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TexasHooch

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  1. 2 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    Siap. Apple realized a free ebook called severance the Lexington letter. It’s about another data refiner and her outie experience and it includes the data refiner handbook. Not necessarily any spoilers in there but it provides more severance background.

    https://severance.wiki/severance-_the_lexington_letter_transcript

    Super long-cat, but for those of you inclined...

    Spoiler

    Severance: The Lexington Letter (Transcript)

    [Transcriber’s note: The free Lexington Letter e-book is formatted for viewing on a narrow screen and the original line lengths have been preserved for this transcription.]

    TO: JIM M (jm@topekastar.com)
    FROM: DARIA T (dt@topekastar.com)
    SENT: November 12 at 12:43 PM
    SUBJECT LINE: Lumon letter

    Hey Jim,
    I received the letter below from a Severed employee at Lumon.
    I also scanned the employee handbook that she mentions in her
    letter here too, so that’s attached.

    The whole thing seems pretty out there… but perhaps worth
    pursuing? What do you think?

    Daria

    Daria Thorne, Reporter
    The Topeka Star

    Attachment 1 of 2:

    [Transcriber’s note: Scanned attachment of printed pages]

    PLEASE READ IMMEDIATELY
    Daria Thorne
    c/o The Topeka Star
    Saturday, November 10
    Dear Ms. Thorne,

    My name is Peg Kincaid. Until yesterday, I was an
    employee at Lumon Industries here in Topeka. I’m
    writing on behalf of myself and my friend, Peggy K,
    who is now no longer with us. Maybe it’s strange to call
    her my friend, but it’s how I think of her. Depending on
    how much you know about Lumon and what they do,
    maybe you already know what I mean.

    I chose to reach out to you because I’ve seen, among
    other things, your thorough coverage of the Dorner
    truck incident on November third. I thought about
    going to the cops with what I’m about to tell you, but
    people say Lumon has a lot of connections with the
    police and City Hall and so I don’t think they would
    believe me anyway. I hope you believe me. I really
    need someone to believe me.

    With that in mind, I’m going to try to give you the full
    story. Forgive me if I get a bit rambly… I tend to go on
    and on when I’m nervous. And I’m really very nervous
    about this. Right now, I’m staying in a motel because I
    can’t shake the feeling that someone has been watching
    me. The same black cars seem to always be parked
    next to mine. And for the last few weeks, my mail has
    been all crumpled when I’ve gotten it at night, like
    someone’s digging through it. It all feels so off.

    So yes, I just want to get this all written down, in case
    something happens. Something beyond what’s already
    happened. Alright. Here goes:

    As a bit of background (I think, in your field, you call
    it “color”), up until about two years ago, I was a school
    bus driver for Clover Elementary down off Route 2.
    I’d been there for about twelve years. I loved my job. I
    love kids, even though I don’t have any of my own. And
    I sincerely believe they liked me too. At some point,
    the kids learned that I was the youngest driver on the
    school’s payroll (even though I was already fifty), so they
    gave me the nickname “Baby Driver,” a reference to the
    beloved action film of the same name. But despite this
    fun camaraderie and my relative youth, I’ll confess I was
    starting to feel burned out. My route had gotten longer, I
    had a few real misbehavers, all that stuff.

    It all came to a boiling point one day in February.
    It was a cold day; the kind I used to call a “booger-
    freezer” to get a rise out of the kids until a
    fundamentalist mom heard about it and complained. I
    was near the end of my afternoon route when, through
    no fault of my own, my bus hit black ice. I pumped
    the brakes, as per protocol, but our momentum kept
    us sliding and for the first time in my career in child
    transpo, I landed my rig in a ditch.

    All the kids screamed. I wanted to scream too, but
    you know how it is — gotta be the adult. Thank the
    good lord no one was hurt, just shook up. But we were
    stuck for nearly two hours, with the heat knocked out.
    The kids were crying, scared, cold, asking for their
    mommies. We had three urination events, which in the
    low temperature proved a real issue. Finally, another
    bus was able to come by and get my kids. I remained
    with the vehicle (again, protocol), and listened to the
    radio to try to stay warm. I don’t know, it made sense
    at the time.

    Now this is the part that, when I look back, still makes
    me squirm. While I was sitting there waiting for the
    tow, boogers freezing, I distinctly remember thinking
    to myself, “Fuck this job”. I may have even said it out
    loud, I’m not sure. But I either thought it or said it,
    and right at that moment, as if it had heard me, this ad
    came on the radio. It was an employment recruiting
    ad, but they were weirdly vague about the job. Lot of
    flowery talk about “making history” and “rethinking
    the notion of work.” I was sort of tuning out until the
    end when they said the name of the company: Lumon
    Industries. I knew who they were — I’d been using
    their deodorant since puberty — but I didn’t know
    they had a branch in Topeka. I remember thinking
    “Well, that was weird”.

    Anyway, two hours later, the tow truck finally came
    and yanked my rig from the ditch. I got home five
    hours later than usual, with an angry voicemail from
    my supervisor accusing me of driving recklessly. I
    wasn’t asking for a medal or anything, but a word of
    acknowledgement over the hell I’d just been through
    would have felt more appropriate than a chewing out.
    That night, I told myself I needed to start looking for a
    new job.

    I was off the next day, and I went downtown to run
    a few errands. On the way home, I passed what I
    realized must be the new Lumon site, which had been
    under construction for the past few months. It was a
    big building that looked almost like a mall. I thought
    back to when I’d heard their ad while shivering in that
    freezing bus. And even though I had ice cream in the
    trunk, I found myself turning into the parking lot. I
    parked, and I went in.

    At first I figured no high tech company would hire
    someone like me. I mean, I only got through a few
    semesters at Kansas State. But the nice Lumon lady
    who greeted me told me that didn’t matter. She said
    that I could get a great office job, incredible benefits,
    manageable hours, and all I had to do was this tiny
    little procedure called Severance.

    I’m guessing you know what that is. Well, I didn’t —
    remember, this was a few years back and it took them
    longer than it probably should have to explain it to me.
    They told me that after a screening process, I’d have a
    small, totally painless chip inserted into my brain. That
    freaked me out for a beat, but they assured me it was
    easier than getting a cavity filled. Then they told me that
    the chip would make it so I wouldn’t remember work.

    That was the real benefit here: I’d have absolutely no
    memory of work. Never. I’d just go into the office
    and the chip would turn on in my brain, activating
    my work self — my “innie” is what they called it.
    That person would do all the work. And then when
    I’d leave work, the chip would turn off, and I’d be
    back and have the whole rest of my day ahead of me.
    No memory of work and four times the pay? Despite
    it being quite a drastic procedure, all that made it
    feel like, well — a no brainer. Or, ha, a half-brainer?
    Because of Severance? You get it? Sorry. My dad
    always hated it when I joked when I was nervous, but
    here we are!

    So where was I? Right. Back to Lumon. I got the
    procedure, I was Severed, all that, and it was totally
    fine. They even gave me a really nice four-cheese
    panini afterward because my procedure time slot
    butted up against the lunch hour. I thought, “This is so
    great! What a great place to work!”

    I was wrong. Very very wrong. But I wouldn’t learn
    that for another two years.

    I started at Lumon the following Monday and settled
    into this nice day-to-day routine. I’d show up at work,
    swipe my fancy Lumon badge and then change out of
    my outdoor clothes and into some Lumon neutrals, as
    they call’em which means no labels, tags, patterns,
    no words at all, on anything. Company policy. Lumon
    wanted a complete divide between innies and us
    people on the outside, a.k.a. the outies. No written
    word, no messages back and forth were allowed — all
    of that is what you sign up for when you get Severed.
    In my orientation, they even talked about these code
    detectors built into the elevators that would sense
    written words. It was a fancy place.

    Then, after changing my clothes, I’d take the elevator
    down to the Severed floor in the basement and then
    — nothing. Sweet sweet nothing. In the middle of
    the elevator ride, my Severance chip would switch
    my consciousness over to my innie, this whole
    other personality, with no memory of my life here
    in Topeka. She could walk and talk and all that, but
    didn’t remember, say, my third-grade teacher’s name,
    or me falling off a horse and breaking my arm when I
    was eight, or when my ex-husband told me he wanted
    a divorce. Lucky girl.

    She was ME, but NOT me.

    So yeah, my innie would wake up and head to work
    — doing whatever it is my innie did down there. Some
    desk job with data, I’d been told. And meanwhile, the
    other half of the brain that is, ME — would basically
    get to just take a nap for the day. At the end of the
    workday, I’d come to, in that same elevator, maybe a
    little tired after what I assume was a hard day’s work,
    but otherwise none the wiser for earning that paycheck.

    And that’s how it went, day in and day out, for two
    years. Until one particular Tuesday, when I messed it
    all up. Or, actually, we messed it all up.

    That Tuesday, I got off work — in other words, I came
    to in that elevator — and went to my locker. Nothing
    odd there. But then, as I was pulling on my jacket, I felt
    something in my pants pocket — a surprise, since we’re
    not supposed to bring anything in or out. I pulled out
    a half-sheet of typing paper, neatly folded into pocket
    size. Seeing that the upstairs security guard was busy
    watching soccer on his phone, I opened it up.

    Now, at this point, I need to back up again and give you
    more “color,” but I promise it’s for a very important
    reason. My sister Meryl is only about eleven months
    older than me. We actually were born in the same year,
    funnily enough. We’ve since grown apart as time’s gone
    by, but as kids we were really close. In fact, we were so
    close that we invented a secret language together, called
    Puglish. We’d write long letters to each other about
    what boys we liked or teachers we hated in Puglish
    so no one else could understand. I say “language,”
    but actually, all we did was replace each letter with
    a different symbol. “A” was a seahorse. “B” was a
    lightning bolt. “X” was a pair of boobs, which got us
    in trouble once or twice, but not too often because it’s
    an uncommon letter and we were sneaky. Anyway, like
    I said, Meryl and I had grown apart over time, and I
    hadn’t thought about Puglish, let alone read or written
    it, for more than thirty years.

    So, on that Tuesday at Lumon, you can imagine my
    surprise when I unfolded the paper and found it lined
    with rows of little seahorses, lightning bolts, and other
    distantly familiar symbols. There was even a boobs in
    the second paragraph. I stood there, baffled at how a
    full note in perfect Puglish had ended up in my pocket
    while I was down on the Severed floor.

    I took the note home and looked it over. It was strange how
    quickly my memory of our code came back to me, and I
    was able to read the message almost as if it had been in
    English. Understanding its contents proved a little harder:

    Dear Peggy K,
    I don’t know what this language is, or why it’s in
    my head. It’s been coming to me slowly over the
    past few weeks. I find myself writing it at my desk. I
    thought if anyone would know what it was, maybe it
    would be you. I don’t know if this will even pass the
    code detectors, but I felt I had to try. I know this is
    a breach in protocol. Please don’t be angry with me.
    If you cannot tell, I am your innie. I live down here in
    the Macrodata Refining Department, with my three
    co-workers. I have often thought of you and what your
    life might be like out there, and why I exist in the first
    place. Why does one choose to get Severed?
    Maybe this language isn’t real and I’m writing
    nonsense. But if you can read this, I would love for
    you to write me back. I understand if that is not
    possible. I do not mean any harm.
    Sincerely, your innie,
    Peggy K

    Well, this knocked me on my ass, I’ll be honest. I
    hadn’t really given my innie too much thought before
    then. Like, I knew she was down there, doing her thing,
    but part of what I loved so much about this whole
    Severance thing is that I didn’t need to think about it.

    But then there she was — Peggy, my innie, writing
    to me. In Puglish. I stared at it for a long time. It also
    tripped me up because I hadn’t been called Peggy since
    elementary school. I’d been told during training that
    my innie would be like a little kid, with little to no life
    experiences, but I didn’t think it’d be so… obvious.

    I stared at that note for the rest of the night. I thought
    of her, or me, or a different version of me I guess,
    down there in the dark, on the Severed floor, clearly
    desperate for more information.

    I was really torn about what to do. I loved my job, or
    what I knew about it, and I didn’t wanna mess that up.
    Writing messages to my innie was definitely against
    Lumon policy, there’s no question about that. Was it
    possible a code invented by two grade-schoolers could
    be enough to trick the detectors? Granted, it was a
    new technology, but still!

    To this day, a part of me wishes I’d done what I
    was supposed to: Call my Lumon supervisor, Mr.
    Alvarado, and report my innie’s infraction. But
    sometimes, at the end of the day, I’d come out of the
    elevator feeling, I don’t know… different than I’d
    ever felt before. Maybe a little giddy or sometimes all
    wound up, or scared even, and it made me wonder:
    What were they doing down there with my body?

    So, the next morning, I decided to write her back —
    just this once — and ask her.

    She wrote back right away — I got a message in my
    pocket that next night. She told me she worked as a
    Macrodata Refiner. When I asked her what that means,
    she told me it involved working at a computer, putting
    these special numbers into special bins, which made
    no sense to me — that’s a JOB?? And I’m making four
    times as much as when I was driving a bus?

    Once the floodgates were opened, I couldn’t help
    myself — I wrote back to her more and more, asking
    follow-up questions. She responded with such a weird
    description that I had to write it down here:

    The best I’ve come up with is that the numbers make
    you feel things. It’s not an individual number, but a
    whole cluster of them, and after a while, they’ll sort
    of *throb* a certain emotion at you. Sometimes it’s
    joy or sadness or worry. Sometimes it’s obvious,
    other times more subtle. Each type of number
    has its own designation, like the angry ones are
    called MA. Once you’ve identified the numbers, you
    surround them with the arrow on your computer
    and into a bin they go.

    I want to take a moment, Ms. Thorne, and say that th1S
    sounded as nuts to me as it does to you. These numbers
    made her feel things? Peggy tried to help me out, and
    describe it more, but the more detail she’d go into, the
    more confused I got. I asked her if the numbers ever
    ended. She told me yes, when you finish a file. I guess
    there’s a whole wall of them on her computer screen,
    but eventually, the wall runs out, and all the numbers
    have been sorted, and that’s that file completed.

    Peggy told me that they get prizes when they finish the
    files: Some weird stuff, like a melon bar and something
    called a “music-dance experience” and a waffle party.
    It all sounded pretty infantilizing to me, but I hope they
    at least get different types of syrups to go along with
    those waffles.

    It wasn’t always me drilling her though — she also
    asked me things too. And over and over again, I was
    beside myself with how much it felt like I was talking
    to a kid-version of, well, myself. She wanted to know
    everything about outside life, like what it felt like to
    be drunk, or asleep (I’d never thought of it before, but
    she’d never been asleep, because I do all that on the
    outside!), or to fall in love (that one was a toughie to
    answer, just ask my ex-husband) or to have someone
    you love die. It was strange to see how the procedure
    filtered her knowledge. She knew what beer was but
    couldn’t name a specific brand. She knew she lived in
    America but couldn’t draw a map of it to save her life.
    She knew that movies exist, but not who David Niven
    was (despite him being by far my longest-standing
    crush). It was like she’d seen only the vaguest shape of
    the world through a foggy window.

    She asked me what snow felt like (I sat on that one
    for a while, and finally came up with holding a cold
    cotton shirt that melts in your hands), and if I knew
    how to ride a bike. (I do. Not very well, but I don’t tip
    over either.) And if I ever regretted getting Severed. To
    be honest, I hadn’t — until I thought more about her
    sitting down there, in the dark.

    So anyway, yes, Peggy and I wrote these letters back
    and forth for, I don’t know, maybe three or four weeks.
    Not every day, but enough that it started to feel like…
    this sounds crazy, but like I’d found a new friend. She
    made me see my life in a different way. I used to think
    my life was boring, and pretty mundane, but Peggy
    found all the little details I’d mention fascinating, even
    glamorous. Once I painted my nails hot pink (which is
    really not my style), just to see what she’d think. That
    night, she wrote me back saying tears had sprung to her
    eyes, our nails were so beautiful.

    Sorry, I could go on forever. Like I told you, I ramble
    when I get nervous and I’m jumping out of my chair
    over here. No joke — Housekeeping just knocked on
    my motel room door and I shrieked.

    So anyway — Me and Peggy kept thinking we’d get
    caught, but nothing seemed to come of it. Peggy grew
    concerned that their head of security, Mr. Dooley — a
    “pale little man with a terrifying smile” was watching
    her more closely than usual. She described seeing him at
    the far end of the hall when she’d leave for the day, “Just
    standing there, smiling. Like he knew what I was doing
    but wanted to play with me a while before dragging me
    to the Break Room.” I asked her what the Break Room
    was, but she never told me. Despite the forbidden nature
    of our whole interaction, this seemed to be a specific
    topic she was afraid to broach.

    Still, those code detectors never seemed to bother us
    or pick up the Puglish. If they had, I would’ve cut it
    off, played dumb, blamed my own idiocy — and never
    Peggy’s — but it never happened.

    But then we get to that morning of Friday, November
    3rd, which is why I’m writing to you in the first place.
    I come-to in the elevator as usual that night and check
    my pockets, just like I’ve been doing for months
    — and there’s another note from Peggy. And she’s
    really excited. She finished her file, which was named
    “Lexington,” earlier that afternoon, at 2:30 pm. She
    says she’s been so excited to tell me about it that she
    could barely wait to go home, even if it meant cutting
    her melon bar party (???) short.

    She told me that the Lexington file had been extra
    complicated and particularly exhausting to do (this made
    sense to me — I’d felt fried for the last few weeks after
    coming-to in the elevator and didn’t know why). She said
    she’d pushed through and completed it and that everyone
    at Lumon, including her boss and her boss’ boss, was
    thrilled with her work. They’d even given her an extra
    melon bar party to cash in later in the week. Whoopee,
    right? Again, I don’t fully get this whole refining-files
    thing, but a big win at work makes me look good too,
    so what the hell. And our whole body just felt JAZZED
    when I came to in the elevator, which wasn’t a bad
    feeling either. I drove home and went for a jog for the
    first time in weeks. I felt like I could tackle the world.

    Later that same night, I’m watching TV and I see you,
    Ms. Thorne, on the news. Your face was as serious as
    I’ve ever seen it, your voice steadfast and resolute, as
    you reported about the truck that had been blown up in
    New York at 2:32 pm that day. The Dorner Therapeutics
    truck. Dorner, of course, is a major competitor of my
    now former employer Lumon. God, watching that
    footage made my heart stop. Seeing bystanders running
    for cover, the destroyed street, all of it seemed like hell.

    That’s when a sudden, intrusive thought dumped a hard
    knot right into the pit of my stomach. I looked back at
    my earlier note from Peggy, and read again when she’d
    completed the Lexington File.

    The time had been 2:30 pm.
    Two minutes before the bomb went off.

    I was stunned. I tried to tell myself I was being
    paranoid, but I couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming.
    Two people were burned alive in a truck. Four others
    were dead, too. No explanation, no terrorist group
    claiming credit. The next day, Dorner said that some of
    their devices had been destroyed. Their prototypes or
    whatever. It almost seems like this was some kind of
    corporate espionage.

    It all seems like too much of a coincidence, doesn’t it?
    Is that why these numbers are making the innies down
    there feel things? Because they’re dropping bombs or
    blowing things up from down there? What had I gotten
    my body — and my innie, my friend — into?

    I barely slept that weekend. On Monday morning, I
    wrote Peggy another note, asking her to send me any
    information she could about the file she’d just refined.
    Told her it was super important. She didn’t know
    anything about the Dorner truck down there, of course,
    but I tried to press her more about the numbers. I asked
    her: What do her bosses tell her about the numbers?
    About Lexington in particular? What is this data they’re
    refining? Not much, she said, other than it being very
    important work. Finally, I worked up the nerve to tell
    her about the truck. It took me over an hour to write
    that note. I told her I couldn’t be sure there was a
    connection, but that the timing felt too close to ignore.
    I told her not to refine another number down there, no
    matter the consequences. I told her that, if I was right,
    then Lumon had been using us both for something
    insidious and horrifying. I told her none of this was her
    fault. And that I loved her.

    I didn’t hear back.

    A day passed, then three. Every day I went down,
    hoping to feel the familiar pressure of a note in my
    pants pocket as I came back up. But there was nothing.
    Was she mad at me? Horrified by my claim? Or was it
    something else? Was there something stopping Peggy
    from responding?

    It’s a funny thing, worrying about your innie. I was
    leaving each day without a scratch on me, and I was
    certainly still alive, which meant that physically Peggy
    had to be fine. But her silence every evening grew
    more terrifying as the days turned to weeks. I wanted
    to write her again, ask what was going on — but
    was Lumon on to us? If so, another note could spell
    disaster for my dear friend.

    One Tuesday, I emerged to find my hair wet. A note
    on my windshield from Lumon informed me that my
    innie had had a “visually comedic but painless mishap
    with the water cooler”. I was given a gift card to
    Murray’s All-Day Breakfast Buffet as an apology for
    the inconvenience. That night, over hashbrowns, my
    mind raced. What the hell were they doing to her down
    there each day? How could I help? Should I resign?
    Since Lumon was the only place she was alive, quitting
    would essentially mean killing her. Surely, I couldn’t
    do that, no matter how bad things had gotten.

    It was two weeks later when, upon ascending for the
    evening, I felt something thick and firm tucked in the
    back of my waistband. I struggled to show no emotion
    as I went to my locker, retrieved my personal items,
    and went out to my car. When I was safely off Lumon
    property, I breathlessly pulled it out and saw a faded,
    spiral-bound booklet with a teal cover marked “The
    Macrodata Refiner’s Orientation Booklet.” A note was
    taped to the front, written in the King’s English in my
    very own handwriting:

    Dooley found your last note. Been in Break Room.
    Don’t know how long.
    Think you’re right about Lexington.
    Lumon updating code detectors but they’re down
    today. Hope this booklet gives clarity.
    Be careful. I love you too.

    I opened the booklet and was startled to find an eerily
    chipper creature smiling up at me from the page. He
    looked — pardon my indelicacy — like a little dildo with
    translucent skin revealing a spiral-shaped digestive tract
    leading down to his anus. After reading his intro, I
    learned that this was “Sevy,” a personified Severance chip
    and the internal mascot Lumon uses to train its innies.

    Describing this document is probably a fool’s errand,
    so I’m enclosing it here for you to look at too. I’ve
    spent hours going over it, trying to decipher what the
    numbers might mean, as explained by the all-knowing
    Sevy. Maybe you can figure out more, ’cuz to me this
    whole thing feels like it was written for a child. That’s
    all you’ll tell me about what all this stuff means? The
    only thing the handbook says about it is, “We know
    you may be curious about what the numbers mean.
    However, knowing the true meaning behind the
    numbers could inhibit your natural intuition.”

    Well, my natural freakin’ intuition is telling me
    something horrible is happening here.

    After that, I didn’t hear from Peggy for a week. I
    didn’t write anything either, worried that Lumon’s
    updated code detectors would be able to read Puglish
    and I’d land her back in the “Break Room”, which I
    could tell by now wasn’t a fun place with bean bag
    chairs and a pinball machine.

    This brings us to last Friday morning. I sat in my car
    in the Lumon lot, trying to mentally prepare for my
    strange daily descent, and wondering what horrors the
    day held for my dear Peggy. For some reason, I thought
    of that moment on the bus, skidding across the ice
    with the kids screaming behind me. Knowing I was
    responsible for whatever was going to happen to those
    children in the coming seconds. As their screams rang
    in my head, I did something that contradicted my better
    judgment. I grabbed a fast-food receipt out of my cup
    holder and hurriedly wrote a note in Puglish. It was a
    very quick note. All it said was “Are you okay?”

    I went into work and descended in the elevator as
    usual, trying not to look nervous as I went down.
    When I came back up, my heart was RACING, my
    palms were sweaty — though of course I didn’t know
    why. More troublingly, I felt a dry clump of something
    in my mouth. I looked at my watch: 9:10 am. Only ten
    minutes had passed since I’d gone down.

    Trying to look casual and avoiding eye contact with
    the security guard, I made a beeline for my locker.
    There, I deftly spat out the object in my mouth, which
    I found was a wadded-up sheet of paper. Unable to
    wait, I opened it and read:

    Peg,
    Leave now. Get somewhere safe. They will try to
    follow.
    Nothing they say is real.
    Distribute the training booklet. Answers are there if
    you look.
    Thank you for my life. You were the best part of it.
    I’ll be with you always,
    Peggy K

    And that was it.

    I called Mr. Alvarado and quit on the spot. I left
    Topeka without returning home.

    I only wish I could talk to Peggy again, tell her that I
    was going to get help for her and for all the Severed
    people down there, and that somehow… somehow I’d
    get the word out about what Lumon is doing. That
    attack killed six people, and I can’t even begin to tell
    you why — even though I may have been the one (or
    two) who pulled the trigger.

    But the thing that hurts the most is the only way I
    could ever talk to Peggy again is to go back to Lumon
    to switch my Severance chip back on… and I can’t do
    that again. Not ever.

    So instead, here I am, writing to you. I considered
    putting this up on social media, but I have about
    sixteen friends on there, including my ex-husband, and
    figured you could get the word out faster than all that.

    I hope so anyway. For me and for Peggy.

    Thank you for your time, Ms. Thorne. I look forward
    to hearing from you as soon as possible. My cell is
    785-555-4332. Please hurry.

    Very sincerely,
    Peg Kincaid

    [End of Scanned Pages Attachment]



    Jim M (jm@topekastar.com)
    Re: Lumon Letter, November 12 at 12:43 PM

    TO: Daria T (dt@topekastar.com)
    FROM: Jim M (jm@topekastar.com)
    SENT: November 13 at 10:03 AM
    SUBJECT: RE: Lumon letter
    Hey Daria,

    Read through this letter. Interesting stuff but all, as you said,
    pretty “out there”

    I don’t think we have the resources right now to put you on this
    type of story. Besides, seems more like a disgruntled employee
    making stuff up. I called over to a source I trust implicitly at
    Lumon and it sounds like she was let go because of too many
    absences.

    Let’s have you focus on the high school basketball playoffs, as
    discussed.

    Thanks,
    Jim

    TO: Jim M (jm@topekastar.com)
    FROM: Daria T (dt@topekastar.com)
    SENT: November 13 at 10:08 am
    SUBJECT: RE: Re: Lumon letter

    You’re sure? I can still file that story and then move onto this.
    These allegations, if true, are pretty astonishing.

    DT

    Jim M (jm@topekastar.com)
    Re: Lumon Letter, November 12 at 12:43 PM

    TO: Daria T (dt@topekastar.com)
    FROM: Jim M (jm@topekastar.com)
    SENT: November 13 at 1:03 pm
    SUBJECT: RE: Re: Re: Lumon letter
    Too late anyway. Just saw this — from Carolyn over in Obits:

    Margaret “Peg” Kincaid, 54. Peg Kincaid passed away from
    complications from a car accident on November 11th. She is
    survived by her sister, Meryl Rasmussen, of Tacoma, WA, and
    a group of supportive and loving friends throughout the Topeka,
    KS area. A dedicated school bus driver for several decades,
    Peg enjoyed bridge, spy novels, gardening, cats, and David
    Niven films. She will be missed by all who knew her. A memorial
    service will be on November 20th at 10 am. In lieu of flowers,
    please consider a donation to the Topeka Humane Society.

    Tough break. Sorry. Not to sound too harsh here, but all this
    might be for the best… her whole letter felt really loose and it’s
    not like we want to get into a libel suit with Lumon. You may
    remember what happened with the Nashville Tribune when
    they printed what they thought was a well-sourced exposé on
    Lumon’s feeding tube devices: They got sued into oblivion and
    folded six months later.

    Please send me those basketball pages ASAP though. I want to
    run them in tomorrow’s edition.

    Jim

    Jim Milchick, Editor
    The Topeka Star

     

    • Hook 'Em 1
  2. 9 hours ago, PilotsError said:

    There should be zero playoff games at neutral sites except for the championships.

     

    Hate to break it too you (because I don't like it either), but it's far more likely to go the other way, with all games at neutral locations.  There's just too much money on the table.  The only wild card is whether fans will travel to multiple games- and of course they will.

  3. Shitty throw, but that had no business being a pick six.  SMU was going through the motions trying to bring him down.  SMU is going to continue to try until PSU scores one more TD.  Then they'll quit. 

    Unlike many of you, I don't see this as an indictment on the playoff system.  The better team in this round SHOULD dominate.  But they won't always.

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