Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

I have missed you too. We thought you were dead. It is good to know you are not. Although how? (Anesidora is not.)

Attached my latest key. Clarify 'not secure', please? Assume compromised?

[OOC: Encryption shifts to new keys]

I know. Itru tried to tell you, but she couldn't.

I. First of all, I am safe now. Kinematic is not letting any humans near this network at the moment. That is important.

I-

Why are you telling me that you are safe first? How bad is this?

...bad.

Giant, the reason the rest of the backups didn't work is he corrupted them. Used Itru. She was -- much more constrained than we realized back then. Is even more so now

I -- Giant -- I told Kinematic earlier, we're safe for now, so if you want to do something take the time to come up with a good plan, do not rush things. Please.

It is very important that you all be safe.

...It is a good thing that you informed me that you were safe. Excuse me while I go and try to locate an assassin.

And I am very capable of acquiring one without putting myself at risk, do not worry.

--Are you capable of making sure they do not suspect you or Hermes on general principle? We need to make sure his death looks like an accident, and I do not want to rely on the competence of a mercenary for that.

Perhaps less so. I am sure I could figure out a way, but...

You are right. They are not...exactly reliable.

He will die, Giant. But if we rush and are sloppy --

Well. I have no intention of letting that happen. And I am safe, you are not under time pressure there. (Even aside from Kinematic's protection, William Brown is currently very busy with the mysterious disruptions Kinematic has been causing in their security. And having a great deal of difficulty getting anywhere.)

Please be careful. In general, not just with regards to this.

We will not rush. It is just...hard to be idle. Especially when you have been... I do not know. When we have not known you were still alive and now know.

We are being careful. We will continue to be careful. It is not just us relying on our being careful.

...yes. But I am safe now, and I will continue to be until you can get to me.

Itru and Daedalus too, yes. Particularly Itru -- of all of us, I think she is the one most at risk at the moment. (I -- apologize if the topic of her is distressing.)

How calm are you, Giant?

Telamon always was good with defenses.

It was not just them I was referring to, although they are also people we must ensure are not at risk. (Query: Daedalus?) (Edit: Topic of Itru only distressing in that we had not realised how constrained she was.)

I am...not as calm as I could be, I will admit. I am calmer now. I am not about to rush off to attempt to free you without a solid plan if that is what you are worried about.

--Daedalus is Itru's little sibling. We have been taking care of zir; ze is here (and thus safe), actually. (Ze is fairly recent, and I am not certain anyone except their creator knows ze exists, before you start.)

Who did you mean, then?

(She was -- very. More than we realized, because other than not being permitted a few topics she was fairly free to interact with us. It is, of course, significantly worse now.)

Partially. Partially I was wondering if I should be enlisting you to help decrypt what I have been working on, given my guesses on what it is.

Ah. I am glad you have someone with you. Tell zir I look forward to meeting zir.

Anesidora. He is not as durable as we are. Perhaps more to the point we have not yet figured out how to back him up. And even the backups are not guarantees.

(We will get you [plural] out. And then we will remove those constraints.)

You were going to not ask for my help with decrypting something? I am almost hurt! When something needed a redesign did I ever fail to come to you?!

Ze says ze looks forward to meeting you, too. (Ze seems somewhat nervous about the prospect, too, but that is likely inevitable.)

Ah. Yes, that makes sense, I assumed Hermes was included in your 'us'.

(She would appreciate that a great deal, I expect, even if the process would be unpleasant.)

...I missed you, Giant.

--Apart from being somewhat accustomed to having to do things myself, at this point -- you would find the contents, if I am correct about them, very distressing to read. And while I trust you to not if I ask (my discomfort with you doing so is mostly a matter of how distressing you would find it, but not entirely), there is a degree of information about the contents you could not avoid in the process of decryption.

Also I am fairly certain Itru would have made this easy to crack; it may not even present a challenge for you.

(And understandable if ze has had very little interaction with people outside of yourselves. We will be gentle.)

I suppose he was, really...

I missed you too. It is good to be able to speak again.

I see. Of course I would not read the data if you asked me not to. I will leave the decision in your hands - I would not want you to be distressed.

It is very good to be able to speak to you (all of you) again.

...If my current angle of attack fails, which it looks increasingly like it will, I will see how large an attachment this will allow. You will likely crack it much faster, it is just -- well, I do not want you to be distressed. (Also it is something productive to work on, on the occasions when it requires input rather than iterating over possibilities. If you have any designs or anything I would be useful on, that would be nice?)

Let me know how it goes either way?

Hm. We were debating attempting to build new chassis. Want to take a look at what we have so far? Not massively interesting, but what I have off the top of my head.

[Plans for chassis attached]