#fhajad-084

[john-halo]

Have you ever gotten in touch with the S-II washouts that survived? Like Musa-096 or Fhajad-084?

Rear Admiral Musa Ghanem is the current Commander-in-Chief of the Spartans.

I've seen him and worked with him. Haven't exactly gone out for lunch, though. I knew him once. I don't anymore.

Fhajad... Last I heard from him he was doing slipspace research for ONI Section One. But that was around fifteen years ago.

Him, I still knew.

[fhajad-084]

Musings 2

-Personal Log- -XX.XX.2558- It strikes me, from time to time, how isolated we’ve all been. From one another, since the augmentations. I think I’ve seen John… Two, three times in twenty some odd years. They don’t even know, I wager, my pseudonym. What I’ve done, the papers I’ve published. Sometimes I think it’s out of fear. They think back and feel that foreign sensation of terror that there but for the grace of G-d go they, that it could have just as easily been them in this chair and me standing proud. Uncharitable, of course, but no less true. It stings more than I thought it would, being stationed so near yet so far from at least three of my childhood compatriots. Perhaps I’ll be the one to take the first steps forward in arranging a little reunion. Or perhaps I should leave them be.  They've made their lives, what they're allowed to have of them, that is - and they've made them without me and the others in them. And it's hardly fair to them, really, that I word it the way I do. We've made our own lives as best we could, after all, and it's hardly their fault that we can't quite let go of what could have been. Ah decisions. It's too damn late to be thinking this way.  ... Of course it's either think or try to get acquainted other other parts of this ridiculously oversized ship. 

[fhajad-084]

Musings

Personal Log -XX.XX.2558-

Does it really -need- to be this big? 

I'm all for the mentality of bigger is better, but three and a half miles of starship is excessive, really. Three and a half long, a little over half a mile high, and half a mile wide on the other hand... 

I stand corrected, there's excessive and then there's the UNSC Infinity.

Her contributions to it, of course, are plain as day to anyone with eyes to see - anyone who's had the chance to look over her previous work and research notes that is. 

Color me startled - as far as I was aware, she died on Reach.

While I won't profess to be particularly emotionally attached to her after all these years, I had my moment of silence for Doctor Halsey after Reach's fall, the same as I did my former brothers and sisters. But seeing this vessel now, looking over her technical specifications... I find myself questioning whether or not the truth is half as clear as I'd believed it to be.

Between this and the ever-pervasive sense of deja vu I experience every time I see Admiral Osman, whose face I still cannot quite place, I find myself growing rather uneasy. 

More exploration tomorrow. 

[fhajad-084]

Observations

Personal Log

-XX.XX.2558-

While I certainly didn’t expect to be welcomed aboard with open arms by the vessel’s resident civilian engineer, one Dr. Henry Glassman, I’d expected a little bit of a warmer welcome to say the least.

It’s been in my experience that my participation in ONI science operations, particularly with civilian contractors, has usually been met with a chilly reception at best, and at worst outright hostility and suspicion. I suppose that no civilian likes to feel like they’re being ordered around by a military man, much less a man whose history is sketchy at best and whose name turns up alerts and red flags. It gives credence to all those political discussions over the water cooler or coffee breaks that the UNSC is too pervasive and all encompassing in our lives, something I find outright ludicrous considering the fact that these people elected to seek employment with the UNSC for pay without obligation of service.

No matter - this isn’t the first time my assignment aboard a vessel has been unwelcomed by the science team, and it won’t be the last (supposing, of course, that the Infinity isn’t where I serve out the rest of my service career, however long that may be). I’ll manage the same as I always do - ever dilligent and ever enduring.

Same as I always do.

In any case, I think that this afternoon I’ll see to rounding up a bit of an escort for myself to have a look around this massive vessel - perks of the rank I suppose, though G-d knows I’d prefer to be walking around myself rather than-

None of that, this is neither the time nor the place for that sort of foolishness.

Who knows, maybe I’ll run across an old friend or two.

[fhajad-084]

Brilliance In A Broken Frame

//Personal Log// -XX.XX.2558-

Mandatory psych evaluation was yesterday. It went as well as can be expected, for someone in my position, my predicament. Which is to say that it went as well as it has every other time. An aversion to socialization, a stubborn streak, and lessened bouts of depression. One would think that they would have caught on by now, really, to the fact that our intellect is equal to our ability to kill, and that just because my body is broken, doesn’t mean that the same failures occurred in my mind. That’s why I’m here, is it not? That’s why they gave me this position, this rank, the praise for my papers and my research? Or is it simply to hold me over, pretenses at praise and recognition, trivial accolades tossed my way like treats to an eager little hound dog to quiet it into complacence and satisfaction at the first perceived sign of discontent? I can’t decide which is more likely. It’s 0315, and I can’t fall back to sleep because I’m stricken with the fear that it will happen twice in one night. I woke up screaming again. I was on that table again in my dreams, and I could see the lights above me burning into my eyes, feel every part of my body screaming in pain and protest, and then it wasn’t just my body screaming it was me. The moment of seizure, the single spasm of pain that ended my life but left me breathing and thinking- Realistically, I know I didn’t feel it. Logically speaking I know that I wasn’t conscious for it - I was drugged beyond all reason, damn near in a comatose state. That the only spasms that happened were my body’s reaction and not really pain. But logic amounts to shit, really - the results were the same. My life ended and I kept breathing, a stubborn prisoner in a body that doesn’t obey me anymore. You’d think that after this many years, I’d have accepted it, come to terms with it. But I can’t. And certainly not anymore. Because I swear to G-d above, I know her. I’ve seen her before. Where I’ve seen her, who she is… beyond me. But there’s something in her eyes the two times I’ve seen her, that momentary flash of recognition and - disgust? disdain? hatred? I can’t decide - something else that makes me want to believe that she’s not who they say she is, who she says she is. And if that’s the case, then I’ve been screwed over somewhere along the road. Because there’s no way she should be walking, talking, doing, or even -living- as well as she does, without pain or apparent detriment whatsoever. Not if the offer isn’t open to the rest of us. Our numbers have dwindled, over the years. Those of us who were unlucky enough to die as Spartans and go on living as the wretched shadows of glory. But there are still enough of us that remain, in lofty positions where our every move can be observed and noted, lest we open our mouths and spill the truths that no one wants to hear. If I can’t sleep, I’m going to drink until I can’t feel anymore. Perhaps I should call out now, while my hands still obey.

[fhajad-084]

“Knock that shit off, I mean it.” ~ Lt. Commander Fhajad-084.

Name: Fhajad Najafi

Spartan Designation: Fhajad-084

Birthdate: -Redacted-, 2517 Homeplanet: -Redacted- Blood Type: A+ Height: 6’8” (203.20cm) Weight: 240 lbs (108.86kg) Eyes: Pale green (Augmented) Hair: Grey-black Ethnicity: -Redacted- Rank: Lieutenant Commander Service Branch: UNSC Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence ONI Division: Research and Development, Section-III Beta 5 Specialization: Physics, Xenoarchaeological Studies Service Status: Active, Non-Combat

Notes:

//Requires Section III or higher clearance - your access attempt has been logged//

Lt. Comm. Fhajad-084 is one of the remnants of the SPARTAN-II Program, Class-I, whose augmentation procedures failed.

The Lieutenant-Commander exhibits symptoms comparable to Parkinson’s Disease due to neurological damage caused by failed implementation of superconducting fibrification of neural dendrites. Fhajad-084’s hands shake uncontrollably, and his legs are unable to support him for longer than a few minutes span at a time.

Psychological evaluations record a fiercely independent streak, and as of 2557, previously noted bouts of depression have become less frequent. As such, the Lieutenant Commander’s request for assignment away from station and aboard an exploratory/research vessel have been green-lit by ONI Psych.