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search project and whatever the o utcom e was, whether to discover something. whether the research pro j ect or w h at ever-there was an accom plishment that they were very pleased about and very proud of, and they were celebrat ing. It was as though, you know, maybe l ike maybe he'd gotten a Nobel Prize for extraterrestrial biology-that kind of something or other. And he was every body on the ship was ha ppy. Everybody was-it seems there were more this time than the three. And there was someone who became the deer later, was like a younger person, more like my age. Or it had the feeling of being more like a contemporary and it was a female feeling, like a friend. But I hav e that feeli n g about it and yet the deer didn't have it-it's as though it were the same person and yet when I thin k about the deer. the d eer didn't necessarily feel like a female deer as op
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posed to a male deer.
Androgynous? No. Maybe it was j ust a level we were communicating w as one where you were oblivious to which sex it is, but there was definitely sort of a female friend on the ship, and a lso at least two of the original people who had been on the first trip. Maybe she was their daughter or their granddaughter or um ptee-umpth granddaughter or whatever. It seems like it was a relative that got to come along to meet me and it was a party. They were celebrating and they said they wan ted to share it with me because my research or their resea rch was-interesting, I have a twitch in my l eg now fat her scar-BH)-their research used their visit with me so they wanted to share it with me because my contributions had been really helpful for them. And so we were ha v in g a party and they were tell ing me about-they were having a hard time explaining to me why it was so exciting. except that the older man who had done the research was really beside himself with exc ite ment. As though he had accomplished something that he was really proud of. It was real1y n eat. And, uh, it had to do with research and it had to do with the study, but it seemed like its sign ificance was greater. I mean, it was obviously very deep to him . It was something m ore than abstract re search. It was something either that had changed their