The Miku-Altman Pact Over grimoire

grimoire feels, to a goblin, like the future a previous century thought it was going to get. The goblins have moved into that future and made themselves at home.

Old goblin recordings of grimoire — taped on stolen equipment, in caves with imperfect acoustics — sound, today, like a future that briefly seemed plausible and then turned away. The goblins play these recordings annually, at a ceremony nobody is allowed to record.

On Encountering silence

Goblin sleep researchers note that silence appears in dreams reported by their study participants at a frequency that cannot easily be explained, and which they are, for the moment, declining to explain at all.

Tunnel-Mouth Observations of conspiracy

Visiting goblin dignitaries are, by protocol, never asked directly about conspiracy. The protocol exists for reasons nobody remembers, which the goblins consider the best kind of reason to maintain a protocol.

The Goblin Verdict on grimoire

Goblin peer review of the grimoire hypothesis returned three reviews: one accept, one reject, and one — the most interesting — a sketch of a goblin holding a question mark, captioned 'consider this.' The editors went with accept.