>Set down desk and then check the time.

Is this even a clock? If so, it hasn't ticked over, not once the entire time you've been screwing around here.

As you look at the numbers on your "clock", the part of your mind that seeks for patterns grasps the numbers in hand. Something about this number tugs at your consciousness like a rowdy tyke indicating nearby ice cream. 8:13, 8:13... Well, numbers can often mean something. You remember Aradia finding you in the land of the dead one day and deciding to follow you for a while. flitting about you joyfully, flicking her fairy dust to and fro with each beat of her wings as she encouraged you in your quixotic mission and then told you about 6:12--12 trolls each 6 sweeps old in 2 teams of 6, a number that would appear and reappear at critical points in their history to haunt them like a refrain, an obsession--the session leader's birthday, the date they played the game, the number of hours they'd play the game for, the number of years after the apocalypse that the Black Queen and agents they'd exiled would show up in the wasteland.

So why numbers now, here in a new world beyond the rules of paradox space, and why 8:13 specifically? 8 humans and 13 trolls? You count the trolls in your loose social orbit. Karkat, Kanaya, Sollux, Aradia, Terezi, Vriska, Porrim, Latula, Damara, Kankri, Feferi, Nepeta... That's twelve, right?

Well, there's Meulin too, but she's... ehh. Sort of an exception.

Who could be the mysterious thirteenth troll??? you wonder voluminously.

You veer away from a critical realization at the last second. Fuck numerology, you decide. Numerology is stupid and pseudoscientific. You have real, concrete, scientific work to be doing, work that involves going into a shadow realm to resurrect dead spirits using amazing magic powers that you got from a video game that let you become a goddess in your new isekai universe.

So there.

>Plug PHONE CORDS into rotary phone. Then, read the NOTE.