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FEDERAL BUREAU OF CONTROL
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Potts,
I regret to inform you that your son, Graham Potts, was killed in active duty this past week.
While the details surrounding his death are classified, I am honored to tell you that he died in the service of his country. You can be proud of his courage in the face of danger, and his commitment to protecting our nation against her enemies. He will be remembered by his comrades and colleagues.
I sincerely regret the pain this message will bring you. Take some solace in knowing that his sacrifice helped protect the country he loved so much. His effects will be returned to you with all speed.
Sincerely yours,
Howard J. Murray
Deputy Chief of Communications
Federal Bureau of Control
ID
AWE-17
EVENT DATE
09/23/1992
EVENT LOCATION
Butte, Montana
Butte (AWE-17)
EVENT SUMMARY:
A spate of disappearances was traced to a home in the city of Butte, where Bureau agents discovered a translocative light switch cord.
EVENT RESPONSE:
Bureau agents arrived at the home of a local celebrity, located at address more address?, which had been connected to a total of a few disappearances in the area. Agents found no one inside. While searching a closet, an agent pulled the light switch cord and disappeared from view.
Another agent was selected to pull the cord in order to replicate the event. He disappeared as well. Both agents were discovered at the Oldest House 3? days later, found in a sealed room by Rangers exploring a new area of the House.
The light switch cord in the Butte home's closet disappeared during this incident.
ID
Hotline (OOP3-UE)
ACQUISITION DATE
08/09/1965
CONTAINMENT LOCATION
Hotline Chamber, Executive
Hotline (OOP3-UE)
CONTAINMENT PROCEDURE:
Object should be inaccessible for use except to the Director.
DESCRIPTION/PARAUTILITY:
Object is a 1960s era red bakelite telephone. The rotary dial has been replaced with a black knob of unknown purpose. The phone weighs probably more than you'd expect.
The object allows the Director to communicate with the Board. If used by anyone other than the Director, the object will cause lethal psychic trauma (see Dr. Darling presentation 11.6 for more information).
The object is currently bound to Director Trench.
BACKGROUND:
The object spontaneously manifested in the Director's Office, placed on the desk. Director Northmoor was the first known Bureau agent to use it.
A battery of tests were run on the object, including probably some sort of frequency scanning and whatever else they do to Altered Items, but its origin remains unknown.
HOTLINE SECURITY LOG
ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK IN!
8/19/2019 - 2:45 pm - Director Trench
8/26/2019 - 12:13 pm - Director Trench
8/31/2019 - 11:09 pm - Bill Everett (custodian)
9/02/2019 - 2:45 pm - Director Trench
9/09/2019 - 2:45 pm - Director Trench
9/14/2019 - 10:57 pm - Bill Everett (custodian)
9/16/2019 - 2:45 pm - Director Trench
9/23/2019 - 2:45 pm - Director Trench
9/28/2019 - 9:13 am - Director Trench
9/28/2019 - 10:59 pm - Bill Everett (custodian)
10/01/2019 - 3:34 am - Director Trench
10/12/2019 - 11:03 pm - Bill Everett (custodian)
10/26/2019 - 11:11 pm - Carol Bishop (custodian)
COMPILED BY
Emily Pope, Research Specialist
BY ORDER OF
Director Jesse Faden
ANALYSIS OF HISS THREAT: PART I
--CONFIDENTIAL--
SUMMARY:
Initial encounters with the entity known as the Hiss have revealed various behavioral facts. Most notably, the Hiss is able to invade or corrupt Control Points, Altered Items, and even humans, radically changing their behavior. Curiously, any person wearing one of the wearable HRA devices that Dr. Darling has been distributing over the past weeks was not affected by this corruption.
The only known exception to this fact is the new Director, Jesse Faden, who possesses an inherent immunity to the Hiss. This could indicate that she has already been corrupted, but her behavior is so in contrast to that of the other Hiss that I have dismissed the theory.
My final observation comes from Ms. Faden herself. She is able to "cleanse" material and organisms of the Hiss corruption. We tested this ability on a Hiss corrupted entity, but unfortunately the process seems to kill the host. Perhaps the host's physiology becomes reliant on the Hiss? More work to be done.
Refer to file some number for full report.
Somewhere along the line things went weird. No one was sure how this happened, whether it was something caused by someone or something, or if it just happened by itself. There were a lot of stories, everyone had a theory of how it had happened, of which maybe the weirdist, and perhaps only fittingly singled out here, was the talk about a strange golden space helmet that someone had found, and a secret reseach project to replicate and manufacture those helmets. It was said that the helmet opened a way to another place, different from this one, but whether that other was actually a place or just something that came over you when you were wearing the helmet, no one knew, not even the scientists in charge of the project. In any case, or so the myth went, the helmets, or the people trying them on, brought the other closer to here, and things got weird. Things that people had learned to take for granted, like technology and physics, and religions, and time, and stuff, just stopped working like they used to, stopped all together, or became something different. There were lots of accidents and terrible catastrophes at first, and most people died and disappeared, and in some places it rained flowers and in others blood, and sometimes the other was very close and everything rippled and warped as something big in the other passed close by, and sometimes it was even almost like the old times. In time people adjusted and adapted, and learned to use the new things and laws to fix some of the old, but mostly, as time went by, people just forgot that things had ever been different, and the weird became normal. Everyone, at least, everyone who believed in the myth, thought that the golden helmets and those who wore them were bad, and they seemed to have a point, for those in the golden helmets, even while they were hardly ever seen anymore, were often, on those rare occasions, doing bad things. Luckily, the other gave many people strange abilities, and a few heroes rose to fight the bad things. And there were lots of these bad things, and lots of good things as well, but now, even more than before the other, things were ambiguous and never simple or clear, and people rarely could tell the good from the bad. In any case, things went on, and it was almost never boring.
Who wrote this? Report to Dr. Darling!
COMPILED BY
Emily Pope, Research Specialist
BY ORDER OF
Dr. Casper Darling, Head of Research
EXAMINATION OF PARANATURAL TOPICS
OBJECTS OF POWER AND THEIR PARAUTILITY
SUMMARY:
Objects of Power are unique in their capacity to grant certain individuals paranatural abilities. We call these individuals "parautilitarians".
The potency of these abilities depends on the parautilitarian. Using the Floppy Disk Object of Power as an example, some parautilitarians can achieve a throw distance of twenty feet while others are only capable of as little as three (see Dr. Darling presentation 11.15 for more information).
What exactly determines an individual's paranatural competence is unknown, but it is largely believed that some parautilitarian muscle exists within the body and that, like all muscles, it can be exercised. To continue my analysis, I have officially requested access to the Northmoor records, considering he is one of the most accomplished parautilitarians the Bureau has ever seen. Dr. Darling is still considering this request.
Refer to file 8-54-1982 for full report.
TO
M. Milosz
FROM
J. Bozer —
SUBJECT
Golf on Sunday
FEDERAL BUREAU OF CONTROL
Hey Malcolm,
Yes, tee time is at 7. I'll see you at the course on Sunday morning.
By the way, have you heard about this Tennyson Report? Apparently there's a bunch of copies drifting around the office. Trench is looking to get his hands on any information about who wrote it. You wouldn't happen to have heard anything about that, would ya?
See you Sunday!
- Jim
FEDERAL BUREAU OF CONTROL
To all Executive Staff,
I know there is some concern regarding our operations exceeding the annual budget. So long as we operate within the Oldest House, we are obscured from scrutiny in many respects. If our budget demands are not exorbitant to the point of drawing attention, then they will be granted by the U.S. Treasury without question. The FBC is just another line in another spreadsheet that some lowly accountant won't even notice. Their eyes will skip over us, as if we weren't even there.
The nature of the Oldest House allows us certain freedoms in how we operate. Our being here is no accident.
Regards,
Zachariah Trench, Director of the Federal Bureau of Control