The Sky's the Limit

Jester's Log. Mission #5: The Sky's the Limit

Our fearless leader Tim Clark took a brief vacation last week which gave us the opportunity to make a few changes around the office. As with most companies, when the boss is away - the kids will play. The only difference at the Life Explained Deep Space Colonization Department is that we don't let the sky be our limit. 

Due to the fact that we have not made as much progress as hoped with our teleportation project, we were forced to utilize more remedial technology in the interim. We did not take this unplanned expenditure lightly though. In fact, we found a way to stretch our dollar by making a purchase that will benefit other departments at Life Explained. 

The recent growth in staff and the increased number of company meetings and outings has created a need for a new company vehicle. The VW beetle no longer accommodates everyone. Fortunately for us, NASA was having a killer sale on space shuttles. Apparently NASA couldn't justify having a $450 million dollar spacecraft sitting around doing nothing. Since they aren't allowed to do their job anymore, they had a rather large rummage sale. 

Life Explained is now the proud owner of a space shuttle. Although it's pretty much worthless for local trips within our atmosphere, it does look pretty cool sitting out in front of the building. I hope Tim doesn't mind that he now has to park across the street though. The shuttle takes up a lot of parking spots...

On the bright side, we now have a means of getting supplies off planet to set up the remote receiving sites for our teleportation testing to begin. (We couldn't get any volunteers to test the teleportation device without having a known "landing" location.) Our progress is bound to advance at a pretty steady rate now and we are hoping to have our first remote receiving site in place by early 2018. That of course is assuming the Clark/Zahrt team wins the election so we can use government funding for the ongoing expenses. We kind of blew our budget with the space shuttle purchase. It was on sale, but still not cheap. 

I better get back at it. I see Susan is playing around with the controls in the cockpit again. Last time she did that, the engine blast took out the Taco Bell next door. We can't afford any more losses like that. Pretty soon we'll be back to eating gas station burritos. Until next time....

Hello, my name is Susan Leighton.  I wanted to introduce myself to all of you since Tim Clark, the CEO of Life Explained recruited me for the Deep Space Exploration project among other things. Tim, I have to hand it to you, what a sense of humor!  I really loved the fact that you had a car pick me up in the middle of the night. I thought it was kind of unusual especially when that convincing gentleman told me I needed to wear a blindfold but with the money you are paying me, who is going to complain? Or compare it to a kidnapping?  Not me!

Anyway, I am the SVP of the PRD. We here at LE love talking in acronyms.  It makes everything sound so much more important than it is, harder to decipher and mysterious!  As the SVP of the PRD, one of my tasks is to ensure that LE is adequately represented across every form of media imaginable and some that aren’t but Jesse Zahrt, our head of R&D insists he is working on. Come on, Jesse, Dr. Data cannot wait forever until you combine the algorithm from our microwave in the breakroom with the code of the Wii in our lounge.  Dr. Data assures me this will create the perfect hologram and as you know, holographic projections are on my list of new media frontiers to conquer so get to work!

I will be in charge of press releases for our upcoming deep space exploration project which means that I will be stuck explaining why things aren’t working. Oh, gosh!  I said that out loud, didn’t I? Damn! I have got to cut back on these Mimosas.  Looks like I am celebrating this new position way too much.  What I meant to say was that I will be the one who will field all the inevitable inquiries from the press, NASA, Ancient Aliens, Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton’s hairstylist, and the list goes on and on. Tim and Jesse are way too busy for that nonsense. Besides they need someone like me to take on those pundits so they can be free to do whatever it is they do.

One of my first orders of business will be to appoint a galactic/intergalactic ambassador. This will be very important as we set out to colonize the universe and eventually other galaxies. We will need someone who is experienced in dealing with the unknown.  Someone who is interested in seeking out strange new worlds and boldly going where no one has gone before and yada, yada, yada. Now I must mention that this position will be very prominent.  That being said our vetting process will be rather rigorous.

I have already begun taking applications. I had a very promising candidate, Jim Kirk from Iowa.  He had tons of experience but unfortunately when our sources here at LE started our confirmation investigation, there was a scandal that occurred several years ago at his last employer that involved him and a woman named Janice Rand. Unfortunately, we were not able to offer him the position.

I also received another promising resume from a D. Vader.  However, when I went to call his references, they turned out to be bogus.  I got tired of chasing down Mr. Palpatine who I am told has been retired for several years.

If you think you have the right stuff, by all means do not hesitate to send your resume to LE. We are an EOE. We also accept GED, BA, BFA, BS, MA, MFA, MS, and PhD’s.  Am I forgetting anything? Oh yes! We also abide by OSHA as well.  Like I said, don’t these acronyms sound official or officious?  I can’t decide.

Until next time, keep reaching for the stars. We will be. Sometime in the near future. Maybe 20 years from now or a century.  Who is keeping track?

The walls have eyes

---

Jester's Log. Mission #4: Evasive Action

You know you're onto something big when when the competition starts spying on you. When you're talking about something as important as deep space colonization, calling them "the competition" is an understatement. Everyone from the federal government to Amazon is dying to get their hands on our teleportation findings in the Life Explained R&D department.

Apparently my hiding in plain sight methodology is failing in terms of maintaining operational secrecy regarding the deep space colonization project. Never would I have imagined that they would find our secret lab hidden in this small town in Midwestern America. Over the past week though, I have identified a number of possible breaches to our security that can only mean we have spies working in and around our super top secret Midwestern satellite office.

The first sign was the appearance of two new Wifi signals operating near our office. Normally this would not be of concern, but the fact that there are no new neighbors and all the existing SSID's are still in operation. The fact that one is labeled "FBI Surveillance Van" and the other "WillConnectForBeer" were dead giveaways.

Clearly the federal government wants in on our technology. Leave it to the FBI to have the naming convention for their SSID be so matter of fact. They have recently proven to be a little off their rocker in terms of investigation techniques and results so they should be pretty easy to keep an eye on.

The WillConnectForBeer signal is a bigger concern though. A lot of thought and planning went into that to remain as common place as possible. They did however make one rookie mistake. Their research on local customs and practices was incomplete. Anyone who has ever lived in the Midwest knows that we would never give up beer for something as inconsequential as an internet connection. I am considering connecting to their network and giving them altered reports to sabotage their surveillance efforts.

Another issue of concern is the voices I have been hearing. I'm not sure how long this has been going on because at first I thought I just had a few new voices in my head. I have grown so accustomed to hearing the voices in my head that I didn't give them a second thought at first. It wasn't until I realized they weren't answering me that I knew it wasn't the normal voices in my head - because they always answer me when I talk to them.

It appears to be frequency interference from wireless bugs in our office. I have yet to determine how the bugs were planted in the first place, but I have a couple of leads I will pursue.

The first is a man that lurks around our front door every weekday morning. He's always wearing an outfit that appears to be government issued and leaves unsolicited paper correspondence in the box next to our front door. The second is a black and white cat that just sits out in front of the building and stares at us all day long. He appears to be a real cat, but I am beginning to think it's an elaborately disguised bug planting robot or he's equipped with wall penetrating video and audio technology.

I have already changed all our passwords from qwerty1 to qwerty2 in an effort to...oh crap...I'm going to  have to change them again, but without telling you this time. Rest assured they will be extremely complex (at least for the minds of us Life Explained employees).

This should be back under control over the course of the next few days. I can only hope not too much of our research has already been compromised. If push comes to shove, I guess we can always bring the time machine out of mothballs and go back in time to nip it in the bud before it started. Until next time....