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From the diary (and thoughts) of Professor Chaykin..."

As I emerge from my space-pod, I receive a brief shock from the sight of a few scantily-clad females of the alien species. I suppose it's one of those perfectly rational thoughts, I guess...I had only encountered males of this race before, and since they had been my only exposure I simply assumed that it was a unisex group. Of course, this realization is quickly dashed by the hail of gunfire around me. As I begin sprinting off towards the right (must I always dash in this direction? does it truly lead to freedom and salvation?), I ponder my heartiness to grow accustomed to weaponry being fired around me. ''This is not the life I had intended to lead, or even experience through the visceral viewing of a movie or television program,'' I thought. ''I am a scientist, damnit!''

...but perhaps I leap too far into the story, then? Allow me to start from the beginning.

My name is Lester Chaykin, a practitioner of the Quantum Physics. (Under normal circumstances, I would simply say that I am a student of them, but my recent...predicament has caused me to reword that position slightly.) I prefer to think my way through situations, generally, allowing my knack for logical deduction instead of physical prowess to navigate troublesome situations. Thus, one night when I decided to head into the lab and get in a little extra work with the Particle Accelerator, I hadn't exactly planned for the most exciting of evenings. Granted, I should have known better than to work with a highly-powerful machine during such a rainstorm, but my thirst for knowledge and understanding overrode my better judgment. The following lightning bolt, that supercharged my machine and caused a heretofore-unheard of teleportation (of myself), confirmed such ignorance and propelled me into my erstwhile adventure.

The first thing I remembered after the flash of light was the shock of cold and my inability to breath. My head swam from the confusion of being ripped from my seat and soda from my hand, placed into a situation so thoroughly foreign. Thankfully, my childhood instincts (thank you, mother, for giving me swimming lessons!) forced myself upwards and towards the surface, despite my minds' inability to comprehend the event. Gasping, I arose from the pool and surveyed my surroundings. The vast, colorful landscape automatically clued me in to the concept that this clearly was not Kansas anymore, Toto, and that my location had somehow been altered by the P.A. back home. An electrical override will do that, I guess. (If I ever get home, I'll have to make a note of such a change...dash that, when I get home. Positive thoughts!)

Following this brief glimpse about, I decided to explore. Moving to the right (as I so often found myself doing within this predicament), I encountered some of the local life-forms: sluglike creatures with nasty looking talons emerging from their upper regions, oozing a viscous liquid that would most likely prove to be fatal if inoculated intravenously. Carefully avoiding these creatures (or kicking them aside, I can't quite remember exactly), my journey. I then encountered a beast slightly more forward in its danger to me, a large ape/dog creature with a gaping maw. Growling and chasing me, I was almost dead when I lucked into my survival -- the beast was shot down behind me by a pair of large creatures, clad in overflowing black robes.

Hailing my saviors, I was met with an unfortunate result. Was the waving of my hand deemed to be an offensive gesture? Or simply my colorful appearance?

Regardless, my soon-to-be-captors opted to shoot me into unconsciousness, treating me as they would any other prisoner of theirs and placing myself in a detention block. I awoke within a cage, hanging above a chasm of sorts, with another one of such beasts. Ours was a short holding, though, as the chain we were suspended from was easily broken by swaying the cage to-and-fro. Again, luck prevailed for us as we promptly landed on the armed guard whom was watching our escape attempt. Receiving thanks from my newfound fugitive-in-arms, I picked up the downed creatures' firearm and we pressed onward.

There are 4 things I credit to the survival of my adventures on this planet - this gun, my reflexes, my alien friend, and (of course) LOTS of luck. After toying with it for a while, I found that the gun had 3 uses - simple blasts, which vaporize their target (!!!), a powerful shield which repulses single shots (but dies after too many hits), and a charged-up shot that can blow through doors, shields, and just about anything else in the way. It has served me well up to this point, and would be a wonderful tool to bring back to Earth (if I ever get back) for further analysis. It saddens me, however, that my appearance on this otherwise-excellent trip for scientific study has been one of violence and destruction. What a terrible ambassador I am, to cause so much death! However, the circumstances I find myself placed within seem to have determined my actions for me, rather than vice versa. Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

Odd, too, how my thoughts seem to (apparently) cloud my aesthetics as well as my judgment. Everything around me, from the colorful decorum and creatures, appears slightly blurrier, less detailed. It is almost as if I were wandering in a dream-like state, experiencing these dangerous environs through a desire to be here rather than an inopportune plantation within the heart of the action. What makes it creepy, frankly, is not the lack of detail but the acute realism of movement around me. It is as if the landscape is deliberately trying to look more drab in color, yet retain its authenticity through animated movements.

Also, as if to heighten the mood, my mind seems to be playing tricks on me - I hear everything around me, the sounds created by whatever is nearby...yet occasionally I seem to be enveloped in music, as if my brain were trying to enhance the situation with an audio cue of some sort. With each adrenaline-inducing moment, I again hear the familiar strains of an energetic tune. Maybe I'm trying to motivate myself to a higher level of performance, I don't know. Equally odd, in this state-of-mind I seem to be experiencing - and I KNOW you will think I'm crazy for saying this - is that I seem to have a fuzzy memory of what I am doing here. Sometimes, it will feel as if I have performed the same task over and over again until I have reached the right answer to the puzzle, the right jump over the right pit, that sort of thing. Failures feel as if I were simply placed back at a slightly earlier point of time so that I could re-do the troublesome spot. However, this is lunacy, and clearly the adventure is wearing on my mind...restarting over and over from checkpoints prior? What am I, crazy?

Of course, I'd probably have to be crazy to believe that this has all happened in such a short span of time. I've found myself foiling my captors time and time again, either blazing through a room or using cunning to get the drop on them. I've out-run landslides and surges of water, bounded over nefarious-looking toothy-creatures, and leapt across many a chasm or pit. And although the going has often been issues of trial and error (or was that just another fuzzy memory?) and often felt frustrating to surpass...I gotta admit, it's been one Hell of an adventure.

So as I return to my plight, running behind my oversized companion again, I can't help but wonder what will happen next in this hectic day of mine. As the ground is shot out beneath me and I begin to plummet, only one thought enters my head:

''Ah, that figures. This place really is...Out of this World.''

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/12/04