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Mark - two

Mark sat in his posh cell, the decidedly alien tail hanging limply between him and the wall port. Through it he was getting all sorts of information about earth, culture, religion, hard statistics on a number of different topics, and their opinion about the war. The fact that his brain was automatically sorting the rush of information into his memory instead of allowing him to be bombarded with it was slightly discomfiting, somthing he convinced himself was an artifact of his conditioning.

Mark sighed. The circumstances surrounding his being here were not ones his people would tolerate. Any Kitsune caught in human territory was summarily executed without trial, but they had given him a chance. Their insistence on calling themselves humans and referring to him as an Outer grated somewhat, but he could not refuse their claim to it after seeing their history files.

As the datastream flowed through his subconscious, he reviewed his life so far. At birth, he had been selected as having high intelligence. From there he had been raised by the state, taught to think rationally instead of impusively, and given a thorough indoctrination into the evil that was the current occupants of earth, an extremely emotional viewpoint reinforced by arguments now shown to be paper-thin, only maintaining integrity through physical distance from truth. He'd been given a mission, to infiltrate the Kitsune society, and bring back information for Human offensives. When he had de-hypered, he'd fully expected to be blown into free-space hydrogen by the fighter stationed on patrol, but it didn't fire on his unarmed craft. He announced his intention to defect, at that time a lie, and they had trusted him on that score. Then he had gotten to the surface, and met the pilot of the fighter, Sunni.

She had been extremely talkative, telling him enough to turn the held beleifs of his society inside-out, forcing him to examine his life and realize how bad it had really been. She felt sorry for him for growing up in such an environment, and he felt sorry for her for having to fight a battle she really wanted no part of. They had quickly grown close as kindred spirits and their relationship took off from there. He had quickly decided to make his lie truth, and remain on earth.

But he didn't want any more people dying for a foolish war. After reevaluating his beleifs, he had come to the determination that his species had long since abandoned the earth, by their own choice, and no longer belonged there. Humans had left their cradle for the last time, and could not return to it by evicting the new children. It meant he would have a choice to make, but not now, possibly not for some time.

Mark sighed again, and pulled his tail out of the computer port. He got a sharp, painful jolt for forgetting to think the shutdown code. "The tech is already going crazy, better watch that." he thought to himself as he climbed into bed for another sleepless night waiting for Sunni to return to him.