To: Paul Rutherford, Chemical Analyst
From: Janine Cerros, Head of Business Relations
Date: September 5, 2025
We’ve got a situation here, Rutherford, and we’d like you to relay it to the rest of your office. We’ve received feedback from several of our retail clients stating that they are dissatisfied with the performance of our chemtrails, which directly affects their profits and return on investment. As a government branch, they expect our chemicals to be potent and us ourselves to be precise, accurate, and expedient. For many of them, this is obviously their first time working with the government.
Our clients’ poor results thus far appear to stem from our chemtrails’ chemical compositions. As I’m sure you’re aware, these chemicals exist in an extraordinarily delicate balance and must be developed carefully to bring about the desired…desires. You can understand my confusion, then, when I receive a complaint telling me that half the state of Kansas has no idea what Wendy’s is but is now deeply fascinated with the lore of the Wendigo.
I need guarantees that our clients will receive the results they paid for one hundred percent of the time, Rutherford, and this starts with you and the Chemicals office. As the newest government office, we must ensure we stand up to the scrutiny of those old-guard senators and cabinet members. I don’t pretend to know how any of that byzantine chemistry works, so fix it, would you? And while we’re at it, spray your boss’s office with that concoction that makes him want to check his email.
***
To: The entire Department of Chemtrails
From: John Cristian, Department Lead and Chemtrail Coordinator
Date: September 27, 2025
That was a tough couple of days, wasn’t it? I appreciate everyone’s patience and resilience through the drawn-out approach this incident demanded.
As many of you already know, one of our private equity clients spoke of our fair Department’s existence during a press conference in Washington, DC. You can understand the panic and disorder such a reveal would cause among the American public, I’m sure: one of their greatest conspiracies, government-endorsed and regulated by the law!
Naturally, we took immediate countermeasures to prevent this information from spreading further than the press conference. Our Cessna fleet has just finished their 50th pass over Arlington. I’m told some of the attendees are forgetting their own names.
This is an excellent opportunity to remind everyone that the nondisclosure agreement you signed on the day of your hire covers all situations in which our fair Department and the work we do could be revealed to the public. Such situations include discussing work with non-employees, discussing work with employees, thinking too hard about chemtrails, not thinking hard enough about chemtrails, making chemtrail-related jokes, publicly wearing tinfoil hats, and sending unauthorized memos to unauthorized recipients.
As the Department Lead and Chemtrail Coordinator, I greatly appreciate your cooperation in this matter. Remember, in this department, we’re all just one big chemically-enhanced family! Even now, I’m looking out over the capitol, watching one of our planes fly in front of the sunset, thinking about…wait, what was this memo about?
***
From: Christine Klancey, Head of Public Complacency
To: Aidan Arnolds, Head of Aircraft and Maintenance
Date: October 12, 2025
What a wonderful day it’s been so far. I’ve just been informed by HR that the way I use memos is “unprofessional” and “unbefitting of a government employee.” You didn’t show them my last memo, did you? The one where I asked you out to Maggiano’s for their Saucy Couples date night? Wait—are they watching what we do on these workstations? I thought everything in the Department of Chemtrails was supposed to be hidden. (The dinner invitation still stands. Screw HR.)
Right. The formal purpose of this memo is to make a demand. Cristian has insisted that we stop using commercial flights to release chemtrails over the lower 48 states. Not only is it getting too expensive—Delta and United won’t allow them in carry-ons anymore, so we have to check them—but they’re starting to seep from the plane exhaust into the cabin.
Just last week, DAL883 from New York to Provo had to divert to Chicago because of a passenger brawl at 30,000 feet. The reason? Some of our trails got into the cabin. A flight attendant reported almost a hundred people fighting over who would get the most vaccines at Provo’s Walgreens upon landing.
We can’t have this happening—both the FAA and the American public would have our heads. Effective immediately, decommission all projects to equip commercial jets with trails and alert all of our airline partners to the change. But do still consider my invitation from the last memo. If Saucy Couples night isn’t your thing, I hear Frisky Fettuccine Fridays are also a great time.
***
From: Paul Rutherford, (new!) Head of Chemical Analysis
To: Xavier Lawson, Head of Meteorology
Date: October 25, 2025
This memo constitutes a formal review of incident CT-3051, which occurred on the afternoon of July 19th, 2025. Three planes carrying radical liberal chemtrails to a wide swath of Florida were blown off-course by the approaching Hurricane Rebekah. Due to the hurricane’s sizeable wind field, the planes were pulled into the storm and through its eye wall. Department pilots reportedly flew past Hurricane Hunter planes, whose pilots, quote, “blew raspberries” at ours.
When our planes entered Hurricane Rebekah, they were already emitting chemtrails. These trails were drawn into the storm’s circulation and imbued in the rain that fell when the hurricane made landfall at Boca Raton, Florida. Over the next few days, local news and Boca Raton residents reported a variety of, frankly, disturbing effects associated with this chemical rain. Tree leaves began growing in the shape of the MSNBC logo. One woman’s dog not only started speaking English, but stood up and quoted Karl Marx. Perhaps most alarmingly, according to residents, a rainbow appeared over Boca Raton’s local Planned Parenthood.
We appreciate your office’s collaboration in investigating incident CT-3051. As of this writing, we have established a required 100-mile safe distance between our planes and any nearby hurricanes. (Notably, this excludes tornadoes, which a few of our pilots have expressed interest in flying into—purely for research, of course.) We admire the accuracy of your office’s predictions and keenly await your next forecast. Ask the boys in the Weather Engineering department to make sure the sun shines on the Yankees game tomorrow, yeah?
————
Emily Morrow is a writer and game designer. When she’s not writing games, writing about games, or playing games, she enjoys writing short fiction and humor. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her equally-game-obsessed partner and their network of stray cat friends.