CONFIRMEDENHANCED ×212I have been saying for ten years that they come within twenty-four hours. I was wrong. I apologise to the readers of this website and to the record. They come within forty-nine. I have updated the protocol.
The arrival
Monday, 10:20 am. I was in the shed and Noreen was doing the books when the dogs started, not humming this time, barking, which Dr Faraday says means a terrestrial vehicle. I came round the side of the house and there it was at the gate: white Commodore, sedan, government plates, idling.
Two of them got out. Short-sleeved business shirts, one blue, one white. Beige slacks on both. Lanyards tucked into the shirt pockets so you cannot read them, which is the first thing they teach you, apparently. The taller one carried a manila folder, which is the colour of his pants, so from a distance he appeared to have three legs.
They did not come through the gate. They never come through the gate. They stand at it, like something that has to be invited.
The conversation
I have written this down as close to word for word as I could manage from memory and from what Noreen could hear through the kitchen window.
Them: Mr Doolan? Morning. We’re from the Bureau.
Me: Which Bureau.
Them: We understand there’s been some activity in the district.
Me: There’s been a cow drawn in Terry Hennessy’s wheat, sixty metres across, if that’s what you mean by activity.
Them: We’re just following up. Would you have any photographs or recordings of the site, or of any related matters?
Me: Related to what.
Them: Any recordings at all, Mr Doolan.
Me: You mean the tape.
Them: We’d be happy to take a look at any tape.
Me: No.
Them: Right.
And then the shorter one reached into the folder and handed me, across the gate, a pamphlet. Glossy. Trifold. Managing Pasture Stress in Variable Seasons. With a picture on the front of a cow in a paddock looking, I will say it, worried.
The pamphlet
I have the pamphlet in front of me as I write this. It is a real pamphlet. It has advice in it about rotational grazing and ground cover. There is a phone number on the back, which I rang, and which is a recorded message about rainfall deciles.
In 1994 it was drought assistance and we were not in drought. In 2004 it is pasture stress, and Terry’s wheat was the best crop he’d had in six years right up until a cow was drawn on it. The pamphlets are never about what is happening. Dr Faraday believes they are a code, and that if you lay the 1994 and the 2004 pamphlets on top of each other on the light box he uses for slides, certain words line up. The words are “assistance”, “contact” and “the”. He is continuing the work.
The departure
They did not ask about the glyph itself. They did not go to the Hennessys’, I checked. They did not ask about Beryl by name, they never have, and Dr Faraday says this is because saying the name would “constitute acknowledgement”.
The tall one looked past me at the house for a long moment, at the second bedroom window, where the computer is, where this website lives. Then he said “thanks for your time”, and they got back in the Commodore and drove off towards town at exactly the speed limit, which no one who actually lives here has ever done.
What they are
I have been asked many times on this site who the Men in Beige are and I will set out the Collective’s current position.
They are not the Men in Black. The Men in Black are American and have budgets. The Men in Beige are what you get when the same job is done by a department. They are not threatening. They are worse than threatening. They are procedural. They arrive, they ask, they are told no, they leave a pamphlet, they go, and they come back in ten years with a different pamphlet, and they will keep coming until one day there is a pamphlet about me.
A word from management
They were from the Department of Primary Industries. It said so on the lanyards, which I could read from the window because I was wearing my glasses. They were doing a drive-around after the crop formation because it was in the paper and the paper said "mystery", and when the paper says mystery somebody gets sent. The pamphlet is quite good actually. We should rotate the back paddocks. — Noreen
The updated protocol
Effective immediately the Collective’s guidance for residents of the district is as follows. If a white Commodore with government plates stops at your gate:
- Do not open the gate.
- Do not confirm you own a camera.
- Accept the pamphlet. Do not read the pamphlet. Post the pamphlet to the Collective for analysis.
- Note the time. They are never early and they are never late and nobody knows what they are on time for.
- After they leave, check your cattle. Count them. Count them again. Then count yourself.
I counted. Nine hundred head, minus Beryl. One wife, one nephew, one Doctor by post. All present.
For now.
— Warren
Document U8MC-04-0103. Status: CONFIRMED. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.