[I’ve now received a full set of diary entries from Lord Dszira - this is the first. Turns out he was the one who re-enabled my account, of course! He’s resting at the moment, and asked me to post these on successive days. I hope you find them enlightening. — MT]
Owota here. I hope this reaches you. I’m writing it on Tuesday 20th, but I’m going to ask Mike not to post any of these entries until the crisis is over, in case it gives away my location. I have just re-enabled the blog account password so that he can give you updates, but I haven’t been able to communicate with him yet. I see that he’s posted a message. I also see that someone else posted a message too! I’m not happy.
This Maria T character truly is a pest. Things began to go awry on Sunday, when she managed to intercept me in Prague while I was attempting to sneak up and ambush her. It’s amazing how many mishaps befall people in Prague, from the assassination of Good King Wenceslas over a thousand years ago to more recent disasters, such as the time Michael Palin fell over in a bathroom there and hurt his finger. But I’m rambling — I must keep this short, as I believe Thessifus is monitoring all the EM bands, and I’ve used the emergency laser receiver I installed on my assistant’s roof to transmit this message to him securely. It’s a good thing I have that swarm of microsatellites to act as reflectors. I’m now extremely glad of the weeks I put into that project.
So anyway, I discovered that the only reason Thessifus was able to hack my accounts at SPLAT and the GPR was that she (actually ‘it’, but ’she’ is easier) is a polymorph capable of such finely detailed mimicry that she can pass for me in biometric tests. This is, of course, a lamentable oversight on my part. I should have added two-factor authentication to my security options — but the trouble is that the GPR is near the galactic hub, and even hyperwaves take over an hour to arrive from there, so logging in would have been a task requiring the patience of a domino-toppling technician. As for SPLAT, forget it: they never did have robust security.
The fact that she’s a polymorph is, of course, the reason Maria T was able to ambush me in Prague. She was disguised as a road-sweeping machine at the time, and I was too busy trying to find her house on a map to notice the smell of foetid garbage and the smooth scrape of motorised brushes approaching down the street behind me. Before I realised what was going on, I’d already been ‘taken to the cleaners’. I did manage escape from the refuse chamber by activating the unload circuit and tipping the entire contents onto the road, which caused consternation among the inhabitants of Prague and brought the police running. However, I wasn’t prepared for the resourcefulness of my adversary: she somehow managed to levitate me a thousand metres into the air while she evaded capture below, and later brought me directly down her chimney. I know it sounds corny, but I think it was some form of tractor beam.
She attempted to imprison me in a diamondite chamber, and I honestly think she planned to leave me there for ever. The only reason I was able to escape was that she had not thought to remove my clothes. I always keep a spare crystal lattice disruptor lance in my underpants (who doesn’t?), and I had only to wait until she went out before using it to collapse the entire chamber into a pile of what looks, to the untrained eye, like crumbling burnt toast.
I am now in the Tatra mountains, playing a fine game of cat and mouse with my enemy. Since you are reading this, you’ll know that it ended well, but from my point of view, I’m still unsure what’s going to happen to me. Maria T has set up quite a network of informants and sensors, and it’s taking all my time just to move around the countryside undetected. I think she’s spitting mad that she can’t find me, which tickles me nicely. I’ll give it another day before I make a move. After all, it’s fun to imagine her squirming.
