cleverprey

You know, I need to get better at handling this kind of logistical hassle. Apparently faking a nervous breakdown/stress overload is difficult, especially when you want to leave all of your communication channels open and take everything of research value with you.

Very fortunately, I know an amateur moving company who's boss owes me a favor or two(that would be Mr. Hadrada), and several departments that have storage space they are underusing. So the furniture is taken care of, and I'll be back with a truck in January to get everything that doesn't fit on the train. Only a few days until I leave.

GammaMale? We should discuss that job you offered me, in detail. You might as well be paying me, since your research is already consuming my attention.

Well, so much more for keeping that from you all. Yes, my brother John has been missing, since July 2004. He went hiking with friends, came back to the house, restocked, went camping, and never came home. No, I don't actually blame you for that. That's fallacious. I don't even know where he was, much less what he was doing on the full moon. Nobody has ever found any evidence he actually died. Nothing of his was ever found.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that that influences my perspective on your species. I have difficulty ignoring the human toll your existence takes, despite the valiant attempts that many of you make to mitigate that in one fashion or another.

Very shortly, I'm going to have a (rough) number for the body count to this point. It's a derivative of estimating your population, especially across a historical spectrum. At the point where I'm doing that work, it's too easy to get that number not to do it. Now, granted, the number is going to be across an extensive span of years, and is going to be a drop in the bucket compared to the number of our own that we have killed, even in just the last century.

But it's still going to be large, to the point that it will contribute to the furor when things get found out.
While I have no intention of breaking the promise that got me here, sooner or later this will all wind up in the news, and I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the consequences that I think will follow from that.

 I'm taking a leave of absence. Going home to the ranch. I'll play fiddle, fix tools, ride horses, deliver kids, and in my spare time try to almost singlehandedly rewrite modern ecology to incorporate not only new species, but entirely new metaphysical, biological and social characteristics of the various supernatural creatures I've "discovered". Lucky me. 

Because it can't stay secret if I stay here. There are too many smart people that wander through my apartment, somebody is going to pick up a clue sooner or later. Also, I legitimately need a leave to work on it. This has quickly taken over my life, and the other projects, while they might actually help more people, are not nearly so demanding of my attention. Classes are a distraction. 

I'll be back in Chicago in January anyhow. I've promised some people here goods from the ranch (some precocious little social scientist ought to study the social capital value of a jar of home canned tomatoes, because it's ridiculous what people agree to do for them), and the only thing keeping me alive right now is keeping promises. Now I see why chivalric codes of honor persisted so long as they did. 

In other news, hello. It seems I was already introduced to the crowd, but Ill again reiterate that my name is Megan, and that if I smell like food, there is a reason for that. Even as far as humans are concerned, I fall nicely into the "prey" category, though there, and hopefully here, that has not been a problem.