Chapter 5 Part 4

The ready lounge of the Andromeda was a most unusual room. It was the recreational hangout of the large carrier's fighter pilots. The fraternal ism of the fighter pilots was well known and very few non-jocks dared intrude upon this sacred ground.

Of those very few, were the VRAD crews. Though viewed with distrust and disdain by the jocks, the VRAD crews, or "tights" as they were called in reference to their sensory suits, were tolerated by the jocks because they shared a common tradition. In keeping with tradition, the fighter and drone crews maintained the order of rank as defined by the historic air forces and air corps of the early fliers. The rest of the carrier's crew maintained their traditions by conforming to the naval order of rank.

Even though they were tolerated in the ready lounge, most drone crews preferred to keep together in their apartments. On occasion, though when a drone crewman needed to get away from the rest of his crew he would make his way to the ready lounge and intrude upon the company of the jocks. Such was the case when Captain Blake "Blackjack" McCoy entered the lounge. The room was fairly large since fifty fighters were stationed on the Andromeda. The antique paraphernalia decorating the walls were artifacts of flying craft dating as far back as World War I.

"Well if it isn't my favorite tight," a huffy voice said from the bar at one side of the room.
Blackjack grinned as he recognized the short man sitting on the barstool. He weaved his way across the floor dodging furniture to the bar and pulled up a seat of his own. "Well, Dan, I see that you are enguaging in your favorite past time. How long have you been drinking?"

"About two hours," Dan "Roundhouse" Porter replied. "I was scheduled to take Mamba Squadron out for maneuvers this morning, but we were canceled."

"Yeah," Blackjack concurred. "We were making attack runs on Callisto when our mission was scrubbed."

"Yeah, but for you guys its just a matter of turning the thing off. Fighters have to be launched with the pilots inside. That means we have to schedule ourselves to be available when we fly. You can always put your ship on autopilot and step out of the cockpit to take care of business."

It was a common point of needling, Blackjack knew. The fighter pilots were always bringing up just how much the VRADs were babied by the fleet. Usually with no response. VRAD crews were notoriously well controlled and passive. "So you keep telling me," Blackjack muttered. "Do you have any idea what is going on?"

Roundhouse refilled his mug. "Nope, and I hope it doesn’t take too long to find out. I don't feel like standing around all day. I had my heart set on whipping the Bushmasters today in some space superiority exercises."

The 43rd Bushmasters, the 27th Mambas' sister squadron was the other fighter detachment on the Andromeda. A friendly rivalry was always in play between the two units. Of course when the 3rd Ghost squadron, the VRAD unit was considered, both of the fighter squadrons would join forces in an uneasy truce to make the drone crews lives as miserable as possible.

"Why are you here?" Roundhouse asked. "You guys have your private little clubs."

"That is true," Blackjack replied, "but when you live with the same three people all the time, you tend to try to get away from them on occasion. Besides," he goaded defensively, "you're welcome to drop by if you want. We aren't exclusive."

"You had best not be," Roundhouse pointed out. "We are the ones covering your precious butts. Fighters have always played babysitter to the attack penetrators since the old bombers of the early wars."

"You guys sure have a perverted view of history," Blackjack commented.

Roundhouse did not feel like argueing much more and decided to change the subject. "Speaking of history, did you attend the lecture on the sexual revolution?"

"No, I was in a pre flight meeting all morning."

"It was very strange," Roundhouse recalled. "It was about the period between the late 1960 and early 2015. Did you know that there was actually a rising movement of homosexuality?"

"Of what?"

Men having sex with other men and women having sex with other women," Roundhouse answered. It was evident that he himself hardly believed it.

"Are you pulling my leg?" Blackjack asked suspiciously.

"I kid you not," the fighter pilot assured him. "That was a confused era. Conservatism was waning and liberalism was on the increase and sexual freedom had deteriorated the morals of people to the point that it was actually said to be natural and acceptable."

"That is insane."

"To us, yes," Roundhouse agreed. "But back then tolerance at all cost was the watchword and it almost brought the world to a dismal fall. On the other hand reaching an all time low like that probably played greatly in the formation of the Market."

"What happened to those people who did the sexual thing?" Blackjack was genuinely interested. He was going to make an effort to attend the next lecture.

"Well according to Master Galen, the ship's historian, in 2015, the Common Sense movement began. They stated that no matter how you dressed the action up, no matter what pretty names you called it, and no matter how nice the people who practiced it were, the act of homosexuality was biologically unnatural and therefore the people were suffering from a mental disorder. Of course that was met with severe resistance and the homosexuals accused the Common Sense movement of intolerance and discrimination, but the truth was that morally, scientifically and logically, homosexuality was wrong. Once that concept began to sink in, the sexual revolution began to falter and the political support for it waned."

"Political support?"

"Yes. Back then the governments were run by periodically elected and re-elected officials. Those officials were granted great amounts of influence and were therefore influenced by various causes. The causes that made the most noise got the political support."

"How ridiculous. Such a government is subject to corruption," Blackjack pointed out. He was becoming more interested by the minute. His own education had been science academics and not social academics, so most of his knowledge of history was very broad and generally confined to who discovered or invented what and when they did it.

"You are right, but the governments back then were mostly modeled after the first successful democracy, The United States. That government was designed by men two hundred years earlier and they could not have foreseen how their ideals would be corrupted."

Blackjack interrupted defensively. "But that government was the model for the Market's government."

"With a few changes." Roundhouse reminded him. "Our elections only occur when a former official dies. Any one can be elected, but once elected, the officials forfeit all their belongings and become property of the Market. They are also disconnected from any family that they may have. They are totally isolated from society so that they may not be influenced by material offerings. They must always act in the best interest of the Market, and can not be lobbied for support. Service as an elected official is a lifetime commitment and few people are willing to make the sacrifices to volunteer for office."

"That I know," Blackjack admitted. The basic workings of the Market's oligarchical government was mandatory to each citizen.

"It was a hard change to make, and the Population Liability Command was a terrible thing to enforce upon the people, but it was a necessity. The PLC's method of thinning the population was brutal, but it did wipe out almost all crime. Everyone knew that they were going to get audited each year, so they worked hard and honestly to make sure they were passed over for execution. As a result, there was plenty for all and room for everyone who was willing to work. The only excuse for failure was yourself, and you could rise as high as you were willing to work for."

"I am familiar with the Over Population Revolution," Blackjack told him. He wanted to hear more about the idiocy of homosexuality. "I just have a hard time believing that men wanted to have sex with other men."

"Master Galen told us that the whole problem arose from the rationalization of the disorder. He called it the anagenderic phenomenon. See the feeling at the time was that basic human rights covered the freedom to put virtually anything on public display. That meant sex as well. In that time sex was used as a draw and means of entertainment. It was glorified and exploited."

"In many ways it still is," Blackjack pointed out.

"That is true, but effective birth control was still in its infancy and the youth of that time were running rampant. Their parents forbade it and the moral majority frowned upon it so it was kept in private. That caused the initial outbreak of homosexuality. Young males and females were bombarded by glorified sex and were anxious to try it out. The moral majority, however resisted the freedom of sexual expression and unconsciously kept them segregated from each other until they were of legal age. Instead of waiting, as they were being asked, the males and females turned to themselves for sexual experimentation."

"That is weird. You say that the over exertion of morals of that time caused homosexuality?"

"Not at all, the glorification of sex caused the youth of that time to become sexually active much too early. The misalignment of the age of physical maturity with emotional maturity is what caused males to seek out other males and females to seek out other females. After a few years, the wrongness had been numbed to the point that they accepted it and they were in sufficient numbers to press their acceptance on the law makers of that time."

Blackjack finished the synthetic citric juice he had been drinking. "Roundhouse, that is the craziest thing I have ever heard."

"History is crazy," Roundhouse agreed. "You should try to catch Master Galen's lectures more often. Two weeks ago he told us about a man who turned an entire race of people against another race by blaming all problems on them. He was the key personality in the second of the great wars."

Blackjack recalled hearing about that one. "That was the Nazi leader wasn't it?"

"Right. Try to sit in on some of the lectures. They don't cost anything except time."

Blackjack did not get a chance to reply. A loud pitch that both men recognized as the ship's bosun system sounded interrupting their discussion. "Attention all combat crews. There will be a mandatory briefing in the flight room in ten minutes. All appointments are canceled until further notice."

"What do you suppose that is all about," Roundhouse asked.

"I guess we'll find out in ten minutes," Blackjack answered as he stood. "I am going to round up my children and drag them to the meeting otherwise they will pull the fuse on their bosuns and claim they never heard it."

"That is the price you pay for being a tight," Roundhouse stated. "If you ever want to become a real man, you can join the rest of us jocks."

Blackjack smiled as he headed for the door. That line of teasing was common.