When it came to reproductive potential, especially with multiple concubines expanding the number of wombs allowing extra parallelism, we had as much o... an advantage over all of the other races within the Confederacy, but, then, they'd genetically engineered themselves to slow that down.We humans hadn't had to re-engineer ourselves for limited lebensraum and resources as had all of the other members (assuming we humans qualified as members) of the Confederacy.If the Sa'arm had an Achille's Heel. "Oh, give me a fucking break. We're going to be living together for a year, and this asshole's trying to pick up my mother."So one of these desks is mine, right?" I asked."Oh, yeah, dude, sorry," he said. "I been studyin' my playbook at your desk."He swept his shit off and I started moving in.From there, it just got worse. I seemed to have landed in some football players' hallway. Only about a quarter of us weren't jocks, and of those, I got along with maybe two or three. The jocks? There was a. I was dimly aware of the lounge gradually emptying of bodies, there was some 'gig' somewhere most of them were off to. That left Leila, Rosa the Rhodesian, and me.After the meal, Rosa announced she was off to study and disappeared into the rabbit warren of a house. Leila asked me if I wanted to blow some more dope but I declined. I didn't want to get too stoned in case I had to ride home.We sat in the lounge, Leila finished off a couple of 'roaches'. I sat in a single dusty armchair, not next. That's how we met. My mom was a soldier and was always on the move and for afew years we were in a Pennsylvania small town right on the Maryland line. Anyway, we hung out alot together until the 8th grade when my mom just had to get deployed overseas and I wasn't given a choice to stay. Both of us cried on our last day hanging out. He gave me a puzzle piece necklace that he had a fitting piece on a bracelet he kept. We kept in touch on and off but not long conversations. When I turned 20 I.