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Day 12

Right, where was I, , drifted off there for just a moment. Aliens landing, galactic food resource, do not be alarmed, harmonious communication ... yes, that was it, that's when it all went a bit wobbly cos my mind had been turned inside out with all that parallel destinys, universal substrate, etc. etc. So, have we got to the bit with the big nutter bastard aliens who turned up after ?. NO, wait, that was much later on, what am I thinking, I'd forgotten about the HAT, how could I forget the HAT. Well I called it HAT anyway cos that was the only identification, just a black and yellow safety label [HAT], don't know what it meant but it looked slightly dangerous, like a warning on a foreign piece of machinery, right above the big red button that you almost can't resist thumping, even though you can't read the sign it still screams DANGER in any language. Sorry, sorry, yes, I know, I'm jumping ahead again, just got a bit excited, sorry. OK, it had been almost 2 weeks since the first wave had arrived on their mission to prepare the surface, well pretty much demolish everything really. Fortunately, the place scrubbed up quite nicely once all traces of human civilisation had been eradicated. The world they built for their clients was described as "a flexible and adaptable environment that would pretty much maintain itself with only minor top ups of essential fluids and an occasional enhancements to unreliable technology." In addition, the food resource production was so efficient that the planet paid for itself even when not in use by sending excess product to the hub for distribution to other sectors.

No, it didn't make much sense to me either at the time, but you have to remember I was right in the middle of it.
Imagine the town where you live with the streets and houses stripped away leaving the strangest view of the most familiar. You recognise the contours of the land but all the references are gone, it makes sense, you know where you are but you're also in a totally new environment. I had obviously missed something crucial. Probably not concentrating, or did I take it all in but then forget it all while I was distracted thinking of top 10 tips on how to remember stuff. Anyway there I was, not even half a clue about what was going on, just the flashing of light and thought and multi dimensional spacetime every time I closed my eyes. When I came round from my GUFFathon brought on by our friends teachings, I had only 2 questions I wanted answering.

Question 1 : where the fuck am I
and
Question 2 : no, really, where the fuck am I, OK, now I'm in a room with a bed, a chair, a table and a mirror, but I have no idea where this room is, were here is, or even if there really is such as a thing as here.

It was the oddest sensation, if I looked one way, I saw new Earth, Resource E36 as our friends so charmingly labelled it. All high function super structures that re moulded themselves, reshaping to the requirements, becoming the perfect solution to the problem presented. This constant swelling and popping and generally disconcerting amount of movement made it hard to focus. The shimmering silver shifting quality of the new sky didn't help either.
But, if I just adjusted my focus just a nothingth of a notch, not even a conscious movement, just the slightest shift of perspective and I'm standing in a wood panelled room that seems to be hovering just above the surf line on the beach, you remember beaches, you know, the bit where the land meets the s... oh, sorry, forgot you won't know about sea. Well that was the key really of course. That's what they knew and we didn't. Just think, if we'd have known, I mean if we will have known, or is it if we were to be knowing Yes, yes, I know I'm wandering but I still haven't got the hang of temporal pronouns even after all this...time.

So, the room. Strange looking place yet somehow familiar. Colours too vivid somehow, really yellow yellow. But being the brave galactic adventurer that I wasn't I ignored the fact that I seemed to be standing in one of Vincent's paintings and went over to the bed. I had to resist the natural temptation to lie down and kip off as it was impossible to dismiss the 2 glittering spheres taking up most of the space between the bed and the ceiling. Did I forget to mention them, well there they were, and since I had absolutely no idea what they were or how high up the scary scale you'd find their danger rating, I decided to rap my knuckles on the surface of the nearest one to see if it was hollow. As I touched the surface it resisted slightly before de-atomising and becoming nothing more than a faint smell. Fortunately it was just the wrapping, on the bed in front of me was a wide cylinder, more a band really, about 8 inches across and 2 wide. I picked it up, no weight, and the colour, if you can call it a colour was, was, well, colourful. Shifting and changing like the sky in Universe 1. "I know, I'll put it on my head" I thought, - not very wise - but it seemed like the right thing to do. I sat down in front of the mirror and as soon as I rested the band on my head, it reduced it's diameter very slightly for a better fit and went almost transparent, kind of glassy with occasional green glyphs glowing. At the same time as I'm looking at this in the mirror, the area all around my head and about 3 feet away is a translucent green surface with a single message wrapping around me and then a single vermillion button dead ahead of me, floating at head height

OK, HAT, what ever you're called, it's time to see what you can do.

So, as you can imagine I was quite happy to spend the next few hours discovering what this advanced technology could do. Once I realised that this was much more than just an information delivery device, once I realised it could actually produce any variety of complex environments within the space around my head, I pushed it up to eleven on the very hazey home grown fantasy setting and left the unpacking of the other sphere till the next day.

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