May 7th 

Perl just emailed me to say he’ll be able to visit the offices tomorrow. Thank God. I need another person I can talk to about all of this. I’m certain the psychiatrists here talk directly to the management. In any case, it’s always better to handle these things with friends.

Dr. Peters, one of the biologists, visited my office today. He wanted to apologize for the noise, which was a considerate, albeit late, gesture. When he saw me tinkering with the prototype, he got remarkably excited. We talked for a while about surgical engineering. He says that the QFC’s selective destabilization is a promising replacement for his department’s apparently quite outdated surgical units. He briefly mentioned Perl’s hypervelocity gauss cannon, which startled me. Found it hard to focus on the conversation after that, but thankfully, it wasn’t much of one. He mentioned, with some reverence, that Perl was the only other person in Weapons Research doing any work competing with mine. I’ll have to tell him; he’ll get a kick out of that.

I had to head up closer to the Lambda Reactor today. As always, it smelled like chloroform and was far too busy for my tastes. It was Dr. Byrnes paging me. He wants a QFC-235 in their supply depot for the survey teams. Not surprising--it wasn’t built for the military--but it still took me aback. He’d love to have one on the other side by the middle of May, which’ll encourage me to accelerate work on the new prototype. Hopefully, I’ll be able to show him something by the end of the week.

Speaking of survey teams, it looks like I can expect more tremors tomorrow. Even my most nose to the grindstone colleagues are buzzing about the latest expedition. They only went to the other side a week ago, so they must have found something good to come back this early. Hopefully, I can find some peace amidst the chaos.

Signed,
Dale R.