From: Rachel Malkin
To: TeamTen
Date: 2028.10.12 04:12 EST
Hey everyone, I know this is coming out of nowhere, but I need to ask: are you free to come back to Ten? Yes, that Ten. Too ambitious, too speculative, too expensive. You remember the budget meetings. Meanwhile, the LHC coasted into its fourth upgrade cycle (not that I'm bitter or anything, just mildly haunted). I thought it was dead. You probably did too. We practically gave it a eulogy. And then this, whatever this is, happened. The grant pipeline lit up. Not a drip, not a trickle. Full blast. We're funded. Not patched together with departmental handouts or speculative private capital. Fully funded. High-tier, unrestricted, multi-year. Top-line. Clean. And here's the kicker: no proposal accepted. No abstract submitted. Just a three-word note attached to the line item: "Run it again." No attribution. No clearance code I recognize. No supplementary paperwork. Just approval. Big approval. Like someone skipped the entire ladder and dropped the greenlight from orbit. I don't know what happened. I don't know how. But it feels like someone, somewhere, with reach none of us have, decided this matters. Maybe it's Ferris. Maybe it's divine intervention. Maybe we just became the pet project of someone who doesn't care about normal channels. Come back. We need your hands. We need your eyes. And I think, finally, we have the shot we never thought we'd get. - Rachel
From: Sima Lawrence
To: TeamTen
Date: 2028.10.12 06:02 EST
Rachel, What do you mean "just approval"? You don't just get a grant like that out of the blue. How much are we even talking about here? You're telling me no review, no submission trail, and someone dropped a check? That's not just weird, that's totally unprecedented. - Sima
From: Tao Jiang
To: TeamTen
Date: 2028.10.12 06:09 EST
Rachel, This is difficult to interpret. Are we confident this isn't a misfiled budget trigger or some automated anomaly? I've never seen funding approved without at least a shadow of review protocol. Do we have any way to trace the authorization? - Tao
From: Kiran Ghosh
To: TeamTen
Date: 2028.10.12 06:11 EST
This is... surreal. Assuming the allocation is genuine, the question becomes: why now? Who resurrects a project with this history, in this climate, and without formal channels? It feels coordinated, or possibly political. I'd be more comfortable once we confirm provenance. - Kiran
From: Rachel Malkin
To: TeamTen
Date: 2028.10.12 06:23 EST
Sima, Tao, Kiran, I don't know. I swear. I don't know how, I don't know who. The line's tagged FDF-level, but that's all I can see. And honestly? I'm not asking. I'm not poking at it. If I do, someone might notice and pull it back. Right now it's real, it's clean, and no one's told us to stop. If this is a mistake, let it be a productive one. I want every one of you here by next week. - Rachel