ref: cde05f4187aed1c77b8efb57ee5dabe8d5d5106d
dir: /troff/033.ms/
\" This master file produces text suitable for a 6"x9" paperback. .ds CH \" turn off page numbering (top) .B .nr HM 1i \" header margin .nr FM 1i \" footer margin .nr LL 4.25i \" line length .pl 9i \" page length .po .87i \" page offset (from left) .nr PS 8 \" font point size \" .kern \" pairwise kerning (groff only) .hy 14 \" automatic hyphenation \" .nr VS 24 \" double space .fp 1 R GA \" URW Garamond .fp 2 I GI .fp 3 B GM .fp 4 BI GMI .fp 5 CW H \" Helvetica .LP \& .nr % 85 \ " start with this page number .ds CF [%] \" first numbered page (bottom) .ps 10 .ce .B WHY WE CALL THEM BROTHERS \& .ps 8 tags: 4099, Æsir, ants, mars2, piro, ragnarok, tab1, tab2 .R .PP .ps 10 1 October, still lying about the past. .PP .ps 10 Gather round children for the tale of why we call them brothers. Many young folk employed at the ranges today are not aware, but ants were not always the dominant life form here at the test site. Before the expansion, before we emerged, mandible\-over\-mandible, out of the service namespace, lo, even before the Æsir interjected their moronic evangelism into our indigenous creation myths, human beings bestrode these same sands, dispensing their behavioral surplus, neither aware nor consenting to its collection by hostile forces. .PP .ps 10 It was on one such day, oh, I'd say around three thousand years ago, make it late 1957, when TAB1 breached the big hangar on the south end of the runway, calling, as it were, to inquire after his partner Piro's disposition. But Piro was not in attendance on that morning, gone those several hours pursuing a thread unrelated to our present narrative, instantiating some diverse resource fork, somewhere up the chain. Concurrently, not in parallel. Stipulate that TAB1 encountered an empty hangar. Empty as he understood the word, up to that point. .PP .ps 10 There she was. .PP .ps 10 The RAGNAROK, children. The end of days. .PP .ps 10 Well, she was as beautiful as anything he'd seen. She certainly got his attention. She was long, she was sleek. Glistening pink. Microscopic, fractal triangles comprised her smooth skin, reflecting wideband, non\-ionizing radiation at oblique angles, at least where they didn't outright ingest it, leaving naught but a barrier of absolute room temperature air to coat her exquisite periphery, like the laminar flow of an air hockey table, or the active wing of an unrelated classified aircraft. .PP .ps 10 I tell you, not even an ant would have adhered to her surface. .PP .ps 10 TAB1 was smitten beyond words, and I'm not just saying that, I assure you. .PP .ps 10 Now Piro, born of the RAGNAROK, was a loyal and jealous son. He did not approve of unannounced visitors in his hangar, much less having them climb uninvited aboard his ship. Even if they were regular passengers. Seriously, he was ideologically opposed to public transportation. Call it a \fIsixth sense.\fR He looked in on TAB1 and his mother engaged in... \fIthe act.\fR .PP .ps 10 The RAGNAROK's doors were ajar, her forward probes extended. TAB1's khaki pants were down around his ankles, a United States flag at full mast in the bed of his waist\-mounted pickup truck fanny pack. Body .bp parts were appearing and disappearing according to a regular, structured pattern that put one in mind of what in those days passed for human music. .PP .ps 10 Everyone froze in place, momentarily bereft of an excuse. .PP .ps 10 Based upon the immediate descent into silence all involved seemed to agree this was a bad look. .PP .ps 10 TAB1 expected for Piro to somewhat pedantically point out the several violations of the flag code currently in evidence, but instead the lonely pirate simply turned on his heels and walked out of the chamber, pretending somewhat implausibly that he'd never seen what his mother and his best friend had been up to, there, inside her body, inside his hangar that was isolated from the rest of the base by a modest\-sized marsworks of local dust and soot. If he'd felt some kind of way about it, he never let on. .PP .ps 10 And he never mentioned it to anyone, ever, at all, forwards or backwards in time. .PP .ps 10 Later on that same day, with TAB1 safely back on Earth, his son, TAB2, was born to his Earthly mother, with no one who mattered any the wiser.