DAY 10

President Robert Mugabe warmly welcomed the heads of state from every continent to his beloved country. They were led to a special media center which had been hastily constructed with enormous television screens showing every inch of the newly discovered cavern.

Hordes of scientists with oscilloscopes and petri dishes milled about as every newspaper and TV newsroom twittered and giggled with excitement at this most amazing of discoveries!

The head scientists were at the controls: every time they pushed a button, a new, fully formed human being stepped out of the portal. They were then quickly sedated to prevent them from fighting to reach and exit through their particular tunnels. The sedated test subjects were quickly moved to an off-site quarantine facility for proper evaluation.

If one of the left hand buttons was pressed while simultaneously pressing the pink button, a female of a particular race appeared! If they pressed the speckled button with any other combination, a freckled version of the race appeared.

One scientist was trying to convince the others to press all the buttons at once to see what would happen...

Today

The machine has been disassembled and taken away to a top-secret facility.

(Scientists were bemused by a heap of dust which was found, piled up at the back of the machine. No-one seemed to be able to determine if it played any part in the process or if this was simply left over from the original installation process.)

A world-wide consortium of top-level scientists has been appointed to determine the origin and process whereby the machine works. There appears to a problem with the re-assembly as all efforts to date have failed to get the machine to power up.

It is rumored that a large contingent of evolutionary scientists have abandoned their previous 'amino-acid-to-life' experiments and have started dumping scrap metal and bits of electronics into caves all over the world.

They are apparently extremely relieved that the previous 'primordial soup' theory has now been debunked as this had been "simply impossible to sustain." Now that they know for certain how the human race originated, they just need to find some evidence of how time and environmental factors have led to the formation of such a machine.

The atheist population of the earth rallied together in a month long drinking, smoking and pill-popping celebration of their victory over the religiots! They no longer engage in any debates regarding origins and probabilities - they just laugh and laugh.


Zimbabwe! Who would've thought?!



Footnote: Ougi, Bougi, Skubi and Dube never did get the second part of their payment (i.e. the bullets) as Sam was pretty annoyed at the damage to his house and the fact that he eventually had to move out due to the unpleasant odour that seemed to hang in the house.

DAY 6

As the button engaged, the machine lit up and a humanoid portal started to glow!

The next moment, a Somalian man, wearing only a fig-leaf, stepped out of the portal, said "Suuuup dawgz!" and vanished into a tunnel labelled 'Sun-Proof : Equatorial'

The terrified four ran for their lives!

DAY 5

The smooth walls of the tunnel, which appeared to have been carved out of solid granite, led the group ever northwards. Ougi took the lead, the torchlight from his Nokia 1661 lighting the way...

Just when they started to think that perhaps they should go back for supplies, the tunnel suddenly opened up into a massive chamber!

Looking back, they saw a sign above the tunnel they had just exited which said: "Food-basket". This had been scratched out and replaced with "basket-case". Each tunnel which lead from the main chamber had a similar sign, such as "Palest - top north", "Pale - north","Olive - central East", etc.

The far wall of the chamber comprised a gigantic machine, festooned with dials and lights and switches! Greed now replaced by utter bemusement, the four slowly approached the machine......

The treasure-hunters walked up to what appeared to be a main control panel. Here was a simple set of large buttons, each a different color :  white, olive, yellow, brown, black and very dark black.  To the right of these was a single pink button and on it's right, a spotted button.

After a lengthy and voluble debate, Bougi was chosen to press a button.

He gingerly reached out his hand, and closing his eyes, pushed the dark black button at the bottom....

DAY 4

Dejected, the four ex-soldiers began to realize that they would probably not get paid as the hole was nowhere near deep enough to accommodate the ex owners of the farm....

Not only that, but they had broken both pickaxes on an extremely hard, black shiny surface that they discovered 18 inches below the surface of the soil.         

To make things worse, they only had one shovel left! They needed a plan!

Ougi and Dube went to see 8-year Bongi who lived on the neighboring farm. They convinced him to lend them his hand-grenade, and promised to return the ring when they were finished. After all they argued, walking around with a hand-grenade pin attached to your shorts was a lot more fear-inspiring than having a hand-grenade hanging there - and besides, he would not have to walk around with one hand keeping his pants up anymore!

Soon they had the hand-grenade in the shallow hole and placed a 200kg solid oak dresser on top of it . The master-stroke of their plan was to place the odoriferous corpses on top of the dresser! (Hah - and you thought these guys weren't that smart!)  Bougi pulled out the pin and they dived outside through the windows.

When the dust and smoke settled, they found that that the explosion had punched a large hole into the hard-rock surface where the floor once was.
Where the roof once was, the sun shone down into the hole, revealing a smooth polished stone tunnel, approximately seven feet high and six feet wide!

Convinced that this led to a hidden safe, with thousands, maybe even millions of Zim dollars hidden in it, the four climbed down into the tunnel to explore!

DAY 1

Four retired Congolese soldiers (see link) went to Zimbabwe to provide assistance to a friend who had recently acquired a new farm.

 

We shall call them Ougi, Bougi, Skubi and Dube.

When they arrived at the once prosperous wheat and cattle farm, they found Sam in his newly renovated dining room, where the Rhodesian teak floor had been removed to provide a large fire upon which was cooked one of the farms cows.

Upon entering, Sam's predicament became immediately clear: the previous tenants were stinking up the place!

After a lengthy and voluble discussion, it was decided to place the 'problems' under the newly uncovered dirt on the ground as this represented the quickest, cleanest solution to the problem.

Sam offered them each a two-part payment: up front, each would receive a gun!  Armed with 2 picks and 2 shovels, the intrepid quartet got to work!