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Wednesday June 3, 1951 2:41pm - Revenge and the clinching evidence
Our favourite geologist left us last time to take revenge on the ants that put him in hospital.
I strapped on my grenade bandoleer. Checking they're all functioning, I clipped the clasp together. I chewed off the sealed caps of the sticks of dynamite, and spat them on the ground. I slid them into place around my belt.
I fired a test shot into the ground. Safety be damned, I needed to make sure I was going to get these bastards. I chambered a round, and moved onto the cart.
This was it. Mine 1 lay just up ahead. My palms sweaty, I fidgeted with the trigger on my gun, eager to bust some ant heads.
The cart rocketed out of the entrance to the mine. I saw an ant leg come swooping down - they had been ready for me! The ant crushed the cart like a toy.
Luckily, I had exited early. The ant was a sitting duck.
A column of ants reared up, sensing the death-buzz of their colleague.
Some well placed grenades and dynamite sticks disposed of them quickly enough.
The adrenaline clotted through my veins, and I decided it was a good idea based on all my imaginary knife-fight experience to challenge Ice to a shivving contest.
I closed my eyes and jabbed out a couple of times with the knife, hoping against hope that somehow I'd get through his guard.
Holy shit! Ice was a big pussy after all.
I knew his buddies weren't going to be happy about some four-eyed rock scientist beating up their leader, and even if they were just as wimpy, they had enough weight and numbers to be a problem. I decided to skidaddle.
It seems the Hell Cats had beaten me to it, and ran off themselves.
This is a blatant plug for another Cinemaware title, Rocket Ranger.
In fact, by this point it was almost 7pm - I was dead on my feet. I went home and slept like a log. Unfortunately, I had barely gotten 13 hours sleep when I woke up.
Jackie took up all of my concentration. When she walked in, I couldn't help but stare at her.. clothes. She swished about for a minute, before lounging down and folding her arms crossly. I quickly skimmed through the lab results to get them out of the way.
LAB RESULTS: We have examined the samples you sent and as you suspected
they show an unusual amount of radiation. Area where found must be
considered hazardous to humans. Greenish matter found on some of the
samples bears a striking resemblance to "scenting" fluid ants drop to
find their way back to a food location. The fluid tested has a very high
concentration levels. Given the volume of liquid that you encountered,
the creature that it came from would have to be 8 to 10 meters in length
and weigh approximately 4 tons. Needless to say, we are re-checking our
results.
Fucking FINALLY. This had been a long time coming. I knew that rescuing women would pay off eventually - one of them would put out.
Time to get down to business.
After impressing Jackie, and impressing upon her that this should never be mentioned again. In order to help her keep her mouth shut, I put her in my bedroom and locked the door. I left her with the distinct impression that if she attempted to force open the door, it may explode.
As a side note, if you actually do take this route, you don't get any action - you wake up in hospital having over exerted yourself and fainted.
When I left my house, I found Geez standing outside, staring inside my windows, trying to make out Jackie inside. I coughed loudly, and he jumped.
When I finally pieced together what the hell Geez was saying, I realised that this could be some pretty useful data. Castings of tracks can often tell you a lot about a creature's behaviour and capabilities. We already know that they're giant ants, but we need to know how giant ants act. I headed to the university to see what Dr. Wells had found so far.
Well, I wasn't expecting much - it'd probably take him days to figure out even the barest facts. Scientific discoveries of this magnitude normally take years to analyse, but we probably only had a week or ten days before the town was totally overrun!
Having said that, I felt I deserved a day off, so I decided to go and poke around some of the places I hadn't visited much.
This is a construction site, so I have no idea why it's called Hot Springs.
This could actually be the best news of the past few days (aside from getting laid by a hot chick). Godfrey's men are a pretty tough bunch, and they could really help out in any pitched battle, if it came down to that. Unfortunately that still means convincing the mayor.
Thinking of other potential allies, I decided to visit the police station.
Although I couldn't think of any particular use for a recording of the ant's screeching, I decided to take it over to the lab for analysis. I decided for a laugh to see what the Cop thought of the evidence.
Dr. Wells told me that he'd have it investigated for tomorrow, along with the track castings. Satisfied that my science quote for the day was fulfilled, it was time to work on my loving quota. I went to visit Dusty. Maybe if I played my cards right, I'd be in for a bit of menage a trois.
Well that wasn't so promising. I'm sure she'll come around though - the women always come around.
It was almost 3pm, so I decided to get an early night so I was refreshed for tomorrow. I drove home to get some much needed sleep.
I awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world.
While I was asleep, it had occurred to me that I should speak to the military at the national guard base to see if they were willing to help out killing ants.
What a rude man. I got the point when he asked me to leave, he didn't have to shoot the ground around my feet and tell me to dance.
Prick.
Speaking of pricks, I wanted to drop in and see Jackie's father, the nutcase who runs the Neptune cult in Neptune Hall.
This guy was a total tool. I already had a sample of the ant's fluid, so I just messed around in his shed and pissed in all his illicit bottles of hooch. Serves the bastard right.
It did however remind me that I needed to check in with the good doctor at Platt University to see what he's found out about the ant evidence. Hopefully he'll have figured out something useful, but knowing him he'll probably just tell me there are giant ants around again.
He continued:
"Now about this other evidence you brought...
Well Greg, this one baffled me at first. We found no matches to anything that big. Then I widened my sample to include insects and reached a terrifying conclusion. This track, except for its size, is a perfect match with that of a harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex Rugosus, very common in this area. But the ant that made this track is as big as a house! There must be a local colony of these giants, and in a short time there will be mating flights, warlike colonies spreading death and destruction across the planet... a fate for mankind too terrible for words... !"
My memory is very fuzzy. The next thing I remember was standing over Dr. Wells with my .45 out. It had been fired, and recently. Dr. Wells had some round burns all over his face, and his lab had been completely smashed up.
I left in a hurry, after stopping to assure myself of Dr. Wells' silence. Stopping on the way out of the university, I picked up an elderly doctor's pain medicine, and choked down a couple of pills. They hit the spot, and the red haze lifted for now.
I drove to the police station, planning on asking him if he had had any crazy calls from Dr. Wells.
Well, this was a lucky break. If there had been a murder, and in Neptune Hall of all places, it would probably take the heat off my assault and battery at the University.
I wandered around the town, spreading rumours and getting gossip going - it never hurt to cover your tracks a little more.
I even talked to that little shit Elmer. He started going on about Ice once more, and at that point I punched him and walked off. I swallowed another handful of pills and took some deep breaths. Elmer apologised for getting in the way of my fist, and crawled off into his office to hide.
Feeling much calmer, I drove to KBUG. I burst into the studio and screamed incoherently at Dusty and beat my chest.
There are several more opportunities to get bits of evidence - we can get yet another sample of fluid, and also the track castings, by going to the quarry and stud farm respectively. They're pretty boring with just some guy saying "hey I found this, you want it?"
She'll take me back, I'm sure of it. I just need to keep trying - persistence will pay off in the end. In the meantime, it was time to get some more sleep - it was almost 5pm!
Next update: More knife fights! More useless evidence! More hanky panky!
Minor bonus info. At this point, we've now found and analysed all 4 useless bits of evidence - tissue sample, fluid, sound recordings and track castings. We can now actually go to the mayor, and convince him:
And we skip forward to the final section of the game. Unfortunately, this means we actually miss a lot of potential encounters and crazy shit that goes down. I'm pretty sure that once you've convinced the mayor the game just goes into a loop with people constantly giving you hints that you should head south west and find the nest.
For this reason, we're going to ignore the mayor for now, and carry on as if we couldn't convince him. Eventually the game will just shunt us onto the last section anyway.