Listening In

Let me just say for the record how much I love running through the woods with Sam and Janine bickering in my ear.  Really.  I just adore that.  Fact is that they both seem to be operating under the false assumption that I have to listen to either one of them.  Don’t get me wrong: they’ve both saved my butt on more than one occasion, but if communications gives me some stupid directive – like, say, “run towards those New Canton runners,” I *will* ignore it.  My job is to run supply and tactical missions while – and this is key – while staying alive.  Everything we know about New Canton suggests an oppressive and isolationist government and, if we’ve learned nothing from the last five millennia of human history, it’s that oppressive isolationist governments tent to spread propaganda that is less than friendly about other settlements.

So... spying on NC today with Lem's headset.  I was right: propaganda.  But it never hurts to be reminded that they are people too, and they are hurting as much as anyone.  But they don't trust us, so I'd rather meat them on my own terms, thank you very much.

Vectors of the Infectors

Ran with Ten today - double digits!  Abel hits the big time!  Anyway, Ten used to be a maths teacher and had some really interesting - and useful - observations about zombie behaviour.  If I understand right, if a zombie is presented with equidistant targets, they add the vectors together and follow the trajectory of the resultant vector.  Doesn't say much for their reasoning, of course, but it does have some implications about the sophistication of their internal navigation systems. 

Ten also said that zoms tend to home in on meat smells "even though they don't eat the stuff."  Um... Ten?  To paraphrase Terry Bisson, we are made out of meat.  Just sayin'.  I'm thinking about chumming the water for sharks.  They probably smell blood and have some sort of Pavlovian response.

Not exactly a big surprise, but Ten left New Canton because they wanted him to use his research to basically weaponize zombies.  Truth be told, NC is starting to piss me right off.  Who uses the end of civilization as a power grab?  "Ooh!  The fall of civilization!  Now's my chance to be the head despot in my own totalitarian regime!"

It was a cool mission, though: we were carrying the post apocalyptic equivalent of the Library at Alexandria.  We traded information with Red Settlement.  I hope the exchange yielded some American TV.  I just can't get into Dr. Who ever since that tall guy with the scarf left.  Even just the musical episode of Buffy would constitute a total score,but I'm hoping for Firefly or the first seven season of the X-Files.

Lem

So, much fun was had by all today.  Standard training run.  Of course, a standard training run in the post apocalypse is generally as full of surprises as any non-standard critical mission, so...

Today it was a chap named... oh, hold on.  I have a pneumonic for this... Lunar Excursion Module.  His name was Lem.  Lem was, apparently, a runner from New Canton.  He was pinned down on the roof of the old mill and I helped get him out.  At first I didn't trust him because, well he was either an Aussie pretending to be a Texan or a Texan pretending to be Canadian, but something just wasn't right.  Seemed like a right decent guy in the end, though.  Lem didn't fare well.  He'd been bitten, so he handed off his radio to me and put distance between us.

As usual, Sam had no taste, which is probably why I like him.  Poor Lem was no sooner off to meet his fate and Sam was cracking wise: asked if that was Ace Rimmer.  Of course, it was completely without compassion for a man who would soon join the legions of undead, but it still struck me funny.  You've got to laugh, haven't you?  Otherwise, you go completely off your gourd.  So I've decided that, should I ever have to head off into the sunset of the damned, my last words will be "Smoke me a kipper.  I'll be back by morning."

Just got back from a scouting run with Four and - oh, joy - Eight.  The truth is, I don't really mind Eight so much as I mind the idea of her.  I mean, she's alright most times, but there's just this underlying creep factor that I can't get past.  But once I was finished dreading running with her and got down to the actual run, it wasn't so bad.  Almost normal, at the beginning.  Just three mates on a run.  I even saw a deer! 

At first, I thought how beautiful it was and how it had been so long since I'd just found something beautiful.  But then I thought too bad we don't have a gun because fresh venison would be freaking awesome.  But then, because I know just enough sciency stuff to make trouble and far from enough to be useful, I thought what if the zombie virus is like Creutzfeld-Jakob 2.0 and you can get it from prions?  I know prions thrive in deer and antelope and moose and such, so maybe venison wouldn't be much of a treat after all.  I don't want to have fresh meat if it means turning into the undead. 

Then I saw the fireflies.  They were beautiful, too, but they got me thinking about mosquitoes.  If you can get zombified by cutting yourself of a zombie-gut-encrusted pitchfork, which I hear you can, then can you get zombified from a mosquito that bites a zombie or a soon-to-be-zombie?  (I think of the bitten-but-not-zombies-yet as "zombies in waiting.") 

So I had already jacked up my paranoia to ten before we found the big pile of dead zombies and loaded guns.  So I'm guessing the guys in blue uniforms are with Pandora and still experimenting and fouling things up, as appears to be their custom because we found a mutant zombie hoarde: they can run!  And let me tell you: that sucks.  And who know?  My paranoia scale goes to eleven!

On the up side, I found a phial of VS72.  I'll be passing that off to Max as soon as I get a chance.  Could be nothing, could be the crowning glory for Operation 5.Theta.W.

In Which Sam and Max Bond Over Geek Stuff

Oh.  My.  God.  I am totally going to kill Sam and Max.  Reader, if you aren't Margie, you don't need to go crazy getting this post to her, but I need to vent.

So they sent me out to get stuff for entertainment.  "Fun stuff," they said.  So I'm thinking balls, jump ropes, Frisbees.  Maybe a Mad Libs.  You know: stuff that encourages physical fitness and mental acuity.  Not to mention stuff that won't drain our resources.  But noooooo.  It turned into GeekQuest1: the first post-apocalyptic NerdFest. Oh my god.  Role playing crap, video games... thank God the zombies showed up, or else they would have had me collecting - and I'm not even kidding here - costumes. 

Okay, I know... it just might be that I am the nerd in this scenario.  Apparently, nerdliness, like sanity, is a matter of statistics.  And I am clearly outnumbered here at Abel.  But really?  Asking me to risk becoming Snack of the Undead for role playing stuff?  Do they really not see the irony of asking me to outrun zombies so they can have a game that allows them sit on their posteriors and to pretend to outrun zombies?  This just sucks.  There was this cool macrame owl kit that I didn't get a chance to grab... I think I've said too much. 

Mission... Oh, I've stopped counting

Margie - or whoever - I just got back from a run for five-lambda.... oh, I'm just going to call it 5. Theta. W.  Anyway, I just got back and any information on a lab tech named Arthur Ghurkhan might be helpful.  He may be the key to getting us out of this... um... pickle.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but ask Siva for whatever he has on Pandora Hayes in his conspiracy files.  He might actually have been onto something.  They were working on some sort of cell regeneration thing.  I wish I'd passed a science class or two!  Anyway, get our geek squad onto this.  They might be able to figure out what went wrong. 

As I said, we've been able to focus a bit on entertainment recently.  Runners have been picking up books, and one of our residents has begun a "book club" of sorts: she reads a chapter or two a night aloud for those who wish to listen.  A couple nights ago, she started reading Pride and Prejudice.  I like to go and listen, and Sam went as well.  Afterward, he gave me his review: "Pretty ridiculous, really."  I was surprised, to say the least.  "It's a classic," I told him.  "Well," he said, "I read the original, and I guess I don't see the point.  It just seems stupid without the zombies."

You owe me for this mission.  Big time.

five-lambda-v-three theta-three w-zero-r-one-delta

Did another mission with Max at the comm today. Margie, if you're reading this, I'll call it Operation five-lambda-v-three theta-three w-zero-r-one-delta. And if it's not Margie reading this, and since our code is the most transparent thing since glass, don't get your hopes up. It's a long shot. I did find some stuff, but I don't know if it will help. Max is good and all, but I don't know if she can figure this all out without a lab and support and all.

Max has a habit of telling a bit more than perhaps I want to know, but she's lucky she can just lose herself in revery. She gets this far away sound in her voice and she just returns to pre-zom. Far be it for me to be the jackass to drag her back to this hell hole. She must have been very much in love. It's kind of refreshing, really.

We're starting to build up, which is nice because our efforts can include some entertainment now, rather than just survival. We have these two guys who do a sort of radio show here at Abel. They yammer on and play some songs and banter. They're not bad, really. It's a good model. It would have been nice to have a station like that at Mullins.

Also, the major came up with this redundancy program. It's a good idea, really. The runners are helping the others to get fit and the engineers are helping the rest of us to learn the practical aspects of what they do: fixing stuff, calculating the force and trajectory necessary to propel a projectile with lethal accuracy. You know. Basic stuff. Everyone seems to really have embraced the plan. It wards off the boredom and anxiety of waiting for the next attack, if nothing else.

Well, believe it or not, I have home work to do. I'm learning to do calculus. It's not as bad as I expected.

Runner Five out.