The first unusual thing I noticed today was that my avatar, Lowen, was locked. I was originally going to have them fly their ship undetected across several systems in the Marlen sector to survey the outlay. But unfortunately, I could not even unlock my avatar. In fact, I did not even know it was possible to lock avatars.

At first, I thought that maybe it was a glitch in the system. Then I started speculating with dread that the problem had something to do with the Gold Empire.

I was about to reach out to Rose Anne on this when Josh Marquin approached me and informed me that my Membership had been suspended. When I asked for more details, all he told me was to check my Ticker messages. Sure enough, when I checked, I saw what happened.

So Brythar Foren, one of my old-time enemies from my days in high school and with Cray Fenton, had convinced the Bookkeeper, and a large number of Society Members, that I was a bit of a narcissist with my employer, wanting to be promoted to the Field Journalist role using whatever means necessary, and that I had spawned the Gold Empire to give myself an opportunity to do something seemingly extraordinary. Somehow, he generated what looked like a letter I wrote to Tom Kearney, my co-worker at Three Points, which featured me saying my apparent plans to him. And he stated that Tom Kearney, "seeing through my dishonesty," had blown my cover to Brythar.

Let me emphasize: This absolutely is not true!

And I am outraged! This is definitely not the first time that Brythar was hostile to me but this is definitely the worst time. Skylar and Rose Anne agree on that at least. But unfortunately, we have to follow protocol.

Also, on top of that, the very same guy, Brythar Foren, proposed a radically different idea to my own on the Gold Empire. Just before I got suspended, I had heard a rumor from Josh Marquin on this idea, and I immediately shot it down over the Public Section of the Ticketer. This, perhaps, may be the other reason Brythar is so bent on getting me. But in any case, this radically different idea is to somehow lure the most powerful figures, the Gold Imperial Prefects, into a single system, or even a single Planet, and then contain them in that area, and then destroy the daemons carrying out the Imperial agenda.

First of all, how would one possibly lure them? Second of all, how would we contain them? And third of all, if we somehow pull off the other two tasks, how do we know that this isn't simply a patchwork solution doing nothing in the long run but incubating a contained force of chaos, only to bust out decades later and ultimately subvert the entire Realm, blockworlds included?

In fact, this is not a matter of if, but a matter of when...