ACCESS: RESTRICTED DECRYPTION KEY: 6DU3H2BSKP1V$CHA-319 REP#: 177-PYR-WPN AGENT(S): TRU-135 SUBJ: THIS BENIGHTED THING 1. Chalco when word started going around you know what I thought? I thought oh good maybe Truce gets out of this swamp. Maybe Truce gets to use some of that time off he's had banked for a century. Know what I think now? Doesn't matter because Cowlick won't let me write it down in an official report. 2. Okay. This thing gives me the creeps. Gave it all the standard tests. Some extra. I licked it, that's how I know it's bone. Sticks to the tongue. Stone doesn't. Cut out my tongue after just to make sure so don't worry, no contamination and Cowlick made me a new one no problem. There's a lot of raw data I want you to read over and maybe send up the ivory tower. It's not that I don't trust my gut it's that I don't want to. So, we're paracausal, right? Effect and cause all shaken up, no connection. Everything else is connected forward and back through time. Tug on the butterfly here and make a cyclone there. As far as I can tell this thing made itself. Spontaneous acausal generation. My best guess is that there's so much will hanging around that it crystallized. Pure I-am-and-I-gotta. Embodied stubbornness. 3. All my informants are useless so I have to be blunt: tell me how it went? Drinks, usual place—I'll pay this time. Promise. MESSAGE ENDS. OPEN ATTACHMENT?