ACCESS: RESTRICTED
DECRYPTION KEY: 2CA9SXUO2C$IKO-006
REP#: 011-PSYCHOMETER-TEST
AGENT(S): TRU-135

SUBJ: PSYCHOMETER FIELD TESTS

1. The new version works. Love all the knobs and antenna;
very analog. I took readings off a hatch control out here
on Europa and Cowlick was able to retrieve badly distorted
voices in some kind of distress. I don't know if it's doing
exactly what you Warlocks want, but it's doing something
all right. Cowlick says it's probably tapping into her
scrutiny, if you permit that term in your ivory halls.

2. Now, I'm not much for gadgets, so I won't ask you how
you rigged this thing. But I am one for gossip. Weren't
we closing in on some kind of workable theory of exactly
how our ghosts resurrect us? One which was, if I am not
mistaken, based on research by the Future War Cult? Did
any of that work survive Lakshmi?

3. You know they did try to recruit me once. The Cult. Over
a game of poker. Fifty-two cards in a deck don't seem like
many, this hard-ass Titan told me. But there are 80 658 175
170 943 878 571 660 636 856 403 766 975 289 505 440 883
277 824 000 000 000 000 different possible shuffles of 52
cards. You could walk back and forth across the observable
universe faster than you could count all those possible
shuffles. A lot faster. That's life, she said, and she had
daisies impaled on the spikes of her skull. Life is endless
permutation. So many possibilities. But the rules are what
matter. Who cares how the deck shuffles if you don't know
the rules of the game? We play this game over and over.
Life and death. Light and Dark. But the only way you learn
the rules, the only way you're gonna get one of those
Truces you're named for, is if you come inside. Come into
the Cult. Come on in and see. But I didn't.

4. Another thing she told me is that you can play poker with
just three cards and two players. Jack, Queen, King. Ante
one, max bet one more. High card wins unless one player
folds. And in this game, there are many strategies available
to the first player, but very few to the second, who acts
to exploit the choice made by the first. Many possibilities
against few. Sounds like you'd rather be the first player,