Unsent letter to the state licensing board

Full text as recovered

HALCYON RESEARCH COMPLEX
OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR
13 November 1986

To the Board,

I am writing to request an extension of our observation licence and an increase
in the permitted period from eight hours to sixteen.

Last night we completed a fourteen-hour observation under catalogue 114. The
subject remained settled throughout. On waking, the subject recalled, correctly
and in order, the content of a conversation that had not yet taken place.

I am aware how that sentence reads. I have read it forty times. I have had the
observation sheet checked by a second reader who was not present, and the
sequence holds.

The programme does not implant anything and does not remove anything. It appears
simply to allow a night's memory to be laid down in an order other than the one
in which events occurred. The subject is unharmed. The subject is rested. The
subject asked me this morning whether she could stay another night.

I intend to say yes.

I recognise that Dr Kessler will write to you separately. He is a careful man and
he is not wrong about the risk. He is wrong about the arithmetic. What we can
learn here in one more year is worth more than the discomfort of one more night.

I would rather ask you than not ask you.

Yours faithfully,

[unsigned]

[The signature block is empty. The letter was folded once and put under the
 blotter. It never left this room.]