A ragged, jagged nail caused annoyance. As her teeth and tongue grappled with the sharp unevenness, her brows furrowed.

Reports all have a life of their own. All reports are meant to communicate. They direct and teach. They issue warnings and edicts. They are devoid of empathy, sympathy; unable to sing. And Janice had seen more than her fair share. Her work exposed her to countless reports, some that reoccur like crop reports and missile silo allocation. Others are one-offs meant to provide a glimpse into the eternal.

Who wanted these reports? Mostly tax collectors, sometimes accountants and Occasionally politicians when they wanted to provide the imitation of science while manipulating a segment of the population.

Janice was none of these. Her training in psychology led her to the edge of a career in the medical professions. A chance, short affair, with a sly professor taught her more than she ever wanted about the nature of human beings.

People were messy, complicated, but not in a Sunday afternoon jigsaw puzzle sort of way, more like tsunami. After she learned people were motivated by a mere hand full of ideas, mostly fear based, her passion waned.

Reports aren’t dumb. But this one didn’t make sense. Janice eyes scanned for patterns, flaws, anything to help her mind make sense of what she was seeing.

But there were no flaws. The obvious was being stated with simple clarity. Aliens had landed in Nebraska and the government was exerting great effort to keep that information secret.

Stupid nervous habit she scolded herself while smoothing the edge using her teeth as a smoothing plane. A mere single page was not a conversation. It was merely a conspiracy theory dreamed up by paranoid idle minds. Her’s was not idle, nor paranoid – or so she thought.

It was like the back of the dollar bill only in reverse. The image on the bill contained the illustration of a pyramid with an invisible top. All that stuff building block upon block until…nothing. This report stated a single fact, floating above a plane. But where was the support? Invisible, yet it had to be there.

Aliens! Why not fairies and elves? America. Nebraska?! Why not Los Angeles, the land of the waking dream, or New York, the land of the waking nightmare. Betty and Barney Hill would want to shake her hand.

In an unusual move, she pressed the buttons that would generate hard copy. A finger pointing, guilty!