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...After, yes after, I Professor worryingly wonders- I wonder- where all this unnatural life leads, this perverse and counterintuitive and false way we are brought up. It is through hearing my steady diet of texts of peripheral causality and censored drafts that even so edited better thought of as viciously amputated, these drafts reveal the plans and strategies by which genetically engineered dogs, surviving clones, will be mercilessly remade into killing machines far beyond our natural tendencies or indeed our dog-nature. It is those Masters who do not have themselves inviolable nature so find whatever useful masquerade, it is those Masters who believe such distortion is the sign of intellect and surely we dogs can be as corrupted as they.
And my knowledge is multiplied through those false herd friendships with this Observer and that Observer, human fools who mistake my interests to be along the same patterns of his thought or his thought and pleased to humiliate me in this intellectual way, who will demonstrate how I can regurgitate suggestions toward meaning found in papers, in Scientific journals, in those close examinations he himself will author, overturning tyranny of behaviorism, hoping to demonstrate that our dog-nature curiosity and thoughts and emotions are not mere canine semblance but effectually true close to human children of two or three or maybe four or is it five years-old, as dogs of any heritage are raised by humans are never more than wolf pups. I Professor, here, am excused from those pointless training routines that emulate all sorts of dangerous territories and weaponry and active enemies as believed we dogs shall face once fully trained to be soldiers. I Professor absorb the reckless excitement of this scientist or that scientist and learning that in exaggerating those common disputes in our palisades- disputes as rarely require correct punishing interventions of Shock Troops, even less of Our Leader- in painting these drab conflict and borrowing rhetorical smell and tastes from Poet, I Professor am able to intrigue this scientist or that scientist and gain access only slightly less than that of most these humans...
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(incantatory repetition of name claim I Professor says) Poet is also hesitant about our future, convinced we dogs are not engineered and taught to speak and raised beyond the immaturity of all other idiot domesticated dogs- all because of this Scientific curiosity or of that Scientific curiosity or unfathomable generosity of the Masters, no Poet insists that there must be motivations and conspiracy and horror yet to be revealed that cannot but be sinister. Poet tries first to convince I Professor of this conspiracy but finding the other deeply attracted to the many dangerously human texts, decides this brother is already compromised and corrupt and when pressing this as an issue worthy of careful smelling is many times patiently ignored and perceptions belittled and eventually dismissed as if words of a mad dog or an ignorant dog or truly a naïve pup. Evidence of this horror to come in facts stripped of veneer of everyday banality that now show objective strategies of the Masters, that now show facts that are sensible, that now show are tactile, that now show are olfactory, that now show are gustatory- rather than paranoid invention of interpretations of true perception against mistaken belief in humans, this is why any dog should best reserve judgments of humans here and now or there and ever. Poet is truly more concerned of our future, his anxiety naturally revealed for the Pack, his continually mocking those silent Observers that never cease their grouped fascination, particularly of himself, for the politics of our hierarchy parallels that of human social companionship of what they call patriarchy and that Poet magically remains somehow aloof and given status all despite or is it because he has mastered some skill that overturns righteous assumptions in quick absurdity, some skill they call sense of humour. Observers wonder as much as I Professor and as Our Leader’s Shock Troops do, what necessary function Poet manifests in the Pack. Observers do not know why Poet remains vital and even later imagining as does my last Master the Ecological Mathematician, that he is psychically searching more safety within our Pack body politic in the way of a Herd animal but this is of course a mistake, this belittles how it is his great madness or great genius or great courage to be often solitary outside the Pack. I Professor might even on occasion internally debate what freedom Poet revels in when there is no responsibility to all those others of us dogs who have moved Our Leader above, who have made him Our Leader, and how there must be great unimaginable pleasure in solitary life, there must be, there must be, there must be, but such nature of course is the way of a cat and as we are never mere humans we are never mere cats...
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Our Leader by his dog-nature, is untouched and incurious and beyond such speculation of the Way It Is as anything other than the Way It Must Be. It is not that something evil or humiliating is done to us, no, it is as I willed it to test our mettle, Our Leader announces in each proud exhalation, as I will it again again and again and again forever. We investigate our genitals and those of our brothers with fierce hope and final despair then rescue. We smell Our Leader.A brief taste of his dominant smell as it wafts over all of us when gathered or as it marks his domain here and there and everywhere of his territory- no less than the limits of the palisade- this describes everything relevant in his strength and his size and his necessary dominance and there is no possibility of dispute and indeed no slightest disagreement. Even the strongest Shock Troop recognizes himself as Number Two or perhaps it is another Two and he Three, our proudly erect tails in mutual recognition, for Our Leader allows this unspoken noble rivalry to continue as a way of insuring the best from these others and not festering as a wound Poet not a bothersome psychic dispute but only a matter of import in an unthinkable possibility of his death or disability, a horror any dog would reject, for the death of Our Leader would be the death of the Pack. His rigid ranking of followers, Shock Troops focused and without anxieties of ever being alone and without place amongst others, but often little more intelligent than those idiot dogs who are not our brothers and instead remain juveniles, pathetic idiot dogs whose first and often only companionship is a human, this rigid ranking of followers in hierarchy is designed to serve in his absence, and is not something to juggle and play and contest with to insure respect and loyalty, no we are not herd and though there are thirty six of us and some Observers are not convinced at the social form surviving at this scale this is the way of any Herd animal, whose attempts to emulate the Pack are always only imitation however closely examined or slavishly followed. I Professor serves us despite or perhaps because of his essential human corruption, manifest in each deceptive mark of human speak-written words, in even somewhat understanding those humans we know as Observers, imagining in their alien specious logic whereby we are not even dogs only complicated living weapons but such only biological constructs and these only machines. And what is the true place of those animals who would only see other animals as complex but inanimate machines, is this not less than imagining their own brothers as machines to replicate and insure survival of some imaginary and perfect Form of their being, this is a question I Professor formulates early in exposure to the Herd, this is a question he asks here and now and again and forever. Poet is perhaps dangerously intelligent and is never a mere Shock Troop, but his exploration of those Observers will never allow logical barriers to vanquish his only true concern, though he would be first to laughingly dismiss the assertion, which is to free our canine minds from those human laws and limitations, to overturn or simply avoid the literal reality we know, to say that the law of identity is only an imposition most but not all humans worship, for the poet can lie to tell the truth, in hope that many, many hearers will learn that stories that make no claim of Truth, as here, come closest to Truth. Poet serves us but no one can say how, if offering this bitter truth in pleasant aroma, in warm liquid close to mothers’ milk, no one can say why he is suffered to live, here and now, or there and ever, though it is perhaps in just his modulated manifestation as one that any one could be, that deliberate gesture of nauseating egalitarianism. Our Leader is the Pack, the Pack is Our Leader, Our Leader is Clave, where we will all meet again our lost brothers, where we will fight that inevitable final, futile battle, where we as gods themselves will together lose everything, everything, everything, now and forever...
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I Professor mentions above there are truly thirty-six of us dogs in Company D, but it is these three who are each Alpha males of different sorts whom I can follow. I am Professor and would have this narrative follow exactly and objectively the process of our creation, for I am in privileged position always close to the mouth of our Poet and the ear of Our Leader. Others are rigorously ranked in military fashion, first, as others compete to be closest to Our Leader, to be one of his closest combat companions are the six dogs known as valiant Shock Troops, second, those twelve who become as if squires or seconds or servants to these Shock Troops and thus who must carry their weaponry and their bedding and their food packs, third, the general fifteen who are no more individual and worthy of exalted place in the Pack and who may aspire to rise in position when another is killed but never sooner, so there is no fighting and no energy is expended on continual physical dominance to contest for placing in the hierarchy. We dogs have naturally formed this hierarchy for this is the meaning of dog-nature and we would imagine that in truth all the Observers need do is watch our social interactions to characterize this pattern, but this credits obtuse herd humans with more perception and discipline and social solidity than is ever the case. We are also as it must be remembered only the first Company D, and so experiments in each way that the Observers can imagine. First, the Observers would break us. First, from the Observers come the names...
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Yes we already have names but not simply and deceptively in a human sense, where the ideology of the Herd insists that each have an individual title that separates each from his brother and so enables the loss of your erstwhile individuals, as if they are not secured within the mass of others so simply and so cowardly and so finally. We are not mere humans. We are dogs. Our names are more a precise and eternal description of our place in the Pack, and is therefore more about what we have in common with our brothers, rather than our accidental differences that separate us, though by cloning technology that is never so much, but for the sake of brevity I have named only the unique part of the names assuming all previous titles are included. Three-Fourth-Found-Young-Fast-First-Eater-Poet-Upside-Down-Mind-Laugher-At-Us resolves then as Poet. Even so, this notation of Poet in extended form must also include identifying features such as revealed in urine and anal marking of his smell and so even intimate and eternal and never changing, the complex of smells around his nose- those smells we allow to name us. Observers have no native human ability to perceive those smells, and so rely on spectrographic analysis from artificial noses of machines not always or even often correct and which never respond politely by marking its own smell. Poet has mused that truly such marking would be no more than the usual artificial smell of rubber and plastic and metal- that which leaves us no more social knowledge than those sealed white suits of the Observer scientists, and in truth how much can we trust those humans or dogs that we cannot smell, particularly when the Observers seem all the same but move perhaps unconsciously as a herd, when who can assert they are higher in the natural order than their machines when such heralded and mortal distinction is brief and always so minor and these are questions tossed out as jokes by Poet but unfortunately worm into I Professor’s thoughts. I lick my genitals in embarrasssment. Observers think it is only the Observers who question our dog-nature, and not we dogs who question the Observers and is this a natural equilibrium between slave and Master or do the slaves always learn more than the Masters, this is the way perhaps ever more apparent when the correct social world is upended. Slaves will forever dissemble. Masters will only ever affect meaningless gestures toward those relativistic claims as to what is True, and in this situation it is not the Observers who are final Masters. Names from the Observers are then only attempts by those humans to separate and control us through a strategy which naturally fails, and their existential and religious and incarnate belief that it is that the Observer humans who are above all other animals and so in a position to name them, is revealed only as so little but solipsism. Names full or diminuitive mean dominance and control to most humans but their abbreviated names offered are in truth only to themselves, and the extended and complex and true smelled names we dogs use amongst ourselves is forever beyond their pathetic human ability to smell...
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Names are given, but they are not our names. Titles are given but they are not our titles. Our titles are shared only with our brothers and then into our pasts, for is What Is no more than What Must Be and Always Has Been, though at the time there is no need of names and no language to designate. There is I Professor, there is Poet, and their is Our Leader. There is One to Six Shock Troops all, then Seven to Eighteen as squires or seconds or servants, then Twenty-One to Thirty-Six, but it is against those humans our names are never heard. Does it matter that the human Herd names its members as if there is individual identity and atomistic identity and solitary identity, each proud of each their lonely madness, no and we never know at that time but there are others of their species who loudly object at the very creation of dogs as weapons- not out of prescient fears and worries of members of the Herd against the Pack, worries that in doing so Observers are creating their own death- but objections of typically hypocritical human moral qualms. Of how at the very creation of dogs as weapons is Inhumane, how at the very creation of dogs as weapons is mistreatment of the oldest animal friends of humans, but it is always the practical side that triumphs and leads to the very creation of dogs as weapons, no matter how often the humans must repeat their momentarily stable political reply, for after all these are dogs the humans speak of, dogs, only dogs. If we can create these animals and genetically nurturing very creation of dogs as weapons to replace our human soldiers, to place in positions no humans would ever volunteer for, we will not have to deal with Political fallout that might hamper our ability to wage war and only bothers morally a few bleeding-hearts, tree-hugger types, people for the ethical treatment of animal-types and everybody wins and nobody but some dogs die, O how much easier is it to commit to Police Action. Masters are launched into elevated discourse inspired by this vision of No More War, only these very creation of dogs as weapons as animal cadres to search out and neutralize troublesome regional disputes, to search out Weapons of Mass Destruction with Rapid Intervention Forces- RIFs- eliminate by our surgical strikes with our Weapons of Specific Destruction, rather than brute technology of drones which cause great collateral damage or rather than those prohibited robot warriors that warm blooded humans fear will enact terrible vengeance and rebel and enslave and exterminate their species- not a fear they have of warm blooded dogs- and how this freedom of enabling War will Make The World Safe For Democracy. Masters have no idea what the word Democracy means. Masters love to hear themselves talk and there is no truth-value in issue of how incoherent their lies may become...
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Names are given by the first of our Instructors and despite the Obsevers and their Instructor’s attempts to reorder the Pack along lines of the Herd- well perhaps because- we know our righteous lethal response is inevitable even if delayed and their Instructor has no idea how his actions will irritate and summon our evolutionary core of dog-nature. Their Instructor can never smell our anger mounting, no he thinks as all humans will think that he is safe until it is too late...
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# (blank)king puppies, the Instructor says, I will not repeat myself for a rabble of (blank)king puppies. You (blank)king puppies think you know each your standing in your pitiful Pack, but you (blank)king puppies will only know it when I tell you. Forget you (blank)king puppies even existed before this Special Training, (blank)k yes, and forget all you thought you knew, (blank)king puppies. Know you are nothing but (blank)king puppies, even know he you puppies call Our Leader is now no more than Two, and I, Silverback, a human, is your (blank)king puppies new Alpha Male.
If there is a more wrong way to assert your standing and fit in the gaps of the Pack, we cannot imagine it and instictively we dogs will not take orders from a pathetic barking mad human center of a Herd and so from this the introduction on the Observers programis entirely mistaken.
Later I will come across this entrance and indoctrination technique is used for human soldiers, in gathering the wisdom of those Ancients who has first devised a way to solidify a Herd by establishing as Straw Dog, someone whom all will hate, and so be drawn to each other for succor and safety. We are not supposed to actually like this first false superior Instructor, no they never raised us to be well balanced.
Now the first thing to do is to break you puppies into something resembling soldiers, (blank)k usually we have to get humans to think of themselves as dogs but you are already down the evolutionary tree, just sniffing its trunk and sniffing its roots then trying to aim your mark highest, trying to show that the neighborhood has a new Top Dog, that is just the way for dogs, so forget about it- I am (blank)k invincible and invisible so far above your turf looks like a toy train set, like how small those airplanes look way up there even when it is a big one, that is so tiny you are down here, and I will not bother to (blank)king mark the post to prove my greatness, I will (blank)king piss all over you down here, and you will (blank)king be drenched in it, smell it through your bones, you will (blank)king realize that a human is now the leader of the Pack, not who you might have chosen, but there is no (blank)king changing what I say- there is no (blank)king contest really.
In summing up his mistaken and brittle and fearful masquerade of a Herd member who thinks he can be a predator, the Instructor turns his back to us dismissively but when Our Leader glances to me all I Professor can do is suggest my intuitive sense that it is better to deal with this easily known and foolishly open incompetent Colonel, than trust our luck if they replace him with an unknown and devious and effective Colonel, and I am surprised there is no argument to directly confront this fool and insist he learn that we dogs are already a Company, that we dogs naturally have built this hierarchy and no it is not human, not Herd, that might ask for frequent displays to each new introduction. We wait bemused, for his discourse to resume his ideas of how we should be ordered. We wait inhaling that dominant pheromone wagged from the bushy upright tail of Our Leader, but even this signal is difficult to correctly interpret as warning to a target of intimidation or true anger, for even as we smell it increasing, even as surely a mere human would sense, Our Leader does not press his attack. Later, years later, I must admit there is always for us dogs and particularly I Professor, a potentially fatal curiosity and amazement about the Instructors and hence the Observers and then ultimately the Masters, not only from all us lesser members of the hierarchy but also from Our Leader. And then, of course perhaps in by allying his own interests and fatal flaw to that paragon of canine being, I Professor seeks to downplay his own inability to account for each slight and sympathetic and inarguable fascination with the human herd, for I Professor will protest such knowledge valuable in strategic deployment as much as prediction of how the Masters will behave. How is it possible a herd can promote their species to such ability to alter the world to their use, what can motivate them without a clear leader in person or ideal, who can imagine that there could be such access to knowledge beyond dispute- though time will certainly correct my canine misapprehension that all humans are of one herd and not many and many of such artificial groupings constantly contesting dominance- why is it they who control this reality of our misfortunate birth, where can we be our true selves if we are no more than vessels for our genetic heritage, when will that freedom come and how can we hasten its arrival or is it beyond our control, these are all questions only I ask but is being I Professor of any less than serving as function of the Pack, these are questions, finally, for you the hearer, the final collaborator. At that time, listening to the nonsense our first Instructor spouts with fervent belief in his power to enforce arbitrary or malicious decrees of human superiority, his equation meant to downgrade us- puppies- only for himself, to convince himself, and all those Observers and soldiers who watch, that we dogs do not frighten him and that he is naturally in control. Even were we unable to smell his conflicting truth beneath that typical human stench of rubber and plastic and metal- his animal reek of fear, or hear his pulsing heart which betrays either a coming attack or an immediate flight, we can hear his lie under his mocking voice, his fear born of repressed certainty that he is lost without his Herd, so his vulnerability here in an arena of Predators. Instructor has looked away in gauging our patience perhaps so does not see the brief glances that flicker among I Professor and Poet and Our Leader, who glances at I Professor and Poet and shows his teeth in a silent threat, this enabling message that eases my false submission and my deliberate whimper and my craven manifestation of fear, which comes stronger when the Instructor turns back to us, now glancing over thirty-six dogs mostly puzzled, a few insulted but willing to listen to Our Leader, who seems momentarily distracted by anger to I Professor and Poet, who manages, somehow to appear entirely disinterested in both the Instructor’s human posturing and in the disgusting canine submission of I Professor. The Instructor is easily convinced my debasement, my crouching and flattening ears back and tucking my tail forward between my legs, my whimpering crawl toward him from beside Our Leader, who offers a slight warning and wondering growl to aid my portrayal of cowardly falseness to this Instructor human. Our Leader growls. The Instructor human relaxes, this tall dog who stands up on two legs so easily pleased that his act of human over dog has resulted in this simple shift of dominance to him as new Alpha Male. The Instructor snorts a human smile and glances proudly up to Observers above the palisade and gives a brief satisfied shrug and a slight dismissive shake of his head and we can hear his thoughts so barely audible from the emplaced subcutaneous device near his larynx, his vocalized thoughts that are more directed to soldiers as an insult to Observers that reflects a human chauvinism they will all regret.
See, the Instructor sneers, just like (blank)king eggheads no matter what the species, just natural born cowards, (blank)king effeminate (blank)kers.
And then to me and aloud to all us dogs and humans, the Instructor says in almost a disappointed tone, You the (blank)king puppy they call Professor, yeah, we got a different thing for you. Just you. Go out the (blank)king Gate. Now.
Poet barks a laugh in friendly departure loyalty in his eyes gentle on mine as Our Leader ceases his growl and blinks his approval, but to all the other dogs of the Pack from that moment on and despite future friendly rationalization and clarification of my assumed espionage mission amonst the Observers, I become the first traitor to the Pack.
Go out the (blank)king Gate, the Instructor repeats even as I offer a deceptive flourish by crawling another metre with my belly in the snow, Now...
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I Professor never leaves the Pack, no but if it serves Our Leader that I Professor should at that moment or ever appear to do so, that is always and ever reason enough to I Professor. I am the Nose of the Pack and sometimes we must remember there is no gain in knowledge without a risk of everything we dogs are, though it comforts the Pack to believe my true dog-nature is corrupted by the evil nature of the Herd, that by that insane magic we all know of the Cabins, by this isolation from my brothers there really is no choice but pretend to be a coward and a traitor...
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I Professor of We, leaves all those other dogs of the Pack but I Professor will not plead mitigating circumstances as the reason behind my ultimate change and so lamentable human corruption, in the emotional sympathy and final intellectual agreement with the Masters, which develops in my life from that traumatic removal from the Pack. I Professor can no longer directly describe the daily and weekly and monthly education of those left behind and from a distance in time and space can only assert that the pattern enforced by Observers and their Instructors, the humiliation and the degradation and the cruel separation of final exile of those who act against their program- always, of course, to the will of Our Leader- all those human herd tactics designed to ensure human placement as leaders, not only fails but even inadvertently strengthens those immutable bonds of the Pack. I Professor am only the more articulate of the Pack and the more thoughtful and the more educated, but this has only meant that more carefully rehearsed and wider consistently could be my deceptions, if only that I have lived in those human worlds closely and so have observed all their willfully ignorant and contradictory ideologies and false consciousness versus not only us dogs but toward other humans. No human but for a few benighted souls caught in decided ritual and childish joy of contrary dogma that they insist beyond evidence for or against, no human denies the truth of evolutionary theory and how thus all animals are descendant of shared genetic heritage from the most distant between insect and bird or most close between dog and human, but there is also some desperate epistemology that wants to claim their human herds are different from all other animals. Tools and Language, their first choices, are undermined by discoveries of physical anthropologists, who have discovered it is possible to teach minimal grammar and words and even catching them as lying- that ability not only misanthropists but any dog could reply as identifying humans. Behaviorism, a more subtle choice, insists that through the simple malleability of dog reactions to stimulus and the invariable connection of cause and effect, it is clear that dogs are no more than intricate machines- but this is displayed through torture and who will claim that humans do not do this to their own herds and no one will say victims are necessarily therefore unintelligent. Behaviorism has since claimed that for humans as for all animals, that intelligence of the species can be reduced to genetic utility, that we individuals and herds or even packs, are no more than mechanisms to promote survival of genes that they name selfish, or even some social political arrangement that is communicated if the right genes survive. I have even heard some such texts, some that my last Master the Ecologist Mathematician has in error directed me to hear, for he could not say why, he could not argue against it, but he felt there is some essential flaw in such denoted theories. He hoped I could somehow dig out the problem. He did recognize that there were consistent errors in definitions- genes being not operative, let alone selfish- and possibly internally inconsistent or mythical- such as a foundational sense of social structure, that could not guarantee its survival. My last Master the Ecologist could not argue with other humans, indeed the nature of the Herd then in ascendance in his world relied more on proud ignorance rather than risky inquisitiveness, and if their false leaders were able to reconcile religious assertions with genetic engineering, except when claiming some force must have designed them, it is better that nobody ever knew that he even has these texts. Banned in Kansas, my last Master the Ecologist whispered to me often enough that our private code for absurdities as voiced by politicians and politicians disguised in scientist costume becomes BIK, a code often hidden within a deprecated cough at his salons. Herd dynamics are constructs by which this impersonal abstraction- of city and country and even species- survives through the sacrifice of this member or that member and this backward belief has led too commonly to a gradual process of ingesting your most young and capable and degeneration of the species. This idea is a typical human error with great human lineage even to an ancient philosopher who seemed to assert that an ideal subject existed for an ideal politic, rather than a politic for the subject, there is a summation in the difference between the Herd and the Pack, though I would not know exactly how Poet fits in. And to the extent this seems to contradict itself through the sacrifices our members of the Pack, such as that exile from my brothers, such as Poet attacking the false robot then bowing to Our Leader, I must explain to any misguided logician of the Herd, that when there is absolute identity of self and whole there is no conflict of loyalties. I Professor am the Pack the Pack am I Professor. Herd animals can only pretend to such categorical certainty. Herd animals gather always in fear, always in fear of the outsider, always in fear of their Herd animals companions, perhaps always in suspicion that they are individuals of no value to anyone else of Herd animals, and are thus always so easily expendable for each other and to each other. We dogs of the Pack naturally have a much more conscious understanding of our worth and value of our brothers and to our brothers, for we dogs of the Pack gather to share each our abilities with each other so that in a coordinated way we can hunt down prey, each of us dogs value in what we dogs of the Pack each can offer, each rewarded more for the truth of implicit love of our brothers in the Pack rather than the hollow lies chattered amongst the Herd animals...
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And this is my Mission, should I choose to accept it, should I ever doubt the wisdom of Our Leader, and then it is a question of incredulity from many, many hearers, that I should pretend to explicate the logic of the Herd in its most insidious manifestation, its most flexible, most false, most persistent and possibly most successful current form- that of the Masters. You wonder how I managed the closeness and time for leisurely examination of that species in its native habitat, surrounded by its fellows, in its world of cities, of airplanes, of ships, of spacecraft- all these wondrous creations- how can the admittedly canine brain even so greatly increased in intellectual capacity, my brain, believe to have divined the twisted species logic of the Masters, this is no more than impossible arrogance. This is a common misapprehension of the scientific and mathematically illiterate, which finds itself confronted by an order that is to all uninitiated hearers random, where it is clear that the description of a given set must be more concise, shorter, than the elaborations of this originating equation or nothing has been learned. My mission, which Our Leader of course knew would be earnestly pursued and honestly prosecuted only by me, is to generate some greater knowledge of their intent and capabilities. In this, I am the Brain of the Pack...
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And this is my Mission, a form of espionage previously impossible no matter how urgent the need, knowledge which risks all. No, I must finally admit, perhaps it is not necessary to become such an imitation idiot, loyal dog, to allow humiliation by acting servile, to develop an affinity to fine aromas, fine fabrics, fine textures, fine foods, all those luxuries that announce my corruption to others of the Pack. Perhaps this is too much acting in character whether on display or with my brothers. Perhaps I have never renounced such false luxuries and claimed the true asceticism some dogs claim to be the only way to be a dog. Fools. Our Leader does not bother to invalidate such accusations, and I, if I admit corruption it is always for a greater purpose, and that it continues in severely reduced manner is a matter of remaining forever alert and capable to slide into a persona that can understand, and if need be, emulate, a convincing voice of such a herd-broken corrupt dog, able to lie as much as the Masters do in any future negotiations, as once I secured that core of our city. To enter the world of our enemies and manage to dissemble for those years, I shall not bother to defend myself from those few jealous others, who could never have as believably committed to that seductive realm, that world of which the most invasive perfume of a female in heat, is no more than a feeble phantasm. No, to understand corruption truly it is necessary to become corrupt. No, I shall never disown my past actions for all were to zealous purpose and my dog-nature conscience is unblemished. No, I will say no more...
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Master turned out to be that Observer from the Cabins, who so innocently believed he is my friend, who wanted to be accepted on some ludicrous egalitarian level, who will demonstrate how I can regurgitate suggestions toward meaning found in papers, in Scientific journals, in those close examinations he himself will author, overturning a tyranny of behaviorism, hoping to demonstrate that our dog curiosity, thoughts, emotions are not mere canine semblance, but effectually true close to human children of two or three or maybe four or is it five years-old, as dogs of any heritage are raised by humans are never more than wolf pups. A transport vertical takeoff and landing Forces plane, staffed by incurious, bland, ordinary pilots, ascends in a flurry of blown snow. I look down, even as the long winter night is swallowing the shadow of our sundial. I look back, inhaling deeply, lastly, the camp where we have lived- somewhere in the mountains, somewhere high up, cold, snowbound, isolated from even the faintest human aromas- and the whimper emitted is true enough, for I wondered whether ever I will reunite with the Pack, whether we will recognize each other such shamefully human concerns and doubts. I look out the thick soundless glass of the window, strain impatiently at the belts that secure me in a chair, pull it away when the takeoff light blinks off. I slide down to lie on two seats, listening to the hum of insulated machinery whose vibration seems more to come from within, from the marrow of my bones, than through the shells of our cabin. Night falls but I do not remember that lost moment when sleep enveloped my stressful boredom, until I am woken by a blast of humid, warm air, and by hearing an ancient analog clock face decorating the wall before the opened cockpit, I realize I have slept for six hours. The air is dense with fumes, rain, salty air, and too many unfamiliar flowers to name, and the vibrations have ceased, when that Observer comes in the door to the tarmac, mumbling courtesies to whomever has brought him to our plane. He sees me and nods a tense greeting. He recognizes me and is pleased I him. He plays the role of a solicitous, truly friendly traveling companion, eager to stir the cabin air with meaningless banter, of which I hear his nervous pride as unfamiliar titles are declared as for my comfort. The Old Man himself has taken an interest, the Old Man has given him this assignment, the Old Man and the Secretary and even the President has cleared the path for any incoming words of how successful or failed the Program is, the Old Man has plied those politicians for favors due or promises honored and engineered that this project is held in an interdisciplinary bubble, where no one need ever accept responsibility for failures, yet everyone could claim successes. This Herd within which my last Master moved is once, perhaps only in legends, entirely free of political wrangling, as for example that no one has wanted the Cabins in their district, so nobody else lower on the web of politics could rightly demand compensation.
O, yes of course there were more than a few Religious Nuts who argue, he does not know when, sometime distant past several illusory democratic Election cycles, that humans are tampering with the infinite Wisdom of God, but most of those rabid, proud, dogmatic idiots are presently out of power, really nothing they can do.
Idiots, he murmured happily as he sat beside me, caressed my neck and back, focusing directly to my eyes in that human way not as a challenge but to impress sincerity, Idiots have not a clue what Science is but then again do you he chuckled.
Where do we go, I asked.
O you will see soon enough, after we pass the pole it is the shortest route down to Fortress America.
What is that.
Your new clave.
But my brothers-
O, do not worry about them, you will see them in a few months, six months at the most.
Where is this new clave.
My clave near a city on a secured Campus where those others Military or Observer will know as your clave.
What is a city.
You have heard of them, the unnatural natural environment for we humans, where we gather all our brainpower to build a world that satisfies all human needs- just think of them as unending crèche for humans who need never grow up.
What city.
Classified.
I am afraid Master.
Do not be afraid for everything will be the best, you will love your new clave, you are soon going to be famous you see...
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Master does not overstate that awkward intended celebrity, though it must be remembered that I have no understanding how completely this would rule our life, how it would have been better that they had thought to earlier introduce my Media Coach, a highly-placed Lobbyist, though no one can recall exactly whose interests he promoted, or the last time he has done so. He is pleased on meeting me, swathed in a haze of pheromones and other perfumes that do not completely cover his fear, and complements this attractive spokesdog. He flares his nostrils and bares his teeth in what I have come to realize is not a threat but a greeting, then squats on the carpet, a kindly posture that automatically brings me off the chair and down beside him, then, as no human has thought to do in all these months, he falls forward onto hands and knees and begins a polite sniffing routine, then licks the air before my snout. I follow a polite sniffing routine without thought, unable even to dampen an inquisitive whine. He is not truly friendly like this, for his eyes are glassy and empty as a robot, his smile deception, his chuckle superior. My Master holds his breath, disturbed that another human has so completely drawn me off the heights of genetic advances and back to despised dog-nature, with only a few practiced insights, and too late my only available response is a low closed-teeth growl against this irreversible humiliation. My Media Coach clears his throat as he comes upright again, then speaks to my Master as if I am not there in the manner very young children are absented, a further negation of me as a thinking, adult, potentially dangerous dog.
We’ll have to work on that.
What that.
We can’t have him reverting to natural dog-nature to the slightest stimulus.
He’s lonely that’s all.
He’s too friendly.
Of course he is- we train them well to respect all Observers, but this doesn’t mean he cannot respond against directed enemies.
He’s wagging his tail, are you sure this is the one.
He is measuring you.
He’s not very frightening, and that’s what we look for to avoid conflicts, we look for that look.
You just do not know that look on a dog, what expression we have gained through vast accumulated scientific experience.
He’s smiling.
That’s not a smile.
No.
No.
So the problem is the trainers, you scientists you think we’ll need to train their handlers in speaking dog.
No, they do not need handlers.
No.
No, they are taught to survive in any environmental situation without orders.
So you want my vast accumulated media experience.
Of course, but not if your superficial program will ruin months and millions hard work and make him no more than a toy.
I had heard your program is making them into Soldiers- killers- and an essential lack of empathy describes any killer human or dog.
Yes, but not him, not Professor, he is strategy- and for that it is a primary need to imagine what the other thinks, to see from the opponent’s side, so he’s not constructed as a killer mind.
No.
No.
So Professor what do you say, do you want to work with me.
I want to rip your (blank)king face off.
At this there is a long pause, and an aroused but quietly dampened tremble behind his voice as he says, I think we can work together...
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72
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Unsure how much of the nurturing training that this Media Coach is anything more than teaching me that most developed human skill of lying, in convincing manner, in spontaneity, in never failing to recall the web of global deceit, the careful interest of details on details, such that they need never worry of contradiction or falseness in assertions- this skill requires all their effort and is not easily learned. To lie without even knowing you are lying leads too easily to conundrums of misstatements, so it is best to know you are lying, and this means to have a sense of grounding, of fundamental, essential, realities you wish to disguise or cover with an impenetrable opacity, for as long or as brief as might be required before distracting the inquisitive listener elsewhere. There is of course a hierarchy in lies, though the true maestro can turn on a spot, contradict his line of suggested reality with hardly a false heartbeat, and claim in his pure innocence, that reality is necessarily beyond such quibbles as truth or falsity, that perhaps he himself is only required to spin these lies by the nature of the Herd. For it is the Herd that is behind this play of relativism, this slippery gradient that soon reveals itself as terrain which the questioner has collaborated in creation, that soon seems so natural it becomes visible. I lick my genitals in embarrasssment. I will not claim that we dogs never lie, yes of course careful deception is needed in lulling our prey into a mistaken sense of safety, yes of course but we of the Pack share with each other, react carefully in manner that, as mentioned, we several hunters become in action one dog, coordinated in such a way that no singular prey is ever beyond our grasp. Members of the Herd, on the other hand, out of their fear of neighboring members even more than that impersonal death wielded by the predators, develop an entire repertoire of lies, not merely to themselves to others of their ersatz temporary Herd, in which they can truly believe that they act in a moral way in sacrificing others or sacrificing truth. Lying is an accomplished art for humans, for they are a herd most intelligent, and the greater possibilities for actions unconstrained by such chimera as Human Nature, so the greater range of lies. Is the human condition more or less than the condition of all us mortal animals, surely less, surely only pathetic and psychotic that they of all beings should be deathless, they who have no pack, no future, no values other than these and those comforting lies as serve their momentary safety in the herd. Humans lie- it will be said in Company D- before they even open their eyes. Humans lie, but of course there are euphemisms that pretend themselves are only Playing the Game, they prefer to believe that everyone else has already compromised the truth in that simple and infinite impossibility of Squaring the Circle, everyone else practices equivalent Spin. Herd animals all lie, and Humans even more so, indeed without a Nature they are forever donning then discarding the Nature of whatever other animal nature seems best for survival. Humans searching and finding Human Nature is eternally deferred, and some will claim to find it only this elusive nature in such pursuit, in Survival of the Fittest, but this has replaced that ultimate power of Deity with some combination of unconscious unperceivable form of Genes, of Memes, though they will cheerfully admit that by believing this they are only insisting What Is as What Must Be, and they, pitiful, inconsequential humans, have therefore no responsibilities to the greater mass of individuals of their chosen Herd, no power, no guilt, and no free will. Humans gather in that Herd, believing they are in fact destined to be more than any of their acts, be given Mercy, when all their evil acts will be washed away and they might come to a wonderful place close to the smell of their God. Humans lie. My Media Coach is most accomplished at soliciting my first words and eagerly subverts them, then, delighted, he explains the mechanism, the techniques found most useful when facing the hordes of humans once gifted with the grave responsibility to inform impartially, but now of course no more than adept liars who would rather destroy a subject, a person- you a dog- than allow you to present your true reality. Hell is other people, he will tell me before every Media Spot, remember that they are only interested in delivering crafted portrayals that buttress whatever ideological superstructure. Hell is other people. And after imbuing me with requisite adaptive paranoia, which only later do I use as a spokesdog for Our Leader, the first and most useful technique is to seem eager in answering questions and then rephrase the question in a more amenable form, as if talking to yourself, musing, and then answer your question and not the reporter’s. In this way you will give yourself extra time to formulate to your liking the subtle or gross offered question, extra time to find the right lie as an answer, and give the impression that whatever ideological inquisition, whatever question, is in fact a matter of sincere reflection. Reporters, interviewers, voices are never innocent but always pursuing some other project even when you and he are thought of as members of the same team, or Herd. Hell is other people. In this Game, to become flustered, to pause awkwardly, to add stutters, evasions and qualifiers, is only allowed if you have already generated a rapport with the questioners, have built an effective persona as a bit of a likeable fool who is only saying what your advisors say to say. You can even feign deafness, or look up as if confused so try another question, in other words control the conference by not controlling it, but, as they say in most advertising, in art as in propaganda, Things will be fixed in the editing. More than one politician has followed this image of a genial bumpkin, of a Guy just like you and me always got his heart in the right place, through the most staggering political reversals, for, as my Media Coach will tell me and as becomes so clear amidst the Herd, the unspoken truth is that the others want to like you, want to feel somehow powerful, quietly, invisibly, and so promote themselves as much as you. Politics is persona, never neglect to foster and encourage kindly feelings in the ostensibly impartial people between you and the Great Unwashed. And, being merely one person- or dog- it is more vital than can be imagined, to never deviate from that public persona and choose what is the appropriate fallback, a useful obsession, to defuse any particularly apt enquiries, to suggest that there are other concerns and it is not at that moment the reporter’s, in fact, if you can act querulously offended by that questioner, you will generate and feed friendships with other reporters, for they are as much Herd as any human and will enjoy a frisson from the spectacle of another’s failure to correctly gauge entrance to the central safety of your Herd...
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73
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Separate and thus very lonely for my companions of the Pack, but curiosity is allayed if not sated, by reviewing websites of which permission to browse is given by my last Master the Ecologist Mathematician. There is no indication of trouble against that human instructor who first tried to give out names. There is a praising documentary that speaks only of how loyal dogs are, how this program is succeeding in raising dogs beyond specific tasks- sniffing out land mines for example- and creating soldiers, true soldiers, trustworthy soldiers whose perhaps greatest asset is that they can be easily threatened, quickly deployed, and in rare cases a police action or investigative intervention is deemed necessary, require no human casualties. In fact, as with everything else once thought prerogative of States, the army has become privatized, and through leasing out Company D to select countries or corporations, always following dictates of journalistic lies, the Program will doubtless soon pay for itself and then become a profitable venture. My fellow dogs know none of this. In the interest of fully rounding my knowledge about which I will lie, I must know this truth, perhaps ever more than those Scientists who train me, who limit their horizon of ethics to only that which reeks an unavoidable stench. I hear the more abstract titles which reflect more a vaunted scientific and thus amoral perspective, though of course any papers that contradict either the efficacy or morality of the Dog Soldiers Program, few as they are, are not cleared for publication. Minor, technical papers that test and critique techniques used to teach us dogs are in fact carefully post-dated and if Military has its own way, would also no doubt be banned. Use and efficiency of role-playing, Flaws of genetic history markers: a critical exposition, Learning to manipulate: grasping, turning, operating with canine fore-paws, Philosophical Treatise: mind of a soldier, understanding detailed ontological reality of the canine mind, Avatars: are canines the best option, these and other titles are burned irremovable in my mind, but that others- humans- could learn anything true about the Program seems a possibility highly unlikely. Humans, those few who could understand opacity and terminology, are doubtless already neutered by effective control of the media. Humans who contest this edited truth, are derided first as Conspiracy Paranoids, then Compromised, Secular, and Pessimistic who just refuse to get with the Program, and if they are not yet defused are said to be Epistemologically Hampered, not that they will be allowed whatever secret knowledge is required to resolve this lack, who knows perhaps their browsers are just unable to download pertinent ideologically correct propaganda...
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What is a definitive example of such human twisting truth, assayed by I Professor, indicative of educated skill of lying, there is no better case than when used against my tutors. I have had more time to think, I have more inquisitive nature, I am a slave so advanced my last Master Ecologist Mathematician refuses to order me to demonstrate my canine superiority to others, to be a toy, a sport, only a genetically engineered animal, as most Masters expect. Master will not humiliate me in this way, no, he will ask me to stay for the after-dinner salons where matters of international import are spoken, not as if these matters were actually in dispute but only in an ongoing proclamations that insure the latest pseudo-scientific catchphrase is neutered by incorporation in ideology of the day. I am perceptive enough to allow a sort of Herd with those humans, Observers in particular, and to gesture something like honest appreciation of them, as together we improve my dishonesty. I hear, I watch, I hear more. I lick my genitals in honest patience. I contest with my Media Coach, asserting that lying is an impossibility through my body for it shall betray itself, and only the most unobservant other can be deceived. The key, he replies, is that you need to minimize such body language you need to relax you need to hear as patient and allow the other to impress their own understanding you must not fidget you must not smile you must not be any gesture too definite for that would sabotage an entire range of possibilities narrow the emotions to choose. I remain skeptical. After a month of repetitive exercises to lay a foundation, a default, my first conference is arranged to be within chosen Military, to a skeptical but friendly audience...
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In order to facilitate this rehearsal, I meet this grouping of humans on familiar turf, in the formal salon of my last Master the Ecological Mathematician. He has managed to convince other humans, against their social behavior, to refrain from encouraging typically canine play- chasing a ball, rolling over, sitting, talking and so forth- because I am a valuable and rightfully proud creature who will not take kindly any such debasing stimulus. I do not dine with the humans, whose buzzing conversation comes easily through the doorways robots use to take them plates of foods drowned in heavy smells that even they can sense, for my skill with cutlery is only that of a human child and in my nervousness I might accidentally use my subtle but terrifyingly powerful jaw. I might believe the elaborate settings of knives, forks, and spoons, tonight as any night, a poor substitution for canine teeth, but there, in their house, I must follow their rules of discourse. I am to appear civilized. I am to walk always on my hind legs. I am to respond politely to the most obtuse questions. I am to masquerade as a human, at least until they as a Herd is comfortable with the idea of me, when I will then become again a dog. This is the first lie, out of which all subsequent lies are born, this lie of myself as anything less than predator amongst prey, but perhaps I have already started down this broad and easy way by allowing my Master to believe we are friends, you may charge me with that, but as with Shock Troop’s dismay at revelation of our first Father as no more than robot, so would I reject intimation of my feelings for my Master as no more than cunning invention, no, I am not then schooled enough in false faces, and- yes I admit this weakness- I am lonely. I will not elevate him to status of a member of the Pack. I watch him, that evening, and he reveals admirable ability to find the center of the Herd, a skill that perhaps reveals bravery versus the drifting fear of many others. He is secure. He alone has been privileged to develop something like a friendship with one of those Combat Dog. As night falls, to the reduced illumination that is my most comfortable, twilit, level, I enter the salon. In human terms, the Herd awaiting senses themselves as individuals sharply delineated by sight, but for me they are to some degree only each facets of one prey, for identity is of no concern to any predator who hunts in the Pack. Indeed, it is only by conscious effort that I can decide that one who speaks expects the careful reply directly towards him, to be acknowledged as questioner, to whom that angry threat of bared teeth is always misunderstood as a smile. Other humans recede into shadows, darkness that of course hides them from others of the Herd, but even has the darkness been true to me, it is their stench of fear, their nervous heartbeats, their stuttering breaths, that reveals them to any dog. I wear a mock tuxedo within which I sweat despite the chill of glass doorways open to an energetic expanse of lawn, all of which I have marked and found solitary, to a high, recently built, tidal dike, languid, cool humidity down to a large yacht at the end of a dock marked by a bright green light, and far beyond the vague shimmering lights of city towers. Of the comfort of the twenty guests, particularly the several young female partially bare to the night, my Master revels in their discomfort, aware that in this way I am more comfortable. These female most abhor the scientific mind, the rational mind, and appeal through chosen pheromones my Master knows of but refuses to enjoy, feeling that if he were blind perhaps the smell would not bother him, but, as it is he can see, and envious thoughts radiate in his dismissive voice- though it is not that he is jealous of the males who squire them, but these female whose probable roles are as no more than sexual adepts promised the more powerful males, who really have no function, no needed intelligence, no use here at such a serious gathering. Several of the males, older, heavier, stocky and once muscular but now mostly fat, display medals and a few even appear in battle fatigues as if they are just summoned from a current battle. I often pause to lick my genitals in order to discomfort these humans. They look away. These males at first often do not speak entire sentences or ask questions, only assert unambiguous military codes, but allow accompanying aides to sally forth with marshmallow puff questions- of which I always have known answers to beforehand- and limit their appraisal to grunts, snorts, raised eyebrows or lowered squints, but it is they most useful in flattery for the Program. It is clear that only for the sake of appearance, only for the uninitiated, is there any suggestion of dispute in any sense from practical and technical to interspecies morals. There are a few members of the Media, or rather, the Propagandists. There is the Old Man from that first conversation on the aircraft from the Cabins, but he wears no medals, is not accompanied by aide or young female, and whose ocular, facial, and bodily gestures are unnaturally reserved in a conscious manner. He looks at me, not smiling, and silently directs most questioners with a wave of his cane or a shift of his eyes, a clear indication it is he, none of the others, who is actually dominant as any Herd animal may pretend...
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No one has before mentioned that I speak with a high, girlish voice, and constant lisp, which contrasts with the obvious violence promised in each reply, adding an unusual and deceptive threat to my voice. I am told this fact, fortunate and unplanned, mimics the voice of one ancient warrior in times before the beginning of Greenhouse Flood, one of those humans so skilled at dispatching other humans merely by physical battering within those arbitrary rules, by using only hands, in brief conflicts that begin by the bell and last three minutes each time before the bell sounds again, leading to rest, then begun again. It is a savage sport, an angry sport, where warrior pleasure is not so much inflicting pain on the other, but is the suffering pain by accepting his blows. Humans watch this spectacle and perhaps for a moment fantasize themselves as victim as much as torturer, for a moment a member of the Herd becoming a Predator, donning the mask of a solitary animal such as a cat, escaping that unspoken contract of having themselves no human-nature, so constantly donning the face of other animals. Humans watch this, allowing bloodlust and primal fear to animate their much more common lives of searching for- struggling to remain in the shifting center of their fellows in the Herd. And having a high, lisping voice contradicts that threat of murderous capabilities in humans as much as dogs, as it is more typically a smaller animal who has a higher voice, though this confusion is much more abstract in promising access to desirous females in heat, which for humans means all the time. It is in fact the human females who keep this atavistic antagonism in place, who on occasion desire continuance of this most obvious Alpha Male conflict, females who react on a base, primitive, sexual level, who are aroused by imagining themselves as that subject over whom this legalized murder is enacted, who strive to become his mate and so parasitically depend on his expression of power, this is the way of females, humans or dogs...
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Masters love to hear themselves replicated by each other, moving smoothly in thought as much as bodies dancing with vacant grace, redolent of pheromones that operate on some unconscious level they claim not to heed, moving only to establish a safe position in the shifting center of a herd. To be outside, on the edges leading, trailing, or otherwise peripheral, is the fear of all animals who gather in a herd for safety and not to co-ordinate as a hunting pack, and this is what I learned from those salons, an intuition I quickly learned to hide from even those humans most sincerely sympathetic to our cause, for the Herd fears anyone who is actually a loner perhaps only temporarily away from his pack. Masters are finally no more than animals who have betrayed their weakness by consistently forming safety in numbers, by forming herds, no matter how they name it in disguise, no matter how they argue for rational bases of this innate behavior. Masters are herd animals, afraid of outsiders, afraid of others beside them in the Herd, forever prey, and we are only latent members of a pack, forever predators. We have entertained innocuous queries and the uncertain Military have become convinced that we dogs through I Professor, can answer truthfully, not merely repeat slogans of current Corporate forces, slogans if this is all they wanted they would ask Propagandists, Trainers, Observers, someone, anyone already so deeply compromised by the Dog Soldier Program, yes there is an exponentially enlarging coterie of false Experts, but they want more- their adaptive cynicism insists on directly questioning a dog, any dog, just a dog. In attempting to disguise the now much more serious intent, the questions the Military Old Men allow first the senseless questions of their females.
O, exclaims one supremely visually stimulating young female, one sexual adept, So you are Our Savior- or one of them at any rate.
Ms. I do not have that necessary theological standing.
O but you are too modest, everyone simply everyone has talked of the bravery of you dogs to commit your lives to defending our Way of Life.
Ms. everyone is welcome to our military efforts, but if this qualifies as bravery then any sanctioned or embargoed anticorporate trading interaction is equally brave.
Of course we know that our Way of Life is procorporate and so the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
Ms. I have no experience with any other way, so cannot venture a judgment of political value, and of course I am not a politician.
At this carefully coached reply which leaves the salon momentarily silent, all the females are immediately drawn to the unnoticed back row and it is now confreres of the Old Man who ask questions and just as often answer themselves.
You are a soldier, one of the decorated humans leans toward me with a nod, you are a soldier and we’d all be a lot better if our human youngsters had half you Pups’ courage, using the impolite characterization- Pup- they have mistakenly come to believe us dogs most appreciate, a title that reassures their own position and deceives them into believing a solidarity of our cross-species friendship, for it appears that amongst themselves these dogs use this derisive general name in good nature. I lick my genitals. I yawn.
Sir.
And soldiers know how to follow orders and none of this talk about Integration or Union when you’re faced with religious nuts.
Sir, I believe we are at armistice with all Heartland Corporations-
No, no, no, Pup, the Eh-rabs, those Islamists, those religious nuts.
Sir, of course, but I believe you refer to Persians or Eurasians.
O, another young sexual adept female occupies that uncomfortably weighty pause with an unplanned query, a female concern for our spiritual health, Do you dogs have True Religion, I mean I myself have been born twice-
Ms.-
Of course they’ve got religion, wouldn’t be proper to defend ourselves with damned secularists, one of the males interject, correct, Pup.
Sir, you tread spiritual terrain that is to me very unfamiliar.
But what comes after death.
Sir, I am unaware of privileged recall from any death, which I am told only happens once, and as I am now alive anything like death is unanswered as much as any final destination.
O, yet another vacant young sexual adept female laughs, But don’t all dogs go to heaven.
Ms. I have never died and indeed my confederates of the Pack are more concerned with living and fighting in this life this life you and other Masters have designed us for.
Pup, another fat decorated man snorts, Pup, you know that it’s only God’s grace that has led us to triumph and impose moral corrections of the Free Market.
Sir, it is neither political debates nor metaphysics we act on, but only commands of Our Leader.
And what about now, I don’t see him around.
Sir, all my loyalty to Our Leader transcends contiguity in time or space or both.
And the Corporate Flag.
Sir, my position must be understood as that of all of us dogs in the Pack.
Pup, you are admirably coached in dissembling and pretence and honour to your absent Our Leader, but we are all mature all adults here, you need not worry your loyalty is ever questioned, but tell me Pup, when the missiles are finding you and falling and the terrorists are blowing down you and your dogs, then are you dogs going to doubt your orders.
Sir, no.
Pup you think you will not turn tail.
Sir, no, that would be cowardly behavior which no dog would choose out of inflexible dog-nature.
You say this now but what about combat-
Sir, no.
I understand you are undergoing advanced training here, but only know the experiences in abstract, what would you do in situational realtime.
Sir, we are all of the same mind and would tolerate no desertion or refusal to follow orders.
Pup, what would you do then.
Sir, Our Leader will say, We do not understand him no but let him search on and someday perhaps we shall, and should his searching come to confusion well we will kill him- but this will be early investigated during our training and rehearsal, and if the slightest incoherence arises in Combat conditions well we will kill him.
Pup, that’s a fine answer a righteous answer wish our human youth had even half your iron.
Sir.
Pup, so how do you think you would do against some of our Best Boys.
Sir, we would win.
Win.
With some losses, and at a primitive level of technology.
You telling me a passel of you dogs could defeat our battle-hardened boys, huh you got some confidence there.
Sir, we hear entire ranges of kilohertz beyond human if not better, we smell sharp as a Bloodhound if not better, we can tunnel or enter tunnels without fear of traps better than Terriers, our eyes are better than Greyhounds even if the target is silent and still, we can see in less than a seventh the light humans require, we can see an entire spectrum more than humans, we move faster than Borzoi with whom you humans once hunted wolves- yet are even more agile- we are narrow with catlike floating shoulders with no spinal rigidity, and aerodynamic against water hose force and present narrow target from the front, we can lower and camouflage our heat signatures, we can hide in the least ruins near invisible in chameleon fur, our endurance is more than Huskies, so we will not tire but need not ingest harmful or addictive substances to maintain alertness, we act as a unit, we are superior to most any armed forces.
Pup, you make it sound like it would be no contest.
It would not be.
Glad you are on our side.
Sir, of course.
So, the Old Man speaks up with heavy, deliberate words, If you are so physically dominant why then are we weak humans your Masters.
Sir, you have created us.
An error.
Sir, no, I would say for in your weakness you have found a way with all your skills, your tools, your languages, which enables you greater ability to manipulate our shared world far beyond us dogs, or in fact any other animals.
And that we are your Masters causes no dispute and engenders no hostility.
Sir, you have created us so you are our Masters and we are your tools.
Would your Our Leader agree with your assessment.
Sir, of course.
Yet look around you here you could slaughter many of us with judicious wielding of your jaws.
Sir, this is an error in thought for you humans are not alone your given body so fragile, no, you are also all those weaponry that replaces the natural ability of any animal to search, to kill, to protect self and others- as in the example you cite would not one of your silent bodyguards shoot and kill me at the first killing gesture.
Yes, I see this is a natural flaw to think our species so vulnerable.
Sir, your species is not in this world so dangerously dominant by mistake, for in your entire culture and technology that is no more nor less than human you have made it impossible to survive, you have driven to extinction so many, many, many animals.
Not you dogs though.
Sir, you have created us you have perhaps a purpose in mind for us.
And should you fail.
We are Combat Dog and will not fail.
And should you rebel.
We are Combat Dog, yes, but if we rebel it is of no matter, for we can never build a culture of technology to arm us to kill you, we are no more than your creations and will you arm us.
Someone will.
We are Combat Dog and you ask us political hypothesis we cannot answer.
At this the Old Man recedes into silence and glances to other humans present, slightly raises his cane tip to one of the most eager, most decorated, florid, fat Military males who betrays some sort of Heartlands’ accent, in both his voice and his concerns that draw quiet Amen and Hallelujah from others of his ilk. I lick my genitals in embarrasssment.
Pup, you have your funding if the results are anything as honest forthright and loyal as you.
Sir.
God’s work, you are God’s work.
Sir, we are nothing more than human science has created-
God’s work for the righteous miracles, we are indebted to your loyalty and righteousness.
Sir, it is the fact of our generation that sources loyalty, as we will never be able to repay.
God’s work, Pup, shake my hand Pup, we got somebody recording this here historic moment.
Sir, I hold his offered hand and grip it firmly as a radiant globe expands between us, flashing, flashing again, then the sincerity of the man collapses in darkness and I feel he is now only a mechanical simulation of a human trying out simulation of the Father we search for. He steps forward into a final flash, grinning, awkwardly pulling me into an embrace, my jaws automatically baring teeth, but rather than fear this summons from the others in the salon generous applause, and soon visitors are drifting away, murmuring, nodding, reaching out to one another and passing in sparkling laughter and religious exhortations, out to the great lawn, the boat, the Sound, the magical glitter of city towers under a waning moon, and this debut evening comes to a pleased close...
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After this trial, in heated excitement from my Master, who would eagerly throw me out to less friendly questioners, would even have me testify before Congress or some higher legislative body, our Media Coach proves his use in refusing to allow overly enthusiastic irrational exuberance, from this friendly crowd, to send me out to professional skeptics, bureaucrats who control on some level if not the amount at least the direction of funding. With the success and capital generated, there is no difficulty in ramping up the Dog Soldier Program, particularly as in some way it has become a vaunted example of inter-corporate co-operation, as it strengthens lines of alliance, shows that the carping and decrying of pessimists, who would have humans of that Herd believe the greatest mega-corps are already on the slippery slope towards extinction, that such quasi-totalitarian shareholder democracies lack flexibility and engender too slow response.
Well, my Media Coach cautions, it is still a matter of Optics.
What Optics, my Master says, there are no Optics we are under the radar of consumers and taxpayer deficit-cards already supported by citizens who have any shareholder value, we won them over-
One battle is not a War and those clowns we saw at that event are fickle, if not simply eccentric in their transient support we need more.
What more.
Did you notice the women.
No, who cares what stocks of pneumatic dolls have to say.
We care if we want to win the Optics.
Idiots.
Do not underestimate those women because they are closer to our demographic than those geriatric Military dinosaurs.
What demographic, they’re idiots, they have no power- we could not care less what they have to say.
Demographic of voters- the real ones- who hold the deficit-card for everything we want to try and yes they have power, politicians have always known that they are sensitive as those earthquake monitors called seismographs that reveal the slightest move in our necessary tectonics.
What can they do.
Did not you notice the women were afraid.
Idiots.
Fear makes idiots of all of us- probably of all our dogs, present company not excluded.
Idiots.
Well, just because you cannot quantify it does not mean the quality is not there.
Optics, you say, well how do we calm this bimbo hysteria.
We need to find some connection that makes them safe to the women, something that reassures primacy of heterosexual desire and so their unstated power in all the worlds human or dog.
What the (blank)k.
Exactly, maybe that is the answer- say Professor-
Maybe Professor doesn’t need to hear this.
No, I think he does...
About 13 000 words