Cowgirl Thrillers

by Barbara Neville

Actually, they ain’t much in the way of old paper bound books nowadays, what with the book burnings and general massive destruction in the times of Troubles, but the moniker has stuck around. My saddlebags are full of all the important cowboy info that I have picked up and scribbled down in my travels around the Cosmos. Most have come down passed by word of mouth. But the story goin’ around these days is that a recorded history exists. Books or such. There is still a few about, they say.

  The Hollywood journals have been the subject of much speculation since the Troubles which pretty much blew the world as our ancestors knew it clear to hell. Or as my Great Grand pappy used to say, ‘Earth went to hell in a starship and never come back.’

  Fortunately, the Troubles didn’t get real bad until after mankind had moved out into the galaxies and terraformed a shitload of planets. Some of Earthkind figured out that the shit was hitting the fan and blasted out to new frontiers. Some planets were colonized by the government. Then what they did was send unwanted criminals (being killers, murderers, rapists, druggers, rebels, anyone who disagreed with their politics and all of them what didn’t fit into their idea of advanced and enlightened civilization) off in flying space boats to the less desirable worlds, as had governments on Earth past sent their criminals to empty continents. Cheaper than penning them up in prisons and feeding and guarding them.

  What with all the shooting and bombs and killin’, not many folks survived. We were left with most of our information, libraries, web centers, cities being gone, towns too. Hell, history was lost.

  But then as things got more organized on the new planets where the oldsters had moved after the destruction of Earth, folks began to use their minds to bring the past back to life. Families would sit and reminisce around the campfire and tell all they had heard from the ancient stories told by the oldsters. People finally got to the point that societies could support scribers to listen, remember, and start writing again, getting what we was left of human knowledge scribbled down.

  I myself have spent many a night around the campfire listenin’ to the stories of how my 19th century heroes lived and worked. I am fascinated with the Taming of the West. My people way back then took a big part in the whole deal, bein’ cowboys and cattlemen theirselves. Trappin’, rounding up wild cows, driving huge herds of cattle acrost continents to settle new land, huntin’, homesteadin’, and gen’rally livin’ a hard fought life in a tough primitive world where your scalp was nary more than a trophy to the local folk.

  And my partner Michael is a kindred spirit.

  When Michael and I heard about the Rock, with not too many people and a whole passel of cowboys and cattle work, we was itching to join up. We were ready for new country and this sounded like a place worth checkin’ out. So we worked a season, saved up some travelin’ money and signed on for the wilderness roundup.

  The Rock was built by outsiders, by people who came from someplace else giving the best of theirselves, hoping to make this the greatest planet in the Cosmos.

  Rock folks may or may not have a lot of book learnin’, eddication being every person’s private choice.

  Here on the Rock we are reliving the Old West. With the wilderness rules we have to conquer many of the same obstacles raising the cattle and living a fairly, for our time, primitive existence. ‘Course once we drive the herds to the transport centers, like the MadDog town on the coast, we exit the edge of the wilderness and move into more modern space transport. Not that we see very modern anything very often, being out here at the edge of the Cosmos, light years from the central supply lines.

  On the flip side of the coin is the Center, the Center of the Cosmos and the center of the Centrist government. Now, ‘they’ say, everyone can enjoy the comfort and enlightenment of Centrist Civilization.

  Savage outer planets are considered not so enlightened since we refuse Centrist control.

  Centrists are in the Center, the middle of the road and the center of the Cosmos, claiming to have finally accomplished what the donkeys and elephants had clamored to do in the 21st century. They call it peace and prosperity. We call it mind control and total domination by the Centrist overlords. It is a puppet theater the ‘Benevolent Council’ foists on the unsuspecting public.

  The philosophical question?

  Civilization: Good, bad or ugly?