LogFAQs > #898043660

Roger Tyson is a protagonist who thinks out loud a lot.

We join him just as his car runs out of gas, in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, during heavy rain with no food and no money.

Much to his fortune, a headlight appears in the distance. He stands in the road to flag the driver down. It's a woman on a motorcycle. He doesn't get out of the way soon enough, causing her to swerve into a ditch. She's dead within seconds, but manages to deliver a dire message before she goes...

"Beware the Rhox!"

She also tells him to take a button out of her ear and put it into his own. So naturally he does.

A minute later, another headlight appears down the road. Another motorcycle. Roger stands in the road again, and this time it's not a woman, but instead...

...a headless torso, obese, bulbous, brick-red, pear-shaped, ornamented with two clusters of tentacles, like lengths of flexible metal hose. [...] an eye as big as a pizza and similarly pigmented...

And wouldn't you know it, this motorcycle also swerves off the road, resulting in the death of the driver.

The voice of the dead woman speaks to him through the button he placed in his ear. She persuades him to carry out the deliverance of her message. He accepts that he's gone mad, but goes along with it. Drives two hours to the next city, heads into a bathroom, scribbles down a note which she dictates, and attempts to toss it into a magical rainbow wormhole portal type thing, but ends up falling into it himself...

the message:

My attempt to traverse Axial Channel partially successful. Apparent Museum and associated retrieval system work of advanced race capable of manipulations in at least two superior orders of dimensionality. Recommend effort to dispatch null-engine to terminal coordinates to break temporal stasis. Signed, Q'nell, Field Agent.