Dear Mr. Hance:

This would have come earlier but matters intervened. The sentences are intended to be simple and declarative, as the following information must pass through several permeable membranes before it reaches you.

It is believed, but not verified, that you have already received several messages from Various & Sundry. Some of them are definitely informative as to the nature of the Announcements and indeed, of the Cause itself.

There was (perhaps) over-reaction on this end to your characterization of the Announcements as a Game. It has been considered carefully and a Game is a suitable metaphor, especially for a young person of your background. You must, however, realize that it is a Game far more serious than those with which one is generally familiar. A copy of Kipling's Kim is not available at this location in any language, but if the collective memory serves, his aforementioned novel made reference to "The Great Game." What you are--very intensely--studying is more analogous to The Great Game than to some of the suggestions that have been posited by your friends on the Net.

Since you are deeper into this than most, you should be informed that (as suggested by one of your Net-friends), there is some danger. It is not from our side. It is assumed that by now you have intuited that the Pelagians are the foulest of opponents and the other sub-groups in opposition have subordinate tasks--chosen by the Pelagians. Without becoming unduly rhetorical, the Pelagians can be simply explained as that rotting corpse which stalks you home and then materializes with you locked helplessly in its embrace, your life being its sole food. That loathsome corpse that can also appear animated, attractively young and able to communicate in the most contemporary manner possible. (The foregoing is a feeble metaphor, the point being to convey the power of the opponents--and their multifariously malignant purpose.)

If you have a mailing address and would care to receive one piece of mail, which shows that you are held in esteem at the end of June, please post it on your site. It is naturally assumed that you shall soon graduate and enter the maelstrom of employed life. Do not think that you must "solve" the Game immediately. The stakes are so high that a year, ten years or all one's waking moments between now and rigor mortis, are nothing compared to The Prize.

--The Orphanage