Fed II Star - April 2, 2006

NEWSDROID MUGGING SHOCKS FED II STAR JOURNALISTS

The staff at the Fed II Star were this morning horrified to be told that one of our freelance newsdroids had been the victim of a serious attack, and is now in intensive care in the workshop. Robot ZX81, known as Zee to its friends and colleagues, had been intending to cover events at the April Fool's Day party and write us some amusing pieces to complement the official report we expect from the hosts Asterix and Lynnea (which will be in next week's Star).

Zee left a message with one of the office staff at the Fed II Star offices late last night, saying that it had been at the party and had a great story about the extraordinary events there. It refused to leave any details and sounded quite mysterious. That's all we heard from it. We expected Zee's story to be on our desks this morning, but it wasn't, and when we tried to comm the droid there was no reply.

Then we got a call from Nightwatch saying that a severely battered droid had been found in the dumpster on Earth. A press pass in its pocket had lead the cop to us. It was Zee, and it'd been worked over extremely thoroughly. News from the workshop is that its memory files have been damaged so we may never know what happened to Zee - and what it was intending to report about the party last night!