Welcome to the next episode of Archi’s Diary, a weekly entry in my favorite amnesiac’s journal as he tries to adjust to a world he doesn’t remember. Still going strong with the placeholder image for now but should change soon.

Episode 10 – March 2016

This is so fucked. This is so fucked. This is so fucked.

Steve is dead.

Had to stay a few days more, but when I was leaving he tried to knock me out. I don’t know why, but Inger might ordered it. I guess they were watching me through the smartphone the whole time and my little act was discovered. When I managed to avoid the initial blow, he snapped. Just snapped. You could see it in his eyes. Suddenly I was less than an animal,  a bug to be squashed, when I dared to fight back, when I dared to defy him.

That’s when he came at me, like he was possessed by some demon, all fury and aggression. He pulled a knife from his pocket and cut me again and again. My arms got really badly lacerated, but he was too aggressive for his own good. I managed to dodge a slash at my neck and trip him up. He stabbed himself. The knife was deep in his bicep, blood gushing out. He must have hit an artery, but he didn’t even care. He jerked out the blade, but it was slippery with blood and slipped from his fingers. So I picked it up to defend myself. I don’t recall many details after that but it wasn’t a quick death. He came at me again, but I somehow stabbed him in the stomach and then held him down. He couldn’t use his injured arm, I just held him there until he bled out.

The room got really really quiet. Some time passed as I sat there still holding him, but nobody came to check. None of the neighbours called the police. (Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any neighbours here at any time; just Steve, and the landlord on occasion.) I realised that I had to move, when I noticed that Steve’s door was open. On Willy’s recommendation I read Dexter a few weeks ago and Steve’s room looked just like a murder room described in the book… Was it made for me? I mean, who else would it be for? Sheets of plastic covered the walls, ceiling and floor, bone saw and other instruments of pain in the corner, black sacks prepped. He was planning for the eventuality of murdering me. So I left immediately.

Right now I’m sitting behind the train station, in a small patch of forest, bandaging my arms and writing this. I don’t think I was followed, as I kept to the shadows and side roads to get here, but I can’t be certain. I changed my clothes before leaving, grabbed everything I could. I lost the memory stick, which flew off the table to some hidden dark location during the scuffle and I couldn’t find it again. What do I do now? I need help. But what the hell can I do? Who do I turn to? I have no ID, there is no record of me anywhere. None I know of… Anyone could assume it was my murder room (except I would use lye with a heat source and a bathtub) and arrest me on the spot.

I just hope I made it out in secret. I can’t take this any more, I have to leave and go as far away I can from all the lies… Just go anywhere I can be anonymous and think things through. I did consider telling Willy, but I don’t want to involve him; it might even turn out that he’s is part of this…

Fuck!

End of episode 10. Share, like and follow for weekly updates. Thank you for reading.

Welcome to the next episode of Archi’s Diary, a weekly entry in my favorite amnesiac’s journal as he tries to adjust to a world he doesn’t remember. Still going strong with the placeholder image for now but should change soon.

Episode 9 – March 2016

Most of this week I spent in my room faking the flu and making plans. Steve and Inger have been checking up on me daily, but I’ve been able to keep them out. If they watch me through the smartphone, they would only see me covered in blankets, drinking tea, and furiously blowing my nose. The deception seems to have worked well enough. Everything is now packed and ready to go and not a moment too soon. I managed to obtain most of the travel gear I need through a variety of means like borrowing, shopping and stealing, the latter being Steve’s wallet since I’ll need cash. I’m not even going to apologise to Steve, this is the last time he calls me “Anthony”.

As I’m writing this, I’m downloading as much information as I can manage from the database the software agent connects to. Probably a fraction of what’s actually on it, but I don’t have more time. Once the hard-drive is full, I’m gone. I’ve found a treasure trove of transcriptions (mainly interviews and research notes), some schematics and blueprints, deep web tools and resources, and the remaining surveillance videos, which are the main reason I’m leaving right now. Why is all this stuff even on an externally facing database? That doesn’t seem secure. Must make a mental note on that.

Anyway, I’ve re-examined the first video intensely and it’s terrifying. That orb or sphere thing appeared around me and not in front of the camera as I initially thought. When stepping through the video frame by frame, it’s clear that it appears out of nowhere around me. Does that mean I was targeted or was it accidental? I still don’t know what it is. The room itself is very spartan so any guesses to its purpose is futile.

The second video shows Inger running to my aid after the orb evaporates (?) along with the lab personnel coming in left and right. I recognise some of them from my visits. Except on my visits they were friendly, helpful and unarmed; in the video they carried rifles of some kind.

That’s not the reason I’m leaving now though. It’s not even Inger. She seemed frightened, maybe even hysterical about my condition. No, it’s because of Steve. He’s been watching me for months now, following me, spying on me… and in the third video he puts a gun to my unconscious head! It’s a compilation of security footage of me as I was taken from the incident room, past something that looks like a inside-out electromagnet, down various hallways, into the break room from the time lapse video. At this point it’s really just a break room. Steve is there having coffee and looking mighty freaked out. He and Inger appear to be having an intense conversation, when he suddenly pushes her to the floor and puts a gun to my head. To my unconscious and very defenseless head. What is going on? I should be seeking answers, maybe build a life, but I can’t stay here. What happens if he snaps? Snaps again, I should say, since he’s most certainly the reason I “blacked out” a few weeks ago. The video ends with him getting tackled, wrestled to the ground, and summarily disarmed by security.

I feel numb and helpless and ignorant. And very exposed, I need to get out of here. And the list questions just keeps getting longer:

• What was that orb thing, why did it wipe my memory?
• Will it come back, will it come for me?
• Where did this memory stick come from, who gave it to me and why?
• Why am such I a threat that Steve felt necessary to put a gun to my head even when I was unconscious?

Steve is not in the house now, so this is the perfect time to leave. Everything is unclear except for following: I am Archi. Whatever happened before, whoever I was, that person is gone. I came into being on a hospital bed three months ago. I’m not this Anthony Ames, I’m also not some child, nor a victim. Anthony is just some guy in a video footage who had an accident; maybe he’s a happy memory to some, but he’s just the unknown past to me. Who or what I was is immaterial at this point.

I have a few hours until nightfall, then I’m off. There’s a village a few miles west from here, where I hope I can lay low until morning, then take a bus to the coast. Right now, I’m going to accidentally drop my phone in the toilet. Until it flushes.

End of episode 9. Share, like and follow for weekly updates. Thank you for reading.

Welcome to the next episode of Archi’s Diary, a weekly entry in my favorite amnesiac’s journal as he tries to adjust to a world he doesn’t remember. Still going strong with the placeholder image for now but should change soon.

Episode 8 – March 2016

First off, I realise now that the duster was a bad idea. If I need to run, I probably shouldn’t look like a reject from a spaghetti western or a stunt double for a Harry Dresden movie (not that one exists yet, but the world seems to be a bit obsessed with new franchises so I’m not holding my breath). My aim is to blend in, so I traded the duster with Willy for a proper outdoor jacket. It’s blue, for the record. Also started learning a few languages (Spanish, Urdu and Russian) so I can get by, wherever I might end up. Might even become homeless, but it’ll be on my terms. And at least I’ll be able to chat with my fellow transients and beg in the local vernacular.

I do intend to leave. My plan is to take a bus to the nearest railway station and then a direct route out of the country which invariably means a ferry or something. I don’t have a passport, so the airport or the Eurostar are out of the question. Also, I don’t really fancy being trapped in a metal tube going 800 km/h in the sky. I might be inexperienced, but that seems foolish. In an unrelated conversion with Steve he mentioned something about getting killed in a mugging or vaporized by lightning strike being more likely than dying in a plane crash. Sure, but I don’t go looking for any of those. Steve almost exclusively refers to me as Anthony now, and I’ve stopped correcting him. I mean, it really doesn’t matter to me right now, and if it keeps him happy and away from my plans, all the better.

However all this pales to the fact that I broke the password on the memory stick and had my mind thoroughly blown. I got in on my third attempt, using a list of common passwords. The password was “Password1”. Are you serious? That is not security. That’s a child attempting to be clever. If the password is that easy, it’s hardly ‘protected’.

Mind blown – Part one.

And what did I find?

Two video files. I watched both several times yesterday and they’re disturbing. The first one is a 4 minute long video titled ‘Incident_Cam2_1-3.avi’, which I’ll analyse in great detail tonight. It’s unclear what actually happens, but it appears to be a surveillance footage from a laboratory. I couldn’t readily make out the ceiling or side walls, so it must be outside or in a cavernous room. The person in the video is me, and I’m pacing the chamber when a large circular object or hole appears. I can’t tell if it appears around me or in front of the camera, but when it disappears I’m lying lifeless on the floor.

The second video is titled ‘Anthony_Ames_Recovery_Suite_FULL.avi’. It’s a timelapse of my stay in the medical bay with Steve, Inger, and a few other people I don’t recognise, orbiting the gurney while performing medical procedures, or just watching me. Inger really nailed the stand-around-and-observe thing.

This find is really not helping my anxiety. What exactly happened to me? Was that what caused my amnesia? What was that bubble/hole/orb thing? Where did it come from? Can anyone please tell me what’s going on? I feel like I’m getting kicked down the rabbit hole by an unseen boot of circumstance. And is the name in the title my real name?

Other things on the stick;  some sort of software agent that connects to an external database, which I haven’t attempted to use yet. A complete medical record of me, which is also disconcerting to say the least. It refers to monitoring brain patterns for abnormalities, DNA matching and it has a literal confirmation that I am “human”. Human! Why would you need to confirm that? And lastly a David Bowie album.

Mind – seriously – blown – Part two.

I got to go… get away as soon as possible. Clear my head and get some perspective on this mad situation. I still need to get:

• passport or a replacement of some sort (need to research which nationality is most accepted)
• a new uncompromised smartphone (or similar device)
• money, preferably more than one type of currency
• a weapon of some kind

So the plan for now is to:

• go over all the information again
• test the software agent to see if I can get more information
• find whoever gave me this information in the first place

I need a break!

End of episode 8. Share, like and follow for weekly updates. Thank you for reading.

Welcome to the next episode of Archi’s Diary, a weekly entry in my favorite amnesiac’s journal as he tries to adjust to a world he doesn’t remember. Still going strong with the placeholder image for now but should change soon.

Episode 7 – February 2016

Good things are not happening.

I’m thinking about leaving this place very soon, to strike out on my own and get some perspective. I managed to get a proper long coat, a modern duster, and a few travel items that aren’t too conspicuous for Steve to question. I don’t trust him anymore. All the support, the connection we made last week, has evaporated on my side, and any potential trust in Inger has ceased.

It started at the dinner last week where Steve and Inger had a few too many glasses of wine and persisted in calling me Anthony. The entire night. Even after I mentioned that it wasn’t my name. I don’t know, maybe it is? I don’t remember. Maybe I am this Anthony person, but if so, why would they tell me differently? They looked saddened, maybe even disappointed, like had I done something wrong when I pointed it out.

After dinner I went out to get some fresh air and to see Willy. We spoke about the memory stick and the associated challenges, diverged into encryption and then human behavior. He mentioned that breakthroughs in code breaking during WWII weren’t just about investigating encryption and applied mathematics, but also into human behavior. People are generally lazy and conceited. Most of the time we do things in a way that requires the least amount of effort, plus we often think no one else thinks like we do. So they made breakthroughs by guessing how soldiers in the field might think and feel and then tested for it.

Note to self: This Bletchley Park place sounds amazing, must go there to learn more.

But before he could continue, Inger and Steve showed up at Willy’s place in the meadows. Not at his home address which is a matter of public record (I mean how many people are named Willy or William in a village of less than 200 hundred people), but at our moon watching spot (it has less light pollution and more favorable weather), and acted as if they were just “happened to be in the area”. They left after a short while but it got me thinking. Am I being followed? What if I’m bugged? What if they put a tracker in one of my molars or under my skin, have my bio-signature on file and designated a satellite to spy on me?

Let’s be rational here. You don’t need some invasive bodily procedure or magic technology to keep track of people. You could just as well use a smartphone. Simple and straightforward. Like ‘Here’s a free toy for Archi, “don’t ever leave home without it”, which begs the question; can they listen in? Are they listening now? I mean, the device is in my bag most of the time, and we usually leave it in the car, so me and Willy have a modicum of privacy; but what about at home? It stays in the bag from now on. This is all so goddamn weird. It feels like the diary entry last week came true. A bit too close for comfort.

Anyway, after Steve and Inger left, we spoke about the prevalence of certain passwords or phrases, patterns that most people think of, that are used for email and social media accounts. How people often use the same password across several different services. Why would you do that? That’s like putting all your digital eggs in one basket and hoping the thief only takes the one. If this is true, then people really are stupid. Or at least conceited. He suggested trying a few of the most commonly used passwords. Apparently there are lists online. Why would a person use a password that is on a list of often used passwords?

In any case, this situation is horrible. I might be watched. I might be someone else, however that works. I feel anxiety all the time and have had a few small panic attacks. I’m scared, and the only person I feel can be trusted I’ve only known for 5 weeks.

I need to leave this place. I need to go. Soon.

End of episode 7. Share, like and follow for weekly updates. Thank you for reading.

Welcome to the next episode of Archi’s Diary, a weekly entry in my favourite amnesiac’s journal as he tries to adjust to a world he doesn’t remember. Still going strong with the placeholder image for now but should change soon.

Episode 6 – February 2016

Finally, good things are happening.

Steve has really warmed to me since the whole meltdown/church/coffee kerfuffle. He seems to be in a better mood, is more positive around me and started helping me get adjusted to my new life. He helped me get some maps from bookstore, got me my second  new laptop (don’t ask), synced it to my smartphone and installed some proper software, plus he introduced me to the sweet concept of instant coffee. It’s still a vile beverage when consumed without sugar, but at least it takes the labour out of making it. Oh, funny thing. When he’s really relaxed, he starts calling me Anthony instead of Archi. I haven’t brought it up with him yet. I like the name, but it’s not really me.

I’ve also been thinking about about the future, about what my life should be like. I suppose I could focus on who I was and where I came from, but does that really matter if I don’t remember? I look in the mirror every day and see an unfamiliar face, an unknown person that’s supposed to be me… but I don’t know anything about this person. I don’t know if he loved coffee, if he was mean to the cleaning lady, if he was a Trekkie, or a superstar in the kitchen. I know nothing about him, except that he’s not in here. Not the slightest trace. If I am the sum total of my experiences, and my experiences stretch back for about 10 weeks (give or take the stay in a hospital bed), what does it matter what came before? I got, perhaps reluctantly, perhaps not, what many people only dream of; a fresh start, a clean slate, tabula rasa. And that is who I am now. This is who’s going to go forward.

Well… Not really a total tabula rasa, since I can write and walk and talk and all that, which is still freaking me out. And I can juggle. With 3 apples and a knife at the same time. Found that out today. Didn’t know how to stop though.

I think what I need now, are experiences and goals. I lack the former to be able to make quality decisions on the latter. I need to build a foundation to make decisions from. Most places I’ve read claim that travelling nurtures the mind, body and soul, so that’s what I intend to do. And Steve is helping me decide where. We went over some ideas for destinations, like touring the capitals of Europe, going to Qatar to see a safer part of the Middle East, hike the Serengeti and visit ancient ruins in Mexico, plus he gave me advice on how to avoid getting hustled, mugged and/or killed by less savoury individuals in most of those places. He was quite, um… colourful, when it came to self defence. We even put up a map on the wall and riddled it with pins and notes. We also talked about Willy for a bit, when I felt comfortable enough to reveal that I’d snuck out. He seemed unsurprised. Go figure.

Besides that, the rest of my week has been exclusively about computers. Like I mentioned, Steve helped me with the initial setup, but I’ve done some studying myself. I’ve gone through:

• a comprehensive history of computing
• taking apart and rebuilding a fried laptop (not that it works)
• completing basic, advanced and superuser courses
• written scripts just for fun
• learning a bit of coding (C++ and Perl with a dash of Lisp and a sprinkle of Python)
• reading up on the fundamentals of hacking and cracking, which appears to be more about mindset and social engineering.

And I bought myself some screen glasses with blue filters to stop myself from getting massive headaches from staring at the screen for dozens of hours. I need a resting/sleeping schedule or I might exhaust myself again, which is probably what happened last week. All work and no sleep makes Archi a dull, head-thumping-against-the-floor boy.

Still haven’t told Steve about the memory stick, the cracking of which has been a source of much frustration and procrastination, but I’m OK with not telling him. Everyone needs their little secrets and I only have this one. The second new laptop is nice, the first one I got on Monday also got fried by the memory stick when I failed to authenticate the password. Must be some kind of zero day exploit that has gone undetected or intentionally unaddressed. Pretty substantial one at that. Or the memory stick is intentionally designed to fry electronics. If I don’t get anywhere by next week, I might need to open it up. This is quite vexatious yet oddly thrilling, like I’m the central protagonist in some elaborate mystery story dodging detection while desperately searching for clues to my past all the while an unknown shadowy adversary watches from afar. Silly, but exciting!

Going to finish up now. Inger is coming by tonight for dinner with me and Steve. It was Steve’s suggestion since we’re stopping with the daily blood tests and it might be nice to do a wrap up with her. Not sure about the ‘nice’ aspect. I don’t like the woman and I feel that her ‘origin story’ about me is utter bovine fecal matter, but as long as she doesn’t fling it at the oscillating unit I’m sure it’ll be fine. I don’t know. Need to figure this out.

Still. I think I’m OK. I feel OK.

End of episode 6. Share, like and follow for weekly updates. Thank you for reading.

Welcome to the next episode of Archi’s Diary, a weekly entry in my favorite amnesiac’s journal as he tries to adjust to a world he doesn’t remember. And hopefully the last week with the placeholder image. New cool art commissioned. Exciting stuff!

Episode 5 – February 2016

This week marked a change in my relationship with Steve. A little at least. It all started when we were out picking up more project materials and I had a bit of a meltdown or rather I screamed at him to leave me alone. I felt exasperated with everything. When I had calmed down sufficiently, I told him I was scared and confused and felt that nobody trusted me, and that I wanted to leave, so he… sat me down, bought me coffee and listened. It was almost like he knew me personally and cared about how I felt. We spoke for some three hours straight, and I wrote down some of the things he told me.

“I am here to keep you safe and make sure you can function. Finding you unconscious proved that you are not ready for all this. We need you to recover fully”

and….

“Of course you don’t trust us. It’s sensible not to trust people you don’t know and you don’t know anyone. Not everyone in the world is there to help you, nor intends to help you. Most people are decent enough, but every once in awhile you get a rotten egg. Whether they were cracked from the start, or dropped and broken along the way, doesn’t matter, it only takes one egg to foul life’s cake.”

and…

“Everyone has to do things they don’t like, all the time. Life really is about doing the bad things so the good things can come into the light. Complaining about it doesn’t help. Just crack on and be done with it, so you don’t have to repeat it later.”

I’m not entirely sure about the cake bit and what cracking on means, but I think I got the gist of it. And then we went to church to seek ‘higher counsel’, as he put it. Which was code for speaking with the vicar and ingesting an obscene amount of pastry and coffee. More damn coffee. I read somewhere that this is tea country, that they broke and warred with half the known world for the damn stuff for hundreds of years, and they keep giving me coffee?! Must make them a sort of heathens. Anyway, he was nice and all, but the whole conversation boiled down to:

“The people here care about you and want the best for you. Steve is one of our most devout patrons. Donates to church and helps us. Trust in God and Steve, to help and guide you on your journey.”

I’m a little bit at odds with Steve’s pragmatism. We went home (or whatever you call it) and it’s been better between us. Not really friends, more of an acceptable companion, like a friendly colleague or a talking dog. (I watched UP this morning.)  

The only other thing on note this week, which I didn’t share with Steve, is the contents of the memory stick. Went to Willy and asked to if I could borrow his computer, but he doesn’t have one, so we went to the library. At night, since Steve would have followed me during the day. He told me most libraries have computers for public use, which they charge a symbolic fee for, but I could use one for free. So I plugged in the little thing on some boxy thing with a CRT monitor attached, and got prompted with a password window. No amount of guessing worked. And quite disconcertingly so, the computer did a hard shut down after the tenth attempt, resulting in a bit of black smoke smelling of burnt plastic. What kind of security is this? This is spy movie weird. Like something a Bourne or Bond would be playing with. Willy wasn’t too happy, but there was nothing we could do about it. So we’re going to see the new moon tonight with his wife instead. And I will have to find some other way of accessing this thing.

At least things are better. Going to order a laptop tomorrow. See if I can teach myself to hack this thing. Carefully.

Bit more OK now. Suspicious, but OK.

End of episode 5. Share, like and follow for weekly updates. Thank you for reading. 

Welcome to the next episode of Archi’s Diary, a weekly entry in my favorite amnesiac’s journal as he tries to adjust to a world he doesn’t remember.

Episode 4 – February 2016

I am not OK. I’m back at the apartment and everything feels wrong. It’s been a week since my last entry, and I feel like I’ve lost my grip on everything. Over the weekend I was told that I “fell asleep” and woke up back at the institute three days later. Three days later. The last thing I remember is coming back from moon gazing with Willy Sunday night and then nothing. No horrible dreams of the void, no impression, nothing. Just blackness, and a bump on the back of my head. Did I hurt myself? Was I attacked? Steve claimed he found me on the floor and rushed me to the institute, but if he was really that concerned, he should have taken me to directly to a hospital, or a maybe vet’s office. Ok, fine. I suppose it worked out well but it’s worrisome.

At least Inger told me a story when I woke up, because that’s what it was, an absurd story, a fucking fairy tale! Supposedly, and I do mean supposedly, I woke up back in November at the institute after they had freed me from a block of ice. A block of ice… Ice? Seriously?!  I was apparently part of an expedition in Greenland when a freak temperature change melted part of a glacier and washed me away. A local hunter found me frozen solid (I’m guessing she meant to say extreme hypothermia, but she said block-o-icicle) as the only survivor. They subsequently decided to transport me to the institute to get me out. Again, she said ice-o-blockified.

This is just what they told me. I have no recollection of any of it. Does this sound even remotely likely?! I’m not entirely sure, but can you freeze and thaw a human without injury? Memory loss is one thing, I researched the problems regarding cryogenics, seems applicable enough, and came to the conclusion that if I was frozen solid I should be mush by now. Water expands when crystallizing into ice, destroys the cellular wall, when defrosted I would slowly fall apart. Nobody can survive that, irrespective of what Disney thought. And if it supposedly is hypothermia + memory loss, then why the secrecy? I mean, an apartment in a small village with a chaperone and no attempt to rationalize my situation until weeks later. No, Koldberg is hiding something. Even the nurse is a bit flustered to see me lately.

Now, the Koldberg Institute itself is a bit of a mystery. According to their website it’s a ‘think tank that works with advanced applications of emerging technologies’, specifically related to superconductors and quantum computing. Which raises a somewhat pertinent question. Why does a think tank working on computing have a fully functional medical bay staffed with a nurse? Not a permanent purpose-built medical bay; but rather a room that looks like somebody commandeered the break room. It even had a fridge with magnets and a coffeemaker next to my bed. Coffee can solve a lot of problems (Willy’s claim, not mine) but head trauma is probably not one of them.

I don’t know what to do now. I still have the memory stick I found last week, it must be the key to solving something. First of all, where did it come from? Who even knows I’m here? I suppose everyone at the institute could have been briefed about it, meaning dozens of people would know the address. But why? I have so many questions but don’t know if anyone is telling me the truth. There is a truth out there… there has to be. It’s only a matter of finding it.

And again, this writing thing is not helping. How can I even write anything? Why do I have this skill if I can’t remember how I got it? Not even glimpses of crying at a school desk comes to mind. It’s all empty. But I can write. I feel scared.

I’m not OK.

End of episode 4. Share, like and follow for weekly updates. Thank you for reading.

Welcome to the next episode of Archi’s Diary, a weekly entry in my favorite amnesiac’s journal as he tries to adjust to a world he doesn’t remember.

Episode 3 – January 2016

I‘ve had horrible dreams since my first journal entry and I’m not sure what to make of them. I keep experiencing a persistent darkness or void or lack of anything. It’s like everything ceases to exist inside me and I have nothing to grab on to. I don’t know if it’s related to the medication, which I stopped taking completely, but my mind seems clear and crisp despite the dreams. I can read an average novel in a mere 2-3 hours, my podcasts and audiobooks (which are the coolest things) run at 5 times their normal speed, and I can even follow TV shows in the background. Except I had to turn the TV off to keep the commercial breaks from distracting me, and to avoid disturbing Steve at night. Apparently I kept him up one night too many and he chewed me out during breakfast. Verbally, of course; I wouldn’t fit in his maw.

We’ve been to the institute every morning for therapy sessions (which I suppose have been useful), more blood tests and next week I’ll be doing cat scans. Why I would need to scan a cat is unclear to me. I mean, what does a cat have to do with a medical scan. Anyway, I did get to talk more about the future, how I’m coping with other people, what I think of my progress, which is nice. Except they didn’t tell me my backstory this time either. The briefing was postponed despite their promises, because apparently I’m still too fragile. According to my lead caretaker, who finally told me her name, Inger Koldberg, it was unclear if I could handle that kind of shock. I requested that she should tell me the truth. She subsequently stood up and yelled that I couldn’t handle the truth, looked slightly embarrassed, and sat back down mumbling something to herself. I’m not sure what to make of this.

I met Willy again last night. After the initial embarrassment he told me that he is a practicing druid and that he’s observing the lunar phases as a sign of respect to nature. He invited me back for soup and moonlight. Sounds nice. I think I’m going to try to make more friends around here. Would be nice to visit others people (friends?) more often. I feel kinda lonely back at the studio.

Oh, and despite Steve’s less than social demeanor, we’ve been out a lot this week. Besides the institute, we went to the library and the church several times, we found a hardware store where he picked up rolls of plastic sheeting and box cutters for a project he’s doing (though he didn’t tell me what) AND he gave me a smartphone, this really cool sleek black thing… Actually the institute gave me the smartphone, but I like to think of it as a present from Steve since it came from him. The instructions were to keep it with me at all times and use the apps to record any thoughts or questions that might come up. The phone even has Steve’s (not that I need it) and Inger’s contact information so I can reach out whenever I feel like it. And a map app. I used it to see where we are exactly. Sure, they told me we’re in a country called England, but at least now I have some sense of what that means.

Got to finish this up now. Willy told me that there would be a waning gibbous moon tonight and that he would bring homemade pea soup, so I’m going to sneak out after Steve’s gone to bed. Not sure what a waning gibbous moon means, but some things have to be experienced first hand rather than read about beforehand.

Quick note: I just researched this CAT scan on the internet and it’s short for computerised tomography, which I will now have to read up on. I feel a little stupid thinking it was about a cat, but none of the lab techs corrected me.

Quick note 2: I found a small memory stick with the Koldberg Institute logo on when I came back from moon watching (had to look up what a memory stick is). Somebody must have slid it under the door during the night. I don’t think it’s Steve’s doing, so I’ve decided to keep it to myself for now. I will try to open it on the landlord’s computer tomorrow.

And a waning gibbous moon just means Earth’s shadow has started moving across its surface. Still very awesome.

And I think I’m ok. Or I’m going to be.

End of episode 3. Share, like and follow for weekly updates. Thank you for reading.