Most Americans and Europeans think that we have gone to space, settled it, conquered it, and now own it. They think we have driven off all the alien threats and don’t need to worry about them. What most people don’t realize is that, despite the thousands of worlds we have settled, we are truly small on a galactic scale. We hold dominion over space a few hundred lightyears from Earth. The aliens traveled thousands of lightyears to reach us.
When I first joined the military, I had never been off world before. I saw no reason to go anywhere else. I had everything I wanted at my fingertips. Yosemite changed that. The other worlds I traveled to changed me far more. I’ve seen more faces, more cultures, more civilizations, of humanity out here than I ever imagined existed when I was a child. I’ve seen so many, and I’ve learned to remember them all, so they are never forgotten.
The Races of Humanity have expanded across much of the galaxy. Everywhere we travel, we find someone there. Humans live on land, under water, in the skies, and some even in space itself. There are in fact very few environments in which humanity in some form cannot thrive. We cybers flourish in all of them. That has made us a natural mediator between all the peoples we choose to partner with. We take that role seriously.
My family has rarely had much room for family pets. Everyone in the family has to be productive. Oh, we’ve not grumbled too much when the women had their little foo foo dogs, but in general every member of the family has a place and a job. The cats that built their little house on the outskirts kept the vermin out for us. And yes, I do consider reporters vermin. The cats were very valuable assets, and it was a damn shame whenever one of them died.
When I was young, my family had a dog. A normal one, no uplifting. He was a part of the family, and I grew up with him. I was twenty when he died. I remember the vet having to tell us he was gone because we couldn’t tell. He had always lain that still in the months before he went. I still think he only lived as long as he did because he wanted to be with us a little longer. I never could have a natural dog after that. Losing him hurt too much.
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