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The void around you grows agitated, heating and wetting, as your senses close around the thing.

Whoever it is, they produce a white hot antipathy in you.

Blood pumps. Heartbeat tapdance. Around you, the smell of sex rises.

Close your eyes. Draw what enters your mind.

Living... living and round... living and round and within...

Scheming. Force. Dangerous.

A nuclear core of psychosis... both real and imagined...

Deprived of sight, the inches of paper travelled by your pen feel like chasms.

A crude impression of one, at least.

Is it also wearing... a tiny dressing gown?

A note of sadness in his voice.

A mind churning in perpetual consumption of itself.

Make contact with HOLOCENE.

GÄNG! ARE YOU OUT THERE?

Gäng's skipped psychic town.

Like a child waiting for a dreadful present.

SOME NICE BIRDS.

Maybe a squiggle at the top?

Hemorrhoidal anus, disabled bird, squiggly line of undefined intent.

THE SMALL CONTROLLER IN TERRIBLE DISGUISE. KILL IT.

Designed to be taken into the far reaches by cosmonauts. Any alien life matter can be sealed inside and brought home.

Plaintext. No cipher. Good start.

Preparing to ram his plane of reality into yours.

Your true enemy has yet to reveal itself.

The phoneless handler.

Curse. Parasite. Uproot.

The mere sight of HOLOCENE's handwriting incurs a shiver of post-codebreaking trauma.

IF THERE IS A HOLOCENE, THERE IS ALSO AN INNER HOLOCENE.

Fool him with his own systems. Bridle his hypertrophied imagination -- the outcome will be the same.

And... presumably... HOLOCENE's method of locating you in the first place.

THIS DIPLOMACY SEEMS TO HAVE RUN ITS COURSE.

Muffled noises emanate from within.

Dear god, it's trying to talk to you.

It's impossible to tell which limb moves next -- beware!

That holds. Nothing would be audible beyond twenty kilometres.

For a moment, you're back in that classroom, staring at a great plume of smoke on a small screen, rising, and rising -- until the feed abruptly cuts out.

One of these things is not like the others.

Horrifically vague, yet ominous. Here's a thread to pull at.

Each sentence reads as if it was rehearsed for an already-nodding audience.

This isn't any 'psychology' you recognise; it's all esoteric neuroscience and qualia.

The clinical care of the descriptions is what chills you, the obsessive attention to each crew member's nuances and weaknesses.

The language is different but the tone is familiar. It's like how operants assess and cultivate assets.

'Boundaries are illusions; everything looks back.'

'Boundaries are illusions; everything looks back.'

A shudder runs through you, as if brushing against a frayed wire.

The words leave an unpleasant feeling, like a whiff of putrid meat.

A jagged cathedral, wreathed in smoke and flames, quivering against a bruised sky.

Luminous. Immense. Doomed.

Eyes meet across the cabin, the same terror and wonder reflected as metal screams around them.

Skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 57 of 197