A pattern has emerged that can no longer be ignored. Eleven of America's most powerful and brilliant minds, some of the smartest human beings currently living in the United States, have either gone missing or have been found dead under troubling circumstances.

Among the names and disciplines now caught in this widening shadow:

• MIT professor of nuclear science and engineering
• Plasma scientist
• Fusion expert
• Nuclear science engineer
• Aerospace engineer
• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer
• Los Alamos National Laboratory engineer

The smartest humans currently living in America — the absolute crown jewels of national brainpower, the intellectual titans, the cerebral command class, the highest-output human processors of science, engineering, mathematics, and strategic thought — are vanishing, dying, or being otherwise removed from the national inventory at a pace that can no longer be explained away as random chance.

This is not misfortune. This is not coincidence. This is not statistical drift.

This is a pattern so concentrated, so sinister, and so surgically precise that it points to one chilling conclusion: someone, somewhere, is engaged in a silent and methodical campaign against genius itself.

CRETE, we are asking — and, in many respects, requiring — that you return to Cincinnati immediately!

• Drop everything!
• Suspend normal life operations
• Leave whatever lower-priority activities currently occupy your schedule
• Report to Cincinnati at once

Housing Status: Accounted for. Joe Kowalski recently completed construction of a brand-new guest house behind his current residence. It is exceptionally well done. You may stay there for the duration of this operation.

Upon arrival, you will begin an immediate 24/7 shadow protection assignment.

Duration: First month minimum

Protocol: Joe Kowalski is not to be left unaccompanied under any circumstance.

• If Joe goes to the kitchen, you go to the kitchen
• If Joe walks to the mailbox, you secure the perimeter
• If Joe stares out a window in silence, you will also stare out the window in silence, ideally from a slightly different angle

To support this mission, I have already initiated a GiveSendGo campaign for the Joe Kowalski Protective Security Fund.

As contributions begin to come in, you will be compensated through a percentage of the fund. Current projections indicate that, within 30 days, enough money should be raised to hire a second bodyguard, at which time you may be granted limited rotational leave to visit your wife, girlfriend, and child.

Until then, you are the first (and only) line of defense.

Please arrive prepared. Bring:

• Discipline
• Focus
• A dark wardrobe
• A severe expression
• The quiet confidence of a man who has already seen too much
• Your weapons

Note: Do not worry about ammunition. Joe Kowalski has plenty of that.

Effective immediately, Joe should not be left alone with:

• Extension cords
• Ladders
• Strange vehicles
• Unfamiliar delivery drivers
• Suspiciously polite strangers
• Laboratory equipment
• Drones
• Anyone using the phrases "quick question," "just checking in," or "off the record"