>From: stevec@bu-pub.bu.edu (Steve Connelly)
Subject: Eavesdropping on a Chat chat
Date: 3 Jan 91 18:29:35 GMT


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part 1 of 1
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	A man and woman shared a table, the only table lit sufficiently and not
tucked into a corner.  The woman was middle-aged.  Her hair was a gray crew
cut, and she was wearing light safari gear and an indifferent expression on her
dark, wrinkled face.  The man's hair was blonde and his cruel eyes a searing
blue.  The gray uniform of his reich clung to his broad, rigid shoulders.  The
sharp angles of his jaw and scarred cheekbone matched those of the swastikas on
his shoulders.
	He said to the woman, "Ooh!  The bubbles tickle my nose!"  He convulsed
in a high-pitched stacatto giggle that caused the woman to grimace.  He took
another sip of pink liquid from a glass that held a little umbrella and had
half a cantaloupe stuck on the rim.  "So, what's your name?  My name is
Wilhelm.  But the `i' doesn't have a dot over it, it has a teeny tiny valentine
over it.  Now, I told you my name, so you hafta tell me yours, hafta, hafta,
hafta."  Wilhelm started kicking his polished jackboots rapidly above the
floor.
	"Joan," the woman finally said.  "My name is Joan."
	"Joan!  Awesome!  "So, like, who do you think is the cutest New Kid on
the Block?"
	Joan slowly turned to Wilhelm.  "You must be the dizziest, flakiest
nazi I've ever seen."
	She was repelled by another bout of giggling by the man.  "Flaky?
Like, how can a person be flaky?  Unless you have, like, a totally grody
dandruff attack or something.  Like, if you have so much dandruff that your
whole skull flakes off.  You wouldn't just be hair-bald, you'd be bone-bald.
Then it would rain right on top of your brain and that would, well, I dunno -"
	"It would make you dizzy."
	"Yeah!  Dizzy.  I think about my brain alot cuz I need to take good
care of it.  Though sometimes when get laughing I forget to breath and I get
dizzy anyway."
	Joan asked earnestly, "How can you survive as a soldier in the reich
and be so clueless?"
	"Oh, only the body belongs to a soldier," Wilhelm explained.  "The
brain isn't the soldier's."
	"What do you mean?"
	"The soldier's real brain was put into a cyborg warrior for a while.
The brain they put in this body right now is just a loaner.  I'm a cheap
artificial brain that just maintains the bodily functions."
	"Is that all you do all day, maintain bodily functions?"
	"No," Wilhelm scolded.  "I go to the health club to keep the host body
in good shape.  And I go to the beauty parlor for a shampoo so the host body
doesn't get flaky - that's right, FLAKY - like SOME people think I am.  My job
isn't as easy as people think."
	"I'm sure."
	"So I told you what I do for living!"  Wilhelm bounced up and down on
his chair.  "Now you have to tell me what you do!"
	"Very well.  For the past 10 years, I've been an environmentalist."
	"An environmentalist!  Awesome!  What is it?  I know what `mental'
means.  It means brains...."
	"No, no.  An environmentalist protects nature from the harmful acts of
man.  You know.  Pollution.  Hunting."
	"So you help the plants and animals," Wilhelm said with conviction.
	"Yes.  I'm a different type of environmentalist, but you get the
idea -"
	"Different how?"
	"Well, um, I teach animals how to defend themselves."
	Wilhelm's eyes glazed over and started to wander about Joan's face
independently of each other.  She saw that she would have to explain.  "There
are drugs that provide animals with a slight increase in intelligence.  They
become just smart enough to organize themselves and to, um, use weapons."
	Wilhelm had worked his way up to wide-eyed confusion.  Joan continued.
"Herbivores who had been hunted to near extinction were taught how to go on the
offensive.  They learned how to spot hunters, and how to arrange battle plans.
Species joined together to form an army of horns, hooves, and tusks that fell
like an avalanche upon human hunters, whose own weapons were then used against
them.
	"Baby seals were trained in the use of clubs.  Dogs buried landmines.
Moles worked as spies.  Kamikaze pigeons flew into jet engines.  The swallows
consumed an entire ex-lax factory and then bombed Capistrano.  The average
length of a matador's career became 15 seconds.  Shaolin priests taught mice
enough kung fu to snatch the cheese from the trap.  Lemmings could call a
toll-free hotline and get into a program.  Colonel Sanders was sanctioned.
Even private homes were threatened by amphibious assaults."
	"Humans realized they could not overpower the animals, and there would
never be enough gasmasks to handle an escalation to skunk warfare.  They
decided to negotiate.  Representatives of man and animal met on the Serengeti
plain.  There were days of tense territorial urination and counter-urination,
but eventually the boundaries of a large wildlife sanctuary were agreed upon.
	Such negotiations continued on various fronts, but the animals allowed
their own personal welfare to supercede the betterment of the entire animal
kingdom.  Predators and ranchers made unholy agreements so that both could
continue to slaughter.  Elephants and prosthodontists agreed to exchange ivory
for ceramic tusks.  Families of road pizzas were bribed so they wouldn't
pursue a conviction for negligent driving.  Shamu hired an agent.  Man and
dolphin reached an agreement whereby dolphins would not be caught in tuna nets.
But what about the welfare of the tuna that are caught in tuna nets?
	Sure, the animals came to dominate Olympic track and field events.
But they had gained neither justice nor dignity.  Most predators and big game
had cut soft deal for themselves, and so discontinued their chemical intellect
enhancement and became domesticated.  There remained only a few, alienated,
revolutionary small defenseless herbivores who still had the dream of true
influence over their destinies.  The visionaries forming this underground
resistance were the gerbils.  They successfully infiltrated the human political
structure."
	"Now wait a minute," Wilhelm guffawed.  "How would a gerbil get
elected to a political office."
	"I didn't say elected.  I said infiltrated.  They infiltrated the
bodies of prominent humans and secretly changed their attitudes using simple
negative reinforcement:  When the human committed an anti-gerbil act, he
would suffer unexplainable sharp internal pains.
	"The gerbils clandestine invasion began in San Francisco.  Quickly,
human behavior in that geographical area began to shift to a pro-gerbil
platform.   Humans began to curb development and leave primitive natural
environments intact.  They swore off their carnivorous diets and became
herbivores.  They ate alot of lettuce and alot of cereal that tasted like wood
chips.  They stopped wearing garments of animal fur.  They did lounges over in
ferns and unfinished cedar.  They started running on treadmills that went
nowhere, and soon were using rowing machines, bicycles, and staircases that
went nowhere.  The gerbil agenda is nearly complete in San Francisco and is
spreading across the country."
	"Spreading!" Wilhelm squirmed.  "That means we'll be invaded soon!
How can we protect ourselves?"
	Joan sipped her drink.  "Like the street fighters say, you need someone
to watch your back."