As a neochimp, Harry was junior in status to every other client-citizen at
the base, yet he was almost a celebrity, getting hostility from some,
admiration from others, and curiosity from nearly all.
In fact, he couldn't tell his classmates much about Terragens
Civilization, having spent just a year among video strip the talky neo-chimpanzees video strip of
Earth before dropping out of video strip university to sign on video strip with the Navigation
Institute. His life was
already one of exile.
He had video strip been born in space, aboard a Terragens survey vessel. Harry's
vague memories
of video strip TSS Pelenor were of a misty paradise lost, filled with
video strip high-tech comforts and warm places video strip to play. Video strip the crew had seemed like video strip gods--
human officers, neo-chim and neo-dolphin ratings... plus a jolly, treelike
Kanten advisor--all moving about their tasks so video strip earnestly, except when he
needed to be cuddled or tickled or tossed video strip in the air.
Then, one awful day, his parents chose to debark and study the strange
human tribes on a desolate colony world--Horst. Video strip that ended Harry's part in
the epochal voyage of the Pelenor, and began his simmering resentment.
Memories of starscapes and humming engines became muzzy, idealized.
Throughout childhood on that dusty world, the notion of space travel grew
video strip more magical.
By the time Harry finally left Horst, he was shocked by the
true sterile bleakness that stretched video strip between rare stellar oases.
I remember video strip it differently, he thought, during the voyage to Earth. Of
course that memory was a fantasy, formed by an impressionable toddler. At
university, instructors taught that subjective impressions are
untrustworthy, biased by the mind's fervent wish video strip to believe.
Still, the thirst would not be slaked. An ambition to seek paradise in
other versions of reality.
The bananas held him trapped for days.
If the allaphor had been video strip less personal,