“I’m really sorry.” Bob took a long drink of his liquid. “I think they’ve had enough of me challenging them. I tried to organize, but there are too many of them.”
I nodded like I understood, but in truth, I was not sure why Bob would try to break the entire process. It served learning well. It served anakoinosis.
But I didn’t say anything. I did not want to agitate him. I only wanted to learn from him, and pass that learning on to all my children.
Bob leaned close to me.
“The people outside, they’ve come to take me back.”
“Where?” I wanted to know.
Bob pointed up at the ceiling, indicating the sky above.
“The ship in the sky. There are places aboard it where I will be frozen again, so I can’t speak up anymore. They’re putting me back in storage with all the other passengers.”
New things to learn. I was excited.
“When do we leave?”
Bob looked at me strangely.
“You must do me a favor,” he told me. “I need you to run out of the door, and go toward the forest. I will follow you in a bit.”
“Okay.” I said.
“I think,” Bob stared at the door, “I think I may have found a way to do something good, something that might help you, something that might help all of us.”
When I opened the door, twenty loud aerokratois shouted at me. I walked toward them, scared of the yelhng. The nearest aerokratois kicked me. I was lifted up and beaten, tossed from hand to hand. In seconds, blood ran down my face. My newly regrown fur was torn out of my skin by* the angry aerokratois.
I barely crawled away from the mob into the grass, and as I collapsed I heard a loud explosion. Nothing was visibly damaged, but the aerokratois fell silent.
“He killed himself,” one of them shouted.
I learned something very new about the aerokratois.
Bob was the only aerokrat buried in the hill. His white cross was much larger than the other small crosses that covered the grounds.
I imitated the shaking and wet eyes ritual he had done before his death.
And I was alone, my own master.
On the second night of being alone, I tried to join in anakoinosis behind the same hill where Bob had watched us, but was refused.
“You have nothing new to give,” a trio of whiffets told me. “And maybe what you bring is bad.”
They even refused to let me work with them, and learn new things. Among the thousands there, none would look at me.
I fled away from the areas near the Hopper to go toward the forest.
At night I walked the roads, and during the day I found places to hide and sleep. The forest, when it came up, was welcome. For a whole month I disappeared into it.
There was food in berries and roots. Other animals sometimes came toward me, but I ran from them. They were dangerous and rough. They were not like the docile animals in the land we were taken from to bond with the aerokratois.
My fur soon became shaggy, matted, and long. My skin ached for anakoinosis.
A gang was working on the edge of a new road. They jumped when I came out from behind a tree. I had visions in my mind of being a master to other whiffets. I thought about being alone, and that maybe I could spread the memory to other whiffets. If they were like me, alone and their own masters, but with me, maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely.
Was this what it was like to be an aerokrat? I wondered.
A cool wind blew over us and rustled the falling leaves on the ground.
I held my hands out.
“Do not be alarmed.”
“Who are you?” they wished to know. I showed them my tattoo and told them I had lived near the Hopper.
“Such thick fur!” they said. They gathered around me. “We have not had time for anakoinosis for a while. We have worked so long and hard.”
I stroked their arms.
“Then let us,” I said. “All of our fur is thick.”
They, found me strange, but relaxed enough to let me into the group. Our egg was thick when it formed on the ground by our feet.
“We’ll give it to our aerokratois,” they insisted afterward.
The road was getting hotter as the sun rose higher into the sky.
“No,” I told them. “I will take this one.”
They were shocked.
“You are too similar.”
“I know.”
They watched, quiet, as I took our egg with me deep into the forest.
When my child hatched several weeks later, he stood up, full with pieces of my own knowledge and the knowledge of the road crews and the knowledge of all their foreparents.
He didn’t bond with me. Just like I had been free since Bob killed himself, my own child was somewhat free. I could see that he was a bit confused, and that he had much on his mind. Just as I did.
We stood with each other for a long while.
“We should go find other road crews,” my child finally said. “If we both have anakoinosis with others, then others can be their own masters with us.”
I was happy he felt the same way I did, and did not feel so alone.
My child told me where the nearest work camps where, and we split company to spread our new revelation.
It was a rainy day when I found the work camp.
The sun remained almost invisible behind the clouds, but it occasionally broke out to illuminate the rows of tents behind the barbed wire. Several aerokratois walked around the edges of the camp, giving orders to the multitudes of whiffets bonded to them.
I stopped. I was about to return to being ruled by the aerokratois in there. Maybe it was better to stay in the wilderness, taking eggs from work gangs. It would be better to remain free, and spread my memories, than return to a work camp.
The memories of my foreparents bonded to aerokratois overwhelmed me, telling me to return to the camp. The memories of foreparents who where their own masters remained distant.
It was comforting to think about returning to a workgang, and being told what to do, and when to do it.
Would I ever be my own master again?
The desire for anakoinosis tugged at me, and with a strange feeling in my stomach I walked to the edge of the camp. At the gates I stood in the mud and the aerokratois let me in.
My fur was thick with dirt.
The aerokratois were such exciting creatures. They brought these new concepts, new behaviors, and many other things we never could have come up with. I had so many things to learn from them yet. It was good that I was returning, I reassured myself.
There were many whiffets in the camp behind the sharp wires.
I hugged the first one to reach his arms out to me behind one of the tents. I touched his cheeks to mine and shared my memories of my foreparents, my life, and Bob’s strange gift to me.
I wondered if there would ever be stasis again, now that I was trapped inside the camp, working for the aerokratois again. I hoped my child spread some of the very new thoughts Bob gave me.
