Role reversals

Because it seems that being the bearer of bad news no longer falls exclusivly on one person. I have mentioned to some others that I am no longer sure if I exist outside of my own mind; something rather strange for someone like me, (Maybe it is more normal for me than I realize. It is hard to judge oneself, and even harder to realize what oneself truely is. "Self" is a whole concept that I'm not currently willing to delve into). But what would spark such a strange concept?

It would be easy for me to assume that I /had/ proof of my continual existance. My friends, now my allies, the blog itself, the responses from others. But it's come to the point that I'm not even sure that this proves much of /anything/. Strange.

I decided a short while ago that it was time to try and contact the outside world. Sure, it was obvious that the cellphones would not work; obviously the result of some sort of jamming signal (Emitted by what?). Yet there are other was to contact the outside world.

"Cogito ergo sum." I think, therefore I am. Despite the terror we had been subjected to, I was determined to prove that, above all, logic would prevail.

Now, this held a few problems. There's many possible reasons for our continual inability to navigate this place; hallucinagetic gasses, strange fauna, even medications being introduced to our enviroment. Regardless, it's impossible to get out of here by ourselves. So I tried for more... conventional help. Police, the campus, and, more importantly... our families, my family, in fact. My Mother; a good, strong woman, intellgent and kind. My Father. Tall and giant and loving and who instilled my love of philosophy and logic. And my younger sister. Innocent.

....

I digress.

Using a jury-rigged system, I managed to make contact with the outside world.

Of course, I may be lying. It's easy to garner sympathy, isn't it? Logic is useless. Especially when I'm keeping secrets~

The Police, I presume, only looked up from their poker game for a few seconds before writing me off as a hoodlum. The campus denied any such trip, in fact, the campus denied that Class 123 ever existed. And as for my family?

My sister answered the phone. She's fairly young and my parents don't tend to leave her alone, so this troubled me, even moreso than the previous responses.

I could barely even hear her voice over the downright /incredible/ static, but it was apparent what she was saying.

"Wally, they're saying that you were never here, that you're never comming home, that you'll keep The Tall Man away. It doesn't make any sense..."

Over. And over and over and over.

Getting into contact with other people's parents was very much the same. Either they refused to take me seriously, voices high with denial and... fear; or whispered something cryptic regarding Tall, Dark, and Slender and then hung up, quite rudely, if I may add.

[REDACTED]

He's... following my sister. Or maybe he's stopped. Here's my only problem....

If //it// thinks, does //it// exist as well?

...I'd rather not get into that one.

There have been some other things troubling me as well. A strange comment in the post by Lyle, by me... a comment regarding something about health...
That post. The one describing Zach's death in all the gory detail. Why would I berate him for getting it all out? Another point; our location is clearly stated in the subtitle of this blog. Why has nobody mentioned it or noticed?

The only hypothesis I can provide is that we are being censored. Someone is watching our ever move.

Well, I can play mental chess as well, good sir.

Your turn.

Because he's been quite naughty, hasn't he? Going behind my back, collaborating. Don't you see, Sir Bishop? I only want this for your own good.

Just kidding~

You have no idea what I can do, and I look forward to the day that it dawns on you. Sleep well, Subject.

Comments.

Are back up again.

It took Bri and I a good hour of working around the HTML, (a block had been put in, and we can't seem to undo it) but judging by Lyle's post everything's fine now. I've got admin privs to mess with the coding should another problem crop up - worst comes to worst and we'll just throw up an easy CSS so we don't have to work around templates again.

I feel like nothing really interesting has happened since Zach's death (rest in peace, buddy) and most people seem to have calmed down... for the most part. I guess we won't be able to tell for a couple more days.

As Elliott's informed you, the prof hasn't come back. As Elliott went to moan to Lyle about later, no, we should not go after them, if they ended up dead what chance do we have? It's not exactly verbatim (the conversation involved quite a bit more swearing and glaring daggers before Walter stepped in and talked some sense into both of them.) but it's close enough, and the consensus seems to be que sera, sera.


Everybody has the same thought on their mind.

. . . And now the comments are down.

Fanfuckingtastic.

This is terrible

Why did I ever agree to this?

I'm in a forest. Alone. With nobody to trust but my twin sister. A murderer could be behind every tree. A GPS CAUGHT FIRE in my HAND.

We're all doomed, aren't we?

None of us ever came here to scout or anything, and I keep hearing these noises, oh god-

Alright. Looking at the above now that I've taken my Prozac, maybe I should jump onto a more... uh.... sane trail of thought? Uh, hi internet. Name's Hayden. Suze is my twin sister and my doctor said this excursion would probably be good for me. I'm...uh... the jury's still out on that one. Considering I'm not very social as it is, maybe this wasn't the best idea? Whelp, I'm here, might as well tone down the conspiracy talk.

This.. all does seem a bit too... um.... perfect. Why did we all get on this trip? Why was it subsidized? Why does everyone give these little paranoid-

No, that's probably me. Schizophrenic-paranoid is NOT a good mix. Luckily, lotsa therapy has almost fixed that; just take meds for the mild anxiety. Click click. I keep playing with the collar I wear and the clicking noise is soothing. I was told that sometimes having an object to fiddle with helps keep anxiety down, hence the weird fashion sense. Um. Well. If anything goes downhill, maybe I'll be a bit more useful, but everything really is fine and dandy. Aside from the whole "bursting into flames" thing. Guess I'll head back out, though I should uh, probably take off the tinfoil hat. Suze'll be worried. She didn't think I should come but Zach was surprisingly insistent and even I find it hard to say no to him. Alright, that's all for now, I guess. Nice to meet you, internet. Um, yeah.

that's all, folks

Hayden

Status Report

After three days it's been agreed that we all reek of sweat and dirt and nobody is to acknowledge the fact. When the only source of fresh water is more than a mile past the point of (as Elliott puts it) 'give a damn' for anything but water and the beach is too shallow to cover up most of your body, well, the only thing we bathe in anymore is bug spray.

And even that somehow fails to keep the things away.

This leaves us three days into a fifty-seven day trip with 50 stanky university students and one stanky professor rolling in dirt by day and fending off bugs by night but hey, it's for SCIENCE, right?

I don't think I've introduced myself.

I'm the one they call Alex. I'll be handling the status updates, if that much wasn't already obvious.

I digress.

Everything's going splendidly so far. Currently all fifty of us have some form of smart phone in need of charging plus a Dell netbook that promises us 467 hours of streaming video but no internet access - more than enough to keep us drafting up reports and inputing data into spreadsheets. We've packed three extra batteries and daisy-chained five solar-powered chargers (all courtesy of Rich Parents R Us) for the phones, plus an adapter for the laptop. The charger will give each phone a good 57 hours with a two hour charge in direct sunlight. When it comes time to charge the laptop, however, we all have to go without our phones for a while because it takes a full day and then some to charge just one of the batteries.

It's a good thing smartphones come with text editors.

Most if not all of our phones have internet access through our carriers, and those who don't have found someone who does. It's amazing what a few days away from twitter and facebook will do to some of these people.

Looking at you, Erin.

(She's going to kill me for that later.)

The only problem?

Our GPSs are acting up.

Some won't start. Others only display certain coordinates. A few just lead us in circles. Fewer still emit this weird sort of hiss every once and a while when you're in the forest and one caught fire in Hayden's hand. He's been in his tent ever since wearing a tinfoil hat and muttering about god knows what.

I wish I was joking about that.

We're a strange bunch, Class 123.

Not that the GPS thing is really a problem - more an inconvenience than anything. Everybody here is excellent at orienteering and we have more than enough maps and compasses to go around. It's not like we really have to travel too far to get a wide range of samples, but I'll save the science for Bryan.

That's all I've really got to report. I'm sure Zach and Bryan will add anything important I've forgotten later anyways. I can already see Zach tapping furiously away on his phone - he must be writing up a post already. Bryan is off on the laptop in the center of camp, sticking close to the fire in hopes of keeping the bugs away. I can see nothing but pure white light on his face so I assume he's got something open on excel or word he'll be posting later tonight. He and Laura are the only ones who seem to be really dedicated to keeping this whole 'science' thing going - the rest of us are too busy taking in the novelty of it all, and even the prof seems to be caught up in it.

Alex out.