This story is fiction. Actually, the setting of an artificial world in Space and the year being 2109 should have been enough to clue you in about that.
I don't care how old are. I don't care how young you are. However, the law does care, so if you are too young, go away (or at least try not to get caught).
If this story is against the law where you live, then like the young folk, go away. Or at least...
Anzu James: Naked in Orbit, Part 06 (Tueday, Evening)
by Coach Michaels
(low-G martial arts, Western Civ)
* * * * * * * * * *
Botilda and I met at the bike rack, and from there walked to
the Lagrange Dojo. This dojo was founded back in the 2060�s, in one of
the old
Today, it�s located in a grove of cherry trees at the half-G
level. Lagrange-sensei believes this to be the best �default� gravity:
low enough that you can do things you can�t in full-G, but high enough that you
walk around and such almost the way you do in ordinary life. The dojo has
access to training space in everything from 1.75 G to Lunar-G to zero-G, and
pretty much anything in between.
After two days of continuous nudity, I didn�t
hardly think about it� unless I noticed somebody looking at me, of
course. Thing is, EVERYBODY looks at a naked sixteen year old girl
strolling through the park with her hot (though clothed) friend. There
were some whistles, and one woman even shouted, �You should be ashamed of
yourself!� I saw Botilda start to turn, but I squeezed her arm and gave
my head a slight shake. She kept her mouth shut, but for the second time
today I saw her affect that one expression that isn�t attractive on her.
She wore that sneer all the way to the dojo.
Several of the other students were there, as was
Lagrange-sensei. As the others changed into their uniforms, she gave me a
quick head-to-toe look, and asked me to step forward.
�I�m going to embarrass you a little,� she warned me, �but
don�t worry; it won�t last for long.�
�O� OK,� I agreed. Mimosa Lagrange is a pretty decent
sort, and I figured if she said �a little� and �it won�t last for long,� that
it would only be a little embarrassing and wouldn�t last for long. I was
still nervous, but after some of the stuff that had happened to me already, I
figured I should be OK. She did keep me at the front of the room until
all fourteen of the other students had assembled.
�Everybody,� Lagrange-sensei started once they were all
assembled, �some of you may not recognize Anzu James without her
clothing. She is, as you will have guessed, in the Program this
week. I want you all to take a good, long look, because for the rest of
class you will be expected to pay attention to your forms. YOUR forms, not HER form. Got it?�
�Yes, sensei!� everybody shouted.
�Good,� she continued. �Now Anzu, could you please
turn around once, nice and slow?�
I did so.
�Very good. Now please return to your place in line.�
And that was that. We did our warm-ups, our stretches,
and then our sensei led us through several forms. I did catch a few of
the guys sneaking peeks at me from time to time, especially during the
stretches, several of which involve spreading the legs and bending over.
But for the most part I was ignored and everybody did what they were supposed
to. Even when I�d spring two metres into the air and kick, most eyes were
where they needed to be� most.
�Botilda!� Lagrange-sensei barked, �Unless you�ve come up with a technique which
keeps you safe by looking away from your opponent, then pay attention to your
OWN form.�
�Sorry, sensei,� Botilda responded, and then turned back
where she was supposed to be, biting her upper lip and tensing her neck as her
eyes glided over me.
We practiced several moves which involve attacking an
opponent from above. It matters a lot whether I�m in 90% or 10% of normal,
but in 50% jumping feet and all over somebody taller than myself is not a
problem. Kicks to the head are low kicks, and punches are downward
(unless, of course, he�s jumping too). There are also moves which involve
flying grapples, where I pit my mass and speed against my opponent. Since
I can�t depend on having more of that combination (momentum), I also need
leverage. Doing our forms let us practice the lead-up to grapples, but
the grapples themselves need the resistance only another person can provide, so
mostly we practiced punches, knee strikes, elbow strikes, and kicks.
After a half hour of this, we were paired up. Of
course, fifteen doesn�t divide evenly by two, so one student was always paired
with the instructor. I was not surprised when she called me to pair with
her. She acted as if I were fully clothed. She had me deliver a
sequence of strikes, which she blocked. I paid close attention to how she
did it, because as soon as I was finished with that, she delivered the same
sequence back at me, and it was my turn to block. We picked up both the
pace and the complexity of exchanges, until it almost seemed that one turn
began before the other was finished. These were all strikes and blocks I
already knew, but some of the sequences were new. Mostly, it was just
practice in adapting. We even did some leaping passing exchanges, where
we would swoosh past each other a metre or more off of the floor, exchanging
punches, kicks, elbow strikes, and so on in the split second when we were near
enough to each other to do so. The lower gravity made practical things
that in your day only happened in movies.
As always, I gave it everything I had. I might almost
have forgotten my nudity, if it weren�t for the fact that every time any part
of me touched any part of her, I felt it against my own bare skin. Not
that we touched a lot, but we were leaping about and punching and stuff.
Not hard punches, and we weren�t really sparring, but
just trying for accuracy. I knew there would be sparring Thursday, and I
wondered how that would be.
This went on for twenty minutes, and then we were sent to
the showers. The men�s and women�s showers are next to each other, and
since this wasn�t school, I got to use the women�s. In fact, this was the
first time I�d been in a women�s locker room, shower, or restroom since my
Program week had started. And yes, I had used the toilet a few times
yesterday and today. I didn�t describe it because, really, who
cares? Nothing had happened except that I�d sat on the pot and done what
people do. Neither interesting nor sexy.
But anyway, I was in a room full of stripping, showering
women. I (ordinarily) am six days a week, between spoccer and
veegeewushu, so I didn�t even feel bashful. That is, I didn�t feel
bashful until the other girls started talking to me.
�Anzu, you looked so hot out there.�
�Such nice tits!�
�I never noticed how pretty you are.�
What the hell was all this? They�d all seen me naked
before. �Nice tits?� What, and they�d been
lousy tits before? Had they just not been paying attention, or did I
somehow look more attractive when everybody else had her clothes on? I
just said �thanks� several times, took my shower, and then headed for home.
Botilda walked with me most of the way, before turning
towards her own place. I walked the rest of the way alone, and although
several people saw me, only one said anything, and that was just �looking good,
girl!� I didn�t even know who he was, but he was wearing a Systems
Maintenance uniform. I just waved.
And you know, it does feel good to
be told that you�re pretty, or sexy, or �looking good.� Somehow, being
naked made it, I don�t know, stronger somehow. I mean, it�s wonderful to
be told that your blouse is nice, or that you look good in the latest high-waist
jeans, but now� Now, it�s just ME, you know? People are saying that
I look good, just me. Even the compliments in the showers were nice, if a
bit weird.
When I walked in the door, supper was ready. I knew
that Mom and Dad had worked together on this one. Dad would have cooked
the roast beef, sliced the red onion, and sliced the Swiss cheese for the
sandwiches; Mom would have made the chocolate peanut butter cups and chosen the
tawny port for desert and either one might have fried the green tomatoes and mushrooms.
The rye bread would have been bought from a neighbor, Tammi Milson, who was the
best baker in Mendocino. Though officially retired, she made a little
extra money selling home baked goods, and spent about half as much time baking
as she used to at her work-a-day job.
And I saw a bowl of pumpkin soup in my place. I hadn�t
planned on eating any more of it this week, but God was I glad to see it.
I�d been wanting to do everything normally, you
know. But there wasn�t anything normal about any of this! I don�t
�normally� run around naked, and that�s that!
�How was your day?� asked Dad.
�It was OK,� I replied, squirting mustard on the
bread. I always ate two of these; one with mustard, one with mayo.
I would put some of the green tomatoes on the one with mayo,
and some red onion on the one with mustard. Mom and Dad eat them with
lettuce, but I only like lettuce in salad, not on sandwiches.
�You weren�t in any pain today,� Mom wanted to know.
�Briefly,� I admitted. �I took relief, and that solved
it.�
They looked at each other.
�I looked up relief in the pamphlet,� Mom told me. �Right in front of everybody. I can�t believe they
make you do that.�
�Well, it is pretty embarrassing,� I confirmed, �but it was
either that or suffer. What with there being
touching today, I wasn�t going to be able to put it off until I got home.
Besides,� I added, �I didn�t have to do it myself. I had volunteers.�
Dad chuckled. �Boy or girl?�
�Boy, thank you very much!� I aimed a mushroom at him,
but of course didn�t throw it. That would be rude.
Mom gave me a look like she used to when I would scrape my
knee or something. �That must have been pretty nerve-wracking, Apricot.�
�It was,� I admitted, �and to be perfectly honest, I� really
don�t want to talk about it. I mean, that�s almost sex, and I don�t want
to discuss it with my PARENTS, for Pete squeaks.�
They looked at each other. Mom leaned over and
whispered to Dad. I caught the words �understand� and �masturbating,� and
wanted to plant my face in the tomatoes.
�Apricot,� Mom said to me, �sometimes, you need to talk to
us about things, even if it�s uncomfortable. But you seem to have a hold
of� to be hand� you seem to be dealing with this fine on your own. So we
don�t need to talk about it tonight.�
�Cool,� I said. We then talked about the sort of stuff
we talk about when I�m not in the Program. I preferred this talk.
This was when I thanked them for the pumpkin soup.
�You can have it all week, if you like,� Dad assured me.
�I� I don�t know. Can I call during second Homeroom
and let you know?�
�Sure,� Mom said, �as long as you call first thing in second
Homeroom. That�s about the time we coordinate dinner plans, so that�ll be
perfect.�
I decided to hold off on desert until after Steve left; I
have to be careful with port. The only time I�ve ever drank too much
during the school week, it was tawny port. And
chocolate.
No sooner had I announced my intentions than there was a
knock on the door. A quick check of the eye-tap showed that, sure enough,
it was Steve.
He was all bright-eyed and smiling, of course. His
eyes locked on my tits as he walked in, greeted the �rents, and we started in
on the Enlightenment.
We covered Montesquieu and his ideas on the separation of
state powers, and his notions of three types of governments: monarchy, of which
he claimed the guiding principle was honor, republic,
where the principle was virtue, and dictatorship, where it was fear.
Steve saw immediately how this related to the American and French Revolutions,
so I knew he�d been paying attention in school.
Carl Linnaeus and his classification of life forms got
talked about, and Steve related it to the file system
on a computer.
�I�ve got a folder called �Pictures�,� he started, �and
inside that I�ve got ones called �Buildings�, �Earth�, �Mars�, �Maps�, and so
on. Well, that�s kind of like Linnaeus and �Panthera tigris,� what with
�Panthera� being a category and �tigris� being another category inside that
one. I mean, sort of.�
I had to agree that it was similar. But of course he
couldn�t stop there.
�I�ve got another subfolder under �Pictures�,� he started,
blushing, and I knew where this was going. �It�s called �Anzu�, and it
has about a dozen pics.�
I tried not to show any reaction. It was kind of sweet,
but God, he has a folder dedicated to me? And of course, I knew what was
coming next.
�Monday I made a subfolder within that, I guess a
subspecies.� He looked at me, and I just looked back. He was going
to have to say it himself. He blushed furiously, and I was starting to
wonder if he�d ever get around to it.
�It�s called �
I smiled. I couldn�t help it. Not that I was
happy with this whole picture idea, of course. The idea of nudie pics of
myself, available for viewing by somebody else whenever he likes, with no
control from me, forever�
But he was so sweet and cute about it. So while I felt
cold, I couldn�t help but smile.
�So,� I asked, �how many pics are in there so far?�
None, of course, and then he was going to blush like
never before asking if he could have one. And the weird thing is, I wasn�t sure I�d say no. He was just so sweet about
it.
�Five,� he said, �but in two of them you can�t see
anything.�
If I�d been standing up I�d�ve
fallen down.
�How�� I took a deep breath. �How��
He looked worried. �They�re on the O�Neill High School
website. They always have the Program kids on the website. I� I�m
sorry. I can delete the folder.�
I had forgotten all about the school website! I knew
that each week�s Program kids were there, of course. Twice this year I�d
looked up some handsome guy (Bret a couple of months back. Yum!). But I had forgotten it.
�Anzu, I�m sorry,� and he seemed really contrite. �I
really will delete the folder. I just thought, I mean� aug.�
�N� no,� I started, and took another deep breath, �No, it�s
OK. I mean, if everybody else can see them, why shouldn�t
you be��
Everybody could see them! Was the guy in the Systems
Maintenance uniform running his eyes over my naked bod right now? Was
Bret stroking himself to my image? The kid from yesterday�s spoccer
practice: was he exploring the possibilities of preteen masturbation while
staring at my�
I felt dizzy as the possibilities forced themselves on
me. There were probably guys who checked out O�Neill�s website every
week. There could be dozens, hundreds of guys looking at all my most
private parts every night! When the week was over, I and the other
twenty-one Program kids would be taken off, and the new batch put up. But
there was nothing to stop anybody who wanted from saving my pics to their own
folders, just like Steve. They could still see me naked after my Program
week was over! They could see me naked forever!
�Anzu! Anzu, are you OK?� Steve reached out towards me, then drew his hands back, and then just sat there. He
wasn�t blushing any more, and was in fact pale.
I took a deep breath, shook my head like a dog trying to dry
off, and took another deep breath, letting it out slow. �I�m fine,� I
told him. �I just forgot about the website. The idea that
anybody can look at me anytime just kinda�� I took another deep breath.
�I�ll delete the folder right now,� he said, and I saw him
tap his cell.
�No!� I yelped, and smiled at him. I stood up.
�I don�t want you to delete the folder. I mean, you can�t delete anybody
else�s. What sense is it to say that anybody else in Mendocino can see me
naked forever, but you can�t?�
I winked at him. �Truth is,
I�d rather have you looking at me than some of the other yahoos around
here.� I was thinking of Kevin.
He frowned. �Are you sure?�
�Yeah I�m sure,� I answered, �But hold up a sec. I
wanna check out these pics myself.�
A couple of seconds with cell and eyetap, and there I was,
in all my glory. There were six pics now: three from yesterday, three
from today. I remembered that this is how it had been with Bret. In
three of the pics, all you really saw was my face. Well, one of them was
from the top of my tits up, but if you didn�t know you might think I�d been
wearing a strapless dress. One was from the navel up, one was full length
from behind, and one was full frontal Anzu, all charms on display. I
hadn�t really seen myself before now, except briefly in mirrors. I could
feel myself blushing, but as I looked them over again, I noticed something.
I�m pretty. I don�t mean to sound full of myself, and
I�m not trying to say that I�m super-gorgeous or anything like that. I
mean, Botilda and Rashida are better looking than I am, and so are some other
girls. But the truth is, I�m pretty hot.
I�d never really believed it before.
I took off the eyetap, and there was poor Steve, looking all
expectant at me. I smiled and stood a little straighter. �As soon
as you get home,� I told him, �check the site. There�s
six pics of me now, and I wouldn�t want you to miss any.�
�Are� are you sure?�
�Yeah,� I shrugged, �why not? In fact��
I put the eyetap back on and checked the site for the Lagrange
Dojo. Sure enough, they had seven pics of naked me up. There were
other pics of me: one for each new belt I earned, five from when I took second
place in a junior tournament a couple of years back, and so on. I mailed
the address to Steve and took the eyetap back off.
�Check your mail when you get home, too. I think
you�ll find it interesting.�
His eyes grew really big, and I wondered if I might be
raising his hopes too much.
�It�s me at veegeewushu,� I let him know. �There�s seven of me from practice today. They�re under
the link �Anzu�s Naked Fury,� which is pretty corny, but oh well. Your
favorites will probably be the ones of me stretching.�
�You are so amazingly cool.�
I chuckled. �Well hell, if people are gonna be looking
at me, at least I know one of those people is a decent human being.�
�You sure it�s OK?� he pressed. �I mean, you don�t
think bad of me �cause I was looking at you?�
�Boys like to look at naked girls,� I smiled. �I�m not
going to hold it against you that you�re a boy.�
�That�s good,� he grinned, his eyes gliding from head to
toe, ��cause I sure can�t help noticing that you�re a girl.�
I wrinkled my nose at him, and he asked what Thomas
Jefferson would have thought of this.
�Thomas Jefferson liked dark-skinned sixteen year old
girls,� I assured him.
�Ah, yeah,� he nodded, �the slavery thing. Seems inconsistent with all the human rights talk.�
�We�ll be getting into
�How�s that journal coming along?� Steve asked.
�You know,� I started, �it�s strange. I�m writing this
thing, and I keep having to ask, �would my ancestors
know about this?� and then writing about stuff that I think of as pretty
normal. I had to describe spoccer, veegeewushu, the automated lunches at
school, all kinds of stuff. I pointed out the difference between weight
and mass, because on Earth back then, most people used them
interchangeably. And then I find myself going into detail about what I
eat at every meal. I don�t know why I do that. I mean, who cares if
I eat roast beef with mustard or mayo? But there I am, describing every
meal in detail.�
Steve laughed. �You�d better explain where the meat
comes from,� he suggested. �Otherwise, they�ll think we�ve got herds of
cattle and goats and deer and ostriches running around.�
�Omigod, you�re right! Or they�ll think we import it
all from Earth, which would be too expensive for anybody except the very
rich. Well, I�ll add it to tonight�s chapter. Thanks, though.
Another example of how times change.�
And with that, it was time for Steve to go home. I
walked him to the door, and stood on the porch with him. I know a few
people saw me, and one whistled. I ignored it.
Steve made a point of telling me how much he was looking
forward to Thursday, and I reminded him that there were other girls in the
Program this week, if he wanted to check them out on the O�Neill website.
�Actually, I�m looking forward to those veegeewushu pics,�
he grinned.
�Hyah!� I cried softly, whipping a roundhouse kick to the side of his head
(stopping just short of impact, of course). I held the position for about
a second, and then put my foot on the ground, grinning. I stopped
grinning when I saw the look on Steve�s face. He was bright red, bug-eyed
and trembling. I wanted to crawl under the pressure shell and die, again.
OK, look, I wasn�t thinking. Like every other twelve
year old boy who isn�t doing martial arts himself, Steve thinks it�s
ultra-cool, and I�d done the roundhouse thing before, several times. But
I�d been dressed, and it was kind of showing off the skill, you know? Do something cool for the kid. So I�d just done it,
again, like always, without realizing that I�d just given him the crotch-shot
of his life.
�Steve, I� I�m sorry, I�� I hid my face in my hands. I
hadn�t been this embarrassed when guys were touching me. He�s only twelve
years old, for Pete squeaks!
�I hope I�m never attacked by a beautiful naked woman,� he
said, so softly I could hardly make out the words, �I wouldn�t be able to
defend myself.�
�Steve, I�m sorry. I just wasn�t thinking. I
forgot��
�There�s nothing to apologize for, Anzu.� He grinned,
and his voice became normal, almost. �We�ll just call it a Reasonable Request
and let it go.�
�Works for me,� I chuckled. �Now you get home, and
we�ll hope you aren�t gang-raped by a pack of Program girls.�
�I don�t think I�d mind,� he said, winking. And with
that, he was off, turning to wave just before turning the corner. I waved
back, and realized that I was standing naked outdoors again. So I went
inside.
I chatted with Mom and Dad a little, ate one of my chocolate
peanut butter cups, and drank half a glass of the tawny port. I took the
other half up to my room, and another CPB cup. I have to be careful with
port.
I started right in on this journal. I answered the
mail, of course, but I put off my soap until tomorrow. I spent nearly an
hour researching the history of the meat question, and wrote that part
first. I then went back and started with when I woke up to the music of
Shaggy. I�ll have to finish this chapter in Homeroom tomorrow.
OK, the �where do we get our meat� question. It�s
cultured.
In your day, tissue culturing for medical purposes is just
starting to take off. You might get a skin graft that started as a
millimetre of human skin, but was then made to grow in the laboratory until it
was enough for grafting. Just a few square millimetres could be grown to
provide hundreds of square metres, so fewer and fewer skin grafts came from
either cadavers or from taking a little from one part of the body and grafting
it on somewhere else.
And it isn�t just skin. Cartilage was already being
grown by your time, even heart valves were being turned out of
laboratories. In your day, there was even experimentation with bone
tissue, muscle tissue, fatty tissue, and blood vessels. Except for the
skin and cartilage, none of it is really practical yet (yet in your time, I
mean), but the work is progressing.
Well, what can be done with a human being can
be done with a cow, a chicken, a fish, and so on. Samples are taken from
still-living animals, and the cells are made to reproduce in specialized
meat-production facilities. Most of meat is muscle, some is fat, and
bones or skin can be included, if you want a T-bone in your T-bone steak.
Mostly, though, our meat is grown and sold boneless.
Now, when cultured meat was first developed, it was too
expensive to compete with raised meat, it required the drawing of fluids from
living animals, and it just wasn�t very good. But the technology
improved, as technology tends to do. Remember, the first electronic
computer was the size of a house, drew so much power that a whole city�s lights
dimmed when it was turned on, cost millions of dollars, and was less powerful
than some of the wrist watches of your day (let alone now). It was the
2020�s before cultured meat became the equal in taste and cost to farm-raised
meat, and it was still inferior in texture. But by the late 2030�s,
cultured meat was taking over fast food and even the supermarkets started
selling cultured venison. By this time, most people couldn�t tell the
difference in most dishes, but that didn�t stop purists from declaring cultured
meats to be bad, horrible, �frankenfood,� yucky. Enough consumers
disagreed that even with chicken and beef, people were soon buying as much
cultured meat as farm-raised. The purists got louder, and somehow the
word �metallic� started being used to describe the taste of meat grown in a
factory. Exactly why the food would suddenly have a metallic taste when
it didn�t before, or how it could have tasted metallic all along but nobody
noticed before, is a mystery.
About 2060 the matter was settled by a very public series of
blind taste tests. For two weeks, two hundred fifty of the loudest
purists tasted one hundred dishes made with twenty-two kinds of meat. For
each dish there was one sample made from raised meat and one sample made from
cultured meat. In only three cases were these supposed experts able to
tell the difference. In one, shrimp cocktail, there was a slight
preference for the caught-in-the-ocean shrimp, and in another, wild venison
steaks, there was an even narrower preference� for the cultured meat! In
flame-roasted wild duck there was a bit of a question as to whether or not the
results were within the margin of error, but the preference (if there was one)
was for cultured duck meat. While the word �metallic� did get used, it
was used as often to describe farm-raised meat as cultured, and it was
overwhelmingly obvious that the word was being used because it was fashionable,
not because it reflected any reality.
Many of the purists cried foul, and claimed that they had been
set up or that the cultured meat people had somehow cheated. But the
whole process was observed by so many reporters and by representatives of the
purists themselves that nobody really believed that there was any
cheating. After this, cultured meats pretty much took over the
supermarkets. Now, it�s hard to find meat, on Earth or in Space, which is
not cultured.
This is cheaper than ranching, because you don�t need square
kilometres of open range land, nor do you need to deal with manure and urine
and thousands of cows belching methane into the atmosphere. Can you
imagine a small world like Mendocino trying to deal with all of that?
Also, you don�t have to feed animals food from land which could be growing food
for people. Since the meat is grown under sterile conditions, you don�t
need to feed animals antibiotics, and the meat is parasite-free. You
could, if you wanted, feast on raw chicken and pork, and not worry about
salmonella bacteria or trichina worms or anything like that. Today, the
saturated fat of red meat has been replaced with Omega 3 fats, so it�s
healthier than meat from an animal.
Finally, there is the ethical advantage that nothing has to
be killed. This is important to some people, and doesn�t matter to
others. But with culturing, it just isn�t a part of the equation.
I�ve seen real pigs, and frankly, I wouldn�t want to eat anything off of one of
those dirty, snot-faced, pissing shitting ugly things. Horses aren�t so
ugly, in fact they�re beautiful, but they look at you, and seem to have
feelings. I wouldn�t want to eat one of those, either.
Since you don�t need all the room for herds and ethical
questions are moot, you have a huge variety of meat to choose from. You
can have tuna (without mercury), rabbit, beef, pork, venison,
whatever. Since each culture room in a meat production facility can
produce a different kind of meat, and a room only needs to be about the size of
my bedroom to produce a ton every few months, you can have a good variety out
of a facility the size of a single barn from the old days. Meats that
wouldn�t be practical or acceptable before become reasonable. Imagine how
many hummingbirds you�d have to slaughter to make even one meal with
hummingbird as the main course. Even those who don�t think of themselves
as animal rights types might object to that. But with culturing,
hummingbird meat can be grown and sold by the kilo. Even endangered
species can provide a few cells to produce steaks and chops and sausages.
Some people love loggerhead turtle. This animal is endangered on Earth,
and of course there�s no way to raise them for meat here. But ground
loggerhead sausage is for sale in the local market, and no animal died for
it. There are even a few extinct animals where enough cells have been
gathered that their meat is now available. I�ve eaten mammoth.
The one thing cultured meats don�t provide of course is the
thrill of the hunt, or the excitement of landing a huge fish. But then,
you wouldn�t get that in a supermarket anyway. Nor would you get it from
a farm or ranch.
I guess I should point out that leather, fur, and ivory are
also cultured. I have several ivory anklets and a chinchilla fur coat,
and no elephant or chinchilla died for any of them. I even have a
hummingbird-skin jacket, iridescent feathers and all. I hate to think
about how many dead hummingbirds it would have taken to make that without
culturing, but instead I wear it with pride.
Well, when I�m not naked.
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