AMMONIATED

I STOOD PERFECTLY STILL AS I WAS TOLD TO DO. As I stood there, the dental scanner circled my head nearly hanging up in it's orbital trip of my head's circumference. To help out, I flinched a bit but was called back to stillness by the orthodontists insistent stammer, "stand still! ...Stand still... we'll have to get another round." He called back to the girl managing the scanner, "Run another one." She stepped back into the xray room to change my bitewings once and then again, on a later occaision when the machine could not pass around my head without hanging up. "Your head miss... your head seems to be a bit swollen. Let's reschedule this. Where are these going to again? How long do you have to get then in?" I wriggled fingers in the air to notify her that my mouth was still gagged by dental supplies. After releasing the gag cards from mmy teeth and cheeks, I told her that the military unit I was attached to insisted on the medical file being completed before next training date... in the next two weeks. It was after hours, and we were the only two left at the office, when she got a good reading but she managed to insert one last set and extend the rotor dimension for the scanner for a clear set of dental xrays. When she re-entered the room to release me from the interlocked boards set around the inside of mouth she asked about the "glow." It was not an expected sight of radiated light emitted by the dental xray machine or the lighting for an otherwise darkened medicalphotography area. She had turned out most light that was not emitted by themachine itself. The light she referred to was a bright green glow like that benerated by alien life forms so sought after by earthlings in and out of the "Roswell" top secret site run by NASA and the Central Intelligence Agency. The "green glow" that hovered about me, coaxed by the dental xray set up was surely something not anticipated. I mentioned my career focus in the military... Civil Engineering. That was nothing to raise a dander over. There had been an ammonia spill at the engineering office and the machines were down with a myriad of projects coming due. What we could not complete during a training session, the civilian sector would have to work through the details to complete. The Ozalid machine, the oldest of two machines in our section, was spilling the liquid and pouring excessive fumes from both the processing of work and the leakage created by its broken elements. Only two personnel were subjected to the small sideroom to run the designated sheets... three of one set and five to ten of each another set of ten reworked plans. Dawn was not set to the print room, she was ordered to "hone her skills for upcoming training at the tech school" and was being preserved for that. Two others arrived late and were spared for that cause. Rob and I took the dive swinging one after the other for one hour intervals of ammonia gas immersion... we were trained for that in basic, right? I mentioned the gas to the woman weilding dental cards into and out of my mouth.

While she could detect that glow to mean something precarious was set to happen to me or to someone in that military scenario, it was the completed exam that was the important issue. I needed to pass all phases of my physical and present evidence of my "good health" in order to not be set back or confronted for "non performance" of orders to satisfy the three month late completion of my records. They were "watching me," as recommended by my prior unit in another state. They were watching me for bad behavior... insubordination. I transferred in and the file brought along with me during the transfer was "curious." The front page mentioned "under investigation... not to perform." If they had read a little further they could have found another page stating the file was under V.A. INVESTIGATION. I'd been in an accident that killed the driver of the rig I crawled from beneath after a skid and rollover. The Governor General was investigating the event along with the State Police. Now it was Ammonia Gas Inhalation. The ammonia set up was simply due to negligence of necessary repairs. I glowed... and Rob glowed after a weekened of unvented Ozalid work on military blueprints. The workload was turned in without affecting the civilian employee sector on our military base. Alien investigation completed.