I'm a reporter in Arizona, generations from now.

One day, a plane crashes into a red stone ridge. A lonely place, hard to reach. I have to hike up toward the crash site. Above, alone on the ridge, on the cliff-edge, hangs a mansion, where a reclusive millionaire lives. The locals have never met him, and can't say who. I know, though, from research. It's the home of a dog, a very very rich dog. He's a singer, a pop star who went a bit crazy from too much adulation. He decided he must be the reincarnation of Elvis! So this dog, and he's a small dog at that, lives utterly alone on the ridge in that splendid, echoing, fully automated castle, convinced it's Graceland, and he's... the King.

I know better than to knock on THAT door.

The nearest neighbors are out, too. They left only a tiny lapdog to guard the ranch. Their regular guard-dog called in sick, so they rented this little furball. Still, when he sees me he calls 911 and yaps "Hep hep hep". L is a hard sound for small dogs--maybe the babytalk is why little dogs get no respect, though they're as smart as anyone else; the gengineering is the same. I explain why I'm here, and he calms down. Says "The cops arready pooed the survivors from the crash." Two of them are here--some burns, but no serious injuries. He lets me in to interview them.

The two survivors lie in separate sickbeds, in the same room. A dog, and a puma. That's prime cougar country up there--was the cat a witness on the ground, or an actual passenger? I stroke the lion gently once, to say Hello, but interview the dog first--they're usually more articulate. But when I pat him reassuringly, out of habit, I forget how sore he must be. I pat him too hard and he snaps at me angrily. Hurts my hand.

The puma growls in sympathy, a deep, nerve-baring rasp. Will she attack too? I back out, step by step, radiating apology with my body.

I should have known better. Pit bulls are a touchy breed.

Breedism? You can accuse me of breedism after your interviewee bites your hand off...

I wasn't sure, even after writing the dream down, if future-reporter-me was breedist or not. He blamed the bite on breed, not on the biter's stress level. Sounds racist/specist/breedist, but... he'd just had his hand bitten, after all! If the crash victims are allowed to be snappish and irrational after trauma, isn't he?

His/my comment that no one respects little dogs, even though they're just as smart, implies that other talking dogs are breedist themselves.

The dream does have symbolic meaning--a friend praised a song I wrote, so my dream paints me as a small dog convinced he's Elvis! Still a ways to go, Chris... But the dream can also be taken as a literal prediction. As genetic engineering proceeds and animals with human-level intelligence appear, we'd better get it clear how racism develops, or we'll face a whole new wave of it. We've got to learn how to separate acknowledgment of differences from judgments and generalizations about them--and as the dogs show, that's not easy.

When times are good, we mind our manners; but in a crisis, things can... snap.

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