Locked Out

I don’t know what to do.

There, I said it. Bet that came as a surprise, eh? This infallible, invulnerable Space Lord is out of ideas for once. My minicruiser’s been stolen and I’ve been locked out of my base. Yeah, you read that right. I’ve been right royally duped, and no mistake.

It began while I was exploring Iceland. I got a message alerting me to an emergency back home. The object I’d retrieved from the water a few weeks ago had stopped transmitting, and a couple of minutes later, it seems all the power systems failed at the same time. I don’t know for sure what caused that, but I can speculate. I’m guessing the object had something to do with it. Perhaps it was syphoning the output of my fusion plant for some nefarious purpose. In theory, the vault should have remained sealed because there’s a power failsafe on it. However, a physical seal isn’t always sufficient to keep more advanced forms of technology trapped, for which I often rely on more esoteric measures that require power, such as gravitational node compressors. I now have no idea whether the thing is contained.

Of course, I immediately aborted my trip and returned home to investigate. While I was poking about around the entrance wondering whether I could activate the door without the internal power, I was startled to hear the minicruiser take off behind me. I was alone in the woods on the mountain, unable to reach any of my usual technology, and with only a pocket multitool and a couple of basic weapons on my person. I’ve no way of flying out of here, and I can’t figure out where the hell the minicruiser might have gone. It’s also a mystery to me how the hell anyone else knew how to fly it.

You know in the science fiction movies when some pilot encounters an abandoned craft and despite never having even seen it before, is somehow able to identify all the controls and fly it? Yeah, that’s complete pungra dung. There’s no way anyone could have got into my ship and in the brief few minutes I was gone, figured out how to make it take off and fly smoothly away, engaging the cloak while doing so. I’d give that odds of over a million to one, easily.

My weapons can’t make a dent in the walls of the base, but I’ve used them to blast out a hole in the ground and to light a fire to keep me warm. I hope nobody comes snooping around. Luckily my multitool allows me to connect to the web, so I should be able to get this message out. I’m going to have to sleep rough, but with any luck I’ll think of a plan of action by the morning.

Who the hell stole the ship? Whoever it was is frighteningly clever, perhaps as clever as I am. If you see any news reports of mysterious aerial attacks somewhere, you know who to blame for supplying the quantum disruptor. Sorry about that.

Glacier of Lakes

Greetings, one and all, from Iceland!

Yes, I left Orkney a while ago, after I found that the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness were nothing to do with an alien species after all. My initial inspection had indicated a faint hyperspatial wave that appeared to be emanating from the stones, but when I checked again I found that it had stopped. It’s quite likely that it was a normal transmission between two points elsewhere in the galaxy and had just happened to pass through Earth at the time I was taking a reading. It’s a very unusual event, but it’s not unknown.

So I proceeded to Iceland, and I’m now exploring Vatnajökull, the huge ice cap that dominates the southeastern side of the country. There are volcanoes down there, and I have to be careful because they are still known to erupt, causing enormous flooding events. You might well ask why I’m poking about on a huge ice cap. I don’t really know, to be honest. I do seem attracted to wilderness at the moment. Perhaps I’m trying to pretend that humans don’t exist – I do have a misanthropist streak, as you probably realise, and really I only stick around on your planet because it’s entertaining watching what goes on here. It’s like what you call a “soap opera”, only with far more characters and more confusing plot lines.

In other news, I’ve had an update from my base about the object I recovered in Scotland. I’m glad I placed it in a controlled area, because apparently it has begun to transmit some sort of radio signal. This won’t make it out of the vault, of course, but it proves the thing is still active. In a way, this is good: it suggests that the cloaking device probably didn’t fail, which means the military authorities won’t be aware of its presence. I have instructed my AI systems to attempt to interpret the signal and get some clue as to what it is. My hunch is that the satellite is trying to contact the observation relay at the Moon’s L4 Lagrange point, in which case the thing really is Gorpulonian and will be harmless… but I’ll keep an eye on it.

I don’t have much to say at this point: I’m spending my time watching local wildlife – this includes a few birds and an occasional arctic fox, which is quite beautiful. I’m heading down to the more populated areas soon and I’ll report on that later.