Logistics Officer Nall’s personal log: Tuesday 10.11.81

First day on duty here at the Lenticularis base, and it appears to be a refreshingly effortless transition of power. The Logistician I replaced appears to have kept a tight ship and painstaking book keeping, so the usual chore of bringing the supply office up to regulation standards will not be necessary.

It’s refreshing to see how differently things are handled at a top security outpost. Logistics is treated with the seriousness it deserves. Unlike certain Enclave postings I’ve been assigned to, where procedures are so slipshod that Class VI supplies were labeled Class IV. Then everypony was all surprised when the toothpaste they ordered wound up being industrial building clouds.

Only caveat to this surprisingly successful first day is that the keyboard on this workstation is short a letter key. I have already set in the necessary request paperwork for a new one, and I’ll just have to work around it until it arrives.

Logistics Officer Nall’s personal log: Wednesday 10.12.81

I guess I was wrong about the serious respect for logistics that this ‘top security’ outpost has. All day I’ve been pestered by ponies ordering all sorts of incidental odds and ends. Of course, barely any had the proper request papers.

It wasn’t all the standard day by day things either, like practice rounds or foodstuffs, it was things that ponies don’t often wear out or use up. Sets of battle shoes, spark batteries, cloud nails, even a wing preening kit.

Those kits are standard issue and sturdy enough to outlast the pegasus using it! There better be one pristine looking set of wings on this base to warrant a second kit.

The worst of the lot though are the scientists stationed here. They have no concept of the purpose of the logistics office and treat it like a convince store. The few that even gave the effort to filling out a requisition sheet filled the wrong ones. A neutron flow reversing engine is in no way a “standard personal article”, that kind of hardware requires a 528.6215 Class Y request sheet!

During dinner I spoke with a captain about the large quantity of requests, and he said that it’s higher than the usual need at this base. This theory is that several of the ponies stationed here could have been holding off on filing requisition requests once they heard the previous Logistician was retiring. The stallion that held this position previously had a reputation for being a real stickler for procedure and ponies here figured his successor would give an easy pass on their requests.

If that is the case, then they are in for a rude awakening…

Logistics Officer Nall’s personal log: Thursday 10.13.81

Events here at Lenticularis have taking a disturbing turn, literally overnight.

Even before dawn the logistics office was stuffed with a throng of frustrated pegasus, all insisting I replace whatever thing they were lacking and ‘desperately needed’. Only part of the base that was overrun to a greater extent was the Enclave Police office.

It appears that during the night, hundreds of objects of all shapes and sizes went AWOL all across the base. The absentee articles spanned the likes of anti-tank rifles to tubes of zinc sunblock just disappeared under the noses of the enclave elite. One officer even reported that his pillow was taken while he was sleeping on it. This also is apparently the reason behind the spike in requests yesterday, yet then it was so subtle and gradual that nopony really thought anything of it.

This all appears to be a very elaborate (and largely pointless considering certain things that were taken) theft and the EP officers have their hooves full investigating it. All they can do for now is note down all that has gone absent and then send ponies to Logistics to request new ones.

To cope with this crisis I had to forgo any hope that the correct paperwork was filled out and just note down in short-hoof what was being requested by who and eventually fill out the proper papers later. Even with his crude approach, the base’s stores of supplies began running low at a chaotically fast rate.

To add insult to injury, the local scuttlebutt around the base is I could be the culprit, since I arrived around when things started to disappear. Lieutenant general Cloud Coral sent out a base wide notice dispelling this theory, pointing out how I have a flawless service record and the absurdity of a Logistician sabotaging the enclave in this way. Yet certain soldiers still give distrustful looks as I trot down the halls.

I just hope that the culprit is apprehended soon so I can get back to a trace of regular work here.

Logistics Officer Nall’s personal log: Friday 10.14.81

Things continue to disappear around the base, and the situation has escalated severely.

After one of the scientists notice that his top secret research papers had been taken right out of his briefcase, the investigation into the lost property expanded beyond just apparent personal effects and sundry articles.

Whoever (or whatever) this thief is, they succeeded in extracting apparently arbitrary confidential files out of a locked filing cabinet, abscond with prototype weapons held in the weapons locker, and even took the classified contents of the base’s vault. Yet the worst disappearance was the foalnapping of lieutenant general Sea Coral’s teenage daughter.

While the lieutenant general was endeavoring to reign in the rising chaos of these disappearances, his daughter, who stopped by to visit, had slipped out of his office to use the lavatory and never returned. Apparently, her visits are a frequent enough occurrence that security turns a blind eye to it, even though this is supposed to be atop security facility. She wasn’t even assigned escort guards and had free access to anywhere on the base that doesn’t require security cards. So when she failed to return, half the outpost was turned upside-down again to find her.

What started off as a bizarre rash of petty thefts has now escalated into high treason, grand larceny, and abduction. In response, lieutenant general Sea Coral has put the base on total lockdown, preventing anypony entering or leaving until the culprits are apprehended.

I was planning to use this weekend for double checking the inventory of the base storehouse anyway, but there are several ponies on this base rather putout about not being able to leave.

Logistics Officer Nall’s personal log: Saturday 10.15.81

The disappearances have gone beyond serious to the ridiculous. Things that are unfeasible to steal have vanished.

An entire Tortoise class air tank vanished out of its hangar. A soldier’s bed was taken while he was sleeping in it. One of the base’s scientists even reported that a whole laboratory is gone. The door just leads to open cloud now. Fortunately nopony was in it at the when it vanished, but that doesn’t denote that all ponies are accounted for. Several high ranking scientists have not been seen since the lockdown started.

News got out that the security footage the Enclave police obtained of stuff disappearing is just raising additional questions. Apparently, things are there one second and then just gone in a blur the next. This is causing gossip and speculation to run wild all over the base.

There is talk that it’s the result of a pre-war zebra super weapon, or that Discord has returned to spread chaos in the Enclave. One outlandish theory heard was that it’s a spell cast by unicorn like creatures, transfigured by the radiation, living in the wasteland below the clouds.

At least with everypony else so worked up about the disappearances, I’ve finally had a chance to do actual work. I succeeded in get the storehouse inventory tabulated and found a 17% deficit between the stock present and what is on record (probably due to the disappearances). I sent in the necessary paperwork to get nearly all of the absent stock replaced, all except the ones where the correct request papers have disappeared (which I’ve also sent in a request to replace).

Logistics Officer Nall’s personal log: Sunday 10.16.81

The lockdown has finally been lifted and the puzzle of the disappearances has been solved!

The ‘culprits’ turned out to be those high ranking scientists that vanished a couple days ago. Their absence was due to their hiding out in a top secret lab deep within the base as the desperately tried to reverse the cause of all the trouble.

The real source of the disappearances was a prototype device they were working on that alerted how things interacted with clouds. It was supposed to alter any object be able to be supported by a cloud, without the necessity of things like cloud-walking spells, yet it had the opposite effect. While the apparatus was running, it arbitrarily disabled the cloud-walking spells of objects all over the base. The unsupported objects then instantaneously dropped through the cloud foundation of the base and plunged to the ground below.

As the scientists increased the power to the device to try to get it to work, unaware of the confusion it was causing around the base, the disruption to cloud support escalated. It got to the point where clouds could not support other clouds, such as with of the disappearing lab. It could even briefly disrupt a pegasus’ natural resistance to clouds, which was the case with lieutenant general Sea Coral’s daughter.

The lieutenant general’s daughter was apparently uninjured after her sudden drop through the cloud layer and brief exposure to the wasteland below, and was picked up by the Enclave while trying to fly back up to the base. She’s in quarantine now, and not even her father can speak to her yet (which he is rather irate about). There’s talk that another pegasus is also being held in quarantine, yet nopony else in the base was unfortunate enough to fall through the clouds.

Now that the apparatus has been shut down and the scientists responsible have been arrested to stand trial, things should get back to routine here. As long as no other bizarre cloud altering events occur.

I only hope that the spare key for this keyboard arrives before I have to enter the next report, or else I’ll have to change the labeling of this log...