With Love

        This will be the last you will ever hear from the Voices From The Umbra Organization. The Organization has been left to me, and I am dismantling it. It never should have reached this point in the first place, and it's become very clear that the high ideals we were founded on could not save the men and women involved with this project. In fact, clinging to those ideals in the face of evidence and the deteriorating world around them led to an acceptance of cruelty and discipline that should have been unacceptable.

        There have been many lately who thought I might be dead. Some found this a positive change, and some a negative. I would like to thank any and all persons who reached out with concern for both myself and the state of the VFTU Organization as a whole. I'm sorry I couldn't respond, but it was simply impossible. Over the past couple of weeks I have met with a few VFTU agents that I felt I could trust. These were people still working in the field, and who were not confined to the Midwest Base, leaving them slightly further out of the reach of my Grandfather.

        With the help from these agents, we planned a “rescue mission” of sorts. We felt that we had to do something to ease the hold that my Grandfather had on the people of the Midwest Base. We needed to topple the current leadership, get both medical and psychological help for those forced to live, however briefly, under the rule of a madman, and to scrape together whatever we could to make a life for ourselves away from this Organization. We had a plan. It was a good plan. And a mere four days before we were going to take action, we got a piece of news.

        Grandfather Spaulding, the leader of the Voices From the Umbra Organization, my grandfather and only parental figure for most of my life, is dead. He took his own life in the early hours of the morning, on a seemingly random day, and for reasons that are still being debated. We don't know exactly what finally forced his hand, (I, personally, believe it to be a moment of clarity and honest repentance), but we do know that he has left this world. Grandfather Spaulding is finally dead.

        In his will, he left control of the Organization to me. There was some internal debate, (headed by members of the Organization who will here remain nameless), that Grandfather Spaulding's wishes had probably changed in the last few months, and I was only still named as recipient because updating his will was one of the last things on his mind. It's possible, yes. Maybe even probable. But, since he has left this world, we can only use what he left behind for us, and to override a will based on an assumption would be immature, illegal, and foolhardy.

        I feel like the greatest thing I can do for my Grandfather at this point is to dissolve the Organization, sell our assets, help the people from the Organization find employment, housing, and therapy, somewhere far away from here. I have ordered the technological advancements destroyed. If somebody wants to attempt to restart this undertaking for themselves, they will not have help from us. It's become very clear that somewhere along the way, this process was infected. We don't know at exactly what stage that happened, so the most ethical option is to destroy it all. There's just too much possibility for another person like my Grandfather to take control over a small group of people and subject them to horrific circumstances because of the power this technology brings. We've made a mess, and it all needs to be cleaned up. Not some of it. All of it. I will not be responsible if this happens again. That will be my legacy.

        The only thing that will remain is the podcast. The voices from the Other-Earth still need to be heard by people, and many have drawn comfort and wisdom from listening to their specific situations. We still feel like it was a gift that we were able to hear their voices in the first place, and we think that it would be wrong to silence them forever. Feel free to pass on your knowledge of the Voices From The Umbra to others, and when you do, be sure to tell the whole story. Our triumphs and our failures. The genius and the madness.

        Be honest and go forth with love.

        -Claudia Spaulding