A Life In Whispers – Introduction and Forward
(1) New Message
I’d like to apologize for my rude behavior in my last message. You struck a nerve. But now that I’ve finally figured out who you are, the personal threats and intimidations seem more than a bit silly. I’d like to offer you an olive branch – not a literal branch of olives (lord knows what you’d do with that), but something better. It was quite inconsiderate of me to leave you with the story unfinished. Of course, it was inconsiderate of you to hack into my terminal and read my private journals, but there are few things worse than an unfinished story. You want to know what happened to me after I ran the Family out of our lands. You want to know if I ever found the end of that dark, twisting, night forest trail that began at Terekat in the spring of 2095.
You want to know what I found in those woods. There are carved stone idols discarded by the road, old men’s voices gibbering out of sight, and occasionally, in the distance, the flash crack of gunpowder. The night forest trail reshaped me into a killer of men. And while I can’t say that I’ve found an end to it, I’ve at least found a clearing, and since you’ve gone to such great lengths to pry into my life, I suppose I owe it to you to share the things that I’ve found without allegory, without obfuscation. After all, you may not even be able to process abstractions like the night forest trail.
So here is my gift to you: four reports that I sent to Commander Kubek last year between the 18th of February and the 22nd. They are written in the closest I ever come to plain language. May they bring you more closure than they brought me.
– Well, this should be interesting…
