[ WP ] Teleportation is finally invented . Your friend is one of the first people to use it . After coming out on the other side , the more time you spend with him , the more you realize that this is not your friend

Part I: 
 
 A week ago, Galaxy 8's Interstellar Detective Bureau dispatched an investigator to mining vessel Tau-9-9 to inquire into details involving the mass murder and data breach on Watcher station Alpha-0-1-1. Security footage was sparse, but it revealed a human astronaut absconding from the station with a small data stick. Security footage at port 119B revealed a security seal from astronauts on Tau-9-9 was used to gain access to the station shortly before the massacre. This station was manned by only two officers. One, a top-decorated pilot in the U.S. Air Force and mother of two named Amanda Bailey. The other, a Harvard-educated mathematician from Japan who played video games as a hobby and spoke 19 different languages named Ken Ichimitzu. 
 
 The investigator's entrance into the mining ship was unnoticed and silent. The ship appeared unoccupied. It looked ransacked, though. Furniture was torn and clawed through, almost as if by an animal. A small veneer of dust had settled over all, and motion-detecting lights creaked on as he walked down hallways, almost as if they'd been dormant for some time. 
 
 With the mainframe hard-drive missing, the investigator made his way down several corridors to the captain's quarters. There, he ignited the computer, unfurled a small piece of crinkled paper containing a username and passcode, and accessed the Captain's log file. 
 
 
 Captain's Log: 8/26/16 3:30 a.m. 
 Eyes hurt from digging knuckles of my hands into my eyes, trying to wipe away the sleep. I feel trapped. Helpless. Out here on this space station, my computer monitor is really the only area of activity, of newness, of anything echoing life back home. Looks like that buffoon Trump is going to lose. Not much better to beat him, but hey, whoever gets me back home safe and sound, right? I should be catching sheep by now, but something's keeping me awake. I do n't feel right about Amanda. My toes wo n't rest in their shoes, my shoulders feel tight, I'm breathing shallowly, and there's a nameless thickness set into his throat that wo n't go away. 
 
 I swear I've looked at the clock ten times in the last minute. It's 3:16 now. Damn it. It had started last week. Astronaut 11A ( aka Amanda ), had returned on Saturday from her monthly meeting on exoplanet Rebinium with the other watchers on star system Tau-9-9. I had asked her how the meeting went, and curiously she did n't talk much about it. She loves these things, the ideas they have for new exploration and resource management, and all the new people she meets there. 
 
 But this time she just yawned, and then asked where the bathroom was. It's a small spacecraft. And she's been here for almost a year now. I glanced at her in incredulity, you know, the way you do when you are trying to persuade someone into stopping joking around, to see if they're serious, with that hint of hope and terror that what if she really does n't know... my eye brows raised and forehead scrunched in confusion. She immediately sensed my nerves and the gaffe, and laughed, but it was a laugh that was hollow and perfunctory, a laugh like when you are trying to disarm someone, not when you find something funny. Certainly not the kind of giddy laugh I've grown to love about Amanda. But when she turned around to walk away, she took a right turn instead of a left one, and even though I'd turned around out of politeness, so as to hide the fact I was worried, I could hear soft footsteps trying to conceal their way behind my back, retracing steps back to the bathroom. Maybe I'm paranoid. Maybe she just took some strange medicine or something, and was a little delirious. Hence, the fatigue. Who knows. Over and out. 
 
 Captain's Log: 8/27/16 12:21 a.m. 
 `` I do n't feel right,'' were her first words when I saw her the following morning. I asked if she did n't sleep well, and she said it was n't that. Something in her head, she said, striking her skull sort of violently with the heel of her hand. But she would n't talk anymore about it the more I asked. It's not like her. She's one of the most open people I know, a great American in that true Karl Popper sense. 
 
 I'm worried about her. The work on the ship is going smoothly. She's still crunching out her reports on status of the ununpentium-289 mining operation. This element is extremely friable, with a half life of one-fifth of a second, about as long as it takes you to sneeze. But a couple of important articles are missing, and I ca n't seem to turn them up anywhere. One of the astronaut suits is gone, and the picture of my wife and kids I keep paper-clipped to my bathroom mirror has disappeared. I ca n't figure out which is more important. 
 
 Captain's Log: 8/28/16 
 Amanda has a massive bruise on the right side of her head. I asked her if she was hitting herself, and she replied in a cloying voice that she was perfectly fine and happy to be awake and at work. I found it dodgy, but I was glad she was okay. Ever since that trip through the teleporter, she's been acting weird. She does n't eat eggs anymore for breakfast. That was her favorite food. Now it's granola. I also ran a bot program to monitor her computer activities during breakout session from the helm. She's been ignoring attempts by her family to Skype with her lately, which is quite unlike her. When she was in the shower, I snuck into her room to peek around a bit, see if everything was all right. What's unusual is that her own picture of her family, framed on her bureau, it's gone, too. 
 
 And I still ca n't find that damned astronaut suit. 
 
 Captain's Log: 8/29/16 
 Today we had food delivery. It went well, partly because I did all the work, but partly because Amanda was not around for me to stress about. It was nice just to be by myself, even if the docking, receiving, depressurization, importing, documentation, transportation, and storage and sealing of the materials was a lot of work. It was worth it, to be alone. I never thought I'd want to be alone, that I'd ever write that, out here on this spaceship. But I like it. 
 
 When Amanda did n't show up for lunch, I knew something was off. Regardless of my personal preference not to see if she was okay, I took a brisk stroll down to dormitories and rapped on her door. After brushing me off with a few grunts, she opened the door. She was naked, dripping with water. Her eyes, they were hungry. She pulled me into her room, threw her thighs around me, and we had sex then and there. She has a husband for God's sake. I felt strange about it, still do. She did n't seem to care about any of it. And when I finished, she rolled away and said she had some work to do on the computer. She did n't even wipe it out, it was trickling out of her onto the chair she was sitting in, beading down like saliva onto the rubber floor. 
 
 Who is this person? 
 
 Captain's Log: 8/30/16 
 There is something disturbing about Amanda. Lest you begin to think this log is becoming a softcore porno, let me officially document that I wanted and did n't want to see her again. Against my better judgment, I scheduled a trace program to generate data about her internet traffic, what she was reading and writing, and in general why she was n't working from her office desk in the star bay. 
 
 Shortly after initiating the program, one of the sensors in the docking bay went dark. Putting down the report I was finishing on the station's Silent Running greenhouse garden, I threw on a track suit and jogged across the station to examine the cause for its failure. As I was inspecting the sensor, I sensed someone right behind me, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I turned halfway, and out of the corner of my eye a massive figure towered over me. Immediately I threw my back against the wall and cowered, gasping, seconds later realizing it was just Amanda. I yelled at her for sneaking up on me. Her hair was all tangled, knotty, and there was a musky smell pouring out around her, a smell that was n't attractive. 
 
 She asked my why I was spying on her. This was when I felt nauseated. She did n't ask it in the sense that she was innocent. It was malicious. There was something malevolent in her voice I had never heard before. But her face was cool, hands flat at her sides, voice monotone, but there was an indistinct contempt running in the background. I bought some time and told her that Tau-9-9 protocol requires documentation of company time during periods of employment, and that I was simply trying to account for her employment hours so that she could get paid - not that I was reading what she was up to. She asked if I had seen the report. I told her I had n't, which was true. The report was scheduled to finish two hours ago, and I'd just been involved with other things. Immediately she relaxed, and half-smiled. Then she reached past me into the sensor, pulled a wire and linked it to a node, and the room lit up like a police roof light. 
 
 Before she left, I asked her if she had seen my family photo. There was a kind of dim shaking in her irises. Like something deep in her was stirring from slumber. Then she shook her head, smacked it again hard, turned around and walked out. Just before she left, she said families make one weak, and are inappropriate for this profession. Then the airlock door hissed, and she was gone. 
 
 Captain's Log: 9/1/16 
 The report is gone! I logged into my account, plugged into Tau-9-9's mainframe, and tried to access the data file, but it was corrupted. Something in the code had warped, and it was unusable. Things just get weirder and weirder around here. Today Amanda was walking on her hands up and down the star bay, almost singing.
