DOCUMENT QUEST

—A Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists Encounter from the Redacted Expanse

NOTICE

This record concerns actions taken to contain instability. Resulting disclosures produced secondary effects beyond initial scope. These effects are herein referred to as unintended.

Entire civilizations argue over footnotes they do not possess. The disturbance originates from a peripheral world—administratively complex, historically opaque. Initial assessments labeled the event a scandal; this proved inadequate. Analysts now agree the files were not merely damaging but destabilizing. As outrage spreads faster than light, governing authorities scramble to restore balance. Some attempt suppression. Some attempt denial. Others attempt distraction.

ONCE UPON A TIME, IN A CANDIDACY, ONLY A SHORT, SHORT TIME AGO—A ROLE WAS CAST.—

It tested well with demographically changed audiences. The series concluded. The reruns persisted.

Now, by popular request, the character returns:

NEXT UP: THE SPACE FORCE COMMANDER.

He took the microphone like it was a briefing room—uniform pressed, crowd primed, encore expected.

“Look—nobody wanted to go there. I didn’t want to go there. But he went there.”

Scattered applause. A few cheers.

“He starts talking about what’s in the files. Big mistake. Because once you say there are things in the files—people want to see the files.”

Phones went up.

“And frankly? They’ve been asking for a long time.”

Louder applause.

“So now we’re going to take a look. Not everything. Some of it’s very sensitive. Very sensitive. Some of it’s very interesting.”

A pause. A grin.

“A lot of it’s blacked out. People love that. They love the black parts.”

He glanced back toward the earlier panel.

“I wasn’t going to do the encore. But if someone’s teasing the plot—we’re finishing the episode.”

—The document release was initiated.—

It did not disseminate evenly. Material flagged as sensitive followed its designated pathway. That pathway terminated in the Redacted Zone.

The files were released.

They did not go where intended. They passed through the Redacted Region—a rectangular absence in space, a document-shaped gravity well that pulls meaning, names, and people into it the way black ink once did on paper.

The disclosed non-human entities—identified in the files, footnoted, and briefly discussed on cable, returned soon after.

They brought everyone back.

The innocent redacted. The guilty redacted. All previously absorbed by the rectangular black hole and reclassified as elsewhere.

Having learned governance from human political programming, the disclosed entities asked, with visible sincerity:

“We come from Planet Redacto, located within the black rectangle you designate as the Redacted Zone.

“These people do not belong with us. And you appear to be responsible.”

“What would you like us to do with them?”