Albert Tottleman: Salt Miner

Working in the sun....

Always, working in the sun...

The brightness... the heat ...

But the salt...

the salt... so much salt...

Why can't he just shut up...

He's always talking when I come back... 

And he never shuts up when I go...

'Just get the salt, more salt', he says...

So, I do...

I get the salt, process the salt, sell the salt...

It's all I can do...

It's all I can do, for you, Salt Man...

It was dark... He was broken down, an accident...minor...

I thought about what the Salt Man would make me do, but he's not around at night...

So I helped him instead... gave him a toolkit... watched out for traffic until he was on his way...

On the road, at night, it's dangerous...

Bandits, robbers, thieves... afraid of them? no... 

They don't speak much, just point things and yell alot...

Shoot me?, maybe... but there's worse than bullet holes...

The Salt Man, scares me... 

They don't know him...

I know him... but they don't..., 

'They ain't worth knowin', 'They ain't worth salt'.

The sun is so hot...  

My workmates are lucky, the sun doesn't blind them on the flats...

They don't have eyes.

Hard life in Altis..

Makes mining sound worse than it already is. Coming from someone who filled up a tempest transport with diamonds by himself.

It's a long time out on the salt flats, longer than you think.

I've actually met you a couple of times now and you have great RP and a brilliant story to go with it.

Clarity comes to the mindless man after he's been out of the sun and has done all he can...

The salt man and his apparitions have vanished and been replaced with red hot rage...

Egotistical Kavala, Tormenting Athira, sister cities...whores from the same mother...

Some solace is found in the western hills, it's quiet.  Until one of the many faceless gangs appears to molest me or some other poor soul.  

I was minding my business, loading my iron, a helicopter shows up...obviously hostile, obviously deadly.  So I book it, but I made errors in judgment.  Working out in the open was one, not keeping my vehicle repaired was another, and driving toward the bandits was the last.  But death was not without some form of self-satisfaction.  Ramming into their empty chopper was a fair trade.  One of many I will make I expect.

Like groundhog day.  But there's nothing to be learned, except how to die less often.

Sometime later I was taken hostage.  I just wanted to buy a gun.  My captors grew to trust me however.  That may prove to be their undoing in the future.  Or maybe I *am* trustworthy?  I don't know.  I told them many things.  They forced me to steal a car, forced me to get my Tempest, and sling some meth.  I only owned the Ephedrine barrels for the medical industry... but I digress.  They killed men.  They killed a cop.  And someone else.  I didn't like it.  I didn't like how they did it.  But what could I do?  Perhaps I showed them too much, perhaps I told them too much.  Perhaps...I can use them and twist them to do my will, like the salt man did to me...

Tough life being a salt miner