Official News page 1

A FINAL NOTE FROM TRASHLEY CAN

by Trashley Can

I have never been so relieved to see anyone in my life, but the return of my colleagues to the Fed2 Star office has stopped me from slipping over the edge into complete insanity. The things I have had to put up with while they were away!

You will recall from my last bulletin that the workdroids had fixed the holes in Hazed's floor but produced a colossal amount of sawdust which covered everything, so we were waiting for the cleaning droids to show up and do their job.

They were three days late. Apparently there had been a whole series of spills in the spaceport that kept them hopping and they couldn't spare anyone to attend to a private job. I told them it was for Hazed but they said that didn't make a difference. I'd like to see how they cope with an irate demi-goddess lambasting them for failing to produce work up to her impossibly high standards...

Meanwhile, every puff of air I drew in through my intake was impregnated with sawdust. My whole innards were riddled with the stuff. When I talked, I coughed.

Eventually, the cleaning droids showed up, and they got rid of all the sawdust. But they sprayed so much water everywhere that it was like being permanently out in a rainstorm. It's not good for droids to be immersed in water. My joints are starting to go rusty and when I move, I creak. At least it washed most of the sawdust out of me, although I can't help feeling their is something wrong with the way I slosh when I move.

So, the sawdust gone, the water evaporated, everything was gleaming and clean, so the workdroids came back to paint Hazed's floor. I can't fault their work, it looks lovely, a beautiful shade of turquoise, but the paint fumes were pretty intense and they made me feel quite lightheaded. Some of my positronic pathways may have corroded. At one point I was having hallucinations - I thought that I remembered seeing something terrible under the floorboards in Hazed's office, but it must have been just a dream, because there's no reason why there would be a mess of crushed droid parts there, is there?

I have no idea what the long-term effects of all this will be; I think I need to book myself a stay at the droid hospital to get myself checked out. I'm too young to suffer like this.

So the other droids came back yesterday, and do you know what? Dot Matrix, one of Hazed's longest-serving newsdroids, brought me back a jar of 5-star lubs. She said she'd read my bulletins and felt sorry for me, having to go through all that trauma, and she knew what it was like, having done the Christmas shift several years running. Isn't that nice of her? She is a lovely droid, she really is, and I am so chuffed that she noticed me. I wonder if she'll let me do some errands for her...

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page