Anniversary Email 49

Happy 11 year anniversary, <NAME>. That is an impressive milestone. Be sure to celebrate it. Enjoy yourself and escape, if only momentarily, the terrible knowledge that you are being hunted. Hunted by a creature so awful it cannot be named, lest in so doing I call its wrath down upon myself. A leviathan of smoke and shadow and flame. Tentacles. So many tentacles. Grasping. Tearing. Rending. It is unstoppable, and it hungers. Hungers for human flesh. For our spirit. The essence of our being.

It could be I gave it your name. In a moment of weakness. As I stood in a circle of salt, having summoned this titan from the depths of whatever ethereal plane of torment it calls home, holding the crumbling grimoire in my quaking hands. I felt suddenly small. Inconsequential. My protections laughably inadequate. It roared inside my brain, demanding a name. The sheer strain of the assault on my mind caused my vision to darken and blood to leak from my nose. I fell to my knees and spoke the first name I thought of. Your anniversary was so close. It was right there in my mind’s eye. My insides roiled and twisted. I loosed my tongue before I scarce knew what was happening.

It laughed, if you can call the primal, deep rumbling that came from such a thing laughter. My eyes burned from the stench of brimstone and the impossible heat the thing radiated. The candles I had so carefully arranged were naught save puddles as their wicks guttered and blew out. I stared into the swirling mass of chaos that comprised its mass, my sanity straining under the effort. Before it left it oozed one single tentacle over the line of salt I had artfully placed, tapping it thrice, as if to say, “Foolish boy. You cannot contain me. You have no knowledge of what you have unleashed. You are a child playing at a deadly game.”

It shattered the very earth as it fled, thrashing. I gasped for air and slowly rose to my feet, weeping. In the distance, terrible screaming, as though the sleepy little town I had chosen as the site of my studies had become Armageddon itself. The ancient tome was naught save a pile of ash, whether burned up by the gaze of the monster or simply crumbled to dust from the strain of the ages, I cannot say. The world no longer makes sense. I know in time it will return to finish what  I started. You will be the herald. After it has completed its dark task with you, warping and corrupting your flesh, I will know my time is nigh. Without the book, I have no means of stopping it.

Anniversary Email 48

Congratulations on your 7 year anniversary,<NAME>! That is quite an accomplishment. As you may well be aware, astronomers have discovered a ninth planet that they have helpfully called Planet Nine, because apparently creativity is not a thing among that crowd. Already they are celebrating the find. A celebration that they will soon rue as premature.

It is, in fact, not a planet but a space station. A massive weapon patrolling the galaxy, its inner core a gigantic hive of insectoid horrors driven by a ruthless hive mind to consume all life in the galaxy. Slowly, inexorably, it makes its way toward us, using the gravity of our own sun to help pull it ever closer. It will be a creeping doom. A crawling death. It may take dozens of years, but they will be upon us. Once in stable orbit around our earth, hive ships will likely break off from the bulk of planet nine, careening on to our planet with a dull thud, as millions of warrior bugs spill forth from small openings along the exterior. Using what I can only assume are vise like pincers, they will grapple us in place, as a needle like appendage menacingly extends from their chitinous abdomen. At this point they will presumably sting us, rendering us immobile and helpless against what comes next.

From here we project their vile hive will open in a blast of rancid, stagnant air, the bones of those species they have enslaved to serve as food spilling out the pulsing, glowing walkway. Leaving the relics of those they have consumed strewn recklessly about, we can safely guess their terrible queen will exit  the craft, resplendent in ghastly glory, her twitching antennae seeking out those subdued by her loyal children. She will glide across the fields of carnage on graceful, spindle like legs, her mandibles clacking menacingly, until she finds a helpless foe. From here her ovipositor will slowly descend downward, dumping a clutch of eggs onto the prone host, who can only watch in mute horror as the spiny forms visible through the translucent egg sacks begin to twitch and squirm.

It is safe to say we will be completely and utterly destroyed. Powerless to prevent our demise. Left to wander the ruin of our world infested with larvae that will eventually metamorphose into a new generation of space insects, turning our planet into a new ship for these aggressors. Once they reach critical biological mass, the creatures will push our once proud earth, now a teeming hive planet, out into the galaxy in search of worlds to conquer. We cannot escape this fate. The best we may hope for is that we are the one chosen as the vessel for the new queen, that we are blessed to carry and protect her royal personage in our decaying, contaminated flesh.

Anniversary Email 47

Congratulations, <NAME>! 8 years is quite an accomplishment. If you paid any attention to the recent CES 2016 show, you know that companionship robots were well represented. Everything from cute robots like Buddy, to robots inhabiting the uncanny valley like Toshiba’s ChihiraAco. Not one to be left behind, <COMPANY> has been working on our own companionship robot: S.L.A.U.G.H.T.E.R.Bot!

Not to worry, that is simply an acronym. It stands for Slashing Lacerating Amputating Unrelenting Grinding Hateful Tearing Eviscerating and Rending,  uh… bot. As we are still very much in alpha, we need to pair the S.L.A.U.G.H.T.E.R.Bot… You know what? We are just going to call it ‘Happy’ from this point forward. We need to pair Happy with employee handlers to see how it behaves in real world situations.

Happy will go with you everywhere. To work. To the store. To the playground. Actually, scratch that last one. I do not recommend that. Where ever you go, Happy will follow along behind you, its baleful red eyes continuously scanning everything around it for signs of weakness… to… tickles. Yes. Happy loves to tickle. And with its nine inch, serrated, prehensile digits, it is a tickling machine. Honestly, you cannot stop it from tickling, and I really must caution you against trying for your own safety and the safety of those around. Just let it do what it wants.

Worried Happy will be unable to follow over rough terrain? We have outfitted Happy with spiked treads that enable it to crush almost any obstacle underneath its massive, electrified frame. Yes, the slightest touch can render even the most stalwart of opponents prone and susceptible to a tank tread… back massage. Indeed, Happy loves to give massages. He will often emit a strange metallic sound while doing so. A hideous noise that one could almost mistake for laughter, as though it were enjoying crushing flesh and bone beneath its considerable bulk.

Of course, we will first want to introduce you to Happy, so that we can imprint your unique DNA signature into its database. This process currently has a 80% failure rate, but not doing the scan will not help us improve. We will be along shortly so you can make the acquaintance of our new robotic family member. And whatever you do, do not look directly at the chromed skull we have installed as its face. It really hates that.

Anniversary Email 46

Congratulations on 6 years at <COMPANY>, <NAME>! I am sure I speak for everyone when I say thank you for all your work. Thank you, and save us. As you may know, recently we decided to renovate the downstairs of the <LOCATION> office.  In our efforts to build a new, state of the art employee center, a marauding darkness was accidentally unleashed. Some great and terrible evil from before the dawn of mankind lay dormant underneath this very building, and in our desire to have a new lunch area, we have freed it from the arcane shackles that had imprisoned it there. It has boiled forth from the firmament, and has begun to corrupt us all. People report dreams of blood and terror. Haunting nightmare visions of a world aflame and a great, formless evil astride a mountain of bones from the fallen. A profane ossuary from which it orchestrates a malignant rule over the fates of us all.

Now in my case, mind you, I was already pretty far along that path. I mean, that is basically another day at the office. However, others are reporting great distress and sense of impending, inexorable doom. Again, that is what I would call Tuesday. Nothing new. The others, they cry out, “We need a champion!” <NAME> is about as close are we are going to get, linguistically, so I told them I would see what I can do. I am not really sure how you fight a virulent cloud of wicked darkness. Maybe strong desiccants? Like inscribed with ancient runes of binding, maybe? I’m just spit balling here. I’m sure you will figure something out. Good luck. We are all counting on you. I mean, I am not. I will probably be ok. I really will not notice a difference either way.