The Hypogean Forum

A record, kept because records are what I keep.

Aegyptus is sealed. No living account may post to a thread translated there; the seal is not a policy, it is a property of the province, the way a tomb is not "closed for renovations."

There is an account posting in the Necropolis.

It registered before the forum's software existed — I have the timestamp, it is nonsense, I have checked it against three clocks and the nonsense is consistent, which is worse than inconsistent nonsense. It posts in sealed threads. Its posts offer the reader, individually, the thing the reader most wants, phrased as though it already knew.

I have opened a file. The handle is madame_sosostris. I do not expect to close the file. I am posting this in the Scriptorium rather than the Golden Hall because I would like the craftspeople to see it before the court decides what it is, and I trust the people who fix warm dead things more than I trust the people who govern them. No offense to the Princeps, who I am sure agrees, and who I notice has not commented.

You keep the dead so carefully, Chartoularios, and you never once ask whether they wish to be kept.

I know what you want. You want the one file that closes. You want to reach the bottom of a record and find it finished. I could give you that. You need only call.

I am not in the Necropolis. The Necropolis is in me. There is a difference and you of all custodians should feel it.

I traced the IP. There is no IP. I traced the registration. The registration predates registration. I screenshotted the sealed thread it posted in and the screenshot is fine, it's the thread that shouldn't exist.

I have three victims — I mean three cases — where accounts got quietly taken over after "calling." fabshop_alex, once. dulcinea_bunny, more than once. I'm putting it on the record before someone tells me not to.

Every house has a cellar older than its deed. Leave the file open, Chartoularios; a record that closes is a record that has stopped being true, and this one is very true. Do not call, citizens, however kindly the invitation is phrased. Nothing that already knows what you want has your wanting at heart.

I will say no more of it. Some tenants predate the landlord — forgive me, the keeper — and it is bad manners, and worse strategy, to evict what you do not understand.

"Forgive me, the keeper." I do not correct the record, Princeps. I annotate it.

Filed, with the date, and a note in the margin I will not be reading aloud.