Epilogue



Testing...Am I recording?

Okay. This is Micah, second engineer, ATHENA Primary Team. I'm recording this...epilogue, I guess, to Old Red's story. I mean Big Red's story...damn. No way to correct mistakes on this thing. How did he do all that without ever screwing up? Just one more thing about him...

Okay, this is going nowhere. This epilogue, like the rest of the story we've chosen to call "Five Nights on Angelica Prime", is being appended to the Atlantium write-only data chip we recovered from...from Big Red's...from Big Red. Along with some Plasticene chips and something we think is a finger, it's all we have found in the carnage. We're not sure who, if anyone, he was recording the story for. However, as it is now going to be stored in the official archives and distributed about the ATHENA-held portions of humanspace, we felt it needed a bit of explanation.

We still have not determined exactly where that "hell-dimension" is, or what it is. We are certain that it was indeed a trap, that we were not ever meant to leave that place alive. The nature of the place, so the Harbinger tells us, was such that no one could leave it, but normal rules don't apply to the Harbinger, as we all know. The being on Certerus who led us to that dimension in search of the artifact Big Red was researching on Angelica Prime has yet to be located. We have no clues as to either his whereabouts or to his motivation for his actions. When we returned to look for Big Red, we brought a small army, accompanied by a number of mystical artifacts Harbinger assured us would aid us in returning unhindered. However, we encountered no resistance.

Some of the old crew joked that Big Red must have killed them all. I think more than a few of the recuits believed it. The number of bodies he left behind him was truly staggering, even after working with Glitteboy in the fields of Argossia, against the sectoids. He would have depopulated a small planet.

In any event, this chip and the few other small remains were gathered to be interred here, in his final resting place of choice. Almost twenty years have passed since the events recorded in Five Nights. It took us most of those to find his estranged daughter, Jenni, and inform her of her father's passing. She stands here with me now, on Earth, this strange planet which has brought so much change to the galaxy, or at least to humans in the galaxy. It is not a particularly interesting or beautiful planet, in my opinion.

This is second engineer Micah, ending recording.

So, Jenni, what does "Idaho" mean, anyway?