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For all the public spectacles and noise the gangbangers caused, and how rumors abounded of that creepy married couple who actively spied through open blinds for sexual thrill, Padridge Apartments was secretly a great place to live. This kept rent low, and while the smaller profit margins were an annoyance to its landlords, the demand was high enough that they didn't mind if a renter decided to suddenly move, or fell behind in his payments and was persuaded to move. The low prices meant they had a lot of wily customers that saw past obnoxious neighbors, and not too many negligent customers who were intimidated by the rumors and Ricky's gang.

Because it was planned to be a medium-high extended stay set of suites close to the exploding city of Puerto Panuela, half the rooms were connected to industrial-grade water heaters that were supposed to cover the entire complex. It had been a fool's gambit by the original owner, thinking that Puerto Panuela's riches would trickle over into Leakguard. The suburb wore its moniker quite well.

Kioga and Ceylon entered their large bathroom and got to quick work prepping for their relaxation. They eyed their medium-grade changing table with disdain, knowing the promise of their technological marvel from the Mercatio was on its way. Ceylon thoroughly cleaned Kioga's rump, not only to clear it of globs of his semen and small streaks of fecal matter, but to make it perfect since it was going into a swim diaper. That wasn't to say it'd have been an easy process: gryphon had done quite a good job on that rear end, even with his paws tied behind his back.

That was nothing to say about his own predicament, in which the gryphon had received a thorough golden shower. He was dripping from face to foot, and made quick movements over the carpeted portions of their apartment to get to hardwood, where a puddle marked each place where Ceylon had stood.

Kioga had purchased a cutesy novelty snap-on Praetorian temperature indicator from a pass through the gift shop they'd set up at the Ferris-Chalmper tower. FC had switched a large number of its security staff over to an offshoot of the Praetorian Guard, distributing a few on the "professional dress" levels and the rest on the "pleasure dress, pants optional, toilets rare" floors. This temperature indicator was merely a brass totem with an arrow indicating the ideal faucet angle, with their trademark slogan, "DON'T" hovering on the right side. These hot tubs used to be able to boil lobster, before the collection of landlords balanced "excess" against their liability waivers.

They had nearly-unlimited hot water, which honestly was the biggest chunk of their rent. Ceylon let the tub fill as he cleaned Kioga and changed him into a swim diaper, although he was too efficient and it was only two feet deep by the time Kioga was back on his paws, nice and snug.

"I appreciate the sacrifice," Ceylon said, leaning down to troll his fingers through the rolling, tumbling water. It was hot enough that he had to dip his hand in twice, but the second time immediately started loosening muscles and stress until he feared he'd need a swim diaper as well.

"Eh," the cheetah said with a shrug. "I think in this case, I'd prefer to see your eyes lazily rolling into the back of your head than I would my boiled eggs floating to the surface."

"Your sac doesn't get that loose."

"Gimme enough time, and I'll look like a goat."

Ceylon snorted and slid his naked, aching body in. He had to do it three times, as the first two times felt like they'd steam his buns. The third time, he let out a small, "whooh!" as the tip of his flaccid penis was the first part to hit the water.

"I guess that's the disadvantage of doggy-style," Kioga said as he slipped in, no problem. He hid his wince as the hot water hit him: he was an anthroid from Africa, first generation! ... who had also been softened by American excess.

The city council of Puerto Panuela was currently embattled in a debate of expanding that excess, of reconsidering certain drugs and prostitution for commerce, yet its richest board member, Prometheus Pendrael, would only call in by computer, his voice would be garbled, and he'd always coyly abstain.

"Councilmembers, I know that AssDash will be a great service. You've already approved DoorDL, and you know some of those 'service visits' end in happy memories!"

"They all end in happy memories; that's why Ferris-Chalmpers is a partner in the app."

"You know what I mean. So why not AssDash?! We can pivot it to simply sell food at a $200 upcharge!"

"And then the customer reviews will be about how their burger was hot, yet frigid at the same time. How many euphemisms do you want to add to the bureaucracy stew?" said Pendrael.

It was quite possible that Pendrael was able to project the future, and Kioga had asked him a few times whether America was going the way of Rome or the way of the Jetsons. But, of course, the keskin CEO was harder to pin down than nailing a bubble to the wall.

Kioga spread his arms across the top ridge of the tub, which was wide and long enough to allow four short men to lay down in. Ceylon took the corner directly opposite, and once having managed to sink down to his breast, similarly spread his arms. His wings collapsed neatly behind him. Their feet found each other, and in the same prudent way that Kioga kept his swim diaper, Ceylon kept his talon corks. The gryphon's osprey feet had very long toes, which was natural for a perching half-species, and slid in between Kioga's toes like fingers. They were so long, in fact, that Kioga's very normal cheetah toes felt stubby, that his non-hand foot was merely a club on the end of his leg.

"Do you ever perch on things?" asked Kioga, squeezing Ceylon's interwoven toes.

"You mean squat on furniture?" asked Ceylon. "I think it's a bit more practical to sit or stand."

"But have you?"

Ceylon raised his paws, similarly long in finger and talon. "It can be very handy being half-monkey, as it were, though I do not work in construction and so there aren't too many scaffolds I can take advantage of."

Kioga chuckled, nodded. "And how do you feel living in a world that's not exactly built for you?"

The gryphon shrugged. "I don't mean to toot my own horn, though there's a pun in there how your own bowels are quite improvisational, that a diaper works as the mute of a trumpet, and your scatting is quite profound ... ah. You reach the destination and then wonder what the trail back is."

Kioga chuckled again. "Tooting."

"Ah! Well, in fairness and mercy to all--"

"Inferior species?"

"Stawp."

"But in fairness to the less diversely-equipped."

"Yes. I don't mind wings and hand-feet. The proper climbing gloves and I could race Argos up the wall. But I'd definitely lose to you in a foot race."

"You'd be disqualified for not having feet," Kioga winked.

"Staaawp," Ceylon laughed, squeezing Kioga's toes with his own.

In the hot, steamy bath filled with relaxing bubbles, burbling water jets, and a soft lavender soap that filled the humid room, there came about a lull in conversation: they let their many neurons do the talking for a bit, be it the wonderful scent, the muscle-melting heat, the sensation of their digits tied with each other, and/or the soothing, happy presence of the other in the room.

Kioga smiled, his eye in a bit of a half-wink. "It's too bad you're continent. It'd be a lovely excuse to take care of you."

The lynxsprey pulled water through his mutton-tufts, which had fallen to look like a catfish's whiskers, or a Chinese sorcerer's mustache. "Even the most reliable car needs attention. And since when do you need an excuse?"

"Fair," he said with a smile.

"But yes, it's been quite the day, hasn't it? Went from marginal mortal peril to baby jail to a shrine of consumerism and fetish."

"The word consumerism is a funny one," Kioga said, playing with his blunt claws. "People say it with such haughty condescension, but we as a living animal that consumes energy rather need a lot of it. And yes, this absolutely trickles down to plush, kitten-print diapers that elevate me to a place of feather-like peace."

Amused breath rushed out Ceylon's nostrils, and he went about attempting to flatten the rest of his feline face-fur. His ear tufts stood straight as needles. "Consumerism, I think, usually refers to object-obsession, not entropy."

"Oh, for sure," said Kioga, sinking down and stretching his legs so he could stroke the gryphon's bird shins with his feet. "But it can almost feel the same as people accusing any woman chemist of being a witch."

"Let us just remember that the anthroid makes the diaper, not the other way around. Anthropomorphism: we the living, breathing, thinking; ascribe our traits to objects."

Kioga scrunched his face and nodded. "Yeah, you can kinda separate the people who wear their suits versus those being worn by their suits. Not that I want to make some legal or holy edict to prevent anyone from being a 'poser.' I'm not the gatekeeper of heaven nor the Munerum. Some people can fake it until they make it. Farbeit for me to trip them with red tape and jealousy."

"Very noble," Ceylon said with a chuckle, reaching for some shampoo. His paw snuck past the bargain 5-in-1 stuff that Kioga, the Celebrity Emperor God-King of Diapers, habitually bought, and snapped up a pleasant, sea-scented brand-name.

"No sarcasm?"

The gryphon smiled. "Ah, no; it's just a funny concept, bragging that you won't commit minor social atrocities."

"Man is only a standing leakguard away from dribbling madness and the open-pit latrine of temptation."

"But," Ceylon sighed with a grin, "his stains can be washed clean. Even yours."

"And other scatoreligious metaphors."

The gryphon began scrubbing his arms, filling the room with the sweet and salty scent of an ocean beach with a good breeze. "I was wondering," he began, pulling each of his lynx mutton-tufts into a stiff soapy spike--

"Pull them sideways!" Kioga interjected.

The lynx gave him a bemused look. "I'm not English and if you'll check our storage shed, I do not ride a penny-farthing."

"But!"

"You can buy one, and I'll patch up your knees."

"With a kiss, too, right?"

"There is no medical basis--"

"A kiss makes it better."

Ceylon sighed. "Well actually--goodness gracious; the internet's ruined that phrase. In all honesty, there is a neurological reason as to why rubbing or touching diminishes the sensation of pain."

"See? A kiss makes it better."

"And it's called pain gate control theory. Anyway," he resumed, twirling his lynx spikes downward into corkscrews, batting Kioga's paws away when he groped at his tufts. "Grow your own!" he laughed.

"With what, plant food?"

"I'd guess Pendrael, Davis, and Co. are working on a hair tonic?"

"Top-secret."

"I guess we'll have to redact our dinner conversations, then. I trust Pendrael's doing this all above-board?"

"I would guess that he's within the guidelines of Geneva and Geneva-Centauri II."

"Geneva what?"

"Redacted."

"Who's working in the R&D, though?" asked the lynxsprey with a queer grin, now working on the tufts and follicles atop his head. Sweeping it all back, he looked like a yakuza chairman. "I believe Geneva's got quite a few regulations regarding animal experimentation."

"Haaaaa," Kioga honked, then attempted with his foot to tickle Ceylon's groin. A pair of thighs intercepted his foot and trapped it.

The two giggled and splashed at each other and thrashed a bit, then the gryphon eventually restored the cheetah's foot to him. "Ahem. That said, I was wondering what you thought of Pendrael's creeping influence over this city."

"What I think?" asked Kioga. He stuck his foot above the water level to stretch his toes, twinging a little bit as he felt himself leak into his swim diaper--first some fluid and then some hot semisolid--then took a breath after his abdomen stopped its compressions. Ceylon easily detected those micro-tremors of discomfort on Kioga's face, and grasped the cheetah's sole to massage it. "I guess it all comes back to the question, 'what if I were king' or even better, 'what if I were Pendrael?' which I'm supposing I'd do as good a job as him."

"But he's entirely hands-off."

"Well, he's not having any news programs or political platforms of 'Diaper Rights,'" said Kioga, "But with our commercials and specialized shops, special parks, he's definitely breaking some sort of ground."

"And that's not to mention the Carcer Contempla itself, which has compulsory ABDL exercises as punishment-slash-therapy-slash-rehabilitation."

"But the C.C. is only for crimes of an excretory nature in the first place," said Kioga. "So in a way, these 'stupid criminals' have already punched their ticket when abusing the ABDL paradigm."

Ceylon removed a paw from Kioga's foot to rub his own chin, then pulled it back through his fur to get shampoo out of his eyes. "Can we really trust Pendrael to be all-knowing? Or at the very least to know better? That all the compulsory nursery sessions, enemas, diaper changes, and high-chair meals are restorative and corrective, instead of being some deprecatory humiliation?"

Kioga leaned his foot against Ceylon's head and the two rubbed against each other. "From my conversations with Prometheus, I get the impression that the stylized punishment is a bit condescending on purpose. A citation and fine might be annoying, but it's easily forgotten once you make your payment. I'm not sure if he was there when Aesop was writing his fables, but at least I get the sentiment of reciprocal punishment. If you're going to act like a baby, you get treated as a baby, etcetera."

"Sure, and the poetry rhymes," said Ceylon, dunking his head in the water to rinse his top half off. When he stood to reach for some conditioner, his body rose above the water level and Kioga appreciated the naked, wet male gryphon's form--sopping and matted as it was, with a lovely stream of water running from his wiggly bits--before he splashed back down. "But is there a system for the mentally troubled? I do not think that doubling down on their trauma would necessarily exorcize them of their demons."

"Oh!" said Kioga with a ripple, shifting in the water. "I could ask Melinda about those, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the nursery or nurse rooms are toned down for more of a clinical setting: a doctor's office, a place of healing. Something to signify that we're helping with a pause button. A place to regroup."

"That's very positive phrasing," said Ceylon, rinsing off his conditioner. He took the sprayer wand and stood up again, hosing himself down from head to knee. When he turned around, Kioga borrowed the wand and helped him wash his undercarriage. Just like the diaper changes, the erogenous zones didn't always have to be a place of scandal: just natural features. "But it's all still compulsory."

"It is," said Kioga, watching the gryphon step out of the tub and into a body-length towel. "But I suppose we're getting less into territory of Pendrael and more into that of, 'by whose right can a person be detained?'"

"Not necessarily," said the gryphon, gradually fluffing out as he pulled the towel across himself, "We're still on the topic of Pendrael's active treatment. He doesn't just sit you in a room: he prescribes, treats, then releases. I'm not sure if I saw any consent forms in there."

"It is a prison-hospital, isn't it," Kioga said, rubbing his chin. He remained in the tub, enjoying the warm water, but he knew he wasn't getting any cleaner. In fact, with occasional bursts of heat, pressure, and/or electricity from within his pelvic cradle, he knew he was getting a bit dirtier. "Perhaps give them a menu for restoration?"

"At least after the initial arrest, after the threat has been neutralized. I've a theory that an involuntary bowel movement is at least a little more pleasant than several thousand volts." Ceylon looked about for his clothing, then went to the shelf for a fresh set of pajama bottoms. Kioga, of course, watched him step into them, seeing each leg lift and the natural wiggle of certain parts as his body shifted.

"I'll put that across to him," said Kioga, "though the Praetorians would need to maintain their air of authority."

"Do you think the Carcer Contempla is the best solution?" asked Ceylon. At this point, he was getting his toothbrush, so Kioga decided to get out of the tub so they could continue the conversation. As Kioga dried around the inside of the waistband of his swim diaper, he caught a faint odor of unpleasant waste. The thing probably had a few more hours in it.

"Strange measures for strange times," Kioga chuckled. "Quite area-appropriate, I might say."

"Hah, that's fair," the gryphon said around his toothbrush. Kioga reached, also, for a pair of pajama pants, then looked down, saw that he was clothed anyway, then shrugged and went to the sink in his briefs.

"On a more general scale," said the cheetah, "what I've seen is that a lot of our constructs, be it the clothes we wear, the laws we make, the technology we invent, is created in response to our general needs, to the best of our knowledge and foresight, against the spur of the moment demand. It is all relatively rough and none of it's perfect--even a Davis & Co. diaper will leak--but really our goal is to land in the realm of a positive gain. Even if Pendrael does know an even better solution, I'm thinking he's waiting for us to find it."

"Hmm," said Ceylon, spitting out his toothpaste. "That it's all done through anthroid language. People aren't going to pick up on what they don't understand; I could see the reciprocal punishment as speaking their exact language. Their methods do seem at least somewhat gentle."

"I could sit in on a couple of meetings," said Kioga, "because we know that, kinda like car repair, you gotta take yourself apart a bit in order to get at the broken element. Now, you can do that like a cliche army flick and shatter a man to pieces, or you can help him with the breakdown so he knows where all the parts are. I'm pretty sure the latter is what the C.C. is doing, but handsome language like this could definitely rattle around a few hundred company inboxes."

Ceylon rinsed his mouth and went to the door. He looked back at his boyfriend, whose brief was at least an anonymous blue, and shrugged. "Get some fresh air?"

"Yeah, that'd be great," said the cheetah with a twitch of his tail. "I'm not stinking up the place too badly, am I?"

The gryphon chuckled. "Just a lively twinge. Come on."

Fixing themselves two hot cups of tea, they went out onto the back balcony, which was wide and deep enough to support a full patio dinner set. On days which were not too vindictively cold, use it fairly often for a quick, lively breakfast, enjoying the far-off mountainous and green Wyoming landscape interspersed with a couple smaller developments in between. Tonight, those clutches of buildings twinkled like small swarms of fireflies, and the mountaintops glowed faintly under a three-quarters moon.

With a burst of fresh, cool air and a hot mug of tea in his paw, Kioga easily shrugged the squish of the minor bulk between his legs as he sat down on a three-person patio couch. Ceylon sat against him and the two leaned together.

For a few long moments, the two merely enjoyed the clean night air, the scent of night and of grass intermingled with a tiny twinge of gasoline, their shampoos, their tea, and the occasional earthy musk of the cheetah's protective brief. They let their lungs circulate, their hearts beat, their eyes wander, and their minds splish and splash with waves of occasional thought. For a few long moments, it was pleasant just to be.

Their teacups went to the glass table in front of them and one paw each interwove with the other. Bare stomachs made their arms rise and fall with breath. The clamor of the day and previous night shuffled itself away as a memory, another file archived, and they looked out over the towns, the mountains, and even their own legs, with a present and curious objectivity. Things that were.

"It's kind of funny, being in the moment," Ceylon said, pushing their interwoven paws over to rest on Kioga's bare stomach. The bottom of his hand brushed the pleated waistband. "Because it can all be very wonderful, and of course you want to savor the many aspects. I very much like your spotted legs, that long tail, this nice view, that sturdy balcony railing, those little-bitty buildings out there that house all those different people ..."

"It is all very nice," Kioga said with a smile, squeezing Ceylon's fingers.

"And then you keep thinking, or at least I do, and it can get to a point where you're trying to shrink the Earth down to a marble you can hold between your finger and your thumb. Some sort of exploration-lust, as it were: maybe so I can contextualize this moment."

"It could look very tiny, if the world's a marble."

"Just the opposite! In a way. That if we can connect this moment as a gear in a machine, we can follow all its vibrations to the bigger picture."

"Aha."

"Perhaps the universe is shaped like a diaper," said Ceylon. "If we define the 'universe' through the lens of our experience."

"Ain't that solipsism?"

"Soft solipsism," said Ceylon. "In that the universe's quadrillions of features only 'exist' to us as we deem them relevant."

"A restaurant's menu is only the items you order."

"Yup! And the universe is shaped like a diaper because we love diapers. Through a diapered lens do we view the world."

"Our universe is the diaper."

"Right, if you're prepared for the ramifications. Beyond, of course, the troublesome and fun question of, 'why shouldn't I wear adult diapers?' is the question, 'why do I think, and what are the ramifications of my ability to second-guess everything?'"

"Oh boy."

Ceylon changed positions, laying himself down on the couch with the back of his head squarely in Kioga's diapered lap. The warmth and moderate thickness was definitely appreciated. Ceylon used his paws as partitions as he parsed his thoughts.

"Soft solipsism ... at least the awareness of it, awareness that we must pick and choose what exists on the stage of our mind, demonstrates that the universe within our mind is dynamic. We must coordinate our mindscape with our biological body, as both of them have limitations but these limitations very often do not align. Where, then, do we find their harmony?

"Where is our correct frontier? Upon a graph of biological versus imaginative, what point is the greatest yield? I could suggest that the imaginative, guided by rationality, allows us to rise above nature--let us control it--but then again nature is, effectively, just another word for existence. We just evolve within nature's purview and happen to come out at the top of the curve. Nature's nature--evolution--rewards competence. So the end product of nature is us! Imagination is part of our biology. Our instinct includes abstract thought."

"As much as some people try to avoid it," said Kioga, stroking the lynxsprey's head. He felt briefly a little self-conscious about his brief and its gradually increasing (de)composition--such was the nature, ha ha, of incontinent entropy--but as far as he could tell, his boyfriend didn't notice or mind the smell. Self-consciousness gave way to self-confidence, then, because suddenly his ungainly bathroom pants, warm with urine and slick with bacteria-infused dirt, were again a natural part of him. But what was natural, then? Natural is the "necessary?" Kioga often thought that pleasure was necessary, especially if fulfilling. Happiness felt good and feeling good was nature's way of signaling that something was important, yes?

Even if Kioga didn't have the social and personal imperative of self-containment, adult diapers could still, therefore, be deemed natural and necessary.

"On this planet," Ceylon clarified. "Anyway: how far apart from animals are we, truly, given that a large number of patterns and needs in anthroids are optimized in the same way as they are in nature otherwise?"

"Is it reasonable, heh, to say that we are animals with enhanced reason?"

"It is," said Ceylon, shifting his head in Kioga's lap. The swish of the plastic was sharp in his ears, but the soft thickness, along with the slight musk of urine and male pheromone, was soothing. "Our nature is to spread and thrive--as is any living organism's--and we have rationality as a magnificent crowbar. But you see abuses in our actions, moves that are effectively a net-loss: either short-sightedness, seemingly profitable, which handicaps oneself, or some irresponsible move that steals, imposes, or handicaps another: a city builds itself too densely and people are crammed into block apartments, choking on the smog of cars. A factory upstream has to dispose of its waste, but the town downstream suffers all its poisons.

"Of course, we cannot predict everything ever that may happen," Ceylon said as an aside, "but within reason, imagination, we should be able to predict some ramifications. Now here's the crux: can and should we separate ourselves from our thrive-drive to mitigate some of the crises we are facing, or may face? Or does that effectively cut off our muzzle to spite our face, turning us toward a future of dusty technocracy, where our biological needs are met, and pleasure should just be left to the imagination, which is zero emission? Where is the proper equilibrium? It sounds miserable, because we forgo our will to live."

"From which angle?" asked Kioga. It was an excellent night: the air was cool and there was enough of a breeze to cycle its freshness, without molesting their many fur follicles. "One's will to live being that of growth, accomplishment, and self-actualization, or their will to live being pleasure?"

"The former, definitely," said Ceylon, then hesitated. "But the latter as well."

"I think such a technocracy in which we guarantee our ability to live and our environment's sustainability would be a failure if we forget the third part: enjoyment. No point in living if you don't feel alive."

"But what ..." Ceylon started, then interrupted himself. "I suppose we all know, to some extent, what 'feeling alive' is. It's motion, it's progress, it's achievement. Sure we can make books, games, and TV shows while maintaining complete resource equilibrium, trying to tune our entire world from resource management on down (taking into account an environment's carrying capacity), but then again a good story is one that taps into emotions. A tragedy to steel us for sorrows in real life, or a hero's story to inspire. And inspiration is the spark that can set a fire. Fires can heat a furnace and boil water for a turbine, but they can also consume entire structures."

"Kind of funny to think that all stories are pornography, in a sense ... they arouse something within us," said Kioga.

"Well, yes," said Ceylon, turning on his side and laying his head back in Kioga's lap, "but in the connotative sense, porn is an amalgamation of contrivances to 'cheat' the final climax. Denotatively, yes, it's just the 'action' scene itself, be it coitus or an intricate scheme or a dramatic reveal. Foreplay and plot are the same, in this sense: it has to be good, nuanced, and cohesive in order to naturally arrive at the climax."

Kioga's head jerked back with epiphany, then he chuckled. "Yeah; yeah. That's fair."

"But back to my point," said Ceylon, "In summary, anthroid passion is why we cannot make a machine world. So now we're balancing the wildfire of anthroid ambition ... which could be called good greed ... as well as the voracious, shortsighted 'catch as catch can' of anthroid opportunism ... which could be called bad greed ... we balance a very unsteady race against a planet with steadily renewing systems."

"Unsteady race?" asked Kioga. "I thought we were just nature's most premium brand."

"Unsteady in that we are such a premium, powerful species, that we are in ourselves a force of nature. We can be supremely destructive, as we have enormous potential, and we can use our power however we wish to."

"Do you think we can kill the planet?" asked Kioga.

"That's the lesser concern," said Ceylon. "Primarily, we do not want our shockwaves to kill ourselves. We have so many delicate systems in place--you see this in the various economic recessions, not even mentioning the great tyrant exploits of various governments past and present, rise and fall, starvation and genocide--but really the planet is one big company; however we do not see or know all its systems and workings... yet. Do our operations result in profit, growth, and stability? We bet too much on the wrong product, the wrong action, all our eggs in one basket, and we could collapse."

"Or at the very least, see one hundred rising from the rubble of one million."

"Quite unpleasant," he said, reaching up to rub Kioga's thin, naked leg. "But let's get back to the over-topic: models, mental constructs of the world we have to operate with, encoded in neural substrates. Ones we make to translate reality, so it's not exactly all in our heads. So we have the mental. Which is not unlike the biological. And, here's a fancy word, epigenetics links the two, because our experiences do mold us, do mold our tendencies and our brains. So it's not like we're fighting our biology per se, BUT we do have that continuum of immediate satisfaction versus long-term contentment. You can eat decadent meals every day at the cost of your wallet and arteries. But at the same time, you can live like a hermit all your life, then have a bunch of money, or rather, let's call it potential energy, but no outlet to enjoy it."

"Unless you're visited by four ghosts and then spend it on your quaint British community."

"Weren't there three ghosts?"

"Marley."

"Oh, right," said Ceylon, stretching, enjoying the bony spread of his long taloned toes as their knuckles popped. "But what's my conclusion..."

Kioga stroked his hair, moving his paw from one triangle, tufted ear to the other. "I'm thinking that you want to bring a more vivid resolution to the aspect of living. There are religions both secular and theological that state that a man is a being fighting himself, when really we are trying to balance all of our needs: biological, intellectual, and aspirational."

"Porn is a Let's Play when you should be playing the video game itself."

Kioga snorted. "Excuse me?"

"You heard what I said," Ceylon laughed. "But let's be fair, a Let's Play allows you to enjoy a variety of pieces far more complex than real, physical sex in a rapid and convenient way."

"I mean, you know how complicated our sex can get."

The gryphon grinned and reached up to tease Kioga's small whiskers. "Anyway. The battle within ourselves, or rather the competitive ecosystem, extrapolates across all of us and the entire planet. Each of us works to satisfy and sustain ourselves. With our paradigms, models and axioms, we have a rational basis in order to move forward in a truly profitable manner: grow more than we lose, than we pay, than we consume. And until we can examine space travel, terraforming and the like (and the ungodly resources that would consume), we must work within our current finite confines to realize all that we are. And it's so tricky with arguments of, 'that billionaire doesn't need that much money,' but at the same time, what's the point of working if there's a certain cap? It's a matter of flow, of keeping the system alive, proper circulation of available resources to best keep the rise of entropy we fear at bay."

"Well, there's the exploitative stuff," Kioga said, "Lots of tricks to exploit people, same way we exploit nature. Those quick-shocks that drain a person, or an area, of short-term resources that take a long time to replenish."

"Right, and that's not money earned, but money stolen."

Kioga took a deep breath, sucking in fresh air as if sucking down an ice cold pitcher of water. "Life's complex, ain't it?"

"But not unnavigable. We do not know everything, but we can know enough, and learn more, in order to move forward. With confidence, curiosity, and honesty to the world and ourselves, we can thrive."

"That's right," the cheetah said, taking a stretch of his own with care not to roll his boyfriend's head off his diapered lap. "I think it's about time for bed. Need a change or anything?"

"That's okay," said Ceylon with a smile, using his wings to push himself upright, then slipping himself off the patio couch. Leading his mate inside by the paw, the gryphon tugged on his own pajama drawstring. "I like being naked."