“Yeah, that... that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if there’s any way you could... test that? It seems sort of... vague... but it also seems like the kind of thing that’s worth keeping an eye on.”

"...yeah off the top of my head all I can think of is 'fund a horror movie and try to convince everyone that ice cream is creepy' but I think that is probably way above budget."

“Definitely. You can keep track of the... horror-movie-ness.... of the statements, I guess, see if the creepier ones keep have more confirming details?”

"Yeah. --I also feel extremely validated in my concerns about people being possessed by evil spirits and my conclusion that you were not possessed by evil spirits."

“I’m... glad? I think? I am also significantly less paranoid about the likelihood of people being possessed by evil spirits than you are, but I guess if this leads to my possession you can say ‘well, Martin, I told you so’.”

"If you start writing frantically in already-full journals and then eating them we will no longer be friends. --I'd say 'or startling at sudden sounds' but I bet you do that anyway."

“You’ve caught me.” He holds up his hands for a moment before putting them down. “I don’t do that other stuff, though. That’s—a person who was possessed?”

"Guy named Graham. I guess I don't know he was possessed but he definitely seemed to be mentally affected by some sort of magic. And then a monstrous thing crawled into his window and he was replaced with a completely different-looking person."

“Huh. That sounds... very not good, yeah.”

"Bad for him, reassuring for me, because it suggests that at least some people mentally affected by evil magic are going to behave in a really really obviously weird way."

“This is true! Though I. Guess we wouldn’t notice the ones that didn’t.”

"At least until they get eaten. --Other things magic seems to be connected to: books and... optical illusions? I don't know what the category is here but it feels like there is one."

“Huh. I have... no idea what the connection there would be, honestly. Maybe Jurgen Leitner collected optical illusions too and just didn’t put his name on them?” His voice is light and joking. 

"Not that kind-- I think magic things tend to be associated with weird visual effects, that's a common theme in the statements. Maybe it's because the visual cortex is easy to fuck with? Drugs really often lead to visual hallucinations."

“Oh! That’s, that’s really interesting. What’s going on with the books then, do you think?”

"I have absolutely no idea other than 'Jurgen Leitner did something really really terrible.'"

“Yep, thaaaaat... sounds about right.”

"...I want to make a monster manual."

“Oh! That’s a good idea, I should see if I can find information somewhere on all the ones the Institute knows about? I think Jane Prentiss might be the only currently active... monster... that we have confirmation of, but I’m sure she can’t be the first?”

"Well, there's a lot of monsters in the non-digitizable statements-- Wilfred Owen's spirit of war, the anglerfish asking the guy for a cigarette, the tall men with no distinguishing features who took the coffin from Joshua Gillespie-- but... it's really hard to know which ones are the same kind of monster."

“Yeah. And nobody’s really gone through the statements that aren’t fully proven to make a list, and it’s not like they could check whether you could digitize it until computers were invented... It’s a good idea, though. And maybe with more to go on it’ll be easier to note which ones are the same, or at least... similar? Or maybe they’re all different and we’re just wasting our time, but, only one way to find that out.”

"Non-digitizables first, I think, and maybe we can figure out some kind of temporary classification system... 'embodied,' 'partially embodied,' 'unembodied,' 'artefact,' maybe."

“Okay. Yeah. That seems—definitely doable, yeah.”

"We should work on it together this afternoon maybe!"

(Working on something together with a person he can also hug feels... really nice.)

“Yeah! Yeah, that sounds great! Just the non-digitizable statements we’ve already found for now, then, and we can add to it as you find new ones?”