It's the deep future. Humans still dominate the world with advanced technology but they're turning unworldly, losing interest in Earth, as they spread into space--and infospace. Several species of animals have evolved into people.

I'm in a minority group who still talk to animal people. But for me, it's more than talk. Touch, pet, massage... I feel a definite sexual attraction!

This isn't taboo here; we could even marry. Though I haven't committed to any one girl. Feel torn between several--from bold to shy, from bookish to soccer nut.

They're all too adorable--I can't choose.

But then there's no hurry... is there?

Slowly I realize something's very wrong. Our group of animal sympathizers means to encourage them into some kind of behavior that'll destabilize the world's ecosystem. Then a rival human faction who want COMPLETE data on every creature and event will declare the Earth nonviable, and RECORD THE WORLD--using a process that destroys it! It'll become just a digital memory for simming. And we know about this and accept it, rationalize "it's the best for them, doomed as they are." We're unwitting agents provocateurs!

I've been raised in this technoculture and share its values. I didn't even notice that my love (and my human friends' love) for animal people conflicts with our plans for them! Brainwashed! It's creepy to wake out of my moral sleep, but I have to. Lulled by sexual desire and genuine affection, I'm luring those I claim to love toward eventual destruction.

And what of the pre-sentients--ravens, wolves, a dozen more species evolving bigger brains, nearing the verge of personhood? With help, or just a few millennia left in peace, they too might cross the threshold. Don't they have the right to become people after us? If humans want to abandon Earth, fine, but it's the home of millions of species and they have rights too. I have to stop this!

Wake up shaken that I drowned in warm fuzzy feelings and didn't question my values for so long...

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Affectionate genocide?! The dream echoes Octavia Butler's disturbing books about the Oankali, a race biologically driven to swallow whole worlds' bio-resources to reproduce themselves. They rationalize the destruction by recording all the genetic codes of the creatures they exterminate so they could theoretically be brought back. They feel affection and sexual attraction for local people, even intermarry--but lie to their native lovers, hide their genocidal plans. Butler is of course talking about colonialist, racist and sexist attitudes lurking in us... or people we know.
• Fear I'll rationalize evil: saw a Delia's catalog today (teen fashion) and thought some of the girls in it looked hot. But they're under-age, so I worried that I'm a pedophile, that I'll fall in love with a girl who's too young and hurt her without even realizing... Although... hmm. I was also troubled by the values in that catalog--flippant little quotes like "I wish I lied better. I wish I didn't have to." My dream thinks dishonesty's even more toxic than pedophilia?!
• Why ANIMAL people? Because... I betrayed my body today. Repeatedly. I got hungry but was slow to cook and eat. Then I wrote music too long--denying my body rest or exercise. My mind acted like a benevolent colonial master who knows better than those lazy natives--just like an Oankali.
• ACTION: my feelings and appetites (sexual, dietary or otherwise) aren't predatory. It's my values and discipline that are toxic! Brainwashed. A mind is a terrible thing! And mine, it seems, has take over.

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