Fifth Transmission:

Look, I’ll put it plainly: I’m not doing revisions. It might make for a better story, and a better product if I did, but that's far from the point of this. As has been mentioned in the foreword, I’m a conduit. I’m the needle on the seismometer, scrawling data as the earth shakes. If it's all out there, as it comes, then someone down the line can pluck whatever important information might be contained here and come to the conclusion they need to.

And the music goes to scramble and static if I try.

* The Author

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From the outskirts, Speculation city popping up over the flat horizon looks like arguing worms who have poked their head above to get directions.

Here I am, at the edge of the woods. I’ve got a couple of empty sacks, some durable shoes and long sleeves to avoid getting scrapes. There are little seed pods that drop from the trees at this time of season. They’re only good for a couple weeks out here. The ones that drop after that have had too long to grow, and can’t be dried properly. I come out at night before the critters wake up and eat them all. There’s no road that leads to the forest. You just walk past those first trees and into it, leaving the worms to argue.

The seeds get dried out over hot rocks in the depths and stiffen. You grate these with a metal file and collect the dust which is used to marinate bug meat.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

There’s a newly fallen tree, I’ve got to heft myself over it. It's suspended maybe a foot and a half above the forest floor where I’ve come across it. The rest of the forest caught it as it fell.

There’s another one, split across the trunk. A little gully has formed between the sundered halves. The wood within gleans moonlight off of it in wet splintered relief. Must have just happened. The seeds brought low and so conveniently presented to me cannot be used as they are. In tact branches could be kept until the seeds fall on their own, but there will already be enough to fill the sacks I’ve brought, so I continue without much thought.

The woods are a tangled mess, which is new. Trees keep falling and it's tough to progress in the same manner I have in the past. Something must be bringing them down faster than they otherwise would. I have to do a lot of reaching through shrub and bush to grab the little seed pods, many twigs scrape my sleeves. My arms remain unscathed.

The clambering necessary to progress further inward puts me in a rhythm of movement that causes me to lapse in thought. I believe I am lost. I was under the impression the woods themselves were quite small, since I’ve traveled clear through them pretty quickly in the past. Now I am under the impression that they are vast and I may never make my way out.

I reach a clearing. Dense but low grass, level ground. A pit with a puddle in it is dug into the middle of this clearing. The moon does not reflect off this liquid in the way it would off of water. I had not seen the moonlight glance off of sludge until just now, so I didn’t know to make the comparison or recognize it as such.

Something stoic and chitinous, with mandibular writhing jaws emerges slick with the stuff, out of the puddle. Squared shoulders, lengthy and plentiful arms gesticulating in a rapid and silent dance of sorts, flicking the sludge from its slick body. The moon seems uncertain how to best reflect off of this myriad of surfaces. Orbular segmented eyes shine through this mess of movement, trained directly on me. This is new as well. This thing likely intends to kill me.