streets and out of trouble. I loved Jim, truly, but somehow the Love got thinner as time passed, and eventually the Romantic Love was just gone, replaced by the deep affectionate love of true friends.

Dad Drake liked Jim so much, he married him after Dad David died in the Orion 23 nova evacuation. They got the transport coordinates wrong by a couple of meters, if you can believe it, and there was no way to reconstitute him, of course. That was a couple or three years after Jord and I moved here, after I got the job with Otis.

Dad Drake and Jim are still married, on Heserion, one of the earlier ones here in Andromeda, built before I got this job. They have at least a couple or three hundred kids -- Dad Drake got a big settlement for Dad David's wrongful death. And Jim loves kids. It feels a little funny to think of my father married to my ex, but that's just me. I know guys that have married their descendants! That makes me a little squeamish, too. I don't care if the law permits incestuous marriage as long as there are six intervening generations. I just don't like the idea of DNA strands being weakened by the natural repulsion of too-similar chains.

Dad Drake and Jim have only three girls -- all still alive. I think the girls are all married now, living on their egg-producing income. I don't know them - I've looked at their pictures, but that's all. I mean, with over twenty thousand close relatives, how can you possibly have close contact – especially with girls, when they only live a hunfivy years or so? I've only physically visited Hererion once, for Dad Drake and Jim's avowals, but Jim and I talk three or four times a week, and Dad Drake is usually with him, so I'm closer to my Dad than ever.

Jim and I only had tweny-three kids together. It was the first marriage for both of us, so we didn't have a lot of loot behind us. All boys, save two. We stopped having kids about eighteen years before the divorce, to make sure we didn't mess up any kids' lives. Sex became perfunctory, then non-existent, as the flames died. We each found "outside interests," me a delightful young scallawag named Tommy that somehow managed to take all twenyfive centimeters of my meat up his love-chute, although he was barely one and a half meters tall to my two meters ten, and sixy kilos to my hunten. He was so tight that when he had an orgase, it was like my dick was in a cylindrical vise. Jim was seeing a professional ball player, I think. I never met him, but the guy apparently treated Jim well, kept him in good shape. As it was, the last of our children knew we weren't sleeping together any more, and they worried about us a lot, I later learned.

As soon as I was free, Tommy moved on to another married man. It hurt for a day, until I picked up a guy a few years older and spent a weekend nailing him to the bed. I went in for RJ a few weeks later, and spent the next four years in pursuit of nailable guys, with considerable success. Hormone flow is just great!

As far as I know, all our (Jim's and my) boys are still doing okay, except Rolf, who married a girl and died of old age, maybe tweny years ago. No matter - he was happy, that's all that counts. Oh yeah -- Chris got himself involved in some shady circles and was denied RJ. He never had any kids, either . . . his local security council rejected his genetic structure, which the planetary council reviewed and approved. Just as well. There's a black sheep in every family, although the geneticists have removed a lot of the rogue genes. (Jord and I discussed the possibility that I had a faulty section in my DNA, but nothing has shown up, so we have kids with joyous abandon.) Mareth and June -- our girls -- did fabulously, each providing more than a thousand viable eggs before they petered out. God bless women!  Mareth died on Earth, she was so wealthy, and June was still alive, at least last I heard a few weeks ago, on Storna.  (She's getting on now, let's see -- probably nearly a huntweny. Her no-good husband kicked a couple of years ago. Good riddance to an egg-sucker.)  Jim and I split Mareth's estate between us, as Mareth had no husband to get the usual one-third portion. We each had twenyfour kids on the proceeds, him with Dad Drake in one year, me with Jord over three years..

Chris left us a surprisingly sizable estate, so the rumours that he was involved with questionable development contracts were probably true. Since he had no kids, we each got equal shares of it, but instead of using it for procreation, we donated it all to an education trust. We didn't want kids batored with dirty money.

Jord and I have a huneightysev sons and twelve daughters, with four more (two boys and two girls this time - we've named them Alarit, Ernesto, Clara and Zena) on the way in the bators. We're pretty well off, so we can afford more kids, even without the subsidy for high-female offspring genetic combination. It's funny -- my genes alone in combination with a normal zygote actualy produce a lower than normal female ratio, and Jord's ratio is about normal. But when our spermatozoid genes are spliced before fertilization, we have one of the highest incidences of female offspring around. It's nice to know we're contributing more than our fair share, but there are limits.

Despite Council pressures to have more kids, we don't usually have more than six a year, though we could easily afford three times that many. We've also stuck to an alternating-year cycle to give the kids a chance to maturate before the next siblings arrive from the bators.  Besides, there are limits to how much time we can spend parenting! The girls are all healthy, but of course we don't see them very often. Four of them are in the Way, on Trimulon, where Jord and I first set up house together, the rest here on Pelera. They're all in the same ovulary local trallicntr. Four have already started producing, and Lin has married a guy named Barnaigh. Seems a nice enough chap, though why he'd opt for a single life span partner instead of RJ is beyond me. Incorrigibly heterosexual, I suppose, and unwilling to rent a woman for short spans when needed. Like almost all men who marry women, he has decided to live for just one generation, and has had his RJ cultures destroyed. Now that's true love!

The girls never go off-planet, like most women, to keep their fertility levels up, so when we move on to the next project they will all stay here – at least until they've completed their fertile period. Junesta, our first daughter, has just gone through the change, and is now traveling around with her husband collecting images of "black holes." I don't know why she's so fascinated by them – but she's happy, so why not? I guess there are still five or six thou left here in the Andromeda, out of the twenythou or so we started out with. Coagulated matter is just too valuable to allow it to be wasted. (We kept a few of them for powering the Transport Grid, of course, but the rest were all treated with the antimatter neutralizers and put back into production.)

Jord and I spend as much time with the kids as we can, but they leave the nest so soon! We had more kids in our first tweny years together, so there are only twenyeight at home now, ranging from two to eighteen.

Bill will be the next to go, in February. He's a good kid. Already has a boyfriend, and they're talking about getting married as soon as the council certifies their majority. I hate to see him rush things, but he says I'm just an old fart. He and Mark have been sleeping together for more than a year, and he swears it's true love. They want kids, but it'll take a couple of years before they have the money scraped together for the eggs. Maazel. Jord and I will buy them a place, of course, and Mark's Dads will buy them the furnishings. Then they're on their own! I don't envy them -- the first few years will be rough, especially with all the pressures of college, then technical university. Bill is going into acidic humus engineering, and Mark into hyperastronomical photoanalysis software design.

I hate to be cynical, but the divorce rate is so high for first marriages, I wouldn't be surprised if they split after a few decades.  I mean, they haven't had a chance to play the field yet! I had at least four or five "flings" before I got married the first time, to Jim. (I was firstborn in 4104.) Jord didn't, though, so I guess he's passed his ideas along to the boys.

I haven't had sex with either of them (Bill or Mark).  Neither has Jord. I know it's the fashion in some quadrants for boys to be physically trained by their fathers before they have sex with boyfriends, but I'm not that narcissistic. Jord and I told Bill about most of the physical stuff when he was nine or ten, before the educators got into his head and screwed him up with the latest nonsense.  Bill asked us to demonstrate, but we told him he'd have more fun if he learned it on his own. Jord was almost willing, but I'm a little prudish that way. I think Bill was just being polite – we opened the port for pornography to him while we talked, and porn stars are a lot nicer to look at than your familair Dear Old Dads.

At any rate, I couldn't tell you how good they are in bed -- but they both have nice, tight bodies, and Bill says they fit together perfectly.  Bill tests primarily anal aggressive, and Mark oral aggressive, but Bill swears they've developed a satisfactory sexual repertoire, and flang the tests. I'm not so sure. Most of the longtime couples we know have pretty well-notched sex preference profiles, so that's another hurdle for them. Youth is so confident that obstacles can be overcome!

If Jord and I had stayed in the Way, it's unlikely we'd have been able to afford buying them their first home. You know how it is back there -- values just keep going up and up, especially in the outer arms. Earth is out of universe. I've heard that a decent home on Earth costs fivy mill, plus more than a mill a year in taxes. I make good money, but I'm way out of that league!

One of the new engineers told me that there are only a few thou suitable Way suns that aren't built out, and most of those already have development permits filed, so jobs are plentiful only in the dismantling and rebuilding trades.  I don't think I'd enjoy doing renovation work. I've worked on two star renovation projects, and that's a crushing bore. Six months of dismantling matter and re-constituting hydrogen is not my idea of a jolly old time. Still, Andromeda is already filling up, and you can see that we're either at or just beyond the peak building cycle.

Andro Clusters are all complete, of course. Prime locations always go first.

I hear the clusters in M2473 are particularly well-sited for views of the galactic disk. As soon as the probe sends back the first full test beam, Jord and I will zip over and take a look. It'll be expensive, of course – the first decade is always the peak period. But we bought a few mil shares in Otis and Schliesser before General Plant collapsed, so there's plenty in accum dividends to tap. The commute time won't be that bad – the new hyperlinks cut it to about a second per thousand light-years, so I figure on a ten minute limbo each way. Besides, I'll bet I get promoted to 2473. I have a great record. Jord wants to change jobs, work closer to home. Now, he commutes to Achyops II, in the fifth arm of the Way, working for BoBus at the transport devcenter. He hates the waste of time – it takes nearly twenty minutes each way. He's threatening to jump to Locketta, which is rumored to have the contract for the transport devcenter in 2473.

Josef and Barnif will be the next to go, in February. Jo and Bar are still determinedly single. They've both opted to remain virgins for their first mate, and I'm sure that technically they still are, although from the sounds from their sleeprooms, they are pretty lusty. I see nothing wrong with them satisfying each other as long as they don't let it get romantic. They assured me that it's strictly physical, strictly oral. Lately, though, I've seen Bar looking at Jo in a way that makes me think there's more to their relationship than that - at least from Bar's viewpoint.

While I was getting ready to leave this morning, Jord and I had a few words about it. We share the raising, eschewing the roles many couples adopt. I refuse to condone a good-guy/bad guy strategy of parenting. We agreed that we'd bring in a Strat-Teach unit today to find someone to seduce each of them, simultaneously, so as to avoid emotrauma. (One for each of them, I mean, not one for both of them.)

Naturally, Jo and Bar came from different eggs, but they both had our spliced helixes, and somehow they came out looking like identical twins. At first we were suspicious that's what they were, but we got DNA tests done, and the tests confirmed that their genes were completely different. I suspect that looking so much alike, their sexual attraction to one another has a great deal of narcissism to it.

I think Bar will take it pretty hard at first, harder than Jo. Bar is very sensitive, like Jord, but even more so. He is probably latent empath, as occasionally he will do or say something that indicates he knows what is going on in a person's emotions, even though the person in question shows no outward sign. But he's off the charts in intellect, so he'll no doubt realize the good of non-sibling romance as opposed to incestuous marriage. I mean, it's allowed, but Councils refuse eggs to such couples.

Jo is pretty deep, and I'd be surprised if he has much difficulty in getting through the fraternal phase. He certainly had little problem with the patrial phase -- it took some effort to get Jo to stop fantasizing about making love with his Dads, but not much. We just locked our sleeproom when we were making love, because he kept trying to horn in. That was when he was threen. It was only a few weeks later when we saw the transfer of his lust to his sibling. I think if the ST finds him someone who's a little darker-skinned than his brother, with brown curly hair instead of our auburn straw, it'll be okay. He idolized a musicmaker for years that had long curly locks and chocolate skin, and it couldn't have been the quality of the music that attracted him, that's for sure! The postup of the musicmaker left little doubt of the condition and direction of his genitals, which I figure is what really fascinated him. I mean, he's a normal, red-blooded kid!

Jord wants him to fall for someone a little more oriental. He's is such a romantic!

There's my call.

Implant stop record file journal date time.

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