A revision

Our team of experts has given us the authentication we asked for, so, as promised, we'll take some time with you to share the implications of our discovery. We have been debating the wisdom of sharing "The Item" in all its horror with the world, but we haven't found a compelling reason to inflict such harm on the innocent (or naive) majority of society. Suffice it to say that it is in size and shape comparable to a brad, but with some modifications that would make the most hardened brad user shiver in fright. We are just glad the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch didn't get it first--we would certainly be facing an uphill battle if it had been introduced to the world as a harmless office product.

While "The Item" itself is very interesting, at the GNU Public Dictatorship we believe that the implications of "The Item" on our understanding of the modern history of the brad is more interesting, and it is clearly more important in the short term (since we have no plans to subject the world to its evils). The implications are many, but the most obvious revision that we must make is to our understanding of the character of Jacob Gehris.

The world at large has long considered the story of Jacob Gehris to be a standard inventor-is-ahead-of-his-time-and-dies-before-his-invention-is-accepted story. We have long known that this characterization is overly simplistic, and have favored the inventor-is-swindled-out-of-the-profits-of-his-invention-and-the-invention-is-suppressed-until-after-his-death explanation, with the understanding that in most such cases the invention in question is not an evil one (even if the inventor may not have meant it that way). Clearly, we were wrong.

We can safely say that Mr. Gehris was not an innocent bystander in the drama of the brad. He was not merely inventing something to satisfy his fastening needs or the fastening needs of his friends or family. There are still a few missing details, but the information we recovered with "The Item" (which has also been authenticated by our experts) paints a very different portrait of the Father of the Brad.

Our information (gleaned primarily from Mr. Carruthers' stash) leads us to believe that Mr. Gehris had been involved with the Company for many years under an assumed name. It is at this time that he learned of the brad. We gather that Mr. Gehris had philosophical disagreements with the leaders of the Company about whether society as a whole should ever be subjected to brads. The debate had been raging inside the Company for decades, but apparently Mr. Gehris decided to take it upon himself to end the debate once and for all. His "invention" of the brad made it impossible for the Company to follow its existing course and made the leaders of the Company so mad that they punished Jacob for his infidelity. Just prior to his death Jacob had been working on something even more evil than the brad, but he had become disenchanted with the Company's management of evil office products and decided not to let them have it. As we have previously stated this caused a great deal of enmity between the Company and Mr. Gehris, and resulted in his invention of the clapper burglar alarm. Mr. Carruthers, at the time, had apparently not been fully briefed by his associates at the Company about Mr. Gehris and had attempted to contact him to give him stolen intellectual property, which caused Mr. Gehris to take drastic measures. When Mr. Carruthers showed up at his house Jacob swallowed "The Item" in an attempt to keep it from the Company. Unfortunately he had made it too evil, and the act of swallowing it extinguished his life. When Mr. Carruthers first saw the item he recognized its evil and dedicated the remainder of his stay at the Company to stealing it and hiding it where we found it in New Mexico.

We are sorry for any confusion this revised history may cause, and we are sorry that we have misrepresented Mr. Gehris and his intentions in the past. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not delighted by truth, and we hope that, given these new details, we can move forward in our fight against evil!