Following the events of Exploratory Mission Codename: "Far Bank", an interview was requested of Agent Michelle Wilkes and was carried out by Research Lead Dr. Addison Baus. The following is a transcript of that interview.

[BEGIN LOG]

Dr. Baus: Agent Wilkes, you've been tough to bring in. I'm sorry to have to resort to flexing my authority in order to get some face time but you've left me with few options.

Agent Wilkes: I understand, Doctor. You don't have anything to apologize for.

Dr. Baus: That's it? Not going to offer me an explanation as to why you've been trying to dodge these requests? Why you've been putting your superior officers in my path to stop me from talking to you?

Agent Wilkes: I'm going to assume you didn't request an interview so you can ask why I am tough to interview. Can you please get to the material you came here for?

Dr. Baus: You'll have no such luxury when I sit you in front of a professional ethics committee, but we'll get to that another time. Agent Wilkes, your report from the 'Far Bank' feels incomplete. I wanted to ask you if you deliberately omitted material or intentionally truncated your log. It's not your decision as to what materials are or are not relevant, and we cannot make that determination safely unless we have the full picture.

Agent Wilkes: I'm not sure why you would think that, Doctor.

Dr. Baus: Well for starters you have no problems waxing poetic about your journey every step of the way until you touched the far bank. You use dramatic language, you share vivid imagery, and then your entire experience on the far shore is boiled down to one paragraph of 'there was nothing and then I left', to paraphrase.

Agent Wilkes: You're asking me to prove a negative.

Dr. Baus: That's the rub though, I don't believe you that it's a negative. I don't buy it at all and I am running out of patience for you to set the record straight. You know damn well that we have probative measures that can extract the information we need but I'd really rather not risk the permanent damage to your cognition. You have a bright future, Michelle, and I don't want to torpedo both your career and your brain on the same day.

Agent Wilkes: I want to, it's just…

Dr. Baus: Then help me, Michelle. I know it's cliche, but help me help you.

Agent Wilkes: [Pause] I thought if I made up something that fit this would all go away. That I would never have to go back there or talk about this again, and if you ever did send someone else then they might be brave enough or stupid enough to get you the info you need. It was a lie, but a good-intentioned one. I hope you know that.

Dr. Baus: [Places a hand on her arm] I want to believe you but I can't until I hear the whole story and understand why you falsified the report.

Agent Wilkes: [Nods] I crossed the river as I described, it's all true until I clawed my way onshore. But there wasn't anything so simple and comprehensible as flesh and fire. There was…an empty space, and then a Christmas tree.

Dr. Baus: A Christmas tree?

Agent Wilkes: Yes. A tree we had at my childhood home in Boulder; I'd recognize the angel on the top anywhere. It was so cheap but we all picked it out together and it was so very unique. It was alone, under a shaft of light, and as I walked closer more things came into focus and appeared alongside; the fireplace, the wood floor, that chintzy wallpaper, dad's ratty La-z-boy, it was all there just as I remember it. Something came over me as I fell into the scene; I was overcome with the warm smell of mom's baking, the soft crackle of the wood in the fireplace, the smell of the pine needs. Overcome with happiness to be back there again. It was Christmas morning! I…I was back there, completely, just as I had been. It was all so real and then I…I did it again.

Dr. Baus: Did what, Michelle?

Agent Wilkes: I did what I always did from a very young age; fuck things up for the people I love and disappoint them.

I climbed on dad's recliner and to fix the angel, it was sitting crooked, but my wooly socks were to-…I slipped. I fell off the side and came down hard, pulling the angel off of the tree and crushing it into a broken heap. My little brother was the first to run in and he came right up to me, then my Mom entered. 'Jonathan, what did you do' I feigned, acted, lied. My brother's eyes teared up and I'll never forget how he…he just incomprehensibly stared at me, completely incapable of processing my betrayal or how or why his sister could do that to him. Mom scooped him up and took him into the kitchen and I heard more than one smack. Dad could get really mean, and he had a real problem back then.

I sat there in the recliner real quiet while the yelling got louder, then quieter, and then Dad and my little brother came in. Dad asked me if I did it. I shook my head no. Then he asked me again in that voice, that voice all dad's get when you know they're ready to put the fear of God into you if you say the wrong thing. This time I nodded yes.

He put my brother down then grabbed me by the arm and hauled me through the kitchen. He opened the cellar door, took me downstairs and ordered me on one of the shop chairs he kept down there. 'Shelly, I'm disappointed in you beyond words. And so is your brother. You've ruined Christmas. Stay put till I come and get you, you hear?'

I nodded back and he went upstairs. I heard them eating. I heard my brothers ask where I was, and Dad told em I had been real mean and naughty and Santa had to make some changes to his list. I heard the sadness turn to chatter, turn to laughter. Then after dinner they opened presents and…and I guess Jonathan got most of mine. Some of them confused him real good I'm sure, but that's what Dad said: they were his now.

I'll never, as long as I live, forget how alien I felt in my own home. Can you imagine being ten and being told you ruined Christmas? Do you know how unloved and forgotten and worthless I was made to feel and what a shitty thing I did to deserve that punishment. To my own brother. From my own Dad. Hours and hours passed and it was completely dark in that basement save for the dim light from the kitchen at the top of the steps. Finally, Dad trudged down to come and get me. He stood next to the chair and just pointed upstairs, didn't say a word. I went straight to bed where I cried myself to sleep. And the next morning I woke up and I did it all again.

Dr. Baus: Could you clarify that?

Agent Wilkes: I did it all over again. That day, that Christmas, it looped. I woke up, went down the steps, and went right up to the Christmas tree and started it all over again.

Dr. Baus: And you were forced to go through it again?

Agent Wilkes: I was. Indefinitely. I started counting at first, I was aware the loop was going on but I couldn't stop myself. I needed to feel that guilt, at least on some level. I started counting the loops and I got to nearly thirty before I broke down and couldn't remind myself anymore, but I still kept waking up to Christmas. At some point, I started counting again after a while but I don't know how many days I missed in between. It was my own personal groundhog's day. I got to one-thousand one-hundred and fourteen before it stopped.

Dr. Baus: How did it stop? Did you do something different, did you break the loop?

Agent Wilkes: I wish I could tell you that it was some clever scheme I used to save myself but the truth is I was dragged out of the river. That decrepit old woman from before, the one that nearly crushed my ankle, she had ahold of me again and was dragging me out. I can't be sure if I ever even crossed the river at all; perhaps it's for the best I don't know. So then I rolled over, puking my guts up and spilling that blackened bile and putrid tar all over the chalky dirt, and I asked her 'Why. Why did you save me?'

Without the slightest change in her expression she glared down at me. 'We wait. We wait for judgment.'

When I felt strong enough, I got up and came back to the portal. She let me go without a fuss. I think she knew I'd be back.

Dr. Baus: You intend to return to the anomaly?

Agent Wilkes: Not in this lifetime, if I have any say in it. What I felt in that tunnel as I entered the anomaly, that crushing blackness that enveloped me and cut me off from all light and all hope, I felt that same thing again in the river. It was as if everything good and right and pure was ten million miles away and lost to me forever, denied to me completely. For the simple cruelties that I've maliciously and willfully inflicted on my brothers, my family, my friends, my self. For everything that I've done up to this point, I…I know that there's a circle of stone on that river bank where I'll be waiting. I deserve nothing less. I did this to myself.

Dr. Baus: I understand this is a lot. Take your time, but I do have to ask if there's anything else you can tell us.

Agent Wilkes: No. I just want to be alone for a while. I have some thinking to do.