Continued on page . . .

[Below Par]

Are usually the biggest load of rubbish anyone ever had to deal with. What seems at first to be a great exclusive turn out to be the dribbled rantings of a looney. Today though might've been the exception that proves the rule. After the recent announcements that Samura were on a big drive to get new employees to reinvigorate their mining concerns I thought the extra attention they'd be paying to signing up new recruits might leave some room for me to slip by unnoticed and progress further with my own task. Several open days were indeed running today and I even bumped into a familiar face whilst doing the rounds.

What was far from familiar was what happened later. I'd managed to get into the "employees only" area under the pretense of being a candidate of some promise, making an excuse then slipping away to see if I could get my hands on some more advanced equipment to determine what I need to know. I didn't realise that, after today, finding an accurate scan of my scar would become the very least of my worries.

This is in no small part due to the fact that I found a full medical diagnostics console in one of the operating rooms in medical after I slipped away. It wasn't exactly portable as it was plugged into various I/O sockets throughout the room and, even once I disconnected the mess of cables, the thing weighed a damn ton despite its small-ish size. It obviously took longer than I thought.

"Hold it right there !" one of the two rent-a-guards barked at me. How stupid could I be? I didn't have the crowd cover of the open day back here and I wasn't dressed in any kind of uniform to explain why I was where I was, I must've been followed by the cameras from the first moment I stepped out of the interview room. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

"Hands on your head ! Turn around! Walk backwards, slowly, towards me without looking back at me!" the other gleefully shouted. The only thing running through my head at that point was this -
I.
Am.
Screwed.
Maybe not even as lucky as that. They're gonna notice my patch come loose when I miss my next treatment and I'll receive one of the swiftest and most thorough autopsies ever performed. They probably won't even bother to kill me first.

"Stop ! Put your hands behind your back ! NOW !" That's when it happened. I couldn't do it. At first I thought I had done as Security Guard Shouty had requested. Then I realised I was sending the signals to my arms to move and they weren't listening. Now I could chalk that up to the feeling of fear and utter failure that was my existence at that point but what happened next . . . I still don't know.

"Last chance ! Do it NOW !" I felt the cold barrel of the pistol dig into the back of my head. Then . . . things happened. I seen them, but I did not do them. As the man who wasn't trying to perform cranial surgery on me with his gun advanced, cuffs in hand, my arm moved. It grabbed the pistol, twisted to the side and, unbeknownst to me, my other arm as a co-conspiritor grabbed at the other man's pistol, still holstered. Two shots fired. One harmlessly fired into the wall, the other into the foot of the man who was about to cuff me.

A passenger in possession I could only watch as I spun, my body landing deliberately and heavily on the wounded foot releasing an anguished scream whilst cartwheeling the other man to the floor, hard. Almost faster than I could keep up with my body then chose to rend the pistol from the wounded man's holster then fired repeatedly at the prone guards head. So quickly neither I or the guard could expect to react to my weight shifted, still without my consent, off of the now sole living guard's foot and, before he could muster another cry I clamped my free hand around his neck and raised him clear off of the floor.

I watched powerful yet powerless as the man flinched, floundered, coughed and choked to death. My grip released and as it did I was released too. I stepped over the other, now dead, body and in a brief moment of clarity corrected myself from earlier -
NOW.
I.
AM.
SCREWED.
What in the name of all that's sane just happened here ?!?!? What am I going to do ? Oh no . . . not again !

This time 'I', apparently, was going walkies. One gun in hand, 'I' grabbed the second and went running off down a corridor, then another. 'I' stopped outside a door marked "Security Office" Strangely I do remember passing it before. After a shot to the entry keypad and several more to turn the office, its' consoles, and anything else in there into slag I get graced with the privilege of control once more.

"Look, up to now I think I've dealt really well with the geometric factors of weirdness that have incorporated themselves into my life from being scratched up to this point. This, however, I can't deal with. I'd very politely and respectfully ask that, until I get some major league help, don't do that again Mr death-dealing-possession-thing. Please?" Yeah. I was talking to myself. Deal with it. I'd like to see anyone else have that horror movie stuff actually happen to them and be all kittens and moonbeams about it.

The rest of today was rather dull compared to that. Double back, lift the scanner, ship, take off, get outta there so fast that engine lunges, crawl back to Cali at a speed so slow I probably could've spacewalked faster. On the upside I've had a smoke and a tall quad of a drink since then and I also, for a small fee and the 'donation' of a new diagnostic scanner to Cali's medbay I got the results I need without anyone seeing the results but me.

I was only on that forsaken transport for about ten minutes, fifteen tops, if my rough arithmetic's right. Also I fed the scan data of my scar into the ships scanners. If there is anything, anywhere in the search pattern that has a tissue sample anything like that of my scar, living or dead, I will find it.

I will find that facility. I will get back in touch with Mr G. from Chester and get things toned down from freak-factor-nine. I'll also get the answers on what happened today and why. After my best attempt tonight to get some rest. Sleep'll be easy, whether it'll be restful is a different matter. It's all probably just in my head anyway. Eyewitness reports are useless.