It's time to come clean

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not dedicated to honesty and openness, which is why it pains us when we occasionally have to mislead our supporters, even if it is for the greater good.  Embedded in the huge amounts of verifiable and correct data we reported in our post about what we know right now we included a few out-of-date statements that didn't reveal all that we knew right then.  Rest assured, however, that the obsolete statements were there to protect all of you and our trusted operatives, and not merely to keep you from being fully informed.  After all, if we didn't want you fully informed, would we be writing this post?

Anyway, to get to the point, our answer to the question "Is 'Edgar' still alive?" did not, unfortunately, reveal all that we knew about the situation at the time.  Now that we have completed our operation (more about the information gleaned from our operation when we have had a chance to collate and catalog the information we obtained) we can be more frank about what we know.  If they have not already, the Parent Corporation/Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch will soon discover that they have not had "Edgar" in their midst for the last month, but our loyal Count Quisling.

In late June our once-maligned operative "Nikolai" discovered "Edgar" passed out in a gully just outside the Parent Corporation's headquarters.  Sensing an opportunity, he quickly put his missions on hold and checked "Edgar's" vital signs.  Finding him to be alive he decided to observe him for a while.  Several hours later "Edgar" appeared to take a turn for the worse, at which point "Nikolai" took him to the GNU Public Hospital's secure ward for further observation.  The opinion of the expert attending physicians (at least after they relentlessly ridiculed the opinion of the intern who suggested that "Edgar" appeared to have attempted suicide) was that "Edgar" had probably ingested some hole punch leavings tainted with noxious chemicals with the hope to end his miserable existence.  Our operative inside the Parent Corporation was contacted and, since we found that the Parent Corporation knew nothing of "Edgar's" current state we devised a brilliant plan to replace him with his twin, Count Quisling.  Quisling bravely offered to have his pinkies severed so that he might more fully deceive the Parent Corporation, but our operative assured us that "Edgar" always wore his prosthetic pinkies and that nobody would notice.

Quisling was quickly able to gain entry to "Edgar's" offices, and began surreptitiously copying interesting files.  As it turns out, however, all of the interesting files predated the merger with the UBHP, which raised Quisling's suspicions.  Instead of being an in-and-out operation, Quisling decided to stay (against our wishes) to find out whatever he could about the current state of our nemesis.

We have known for a long time now that "Jack" has his own motives for the Parent Corporation and the UBHP, but we never suspected how completely his vision had been accepted.  It seems that nearly everyone that disagreed with his vision joined the New Company when it split, and that the few remaining dissenters have either recently retired or disappeared under mysterious circumstances.  According to Quisling, none of "Edgar's" associates remains at the Parent Corporation/UBHP, which is likely why "Edgar" decided to get out.  "Edgar's" role was so diminished that since we had Quisling (acting as "Edgar") resign a week ago we have heard no rumblings of looking for a replacement for him or any memo thanking him for his services or anything like that.

As for "Edgar," we placed him in the TORSO reality simulator and are watching his movements closely.  He has not yet admitted that he tried to kill himself, but his aimless playing of first-person tetris all day at "work" implies that his spirit has indeed been broken by "Jack".

We cannot yet release all of what we found about "Jack" and his fellow "Crafties" but we can say this: the Parent Corporation and the UBHP are mere shadows of the threats they were just a few months ago.  They have abandoned their goals of spreading hole punches and other evil office products in favor of hording them for themselves.  According to several memos they no longer consider us their enemy.  Unless something completely unexpected happens, we believe they will probably be occasionally annoying but of little real global consequence.