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was, after all, a contractor too small and superfluous to really be missed. Numbers in the workplace these days seemed to have long replaced the acknowledgement of individuals. Had I died in this park last night, I wonder how long it would have taken for the authorities to identify my corpse? I often wonder this when taking into account the untold vagrants that are seen wandering aimlessly and seem unaccounted for. When they are found dead, it only becomes a tiny statistic. Who, for instance, would have been aware of my manoeuvres over the past couple of weeks when mysteriously visiting this park during odd hours? I hadn’t been committing an offence and would have no reason to be followed but had something happened (UFO abduction), could it ever be accounted for? If the abduction phenomenon exists then I suspect that our increased sense of freedom and autonomy over the years has offered abductors the ideal climate for their manoeuvres. Nobody knew or cared that I was here and my obsession for privacy had insisted this. It all seemed to be engineered perfectly. At the end of the day the finger of suspicion could point at nobody but me. If something strange did happen last night, there would certainly have been no witnesses, not even a deer. The only sense I ever have of being watched is by the beings themselves that I term the Programmers. Not only did these beings observe my actions, they observed and altered my thoughts. My knowledge of last night could well have been altered. The likelihood of me spending the night here was pretty remote. I still possessed the faculty of curiosity but didn’t remember being too perturbed by the event upon waking. I seemed more concerned with my basic needs; I just wanted a hot coffee and the chance to properly collect myself. I strolled across fields, intending to find the nearest pathway. I was clearly off the beaten track. I remembered trudging through high grass and reeds wondering why on earth I would have come out this far. All I could recollect was the desire to be alone although this would not explain how I instinctively knew where to go. I could not have found a more isolated spot in the park unless given a map and I had no prior knowledge of the whereabouts apart from the obvious tourist areas. I could at last see hints of the civilised world that I hid from last night. The first activity I saw were dogs being exercised in the distance, an appeasing picture of domestic life that I seemed to welcome that morning. Further on I would see joggers and families all going about their business, totally remote to my evening of strangeness. 47