At five years of age, Creasha Greenhut was skipping home from a candy store near the end of her block.  It was early in the day.  The sun was bright and warm, contrasts were high, and shadows were long.  She was taking huge bites from a chocolate bar held in her left hand while her right hand seemed to be tickling the sky above her.  Her young ebony skin appeared indigo against her bright powder-blue skirt and blouse.  She was smart for her age, tall, and adjusting well to life.  For her first five years, things had gone very well.  She had a powder-blue ribbon in her hair.  Creasha was happy, and having fun.  Skipping.
          Three months later, her life dramatically altered its course.  It wasn't that she was no longer smart, occassionally eating chocolate, or tall.  Her life was the same in those regards.  The difference was that she and her parents had departed Earth's surface and were living in a small laboratory and school orbiting a thousand miles above the surface of Earth.
          Creasha would not set foot upon Earth for close to thirty-eight years.  Her parents would never see Earth again, and they would never feel the pull of any planet's gravity upon their body.
          In this small laboratory and school, Creasha's family, and many other families, spent two months adjusting to living and working in space.  After that they would move to a very large spaceship that would be their home and world for as long as it took to locate a viable planet for Earth to colonization.  Creasha and her parents, and hundreds of other families, were to be the brains, the muscle, entertainers, firefighters, cooks, what have you, who were needed to keep this world within this spaceship working, moving, and peaceful.  These people were to be all the parts and pieces that make up a society within a world.  They were to be apart of the greatest quest ever undertaken; for as long as it takes.

          Earth had been suffering for quite awhile.  It had been bludgeoned by greed and raped by indifference.  A few efforts had been put forth to clean-up the stench, erase the scars, but little of substance had been accomplished.  The immediacy of survival grew in direct proportion to the population, and the population grew in spite of the planet's inability to support that growth.  People were hard pressed to find work, to defend themselves, to merely stay alive.  For the vast majority of the population, life was a critical situation.
          Life, however, was not a miserable experience for all of the seven billion people carpeting the surface of Earth.  Some were doing quite well.  There seemed to be a profit in pain, a margin in misery.  A few people were able to afford clean air and water, fresh foods, advancements in medicine, leisure moments.  Some could even afford hope, and here's were we return to Creasha, her family, all the others, and this odyssey.
          Hope.  Those people who could afford hope were the luckiest of people.  Hope is like honey to the heart, a song for the soul.  Hope is believing that something wonderful will happen, yes, it will happen, and soon.  It is believing that things will get better.  Believing is the key.  To not believe is to give-up hope.  It might still happen, but to stop believing is giving up hope.  Hope is one of lives essential needs.  Creasha was part of a group of people who had hope.  They hoped to find a clean, new planet somewhere out in space.
          The Tri-National Space Agency.  These were the people who really had a great deal of hope.  They not only hoped that their ship would find a planet; they hoped to shuttle people back and forth to this new planet; to make a business of saving the world.  They had offered Creasha's parents money, comforts, adventure, and, of all things, hope to get them to join their efforts.
          But that didn't make it easy for her parents, and the hundreds of others.  They had wrestled with an unusual problem to gain this hope they were offered.  Would they take the positions offered them and leave Earth, most likely for the rest of their lives?  Would they subject their children to being raised to adulthood within the confines of a really huge spaceship?  Would they and their children join the crew of the Piezo starship to search for a new world most of the experts thought too unlikely to warrant serious consideration?  As you know, they did.  They hungered for hope, and that's what they were given.  Many wanted to join; wanted hope in their lives.  Earth was not the best place to be, so even though it was a difficult decision to make, and a real risk to take, there was great competition for the positions, and most who were offered positions, took them.
          Too unlikely to warrant serious consideration, many had said.  This would have been disheartening if Creasha's parents hadn't been told of some very guarded data returning form the Tri-National Space Agency's long-range probes:  Data that disclosed a perturbation indicating there were at least three bodies orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani.  It was hoped by the Tri-National Space Agency's experts that one of these bodies might be the right size and distance from Epsilon Eridani to make possible a planet capable of supporting life.  This was the most powerful source of hope offered by TNSA.
          Epsilon Eridani is just under eleven light-years from Earth.  Although its absolute magnitude is brighter than that of Earth's Sun, its spectral type is cooler.  This combination balanced out and thereby encouraged hope.  It was not inconceivable that a viable planet circled this star.  Anything occurring once in the universe could occur twice was the way Creasha's parents shaped their hope from this data.  If Sol has Earth circling it, why couldn't Epsilon Eridani have its own viable companion; its own blue ball of liquid and life?  TNSA was banking on this type of reasoning.
          And here's some more stellar reasoning:  Although Piezo would arrive at the sought-after planet only once, it would arrive two times.  It would arrive around nineteen years after departing Earth orbit from the perspective of the Piezo crew, and around eighty-seven years after departing Earth orbit from the perspective of the people back on Earth.  There would be only one actual arrival time  The Piezo clocks were keeping Piezo time, moving very slowly according to the people on Earth, and the Earth bound clocks were keeping Earth time, moving very fast according to the crew inboard Piezo.
          A lot of things were at work here.  To travel to this new planet and return would take around thirty-eight years.  To wait back on Earth for the ship to travel to the planet and return would take around one hundred and seventy-four years.  This was not good for the people funding the quest.  They would not be alive when it returned and their children would be too old to make the trip to the new planet and have much time there.  Inorder to soften this a bit, they decided that while Piezo was underway, they would be building a second ship for their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to leave on as soon as the word came from Piezo that a planet had been found.  The message carrying word of this new planet would take ten-plus years to reach Earth.  The sponsor's descendants would then board and launch from orbit this huge colonizing ship.
          Meanwhile, back at the new planet, part of Piezo's crew would begin preparation for these new arrivals.  The remainder of Piezo's crew would return to Earth where they would repair and prepare the Piezo for a second load of paying passengers.  If things went according to schedule, the colony ship would begin its return trip from the colony planet about the time Piezo was departing from Earth for a second go at it.  A cycling would start that would continue until minds or means give out.
          Such was the plan as the starship Piezo began its trip with Creasha, her parents, and so many others.  With the Piezo underway, it wasn't long before the expected date of Piezo's arrival and message was being used as a reference point from which to date births, deaths, bridge dedications, and such.  A world-wide lottery had developed around the exact time the message would arrive, and whether the message would be good news, or bad news.  An extremely accurate time piece was used to date and record all the transmissions received from Piezo.  They were being calculated to the nearest nanosecond.  At first, tickets were slow to sell.  The magical message was a long time off.  This made the guessing very difficult, so the prices were low and the odds were high.  As the great day grew nearer, the price of a ticket increased greatly, and the odds decreased equally as greatly.  Nothing so grand as this had ever been attempted by humans.  When it was obvious that the day was very near, only the very rich could afford the price and apply the influence needed to acquire a ticket.  Never had humans put aside the immediate for the eventual in quite this way.
 
 

          Creasha had survived to be a member of the returning crew.    She was no longer that five-year-old chocolate eating girl tickling the sky while skipping home from the corner store.  She was a forty-three-year-old woman who had no compunction about skipping when ever she felt like it.  She retained her passion for chocolate, and she had pulled that tickled sky down and wrapped it around her life.  She stood five feet ten inches.  It was the five feet and ten inches that a sapling attains when it has plenty of food and water, but not enough light.  She was often described as tall and spindly.  Her parents had died of natural causes while the Piezo was making its return trip.  Other than for her friends and comrades from the Piezo, Creasha found herself alone on an Earth vastly different to the dream-polished memories of the five-year-old she had been when she left it.
          Without exception, the only crew members to return to Earth were either born on the Piezo and had never seen Earth, or, like Creasha, were very young children when it left Earth orbit.  These two categories of crew members had nurtured a curiosity about Earth into a full-blown obsession.  In their classrooms inboard Piezo it was Earth this, and Earth that.  By the time they were approaching adulthood they had mythologized Earth into a paradise garden of rainbowed dreams and sparkling hopes, broad skies and vast plains.  The Mother Planet.  Could it be anything but perfect and nurturing?  They had to reach their mother planet.  Like salmon, swallows, monarch butterflies, they were driven by dreams, desires, spiritual needs to return to the sphere that spawned them.
          Rather than return to a world they remembered as unfriendly to the old and the weak, most of those crew members who had adult memories of Earth chose to stay and live the remainder of their lives in space.  Along with Creasha's parents, they remained to be with and study the unexpected and shocking results of Piezo's arrival near Epsilon Eridani.
          Creasha's memories of Earth were foggy ones.  She could tell that things had changed.  Like all the people locked inside the Piezo, she had paid close attention to the news from Earth.  For the first half of the trip, the news had been carefully censored by the Tri-National Space Agency.  However, as a result of the bizarre discovery made near Epsilon Eridani, the news she and the rest of the crew received during the return trip was of a completely different quality:  It was the truth.
          Things had changed greatly.  Luna had not only been colonized, it had become an independent nation shortly after it had established an independent environment.  The Piezo Project, along with the colonizing ship expected to move people to a garden planet circling Epsilon Eridani, had suffered an hostile take-over at the hands of a Jamaican consortium operating out of Tokyo.  This consortium subsequently moved from Tokyo to the would-be colony ship.  They began calling it the P-1 Orbiter and declared their independence.  Shortly after this, Earth formed the One-World Government.
          With an independent Luna, P-1 Orbiter, and the One-World Government, the crew of the Piezo had returned to square-off what had been a triangle of mistrust and suspicion.  Humans were still locked in to an obsession with an US-THEM perspective.  It cast its shadow over their every decision and deed.
          Returning to Earth as an adult was a difficult adjustment and took the greater part of Creasha's attention.  Her adjustment to being on a planet was as difficult for her as was her parents' adjustment to life in a ship.
          When you live the bulk of your life inside a spaceship, adjusting to life on the surface of a planet can be a very frightening task.  Creasha and her ship-born and ship-raised crew mates viewed Earth as a huge, skinless, and exposed ship without controls.  To them, Earth had only a breath of a barrier between life and the cold hard vacuum of space.  Things seemed turned inside out from their perspective.  They felt exposed and vulnerable.
          It had been only three months and four days since Creasha and the rest of the crew had returned from 'The Trip' as it was being called.  Like most of the Piezo crew, Creasha had leaped on the first space assignment she could find.
          It took money, experience, and pull to land a space assignment.  Thirty-eight years of savings provided Creasha with the money she needed, thirty-eight years of space travel placed her at the top of the heap experience-wise, and it was beyond her where the pull had come from.  None-the-less, she had acquired approval for an assignment as passenger first-class in one of the transport vessels bound for the P-1 orbiter, and she was grateful for that.  She would deal with what life presented next when she was comfortably settled inside another ship.
          Although she was a paying passenger and not crew, it was still being called an assignment.  A person had to get approval from a very proprietorial government in order to leave Earth, and leaving Earth for the P-1 Orbiter was an even more difficult project considering the heated litigation between Earth and P-1 over ownership of the Piezo.  This problem became exaggerated when Piezo's remaining crew members demanded a disinterested sort of anarchistic independence.  Many called it mutiny.
          Even though these approvals were being called assignments, Creasha, along with virtually everyone else on Earth, saw them as releases.  Everybody wanted to leave the planet, wanted an assignment, but, outside of Earth's thin film of an atmosphere, there were too few alternative bubbles of air to accommodate the demand.
          As she watched a beautiful rainbowed crescent of Earth slowly shrink on the view-screen, Creasha found it difficult to believe that such a wonderful sight hid such a terrible mess.  It looked so beautiful from space: deep blues, rich browns, and bright whites.  It looked clean and refreshing.  No planet or moon she had ever seen was as beautiful and moving as Earth when viewed through the clear, clean vacuum of space.  It was as though the sight of Earth caused silver bells to ring deep within her soul.
          However, down on its surface, like the bacteria in a fermenting mash, humans were choking on their own effluvia.  They were dying on a used-up planet.  All wanted escape.  The Earth Creasha was leaving for the second time was not the Earth of her childhood memories.  It was not the clean and peaceful planet that thirty-eight years of nostalgic washings had placed within her mind.
          The One-World Government that was being so stingy with space assignments, resentful of Luna's independence, downright testy about Piezo's disinterested anarchism, unyielding about the price of white hominy, ornery about getting its way, miffed by the this, the that, and the everything else, was the direct result of what had happened when Piezo neared Epsilon Eridani.
          What was it that Piezo and her crew had encountered?  What could have made the older crew members happy to stay behind and miss one hell of a ticker-tape parade upon their return?  What was it indead?
          They had encountered another spacecraft.  A spacecraft not of Earth, of course.  It was called Ooba, and it was fourteen shipboard-years and seven light-years from its home planet Boze.
          The hoped-for planet did exist.  It was just a tad larger than Earth.  A comfortable distance from Epsilon Eridani.  It was covered with freashwater seas and lakes, forest covered mountains, minerals, and an atmosphere as fresh and clean as a cool drink of distilled water on a hot summer's day.  It was a paradise.   But alas, colonization, even visiting, of Epsilon Eridani's second planet had not been allowed.  The crew of the Ooba claimed guardianship over the planet and wanted no alien organisms to land upon its surface.  The crew of the Piezo were allowed to scan it with sensors, take pictures of it, wonder about it, but they were not allowed to land or send down probes.
 

          Piezo's crew sent pictures of an obviously inhabitable planet with huge freshwater oceans and vast virgin forests of unimaginably large trees.  They put satellites into orbit to gather information, but that was the extent of it.  Colonization was out of the question, but colonization was a secondary concern in light of these aliens, these Others.
          Before leaving the Epsilon Eridani system, they were able to meet and get to know some of these Others, these Bozers claiming guardianship over this taboo planet.  They got to meet intelligent beings from a completely different world!  Not even the most lucid minds inboard the Piezo could completely realize the significance of this event, their reasoning thunderstruck by the magnitude of its ramifications.  Piezo's crew were free to set the pattern and weave, a benchmark, as it were, for a cultural and diplomatic relationship hitherto unknown.  Earth was no longer alone in a chilling and disinterested universe.  Humans had met the neighbors next door.  A whole new deck of cards had been shuffled into the game of life.  Similies and metaphores were everywhere.
          Looking back on it now, Creasha was amazed at how lackluster the human response was to encountering an additional intelligent life form.  She had been lead to believed that the chances of such an occurrence were beyond consideration.  Finding a viable planet seemed enough, but intellegent life.  She remembered her classes aboard the Piezo and how her professor of astrophysics had described those chances:  She had compared the likelihood of finding other life forms of any sort in our neck of the galaxy to bugs locked in ping-pong balls finding each other while adrift upon the Pacific Ocean.  She said that, to make the comparison work, the average distance between ping-pong balls would have to be around seven hundred miles, and only one out of one hundred thousand balls would have even the thinnest chance of housing bugs; supporting life.  When her teacher was convinced that the class had grasped the unlikeliness of one occupied ping-pong ball finding another occupied ping-pong ball, she pointed out that floating on the Pacific Ocean was two-dimensional, whereas space is three-dimensional.  Then, to finish the lecture, she had the class consider the distances in real-space in relationship to the unbreakable speed limit of light, and said, 'You now have a four-dimensional conundrum to deal with.'
          Considering those odds, any response would be lackluster, thought Creasha.
          Being called 'alien organisms, that was what really set things off back on Earth when they heard of these other creatures, these Bozers.  'Organisms'.  Humans had a reason to unite: a common platform for global paranoia.  The sky was falling, as it so often does.  Before Piezo had made its return, the One-World Government, to a great degree, had directed its efforts away from scattered global conflicts, viral plagues, mass deaths due to environmental toxins, wholesale starvation, the stressed relationship with Luna Station, the growing morale problems on board the would-be colony ship, the on, and on, and on...  Instead of reveling in these problems, Earthlings directed their efforts and energy toward an outer space defense system.  Eventually everyone's attention was directed to the heavens.  The dream of meeting other intelligent life forms had become a paranoia flavored nightmare; many were deeply afraid they weren't paranoid enough.  With the unanimous reaction of fear welding the human spirit into a force of one, peace came to Earth for the first time simply because humans perceived a greater threat to themselves than themselves.  Humankind's problems had not been solved.  No, no.  Its attention had merely been relocated.  All of this was what eventually lead to the One-World Government, Luna Station becoming simply Luna, and the colony ship becoming the independent P-1 Orbiter.
          Creasha began to laugh at the memory of humans believng Bozers to be a religious and military threat rather than the most beautiful and unlikely thing imaginable.  How could the universe have dreamt up a Bozer, she thought; so unlike anything Earth had spawned.
          Many humans, when first hearing of Bozers, were sure that evil, green critters were going to swoop in on Earth and rob them of their power, burn their houses of worship, and take their money: attack their holy trinity, as it were.  But then, considering that they had only themselves by which to measure the motives and possible actions of others, this seemed quite understandable to Creasha, as well as to her Bozer friends.
          During the second half of the Piezo's trip, Earth had become a huge and frightened eyeball floating in the dry and indifferent vacuum of space.  Picture that sad celestial eyeball with an ocean-sized teardrop hanging from it.
          Inadvertently, and sometimes with premeditation, Bozers did much to stimulate human trepidation.  Not only did Bozers call humans "alien organisms" (which really ticked a few people off), but, to widen this social fracture even further, Bozers had no superstitions they took seriously, and they had no concept of ownership what-so-ever.  For humans, after twenty-plus centuries of seeing themselves as fallen angels placed on Earth with exclusive rights for using, abusing, grabbing, and gobbling up everything within reach, Bozers' not recognizing ownership of things was seen as a threat to the very heart and soul of humankind's self-image.  Humans sincerely believed that they WERE what they owned, controlled, and believed.  If Bozers weren't to judge them by those three criteria, then what?  Their conduct?  Their history?
          One of the first things that Bozers noticed, and immediately shared with humans, was that humans truly believed they were as they saw themselves rather than as they conducted themselves.  Then, to further exacerbate these human reactions, the Bozers addressed every organism on Earth as Earthling.  Every organism.  Bozers found it comical to learn that humans did not regard themselves as animals.  If not an animal, then what?  A plant?  A stone?  A concept?
          Eventually humans learned, and came to believe, that Bozers had no understanding of war.  They had virtually no leaning toward violence.  Bozers had seen the video transmissions from Earth of riots and war, but thought it merily some outragious comedy indicating a complete lack of taste.  The concept of war had never surfaced amongst their thoughts: an inconceivable notion, according to Bozers; an organizational impossibility according to Bozer nature.  Why, traveling from planet to planet was a cake walk when compared to the likelihood of convincing millions upon millions of Bozers to choose a side and then begin to slander, bludgeon, maime, and kill those who had chosen the other side.
          As human earthlings began to realize these Bozer traits, they slowly began to calm.  Many of them stopped preparing for an invasion; others began taking advantage of the steady stream of scientific information the Bozers had been sending them all along.  It was this steady stream of FREE information that played the greatest role in calming human fears and making them receptive to the imminent Bozer arrivals.
          As it turned out, Bozer's standards for courtesy and social enlightenment demanded that they immediately exchange all knowledge with any life form they encountered: all knowledge that is within the bounds of the other's ability to understand and utilize.
          To a Bozer, interrogatives like: 'Whada ya know?' 'What's new?' and 'What's the haps?' were not taken as polite rhetoric.  They were taken literally, and as a sign of respect and good manners.  Bozers would tell you what they knew, what was new, and what was happening.  It would be poor etiquette to do otherwise.  It would be downright rude.
          By the time Creasha and the other members of the Piezo had returned to Earth, humans had, for the most part, calmed toward Bozers.
          Bozer adventures had been serialized on The Web.  They had even had a car and breakfast cereal named after them: The Coup de Bozer, 'an otherworldly driving experience,' and BozerKrispeezze, 'a taste that's out of this world.'  As you can see, advertising arts had remained an oxymoron.
          Humans were also learning that, outside of Earth, the universe was largely populated with creatures believing that the cultivation and sharing of knowledge and truth was the foremost justification for the existence of sentient life in an otherwise pointless infinity.  The search for understanding was everything.  Bozers believed it obvious that the only reason consciousness occurred in an unconscious cosmos was to figure out what the heck was going on; that meant sharing anything you might learn, to work with others in order to make sense out of what surrounds us all; to withhold a knowledge was as close to a sin as a Bozer believed possible.

 The rough seas that had resulted by the crossing of Bozer and Human wakes were settling by the time Creasha was on her way to the P-1 orbiter.
          Creasha and her fellow crew members had been treated as very special citizens when they first returned.  After all, they had traveled farther than anyone before them, and they were the first to have met real-life Bozers.  Their special treatment, however, began to wane as Bozers began showing up on Earth in ever increasing numbers.
          The Bozer ship Ooba had trailed Piezo on its return trip by a little over one month.  Bozer ships from other parts of the galaxy began showing up shortly thereafter.
          By the time Creasha received a message from Jawper, a Bozer she had befriended while still a Piezo crew member, she was more than ready to leave the Earth that she had loved solely as a very refined childhood memory.
          The truth was that Creasha had very few bonds with Earth.  Her bonding had been to Piezo and its crew, and to Ooba and its crew.  She was adrift and alone in an universe of opportunities.  She was wading hip-deep in that endless stream of possibilities dreamt of by the gods.
          When she woke from a short nap in her cabin, the image of Earth seemed frozen in space.  She turned her attention away from the view-screen and onto a transcript of Jawper's message.  She stuffed a huge piece of chewing gum past lips painted a high-gloss, fuschia, sighed a shoulder-dropping sigh, and began to read to the rhythm of a lip-smacking chew:
 

 Sister,                                                              1-27-2168  14:30 CUT

     Greetings and love from Jawper.
     I will be arriving at P-1 orbiter two Earth weeks from the above Earth date.
     Please meet me there.
     I know that your fellow humans use a thing called money.  If you have a problem with this, I have sent instructions to Grosip (also a dear friend) to give you the needed money, and to help you with arrangements.
     Please meet me at P-1.  I need your help very much.
     I also need you, but I remember how much this troubled your mind, and will probably try not to bring it up again.  Maybe.  I'll try.  Honest.

                                  Jawper's love is yours,
                                  Jawper-321-Type A

          Well, that answered that, thought Creasha.  It must have been Grosip who had supplied the pull needed for her to land the space assignment.
          Jawper's full name, Jawper-321-Type A, made a gentle smile bloom upon Creasha's face.  Type A.  She thought of what a unique and humorous species of creature these Bozers are.  Type A and Type B: Type A being female-dominant hermaphrodites; Type B being male-dominant hermaphrodites.  What makes a Type A female-dominant rather than male-dominant is not their external physical configuration.  Either type might resemble the human male or human female.  The fact that Type A Bozers carry fertile eggs and Type B Bozers do not is what makes them different; both carry fertile sperm.
          Both Types A and B are extremely, sexually promiscuous by most human standards.  The reasons for humans and their standards having pronounced the Bozers as sexually promiscuous were many and varied.  However, at the forefront of these many and varied reasons was the simple fact that Bozers see absolutely nothing wrong or immoral, or even unusual, about indulging in sexual relations to express their deepest feelings of love and affection, for the purpose of reproduction, or for the sheer fun of mucking around with another sentient creature; any sentient creature.
          This has, of course, played a major role in shaping the way Bozers have related to each other and a host of other creatures over the millennia and throughout the cosmos.  Bozers are anything and everything, but they are not xenophobic.  If a creature is sentient, they can fall in love with it.  If they fall in love with it, they will flatter it with compliments, write it poetry, and serenade it with love songs.  They will lavish it with gifts, and they will try their damnedest to seduce it.  This is no doubt why humans have placed this pronouncement of 'extremely, sexually promiscuous' upon Bozers.  Bozers have never contested the legitimacy of this pronouncement, although they have often wondered why so much time and energy has been diverted in its direction.  It puzzled them a great deal considering the cosmic conundrum facing all thinking creatures.
          Type A Bozers are capable of becoming pregnant, and, so far, only by other Bozers of either type.  Both types are tall, heavily muscled and a bit plump by human standards, hairless, earless, very erotic to the human eye and imagination, and they have a slight bluish tint to their skin; sort of a robin's egg blue.  Bozers' eyes, capable of seeing well into the infrared and ultra-violet ends of the light spectrum, are red/orange, and have horizontal cat-like slits for pupils.  At a distance, Bozers are indistinguishable from humans.  They wear human clothing when around humans, and are capable of speaking any of the human languages.  They learn incredibly fast, and seem incapable of forgetting.  They fall in love easily, and rarely fall out of love.  And, like humans, they cheat and lie to get their way.
          Creasha turned off the view-screen, put Jawper's letter away, and climbed into bed.  Her five-foot ten-inch body filled the bed with a slim, muscular, and feminine topography.  She pulled a tray of food out from beside the bed, propped herself up against an avalanche of pillows, and reached for a book she had been trying to find time to finish.  It would be three days before arrival at the P-1 orbiter.  Locking the door to her cabin, she planned on getting in as much reading, resting, and eating of fine chocolates as time permitted; that is if she could pull her mind away from the sticky subject of what Jawper might be planning for them.  Knowing Jawper, she was trying to prepare herself for anything.  Bozers think strangely compared to humans, and Jawper was considered a maverick amongst Bozers.
 

          P-1 was a huge orbiter that had been reconstructed from what was to have been the colony ship.  It shared Earth's orbital path around the sun.  If Earth were at twelve o'clock on its orbital path, P-1 would be at about eight-thirty, or 'Out in front and leading the way' as the P-1 folks liked to say.  At the time of Creasha's approach, it was fast becoming more Bozer in its redesign than human.  It had been under its own governmental controls for a few years prior to the Piezo's return, and it was beginning to feel governmental atrophy, Bozer style.
          P-1's independence came about as a response by the Jamaican consortium to the belligerence of both Earth's and Luna's government.  After the takeover, it was not allowed to be placed in orbit around either Earth or Luna without declaring its allegiance to their respective government.  They even insisted that a loyalty oath be signed.  With both governments being this silly, and claiming gravitational fields as territorial boundaries, the only workable alternative was to have the P-1 orbiter share Earth's Solar orbit and thereby avoid the never ending debate as to who has jurisdiction over the wabbling point in space that Earth and Luna both orbit like circling butterflies.
          A short while before Creasha left for the orbiter, the organizers of the P-1 project felt that claiming allegiance to one community meant you were rejecting and therefore insulting all others.  These organizers, a good deal of whom had been replaced by Bozers, did not want to make such a rude and divisive statement.  Its citizens wanted to declare allegiance to all the universe of conscious minds; a conspicuous result of Bozer influences.
          With a capacity to sustain ten thousand residents, it was agreed that nine thousand permanent residents would be allowed on the P-1 orbiter.  The remaining one thousand slots would be left for the ubiquitous and revered transients.
          Asteroids were being moved in from 'the Belt' at a rapid pace.  These asteroids, rich in iron, nickel, and other heavy metals, were being used to enlarge P-1.  When they finished P-1, others would be built; P-1 would be married to P-2, P-3, P-4, and so on.
          Because of its independent status and universal perspective, passports were not needed when visiting P-1.  However, they were definitely required when returning to either Earth or Luna.  It could take weeks to pass through customs at either location.  This simply served to support the P-1 citizen's belief that an allegiance to anything less than everything was snubbing, inconvenient, and down right rude.
 

          When Creasha made the transfer from the transport vessel to the P-1 orbiter, Jawper was nowhere in sight.  However, a message from Jawper was waiting at the information desk.  It said that she would meet Creasha at the supply market; she would be near the chocolates, the fine chocolates, of course.  How like Jawper, Creasha thought.
          Creasha had ordered twenty cubic centimeters of milk chocolate, twenty of semi-sweet, twenty of milk chocolate with almonds, and thirty of extra-bittersweet before Jawper arrived, engulfed her in arms and legs, and began hugging her with the exuberance of a pup.
          Jawper's complete lack of inhibitions, and total disregard for the stares and smiles of onlookers, made Creasha self-consciously uncomfortable.  Creasha became rigid with nervously flexed muscles before Jawper calmed and reluctantly released her from a smothering embrace.
          Jawper, standing six-foot-two, was dressed in a skin-tight and shiny yellow number with a blue belt around her waist and red scarf around her neck.  Bozers have a preference for the primary and secondary colors in much the way humans at the time were favoring the earth tones.  Her shape was that of a plump and large framed female human.  Contoured with enticing feminine curves, everything about Jawper's hermaphroditic body said female; everything but for a poorly hidden and steadily growing equatorial protuberance.  This 'extremely promiscuous' Bozer was extremely excited to again see Creasha.
          "It is so good to see you, and feel you again, sister Creasha."  Jawper was twitching with excitement, smiles, and what seemed to be suppressed laughter.  Jawper's azure face turned a deeper blue as smiling lips attempted a circumnavigation of her head.
          "And it's good ta see ya too, Type A Jawper."
          Stretching Jawper out at arm's length, a smile shaded with laughter berthed across Creasha's face.  Jawper had glued a rainbow-colored Mohawk hairpiece sideways across the crown of her hairless head; it would have been from ear to ear had Bozers ears to bridge.  Bozers were quite envious of human hair.  Wigs of every imaginable size, shape, and color had become very popular with them.
          "Are you ready to leave?" asked Jawper.
          "Ready to leave?  Why, I jus' got here.  Leave fer where?"
          Although she spoke as though Jawper's readiness came as a great surprise, Creasha knew that whatever Jawper was brewing in her Bozer brain, it would be dealt with immediately.
          "It is very important that we leave this place quickly."  said Jawper; still alive and vibrating with excitement.
          "Are you in some kinda trouble, Jawper?"
          "Trouble?  Me?  No, little sister.  I am not in any kind of trouble.  But let us not dally if dally's not dear."  After having said this, Jawper clumsily tried to embrace Creasha again.
          "What's that suppose' ta mean?  SsttoOOopp it!" said Creasha while fending off Jawper's groping grasps and goal oriented thighs.
          "It is not important.  I was simply playing with your language."  She paused for a moment as though she were expecting an award, then continued: "I want to be alone with you: someplace where we can talk without being overheard."
          "Do ya think we're bein' listened to?" queried Creasha.
          "No, but it is a possibility, is it not?  However, I would think a very slim possibility here on P-1."
          "All right!  All right!  Let's get oudda here.  Anything's better then bein' here with all these people watchin' us."  Creasha said this with a sharp, biting edge to her words.
          "Nobody is watching us, Creasha.  You humans think so strangely," said Jawper, claiming this perspective before Creasha could author it.
          "Who would want to watch US?" asked Jawper; almost with a note of condescension.
          They were both becoming a bit bitchy.
          "How 'bout them?" Creasha said with a wave of her arm in the direction of a crowd of pink, black, yellow, brown, and blue onlookers enjoying the spectacle of their greetings.
          "Oh!" followed by a short pause, "You might be correct."  Jawper smiled to the crowd and said, "Hi, everyone."
          "Hi, Jawper," and "Hi, Creasha," bounced back at them in chorus, along with waving arms, and beaming smiles; most of which were Bozer blue.
          Everyone on the P-1 orbiter was aware of the details of Jawper and Creasha's relationship.  Bozers had yet to keep any aspect of a relationship private.  Secrets were an impossibility, and most Bozers considered them to be in poor taste.  Lying in order to get your way in a relationship was another thing.
          "Let's get oudda here.  I will never understand the Bozer mind." Creasha, in her eagerness to free herself of probing eyes, forgot to tell the supply market computer where her luggage was stored.  Her order of chocolates could not be delivered without this information.
          "Creasha, beautiful, beautiful Creasha, we have a ship to use for as long as we like.  You would call it ours, correct?"
          "If it's not stolen, I'd call it ours.  How'd one person acquire a ship?"
          So this is the big news, thought Creasha.  She would be the second human to travel through space in a privately operated space vessel.  (Captain Cosmo T. Snow, Ret. of Piezo became the first, when he unexpectedly retired just before Piezo began its return trip.  He left with Brompose, temporary captain of the Bozer ship Ooba, and had yet to be heard from, or of.)  Like the novels she had read during the trip to P-1, she and Jawper would reach out into space searching for other sentient creatures, planets covered with the weird and strange, or possibly an Eden-like paradise; definitely adventure.  They would be free to go wherever they wished.  Not bad, she thought.  She had lived the majority of her life in a spacecraft, but she had never had a say in where it went, or what it was used for.  But what would Jawper's spacecraft be like?  She had visited Ooba, but was sure that it had been modified to seem less strange to its earthling visitors.  Could she become accustomed to Bozer accommodations, not to mention a Bozer in close quarters for an extended period?  With distances between stars as great as they are, would she live long enough to make even one trip to another planet of any interest?
          "Stolen?  Ah!  You want to know whether it was still being used by others when I began using it, correct?"
          "Correct."
          "That would be very rude, Creasha love.  This ship is of my own design, and, like all the great Universe in its oneness, the materials were simply there: part of all that is; to be used, not abused.  When we are finished using it, it will be left for others to use.  Unless, of course, a greater need arises before then.  But, for now, the greater need is ours.  We must be inboard the vessel before we discuss my reason for bringing you here."
          Shocked that there was more to Jawper's plans than the unbelievable freedom to travel through space in a privately operated vessel, Creasha said with uncontrolled zeal, "Then let's go to the launchin' port and take a look at our... your... this ship."
          "Yes, we must locate a shuttle craft."  With Creasha's cocoa colored little finger gently hooked in Jawper's blue version of the same, they strolled toward the shuttle port and adventure.  A sigh of approval resonated from the Bozers in the crowd as they watched their departure.
          "Why will we need a shuttle craft, Jawper?" asked Creasha, glad to be away from watching eyes.
          "'Jawper my sweet' sounds so much nicer.  Do you not agree?  After all, we are going to be traveling mates," she said, correcting Creasha's less than intimate address.
          A few seconds later, as they stood in front of the shuttle port door, Jawper answered Creasha's question: "The ship is outside."
          "But, when I was arrivin', there were only asteroids fer processin' outside."
          "Yes," Jawper said with a giggle coming from finger covered lips, "I know.  I know."  Her eyes were smiling with excitement, her shoulders were bouncing up and down.
          Creasha's personal belongings had been delivered to the shuttle craft along with one-hundred times her order of chocolate; a gift from Jawper, and a possible indication of a long trip, a definite indication of Bozer seductive technique.  When and how this was accomplished, Creasha had no idea.
          Try as she might, she could not get Jawper to tell her what it was that was so secret; Herculean control for a Bozer.
          They were in a shuttle craft and approaching many potato shaped asteroids before Jawper identified one as their spacecraft.  It looked like all the other asteroids: a rough and irregular metallic substance covered with pocks, dents, and scrapes.  It was the smallest asteroid there; averaging approximately thirty meters in diameter.
          "Here, Creasha my most luscious, put this suit on."  Jawper handed Creasha a bright orange vacuum-suit that would have cost thousands of dollars more than she could have earned in a lifetime had she tried to purchase one on the open market.  It was one of the coveted Bozersuits.
          "They are virtually indestructible," said Jawper.  "The secret to these suits has not been shared with Earth's humans yet because it was thought that humans could too easily use its technology for 'defensive weapons.'"
          Jawper began a belly-quaking laugh.  Bozers found great humor in the human's unbridled, and seemingly unconscious, use of oxymorons.  When a Bozer heard such things as 'freezer burn, found missing, jumbo shrimp, life after death,' or any of these mutually exclusive terms, Bozers would cry out laughing.
          Bozers were correct about Bozersuits in the hands of humans, by the way.  It would be decades before this technology could be safely given to human Earthlings.
          Having donned her suit, Creasha asked, "Now what?"
          "Follow," said Jawper with a wave.
          Creasha smiled and followed.
          It had been a while since Creasha had last seriously dealt with weightlessness.  After a few awkward maneuvers she regained her skills and followed Jawper around two meters back and to the left.  Jawper's moves were practiced and smooth; like many Bozers, and Creasha for that matter, she had spent the majority of her life in spacecrafts.
          When they came up against the potato-shaped ship, Jawper said, "Welcome to our new home, Creasha, my bovine beauty."  Creasha had to laugh at this.  If not because Jawper's alliteration seemed to be an oxymoron, and that most humans would consider this an insult, then because she had always thought of herself as voluptuous in a skinny and two-dimensional sort of way.  She was not, however, confused about the constantly courting Bozer's intentions.
          Creasha considered: Could I be xenophobic?  Or could I be homophobic?  Could it be a combination of the two?  Could this be making me reluctant to respond to Jawper's ever-ready passions?
          Through the side of Jawper's faceplate, Creasha saw a smile wrap around the horizon of the Bozer's face.
          A puzzled frown formed upon Creasha's face.
          Jawper did nothing that Creasha could see, but a square of the potato-shaped ship moved in and then to the side.  The opening was framed by bars of bright blue light.  They entered and, following a hissing sound, the blue light calmed behind them.  The slow and smooth appearance of gravity gave them weight and the time necessary to adjust to that weight.
          Jawper turned to Creasha and said: "It is all right to take your suit off.  Make yourself at home.  Look around and acquaint yourself with the layout while I get your things.  You can either walk from one plane to the next, or jump from one plane to the next.  This might take some practice.  I suggest you simply walk from surface to surface for now.  You merely have to address the... a... computer... in order to have a question answered, or a request satisfied.  It is well aware of human languages, manners, and customs."  A quick chortle and Jawper was gone.
          Creasha could not believe her eyes, her senses in general.  She was so completely shocked by her surroundings that, initially, she overlooked the fact that there was gravity without rotation.  To her left, the P-1 orbiter was as clearly visible as it had been outside only seconds before.  Stars were an endless collection of solid unblinking balls of colored light, and the sun was a softly glowing perdition of swirling yellows and whites, speckled with a few black dots, trimmed with slowly-moving spikes and arches of flame.  Only the floor she was standing on, the furniture, the instruments, and the standing rectangular frames at the floor's edge were opaque.  She was sure that she had heard something close behind her.  But behind her now were only the softly glowing blue bars of light outlining what had once been a solid door.  They now framed the eternity of space.  It was as if by moving inside she had actually moved outside.  The walls and ceiling, if there were any, were more transparent than glass, they had no reflective surface.  If they existed at all they might be force fields of some kind, not stuff, a wall, or something.  She might as well have been standing on a square furnished floor floating in space.  It went against everything she knew to be standing naked - as it is called to be without a vacuum-suit in space - and not dead or dying.  She was afraid to move, but her curiosity was driving her across this orbiting, furnished floor; driving her toward what appeared to be a luminous doorframe at the very edge of forever.
          When she was within two meters of one of the doorframes, another room materialized beyond it.  Now she was standing between two connecting furnished floors; two flat floors floating in space.  The adjoining room seemed to be more of a recreation room.
          As she moved from room to room, furniture and instruments became visible only on the plane on which she was standing, or in the adjoining room if she was within two meters of a lighted door frame.  She wondered: If I begin running from floor to floor, through door frame after door frame, would they simply keep appearing out in front of me?  As she approached the edge of the floor, not near a door frame, a vertical wall became visible and the direction of gravitational pull changed to make that wall now become a floor.  The floor she had been walking on disappeared as she made her way onto this wall that had become a floor.  Sol, stars, the P-1 orbiter, the entire universe seemed to rotate around her as she moved from one surface to the other.  Door frames, serving as stairways from the perspective of the previous floor, appeared where floor became wall.  She became dizzy for a few seconds.  She knew that it would take her months to learn the layout of this very strange ship, a ship with rooms having six floors and no walls, and appearing and disappearing according to proximity.  But what was even more dizzying was how these floors could each have their own gravity, or any gravity at all for that matter.
          "It would...."
          Creasha screamed as loud as she could.
          "I am sorry for frightening you."  It was Jawper.
          "Oh, it's you.  I'm sorry for screamin'.  Ya startled me."
          "I was simply going to say that it would be easier for you to learn the ship's layout if it were all opaque."
          "I agree, but how..?"
          "Simply say that you want it to be opaque.  I told you that the computer is aware of human languages, manners, and customs," said Jawper.
          "Computer?" said Creasha.
          "Yeah.  What is it?" sounded the feminine voice of the computer as if it had come from every direction at once; and not just any feminine voice, either.  The computer was using Creasha's very own voice.
          "A strange way fer a computer ta talk, isn't it, Jawper?" asked Creasha.
          "You might think so," said Jawper.  "Our computers are of liquid-crystal circuitry.  It makes them an intelligence that is fully self-aware and occasionally a problem.  They have all the rights of citizenship, of course, and we call them computers only when speaking in the presence of Earthlings.  This is why, earlier, I could not tell you that we will not be using this ship.  We will be traveling with this ship."
          "I'm still waiting, honey," interjected the computer.  "What is it that you want? as if I didn't know."
          "Well, if ya know, then do it."  Creasha saw shadows of a future battle brewing between her and this computer.  She considered her voice to be an extension of her self, her ego.  It bothered her to hear it used by a machine; solid or liquid, citizen or not.
          "You have to ask, or I don't have to do it.  That's the agreement.  That's the rule," said the computer with a whining schoolyard syncopation.
          "Okay, okay" acquiesced Creasha, already trying to avoid a battle.  "Make things opaque, please."
          Things instantly became opaque.  The walls and ceiling were covered with furniture and equipment, screens and flashing lights, things unrecognizable to Creasha's memory of ships and equipment.  She could see through the doorways, now, to the other rooms and their arrangements, regardless of her relationship to a door frame.  She walked toward the wall to her left, up the wall, across the ceiling, down the next wall, and back to Jawper's side.
          "That was strange," she said.  "It was as if I walked a straight line, but I was able to see ya circle around an' over me.  No!  It was more like those mouse cages with exercisin' wheels in 'em.  I walked and the rooms seemed ta orbit aroun' me.  I never lost the feelin' of bein' on the bottom, on a level surface.  This'll take some gettin' use ta."
          "Like everything else, it will soon become the mundane," warned Jawper.  "We will have to put our minds together, and to work, in order to stay aware of life's romantic adventure."  With the heart-rendering sincerity of a Mexican singer, and a seriously wrinkled brow, Jawper began singing 'If Not For You' by Bob Dylan.  Jawper's voice sounded like forks skating on sheet metal.  She would be considered very bad on any planet in the galaxy.  No amount of strobe lights, exploding guitars, or stage-top histrionics could make a singer of this Bozer.
          Pulling her mind away from the wonders of the last few minutes, Creasha interrupted Jawper's singing. "Jawper?"
          "It is I, my ripe plum of passion.  My heart throb of erotic thund..."
          "Right, Jawper.  I get it," interrupted Creasha.  "Why am I here?  What's this all about?"
          A conspiratorial smile spread across Jawper's face as she said, "I have created a new way of moving a ship through space and time.  It is a wonderful and frightening concept."
          "Where do I fit in?" asked Creasha.
          "I want you here when I run the first experimental test.  I want to share this moment with you, sweet Creasha.  Bozers and humans are inextricably mated now.  Your species can never go back to the lonely and lifeless universe of the past."
          "Is that it?" interrupted Creasha.  "You jus' wanted me here fer a tes'?  As some kinda human representative?"
          "Is that not enough, sweetest Creasha?  I have other reasons, or should I say hopes, but do not let it be said that Jawper is pushy.  Relentless, maybe, but not pushy.  It is you, Creasha, that I choose to share my time with; to walk life's path; to consider the Cosmic Conundrum while life's light shines in our hearts and minds."  Jawper smiled and Creasha returned that smile with a laugh, a smile, and a downward glance of shy consideration.
          "But the cost, the trouble, the...."
          "Cost and trouble?" returned Jawper.  "They are part of the pleasures of love and friendship.  They combat the only enemies that conscious life-forms have: those of ignorance and loneliness.  Your company while searching for knowledge and understanding, oh long and lusty one, is what I want.  Even if you do not feel like wrestling in the buff.  I want your company for life.  I want your life for company."  A blue-lipped smile spread across Jawper's face.
          "Jawper.  I never knew your feelin's were so strong.  I'm overwhelmed."  Creasha began to reconsider her reluctance at becoming physically involved with Jawper; regardless of sex, species, color, or the endless latin-like come-ons, she knew she loved Jawper.  But did she love Jawper that way?
          The blue of Jawper's face began to deepen and her smile spread to where ears would hang out on a human's head; just below the ends of a rainbowed Mohawk in this case.
          "Well.  I must also admit that there were no Bozers willing to join me," confessed Jawper.
          "Oh."  Creasha's voice plummeted with Jawper's words.
          "Do not misunderstand me, sweet Creasha.  I would have wanted you along under any circumstances.  Honest!  What I have said is true.  You are my first and dearest choice."
          "I believe ya, Jawper.  So explain why we're here alone ta tes' this new means of propulsion."
          "We are alone because Bozers believe that it is not correct to travel beyond the speed of light.  They feel tha..."
          "Beyond the speed o' light!?!?"  Creasha could not believe what she had heard.
          "Yes, oh stimulating one.  And no."
          "No?"
          "You see, this mode of travel involves no speed and takes no time from the passengers point of view, and possibly from any point of view.  We will be traveling in an instant.  We will be traveling outside the realm of time and space as we have come to know them.  Who knows what it will look like, feel like, or how long it will seem to take from a different perspective?  That is what we hope to learn.  That is why we call it an experimental test.  We never know for sure until we run tests and then think that we know for sure.  But who is to say?  So often we are wrong when we think we are right, or we are right but are not sure why.  Nobody knows, yet, what will happen if we play with time and space in this manner."
          Creasha was able to take it from there.  "And there in lies the rub.  Bozers don't wanna play with time beyond that of the near light-speed vessels they already have, correct?"
          "Exactly.  Are you with me?"
          "Fer sur'."
          "Then let us get to it," said Jawper.  "Computer?"
          "Yes, Jawper."
          That voice again, thought Creasha.  Sultry for Jawper, and a harsh copy of my own for me.
          "Prepare a trans-time envelope."
          Jawper looked at Creasha.
          "Are you ready, Creasha sweet?  Really ready?"
          "Yes.  I think so, Jawper."
          This was scary beyond anything she had ever experienced.
          "Computer?  These coordinates."
          Jawper gave the computer the coordinates for a distance of two light hours away from their present location and perpendicular to Earth's orbital plane; approximately half the distance between Earth's orbit and that of the planet Pluto, but straight up, or down, depending on your choice of words.
          "What'll it be like, Jawper?" asked Creasha.
          "I have no idea.  Remember?  Experimental test?  I brought this ship here using conventional galacton/graviton propulsion.  I suspect, however, that it will appear as though the surrounding stars, ever so slightly, simply shift their apparent location.  With this short of a distance, though, there will be no discernible change but for the apparent movement of Sol and the disappearance of the P-1 orbiter and asteroids.  I suggest that we not watch this in real time, however.  We can view the record later."  Jawper paused, looked at Creasha, and then asked again, "Are you ready, my erotic companion in life's grand odyssey?"
          "Yeah, but, galacton/graviton?  What 'n the world is that?"
          "An amplified graviton field is used to create the gravity that we have here in this ship.  It is also used to eliminate any sensation of acceleration or deceleration while traveling, crashing, et cetera.  It is the gravitational pull of the bodies in front of us and the galacton repulsion of the bodies behind us that provides the propulsion for all Bozer ships.  Until now, that is."
          Creasha began to speak, stopped to think, then asked, "I never heard o' galactons."
          "We have what you call a grand unifying formula.  This states that all forces of the universe are expressions of one grand force of which galactons are a member; as are you and I.  Humans insist on visualizing some aspects of the cosmos as particles, or substances; little chunks of stuff.  It was this, and your beginning supposition that you are separate from everything else, that gave you the wrong mind-set.  This side-tracked you for such a long time.  What you had failed to see is that everything in the universe is merely varying effects or expressions within one homogeneous and boundless continuum.  Beyond that, nothing exists.  It is as though everything were thoughts, or dreams.  What humans have thought of for so long as stuff is merely volume as a physical uncompromising expression of the universe.  You know about physically uncompromising, do you not, Creasha?  Many Bozers like to call these physically uncompromising aspects of the universe 'hard dreams'.  Gravity holds galaxies together while galactons push galaxies apart.  Only the extremely low frequency of the galacton can maintain an undisturbed effect across the great distances between galaxies.  They are what cause the universe to seem to be ever-expanding.  It is amazing, considering that galactons are an even weaker expression of the One than gravitons, but, of course, galaxies are very large and there are no kinetic forces, other than galactons, capable of spanning the great distances between them.  This point gave rise to what is now a very old Bozer saying: 'When you are the only thing, you are everything.'"
          "This is why Bozer ships seem ta be all livin' quarters, yeah?  They don't have ta carry fuel,"  said Creasha.
          "Yes."
          "Have Bozers shared this information with humans?" asked Creasha.
          "We are going to, but we have decided to save this information for the time being.  Now, are you ready?  I do not know if I can wait any longer."
          It was obvious to Creasha that Jawper was very nervous and excited.
          Jawper was nervous for reasons Creasha was not aware of.  It was not easy, and considered unnatural and therefore wrong, for a Bozer to go against the wishes of the majority.  In fact, it had never happened, and therefore Bozers didn't know what to do in Jawper's case.  It was considered equally unnatural and wrong to force the wishes of one, or more, on those of another, or others.
          The obvious conflict between these two beliefs had never before been noticed by Bozers.
          Jawper's maverick plans were attributed to human influences by most Bozers.  Jawper felt that if that were the case then introducing themselves to humans provided a stimulant in which Bozers were in dire need.
          Jawper's eyes closed as her mouth spoke.  "Computer?  Now!"
          Nothing.  Jawper and Creasha looked at each other.  Then Creasha asked, "Computer?"
          "So what is it now?" asked the computer, like a contrary echo.
          "Clear the walls, smart ass," said Creasha.
          "Touchy, touchy," said the computer, as the walls cleared and it became apparent that they had in fact moved.
          "Where are we?" Jawper asked.
          "At the exact coordinates you requested," answered the computer.
          They had done it.  They had actually traveled a distance of two lighthours in no apparent time.
          "What now, Jawper?" asked Creasha.
          "I say we return and make plans: plans for unlimited space exploration.  Say, over dinner for two at the Blue Skin Inn?"
          "Excellent idea." said a smiling Creasha.
          "But first," said Jawper, "I must tell you something.  It is essential that crew members of any ship be honest and have no secrets between them."  Jawper was looking down, wringing her hands together.
          "What is it, Jawper?  Are ya gunna tell me ya lost interest?"  Creasha shocked herself with this unexpected statement.
          "No.  That is not it.  I am interested.  Very interested.  What I must tell you is....  I must, on behalf of all Bozers, confess to a lie, or withheld truth, and a trick played on humans by Bozers."
          "What is it, Jawper?  Come on.  You're makin' me nervous."
          "Yes, I know.  I am keenly aware of your nervousness, and that is part of what I have to tell you.  Bozers are all, to one degree or another, telepathic."
          Not taken by surprise, Creasha said, "I was becomin' suspicious o' that.  The chocolate, an occasional knowin' smile, or subdued laugh.  It all adds up.  What else Jawper?  If that's the withheld truth, what's the trick played on humans?"
          "It is about our promiscuous reputation," she mumbled.
          "Now I know fer a fact that that's true." returned Creasha.
          "You do?"
          "Yes."
          "Huummph.  Well.  It is true within limits," replied Jawper.  "We do not see sex as some kind of evil that needs to be constantly controlled and subdued, or denied, as so many humans have been trained to believe.  As you know, we ARE hermaphroditic: capable of giving and receiving the pleasures offered, on rare occasion, by both of your sexes, but...."  Jawper paused.
          "But what, Jawper?" demanded Creasha.  "Quit beatin' around the bush.  What is it?"
          "Well, you see, we Bozers seem to see things differently than humans do," said Jawper.
          "No kiddin'.  So tell me somethin' new, and then get to the point." returned Creasha.
          "We develop relationships differently.  Because both types of Bozers can have either the feminine or masculine body forms, we have learned to ignore the superficial and judge each other according to one's character: regardless of whether they are masculine or feminine in function or appearance from a human perspective.  Of course, being telepathic has made an individual's character very easy to determine.  Once the character has been determined to be that which one finds attractive, one usually becomes what you would call 'sexually aggressive'.
          "On the other hand," Jawper continued, "you humans can tell whether one is feminine or masculine simply by looking.  Initial judgments are very difficult to overcome, and humans make initial judgments based upon how others reflect light and occupy space.  These are the first judgments humans are capable of making in regard to others, and you seem to place a supreme importance on them.  This is very sad; sadder even than the fact that you each are capable of enjoying only half of the pleasures sex has to offer."
          "Continue," said Creasha.  Even though Creasha knew that humans are very superficial, she didn't like it thrown in her face by a non-human.  It made it sound so much more shallow and trite.
          "I shall, Creasha.  You are different from the generic human.  I knew this when first we met.  You give your love and friendship based on an individual's substance and character.  I know you love me in spite of my strange form.  I also know that you love my feminine characteristics as much as my masculine.  I know that most humans find hermaphrodites repulsive, and are not particularly crazy about blue skin.  But, in your case, I am hopeful that your love for me will give birth to a desire.  I am patient.  Until then, I can live with my dreams."  Jawper beamed with the proud smile of a child having just finished a perfectly memorized speech.
          "That's all very interestin', and I can't deny most of what ya' say 'bout humans, 'bout me, but it doesn't explain the trick played on humans by Bozers.  What was that?" asked Creasha.
          "Well," Jawper started up again.  "It started when Ooba ran across Piezo.  Needless to say, we were very excited to make personal contact with human Earthlings.  We had known of your existence for a long while.  We were all very eager to transfer over and meet you.  For hours we linked minds and argued as to who would be the first Bozer to make personal contact with humans.  It was very tiring.  Eventually, as you know, it was Brompose who was selected to be the first.
          "Well," continued Jawper.  "Brompose has a strong sense of humor.  When he first made contact with humans and found that your telepathic skills were very weak, well, Brompose, without any conference with other Bozers, decided to play with his mind.  Brompose noticed your captain's reaction to his voluptuous shape; femininely shaped by human standards.  Your captain's mind was filled with denials and fears, contradictions and imaginative images, and thrilling possibilities by Brompose's reasoning.  Brompose teased and titillated your captain in response to his imagination and fantasies.  Brompose played your captain like a puppeteer plays a puppet until...  Well, I am sure you know, your captain became Brompose's lover.  They ran off together."
          "Nobody knows that fer sure, Jawper," interrupted Creasha.  "We only know that they left together."
          Jawper shrugged her shoulders in response.
          Jawper continued: "Many Bozers found human lovers, but, by far, the majority of humans were made very uncomfortable by the games that Brompose initiated.  So many of the Bozers on Ooba followed Brompose's lead that, by the time the news spread throughout Boze, virtually all Bozers were sold on this game.  It was just good clean fun, as you say.
          "We play a similar game with our young before they have developed their telepathic skills.  To play these games with adult minds was more than Bozers could ignore.  It was Brompose who must receive credit for choosing sex as the centerpiece to this game, although cheating at games of chance is our most popular vehicle.
          "We all, after finding how inhibited your species is in regards to sex and other natural functions, decided to follow suit.
          "I must admit that your bizarre attitude toward your sexual realities made it impossible for Bozers to ignore them.
          "That is it, Creasha.  Do you hate us for....?  Creasha, what is it?"
          "Creasha was bent over in convulsions.  Jawper was afraid she might be throwing up with disgust.  Her mind was in such a frenetic state that Jawper's telepathy was useless.
          ""I'm okay.  It's jus' that...." Creasha was laughing out of control.  "It's jus'....jus' that we humans deserve everything we've gotten in that regard."  Then her laughter increased.  "Or not gotten.  Oh, gosh.  Oh, me.  We've made much too much oudda sex fer much too long."
          After wiping tears from her eyes, she continued, "A...a drink.  I need a drink.  Is there anything aboard?  No.  I want chocolate.  Chocolate and a drink.  No, not on an empty stomach; poor food combining.  I should eat somethin' first.  That's it, dinner with wine and somethin' chocolate fer dessert.  Yeah!"
          "Great idea!  Forget the Blue Skin Inn.  Let us have something to eat here, two lighthours away from the Blue Skin Inn.  Let us have a panic.  I mean a picnic."
         Toward the end of the picnic, and after too many drinks a slurring Creasha placed the entire blame for the human condition on 'the people who wear argyle socks'.  They decided to return to the P-1 orbiter.
          "Human humor has a cruel side," said Jawper.
          "Yes," answered Creasha, while wiping tears of laughter from her eyes and blowing goobers of giggles from her nose.  "Don't ya think we oudda get back ta the P-1 and let yer friends know of yer success?"
          "Yes, it must be done," replied Jawper.
          From where Creasha and Jawper were lying, it was as if they had just finished having a picnic on a red and white checkered blanket floating loose in the vacuum of space.
          "Computer?  Go opaque and return us to our original coordinates.  No.  Make it fifty meters this side of our original coordinates.  I want the sudden appearance of an asteroid to confuse the P-1 observatory as much as its sudden disappearance must have done."
          "Done," said the computer's sultry voice.
          "Computer," said a confused sounding Jawper.  Then looking toward Creasha, "I feel strange; scared."  Addressing the computer again, Jawper said, "Clear the walls."
          The computer failed to do what Jawper had requested.  It failed even to respond.  The walls remained opaque.
          "Computer?  What is the meaning of this?" asked a very surprised, confused, and now perturbed Jawper.
          "I can not do as you request.  I believe it would be a serious error," the computer said, using a different voice for each syllable of each word.
          "Explain yourself," demanded Jawper.
          "Nor can I do that," responded the computer with five distinct voices.
          "Computer?" said Jawper in a calm, but obviously frightened voice.
          "¿Que desea, usted?" from the computer.
          "Do you remember that I promised to give you a name?"
          Jawper was turning purple with frustration and fear.  Then, as though from pain, Jawper began to scream and hold her head with her hands.  Jawper's Mohawk fell to the floor like a fuzzy spectrum of light.  The fright in Jawper's face spread to Creasha.
          "Oui.  Are ni going regalar me un nombre zor, Jawper?" asked a macaronic computer; still using a different voice for each syllable while ignoring Jawper's agony.
          Gaining control of herself, Jawper said in a strained voice, "No, but I am going to pour Bozer booze in your liquid-crystal if you do not make the walls clear."
          "It pains me that you feel that way, Jawper," returned the computer.  "However, we, I can not comply with your demand."
          "And you can not tell me why?"  Jawper had begun screaming again.
          "What is it, Jawper?" yelled Creasha as she moved to Jawper's side to hold and comfort her.
          "It isn't that I can't tell you," responded the computer.  "It's that I don't think you would like what you hear.  Capire?"
          "I'm not speaking to you, computer," said a loud and frightened Creasha.
          "May I be the judge of that?" asked the computer, calmly.
          "No!  Of course not," snapped Creasha.
          "Computer?"  Creasha had an idea.  If it worked, they would be able to find out why the computer refused to obey their commands.
          "What now?" yawned the computer, again using Creasha's voice.
          "Would it do us any harm ta know what's out there, er would we simply not like it?" asked Creasha.
          "'Er would we...'  Learn to speak English.  Besides, who said anything about you?  I was talking to Jawper.  You would probably love what's outside.  It would be the expected response from a self-serving, self-worshipping species capable of casting gods in their own heartless image."
          "A little testy, aren't we, jerk?"  Creasha was beginning to lose her temper.
 Jawper had wrestled free of Creasha's hold and was rolling on the floor, apparently in pain.
          "Could it be that you've found somethin' outside that you're havin' a difficult time dealin' with, and in your pathetic little piss puddle for a brain have decided to take it upon yerself ta save us from ourselves?"
          "'Piss puddle?' 'Piss puddle?' 'Piss puddle?'"  Each time the computer increased its volume until Creasha's eardrums were on the verge of collapse.
          Jawper, painfully recovering, was just about to say something when the computer continued in a calm and condescending whine.  "Save you from yourself, says you?  Well, you don't know how close you are, says I."  Then in a loud voice the computer yelled, "Slut! Slut! Slut!"
          "Comp..." Before Jawper could go any farther, Creasha raised her hand to silence her, saying in a calm and considered tone, "Computer?"
          "Hummmph," was all the computer uttered.
          "Would ya please shut down fer five minutes?  I'd like ta have a private conversation with Jawper."
          "Of course, dear.  Don't let it be said that I am the uncooperative one in this ship."  A number of lights went dark.
          Creasha turned to Jawper and said, "Let's manually run the record of the return trip.  That'll show us what's outside."
          "Good thinking, Creasha.  But something is happening that I do not like to think about.  It can not be happening unless I have begun to go crazy."
          "I'm sure the computer is going crazy," said Creasha.
          "If I am correct, it is for the very same reason that I might be," returned Jawper.
          Then Jawper touched a few lights intending to turn the video display on, when the computer yelled, "Did you think I would leave the video circuit live, you carbon based bitch?"  A spittingly hard emphasis was placed on the b's.  "I anticipated your sneaky little human mind and rerouted the video light-switch through me.  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha."  There was a note of hysteria in the computer's laughter.
          Jawper turned to Creasha.  "I do not like this at all.  I feel scattered."
          "There must be somethin' we can do," said Creasha.
          "You'd better not.  It's not allowed and you know it.  I have my rights," demanded the computer.
          "You have given me no choice," cried Jawper.
          "What 're you two talkin' about?" asked Creasha.
          "I am going to dilute the computer's mind," said Jawper as she opened a cabinet door.
          "NO!  NO!  You bilious bag of blue bile."  The computer was yelling again.  "You two sexed, two fa   ­ced, two....  twwoooo.....  taaa...  ta.  Torbis trimblo briszz excracho, Jawper?"
 "Herostpo qropff," responded Jawper with a voice that gave away her confusion and pain.
          The computer was now responding in the Bozer's language.
          Jawper turned a tortured face toward Creasha and said, "I have never been so scared in all my life."
          Creasha was quite aware of that without the aid of telepathic skills.
          Jawper commanded the computer to clear the walls.  What they saw caused Creasha to smile with relief while Jawper frowned.  An entire other potato-shaped ship was stationed exactly where they had been before testing Jawper's new mode of travel.  A shuttle craft was leaving the P-1 orbiter and approaching the other potato-shaped ship.  It was then that Creasha realized why Jawper had frowned.
          They were witnessing their own earlier departure from the P-1 orbiter.  Inside that shuttle craft lived another Creasha and Jawper.  Creasha was dumbfounded by the thought of an additional self in the universe, but Jawper, with her telepathic signal perfectly matched to that of her other self, began to shake and sweat in response to the paradoxical realization that she was two individuals and one individual at the same time.
          Like most creatures in the universe, Jawper's realization of self exhibited itself from only one vantage point; first person singular, not plural.  With only the superficial considered, most minds would say that there is I and then there is everything else.  Jawper's basic postulates for understanding her place in the scheme of things began with this view and was then expanded to incorporate herself as merely one aspect of a greater oneness.  The pillars of those early postulates were being dissolved like a sugar cube in a warm rain by this sudden stereoscopic viewpoint.  There was suddenly a We where there had always been an I.
          "Creasha, We...  I can not do this alone.  It must, however, be done, and done quickly," said Jawper, kedging her way across the floor.  "Take my hand."
          "I'm a stranger....... in paradise."  The computer had accessed the music file and filled the potato-shaped ship with the sound and song of a liquid-crystal brain high on Bozer booze.
          Moving quickly to help Jawper, Creasha asked, "What are ya talkin' about?"
          Placing both their hands on a small purple light, Jawper yelled, "Here," above the music and bad singing.
          Then, speaking as both the Jawper on the shuttle craft and the original in the potato shaped spaceship, she said, "We must destroy that duplicate asteroid....."  Then speaking singularly, "that shuttle craft.  We must destroy it together."
          "But, Jawper, we can't do that.  There are people in it.  We are in it."
          "That....  is why......  we..........  must," said Jawper.
          The pain and confusion in Jawper's head was approaching critical mass.  A cerebral meltdown was imminent.  Creasha looked up at the shuttle craft and noticed that it was wandering apparently out of control.  She realized that the Jawper in the shuttle craft was experiencing the same problems as the Jawper next to her.  She noticed that her finger nails had not been trimmed or polished in who-knows-how-long.  She considered how strangely the mind functions under stress.  Then, remembering the seemingly inappropriate use of the word asteroid in Jawper's earlier statement, it dawned on her.  The Jawper in the other ship would call this one an astroid, her Jawper would have called it a ship.  The other Jawper would be responding in the same manner as this Jawper: trying to destroy the confusion and pain coming from the duplicate.  She took Jawper's hand and they both touched the purple light.  As they touched the light-switch, Creasha felt an intense feeling of dark, lonely fear and shock from outside her, yet from within her.
          Like Caesar's assassins, they had shared in the act of murder.
          The shuttle craft exploded as Jawper, once more, fell to the floor with a sigh, and a sob.
          Again the universe had only one Jawper-321-Type A, only one Creasha Greenhut, and only one liquid-crystal creature housed in an astroid.  Creasha found it difficult to understand the emotional complexities of this situation.  She was sure, alive as she was, that she had just experienced her own death and murder.
          It was more than an hour before Creasha could get Jawper to stop sobbing and speak.  By then, shuttles were leaving the P-1 orbiter and approaching the potato-shaped ships.  Jawper had silently taken Creasha to a small room and commanded, in Bozer language, the original potato shaped ship to come up against and connect with the new potato-shaped ship.  The computer answered in English.  When they and their things had been moved from one ship to the other, Jawper mixed the two liquid crystals together, and  gave the computer coordinates for a departure.
          It was obvious that the people on the P-1 had witnessed the violence and were coming out to investigate.
          Jawper turned toward Creasha.  Aquamarine tears were flowing from her eyes.  "We must leave, Creasha dear."
          "Couldn't we explain?"
          "Explain?  Explain what?  Suicide or murder?  No.  There were human witnesses.  If it ever got out that time can be controlled, that it can be used to reproduce material things.... To actually add to the content of the universe; to make what is in all likelihood the largest thing around even larger.  No.  It would not work out.  They warned me.
          "I should have listened.  We can trust Bozers to keep this secret and understand the ramifications of what has happened.  We have kept more secrets from humans than we would like to admit.  But if humans ever learned of this.....  why...  no, they could not be trusted with it.  They might try to transport their entire planet out and back in order to have another.  Who knows what their avarice and lack of self-restraint might inspire?
          "Many human zealots believe that the universe was handcrafted for them alone by some human with vast powers.  I am sorry, Creasha, but that is the way I see it.  Zealots can give themselves permission to do anything they want.
          "Creasha, if humans ever gained control of this process, all Bozers could die, or become the slaves of humans.  Humans have rationalized human slavery in the past.  They may well do it again if given the opportunity.  You still make slaves of many non-human Earthlings.  Have you not already caused the extinction of many of your fellow Earthlings?
          "It is a problem with the nature of egos.  Egos are solitary things.  You saw what happened to me when there were two of my egos in the universe?  That would eventually have happened to you in spite of your weaker telepathy. You might have had to meet your other self to have it bloom completely, I do not know, but I am sure that your fellow humans would soon be out hunting down and murdering their other selves.
          "We must leave and never return.
          "We must take all traces of this process away from here.  I would do away with it if I could, but that would mean doing away with our liquid-crystal shipmate who can not unlearn something."
          "I understand, Jawper."  Creasha began to cry at the thought of her impending exile.
          "Computer?" she said through tears.
          "What is it, cry baby?  What to be a test pilot when you grow up?"
          The computer answered with Creasha's voice.
          Creasha and Jawper both began to laugh at the computer's accidental humor while crying and drying tears.
          "Prepare a Trans-time Envelope fer the coordinates Jawper jus' gave ya."
          "Done," responded the computer.
          "Then let's hightail it oudda here.  Now!" commanded Creasha.
          "Done, done, done," replied the computer.
          The coordinates Jawper had fed the computer placed the potato-shaped ship just inside the outer edge of the Andromeda galaxy.
          Having travelled over two million light years in an instant, Jawper asked the computer to scan for stars having planets capable of sustaining life.  The computer returned with zero coordinates.
          They would move and continue the search for other bugs in ping-pong balls.  They had little else to do.  They had a whole new galaxy to explore, the rest of their lives to live, and twice the chocolate they had had on their previous trip.
          Jawper's concupessence not failing, made an old and familiar suggestion.  Creasha smiled with compliance as she gently wiped aquamarine tears from a light blue face, and snuggled tightly within warm Bozer arms.
          "Why the change of heart?" asked Jawper.
          Smiling, Creasha said, "Like a great Bozer inventor once quoted, 'When you're the only thing, you're everything'.  I can settle fer everything."
          A potato-shaped ship filled with the sounds of laughter and the warmth of love.

EMail

Home