User blog:Sydneygb/Major Bludd's Personal Journal - 29 March, 2016

It's been a very interesting last few days. The alien let us go, after trying to get us to kill each other. Aliens. Anyway, it dropped us into the centre of Australia, near a place called Erldunda. Ayers Rock is only a few hundred kilometres away, and Alice Springs, where I was staying courtesy of Mayhem, isn't much farther.

There are times I stop and wonder if I'm really in the Twilight Zone and just don't know it. I like Kimber. For all she showed herself to be empty-headed, mercurial, and mouthy the first time I met her, I've learned she's really got a core of intelligence, humour, and, most of all, compassion. The girl was near tears lamenting she couldn't help me get out of this mercenary killing life. I don't think she has a hostile or deceptive bone in her body. I believe her when she says she wants to help.

But there's more than that. I've thought it over, looked at it from as many angles as I can, which isn't a lot, honestly, given what's going on here... against all the odds, I fancy her. I fancy Kimber Benton. What the hell has the universe come to? I'm as distracted by her as I was by Pennington years back. What's worse is I think she might just fancy me, too. I can't bring myself to do any harm to her in any way. I'm committed to ensuring she gets home safely, and in comfort. I can more than afford some first-class airline tickets for her. But I don't want to put her on a plane and see her off. Not yet, anyway. She's agreed to come and see Ayers Rock with me. I've always wanted to see it. The romantic in me, that idealistic kid that got caught staring out windows in class, wants to stand beside the heart of my birth nation and feel a connection with the earth. And damn me for a fool, I want her beside me when I do. I spend so much of my time squashing my feelings down, boxing them up and putting them on the shelf because they've no place in my work. I feel more alive right now than I have in several years. And I'm enjoying it.