#Legal Ops

[filejet]

How to Build a Holistic Entity Compliance Management Program in 2024

Due to the rapidly changing and convoluted business environment, adopting a corporate compliance program has become necessary for companies in essence to avoid rolling the dice.

According to Statista, 41% of the risks encountered by leading companies included supply chain disruptions, followed by cyber incidents at 40% which is not surprising given what we have gone through the past few years.  In terms of entity management, there has been ebbs and flows for changes in legislation and regulations and market developments like mergers and acquisitions. These are some reasons businesses must have regulatory compliance policies in place.

Organizations are increasingly facing regulatory challenges, operational disruptions, and risks to their reputations. Therefore, creating legal policies that encompass not only regulatory requirements, but also social and ethical responsibilities is compulsory for companies.

The goal of holistic compliance is to build a culture of ethical behavior that includes everyone, from stakeholders to employees, customers, and suppliers. Explore the key elements of ducking your proverbial head by creating a compliance program with   all of its benefits for enterprises just below.

What Is a Corporate Compliance Program?

A corporate compliance program is a set of policies, controls, and procedures ensuring an organization operates responsibly and within legal and ethical limits.

The purpose of this program is to identify and resolve potential violations of laws in the organization’s regulations and internal policies.

Importance of a Corporate Compliance Program

In today’s business landscape, a company’s prestige is its most valuable asset. While rules for business practices are becoming onerous, violations can lead to severe financial and reputational consequences for an enterprise.

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2018 Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, the annual regulatory costs in the U.S. in 2017 were estimated to be almost $1.9 trillion.

Federal Regulations in Entity Management Compliance

The big daddy here is the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA).  This is a U.S. federal law that was passed in 2021 with the aim of increasing transparency around the ownership and control of U.S. companies. The law requires certain companies to report information about their beneficial owners (i.e., the individuals who ultimately own or control the company) to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department There are federal regulations that govern entity management. 

The CTA applies to certain corporations, limited liability companies, and other similar entities that are formed or registered to do business in the U.S. Specifically, it applies to companies that are defined as "reporting companies," which are companies that are not already subject to certain types of federal oversight, such as publicly traded companies or financial institutions.

From an entity management perspective, the CTA will likely have an impact on the way that certain companies are managed and organized. In particular, companies that are subject to the CTA will need to ensure that they have accurate and up-to-date information about their beneficial owners, and that this information is reported to FinCEN in a timely manner.

This may require companies to implement new processes and procedures for collecting and verifying beneficial ownership information, and for ensuring that this information is maintained and updated on an ongoing basis. In addition, companies may need to review their existing governance structures and make changes to ensure that they are in compliance with the CTA's reporting requirements.

Overall, the CTA represents a significant shift towards greater transparency in corporate ownership and control, and companies that are subject to the law will need to adapt their entity management practices accordingly.

In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has regulatory authority over certain types of entities, similar to CTA that includes publicly traded companies, investment funds, and investment advisors.

The SEC requires publicly traded companies to file regular reports that disclose information about their financial performance, operations, and other matters that could affect investors' decisions.  By the same token, investment advisors are subject to registration and reporting requirements under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. 

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Labor (DOL), also have regulations that may impact entity management.  As an example, the IRS has rules regarding tax filings and reporting requirements for certain types of entities, while the DOL has regulations related to employee benefit plans and fiduciary responsibilities.

In general, poor compliance policies can erode the trust of stakeholders and result in investor withdrawal, supply chain disruptions, reduced employee productivity, and lost business opportunities.

But proper compliance program oversight minimizes legal risks and sustains a company’s reputation by ensuring it meets its regulatory obligations. They can also help avoid costly penalties and identify and manage data privacy fraud and corruption risks.

Moreover, a compliance program improves engagement among employees so they can understand and act in accordance with their company’s rules.

Ultimately, a corporate compliance program can assist an organization in defining its risk tolerance in pursuit of its objectives.  This isn’t a ‘put your finger up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing’.  It's a concerted effort to assess whether your organization is more conservative and risk adverse or flexible in pursuing its objectives, each should focus on implementing policies and procedures that reflect this which will allow everyone involved to operate accordingly.

7 Elements of an Effective Corporate Compliance Program

If you invest in building robust compliance programs, it will guarantee the long-term success of your business. The value here is we are hoping this outline takes the bite out of getting started.

For the policies to be fruitful, you must follow the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines. Its eighth chapter, amended in 2004, describes the seven elements of an effective compliance program. Grab some coffee, it’s a challenging read or take a glance at the highlights here which include:

Standards and Procedures

The first element relates to the establishment of written policies and procedures. These policies should establish the legal and ethical standards to which all employees must adhere, identify compliance risks, and the consequences of non-compliance.

Governance and Oversight

Establish a compliance committee and assign someone who is in charge of overseeing the implementation of the compliance program and resolving significant compliance risk. High-level executives, the board of directors, and senior personnel must govern the compliance policies. They should be responsible for maintaining and enforcing the program across the organization, as well as establishing a compliance officer.

Education and Training

Your company must provide education and regular training to employees. This training will make them aware of your organization’s expectations and requirements to comply with regulations and enable them to understand the severity of compliance.

Implement a compliance training program, including an annual session and revisions that clearly remind your employees of your business’s ethical code of conduct.

Monitoring and Auditing

Establish an internal and external monitoring system and conduct regular audits. Assess areas of weakness and identify potential non-compliance risks in your organization.

Reporting

Your organization must deploy an internal mechanism for investigating regulatory violations. Employees should be able to report compliance concerns and fraudulent activities anonymously. Establish two-way communication that can help analyze the issues and take timely, appropriate action.

Internal Enforcement and Discipline

You must have a strategy in place to enforce employee disciplinary measures promptly. The standards must clearly define the consequences of violating regulatory policies.

Response and Prevention

The seventh element of corporate compliance programs is response and prevention. Your organization must continuously evaluate and improve compliance based on your employees' responses, stakeholders' experiences, and changes in regulations.

Besides, depending on these experiences and changes, you’ll be able to discover violations and take consistent measures to prevent them.

How To Create a Corporate Compliance Program

Creating a successful compliance program for your business requires you to take a systematic approach that involves following several steps. Here’s how you can build effective regulatory policies for your business:

Involve All Necessary Parties A.K.A Posterior Protection

Digging into this, the first step to building an effective regulatory plan is to involve all necessary parties, including senior management and employees. Your board must be on one page regarding the program and should support staffing, resources, and the budget needed to build regulatory policies.

It’s easier for the employees to follow the plan with the help of leadership support. Next, create a compliance team that includes representatives from your legal, HR, finance, and operations departments. This team should be responsible for developing, implementing, monitoring, and maintaining compliance policies across the organization.

It should also take input from all involved parties to identify potential risks, write policies to address them, and outline directives that employees are expected to follow. Moreover, the compliance team should seek feedback from all parties to ensure the regulatory program meets their needs.

Moreover, including everyone in your organization in the compliance plan ensures they understand their role and responsibilities regarding maintaining it.

Assess Current Risk and Increase Transparency

This is a biggie.  Assessing current risks and increasing transparency are crucial components of creating an effective compliance procedure. Transparent assessment guarantees a company is adhering to existing laws and regulations and therefore mitigating risks like penalties, reputational damage, and other negative consequences.

Start by determining the regulatory requirements that apply to your organization. These requirements may include industry standards or regulations that affect your company’s operations.

Your compliance team should be able to assess your company’s current legal status by reviewing policies, training materials, and procedures. This is necessary to ensure your business is meeting all regulatory requirements. Make sure that there are processes in place that allow full visibility on all compliance aspects.

In addition, the team should conduct a risk analysis. This includes assessing your organization’s operations, supply chains, customer interactions, and partnerships to identify non-compliance issues.

Based on the potential risks, the compliance team should be able to develop strategies like internal monitoring and training programs. A periodic risk assessment can also help establish procedures to determine new compliance risks and visibility issues and mitigate them on time.

Establish Guidance Across Departments

Establishing guidance across departments can help you identify areas of non-compliance you may miss if only one department is involved. This also means all the stakeholders in your organization are held to the same regulatory standards - more CYA.

Your compliance team should be able to review past incidents and consult with departmental managers and stakeholders to recognize potential risks each department faces.

Next, they should develop standards and controls tailored to each department’s specific needs and align them with the overall compliance objective of your company. Your team should also establish cross-functional communication so each department can communicate with the other regarding compliance concerns. Maybe in your intranet or via a slack channel.

Communication can include regular meetings, collaboration on compliance initiatives, and reporting channels like a hotline or email address.

Furthermore, your compliance team should assign clear responsibilities to each department and establish accountability at appropriate levels so employees can report without fear of reprisal. Also, the team should regularly review or establish a cadence to update legal controls based on changes in regulatory environments.

Launch New Guidelines

Still with us?

Launching new guidelines is a critical aspect of a business compliance plan. It ensures that all regulatory updates are communicated, accepted, and adopted by the stakeholders. Your compliance team must develop the new guidelines by consulting with subject matter experts and reviewing existing legal procedures.

Once the new policies are developed, they should be disseminated to all stakeholders via mail, your company’s website, or through meetings and training. Make everyone aware of the new requirements.

Your team should also incorporate feedback from all senior management, department heads, and front-line employers to adjust the new guidelines accordingly.

Continuously Monitor and Adjust

Last but not least, it is equally vital to monitor and adjust your compliance program continuously. Your compliance team should set up a monitoring plan that identifies key performance indicators (KPIs) to track incident reporting and training completion rates and audit results.

The data collected from the monitoring plan should be used to recognize key compliance trends and areas of improvement. Continuously reviewing your legal policies will also help your company to remain relevant to regulatory requirements.

Additionally, your legal compliance team should use the data analysis to make informed decisions like modifying policies and procedures and providing additional training to employees.

Maintaining a Corporate Compliance Program

Maintaining a corporate compliance program can be difficult, as it includes a complex set of policies, employee training, investigation mechanisms, and reporting. Manually managing regulatory policies is impossible, especially for large enterprises, as the legal procedures require a high level of transparency.

Therefore, you’ll need compliance management software to streamline and automate your compliance program. Allied Market Research has already forecasted the global market for compliance management software to grow at a 15.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $3.06 billion by 2027. Here’s how this tool can help you:

Provides Entity Management Reporting

We are Filejet, a leading legal entity management software, and we spearhead a comprehensive entity audit upon implementation. This helps establish current status visibility and a baseline to determine active compliance risk. Our software will help you maintain regulatory consistency and accuracy across your organization surrounding entity management.  Which is often the most overlooked part of a compliance program and one that can garner a quick win for a new corporate compliance program.

Automates Legal Processes

Automating your compliance procedure can save time and minimize the risk of errors primarily because most entity management programs are organized around a spreadsheet relying on busy teams to maintain it. Filejet can help. We establish practices that automate the compliance process, keeping entities in good standing.

Offers Real-Time Reporting

At Filejet, we have witnessed the hefty costs for non-compliance and the dread of having to write checks for fines, penalties, back taxes and legal entanglements. When an entity has become out of compliance or has been administratively dissolved due to non-compliance or illegal continued operation, the costs can be excessive.  From our point of view, if your organization is paying out dollars in any measurement on entity management, that equates to a high tolerance for risk in an attempt to align with company growth goals.

Filejet provides real-time reporting on the performance of compliance measures as it relates to entity management, ensuring timely identification of potential violations. This can help save your organization from reputational damage, legal penalties and potential liabilities and lawsuits.  Filejet is your get out of jail card that you can keep in your back pocket.

Enables Collaboration…Makes You Fearless

Filejet compliance management software enables collaboration between stakeholders, senior management, employees, and departments. Accountability can be managed and documented, and specific entities can be assigned to people or departments. This ensures everyone is on the same page and can work effectively for the success of regulatory policies. It also promotes crucial cross-company visibility and communication ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.

Easy To Scale

Whether you have a small business or a large enterprise, compliance changes can be challenging to adopt. Due to the engagement with government agencies for entity management it can be daunting to keep up with federal, state and jurisdiction requirements.  Filejet is comprehensive and flexible and can cost-efficiently scale to adjust to these regulatory requirements and the needs of your company.

Efficient Compliance with Filejet

A corporate compliance program is critical for the long-term success of any business as it can mitigate legal risks. While managing compliance is not easy, Filejet, a legal entity management system, can streamline your regulatory workflows and ensure transparency across all your business entities.

We aren’t handing out superhero capes but Filejet can help maintain your organization’s credibility, reduce legal inefficiencies, and notify you when your filing date is due. So, what are you waiting for? Explore Filejet today for efficient compliance and entity management.

[knovos]

Legal Ops

[ariadne-mouse]

Sometimes self care as a DM is taking a break to be your PC with 8 INT

[slushyseals]

[overtake]

Much to unpack here ...

[todayisafridaynight]

x

[oopsallmabari]

so no blood magic

[biscuitboba]

I love how the translation from the colored version makes a certain someone sound more whipped for his captain😭 and the thing is, we can tell who is down bad (out of all the strawhats) for a certain captain from facial expression alone like, okayy??

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

new apartment had a toilet problem and within two hours there was someone here fixing the fucking toilet problem. crazy how that works.

[runawaymarbles]

[holding 9-1-1 fandom gently by the face] i need you all to understand that Eddie saying Buck should get custody if Christopher if Eddie dies does not make Buck Chris's legal guardian. That requires a shitton of paperwork and lawyer hours and a court order of some kind and usually a hearing. You can't just do it without the guardian knowing about it.

[booasaur]

Special Ops: Lioness - 1x05

[ariadne-mouse]

[aroaceleovaldez]

non-exhaustive list of canon powers Nico di Angelo either has shown or is heavily implied to have:

Shadow-travel

Manipulation of shadows/darkness (also possibly use of shadows as a pocket-dimension a la Magicians using the Duat in The Kane Chronicles)

Becoming intangible/shadows

Complete control over skeletons/bones (dead or alive, including summoning, reanimation, and/or changing shape of them) and being able to sense their presence

Summoning, reanimating, commanding, and dispelling the dead/undead (Skeletons, zombies, ghosts, etc & varieties) and being able to sense their presence

Ability to understand/communicate with the dead/undead and potentially other beings of the Underworld

Inherent complete comprehension of Latin

Ability to perceive the usually unperceivable/possibly look upon a deity’s true form without repercussion (at least moreso than the average demigod, though possibly is restricted to chthonic beings) (ex: Tartarus, potentially also interacting with his parents, etc)

Interacting tangibly with ghosts (implied to be a Ghost King thing rather than a Hades/Pluto thing)

Partial or complete immunity to different effects of the Underworld/things within (can consume food/drink of or in the Underworld without repercussions, effects from the Lethe wear off over time instead of being permanent like usual for mortals, etc)

Astral projection/”Walking in dreams”

Dream manipulation and projection (Sending dreams to others, etc.) (presumably includes sharing/projecting dreams with others) alongside inflicting sleep upon others even from a distance.

Illusions

Manipulation of emotions/aura that inflicts specific emotions on others (ex.: radiating fear/death onto enemies)

Projection of emotions and memories onto others (can be so forceful it causes physical damage like a shockwave)

Geokinesis (all forms but also specifically generating black marble) (presumably also specialized control over precious gemstones & non-paper currency)

Temperature manipulation (seemingly only lowering temperature)/creating frost)

Control/manipulation of souls, including living beings (ex: ripping out Bryce Lawrence’s soul)

Perceiving/reading/judging of souls (most likely also a Ghost King thing over Hades/Pluto thing, but possibly both)

Converting living into dead/undead, aka instakill (ex: disintegrating monsters to bone with one touch)

Lowering or manipulation of own vitals (breathing, heart rate, etc)

Death Trance/pseudo-hibernation (possibly also general control over states of consciousness at least for self, in combo with control over vitals & dreams)

Sensing death (impending or when it occurs, sometimes receiving dreams/visions of it occurring)

Able to sense other children of Hades/Pluto (potentially also other chthonic beings in general/able to identify based on sense alone) and also just living beings in general, such as mortals (possibly via souls).

Improved navigation underground/in the Underworld and ability to traverse restricted or normally unnavigable parts of the Underworld

Enhanced strength/abilities when in the Underworld

Inherently unnaturally quiet (possibly able to silence sound on a designated target)

Hiding/shielding self from being perceived (seemingly related to shadows/silence)

[emil1863]

Day 6: Flirting | Jealousy

Option chosen was flirting, and Ikkaku is handing Nami tangerine blossoms :)

Bonus below the cut

[rebelliousdandy]

i used my mandated 15 minute break to make this

[therobotmonster]

The Fae Thought He Had Her, but She's Had Lots of Practice

Actual Title: "On Foreign Soil."

The fae was having a grand old time with his latest toy. Mortals were easily befuddled with the magic of contract-and-courtesy. He'd taken pretty much all he could from the family: several names, the mother's attention, the son's concept of friendship... Even the life of the father.

He'd taken that one taking just the right moment of his time, the one where he moved just out of the oncoming car's path. That also took out the youngest daughter and making a new neverwas to lurk in the pockets of lost time around the home.

The tricks made him strong. The sense of betrayal and regret humans had when they realized how screwed they truly were was like honey: rich, sweet, and immune to spoilage. If anything, in the last sixty-some-odd years he'd been home the humans had gotten more petulant and even easier to trick.

It was a veritable buffet.

So when the eldest daughter returned home from college, he expected her to be easy pickings. The young were always foolish and prideful, and very often rude. They gave him so many opportunities.

So when she threw open the door, and stared at him with cold green eyes, he immediately laughed in delight. His face took on a distinctively 'David Bowiesq' aspect, a trick he found worked well the last time he'd been to the mortal lands.

"Oh, hello. May I have your name, lass?" He cooed in a cocky-yet-soothing voice.

"My name is Alex, and no." She said.

He raised a brow. She was canny, or at least half-canny. She knew enough to object to him taking it. Still, she had answered, and by the laws of the fae, the latter objection did not override the former offer.

So why wasn't he Alex now?

It was odd, but sometimes mortals were a little resistant to magic. He worried for a moment she was a skeptic, but she couldn't be. Her response meant she knew, or at least suspected, what he was. Moreover, he didn't feel the painful chill and sluggishness empiressence caused, nor the crushing weight of the explicable upon his bird-hollow bones.

No, she was just lucky, or was carrying an iron horseshoe, nothing he couldn't handle in his, or someone else's sleep.

"And what the fuck are you calling yourself, asshole?"

He blinked.

The impudence hit him like a slap. She'd just given him the opening to do anything he wanted, but the raw temerity of the insult, it's artless crudeness, it's utter lack of respect stunned him too much to enjoy it. His rage and petulance rushed into the hole left by his shock, and he sputtered.

"You rude little beast, you have no idea what you've brought upon yourself!"

He raised one pale hand, the flesh fading from it to leave nothing but blackened bone, and he pointed the index finger at her in a silent gesture. He let fly his curse. Not just any curse, but his, the one he had made for just such an occasion.

Alex stared at him. Arms crossed. Her hair was the color of the fae's own rage.

"What's the matter, cat got your brain?"

The fae's confidence wavered and the flesh returned to his hand.

"Where are the spiders?" He said. "There... there ought to be spiders! There should be spiders!"

She rolled her eyes.

"You broke the laws of courtesy and decorum! I can do as I please as a wronged noble! You should be spiders!"

"Whose laws?" It was Alex's turn to smile.

"Why, the only ones that matter, the laws of Faerie, as laid down by Oberon and Tita-"

"And Titsforbrains, yeah. I was five once and I can read. I know your dumb politics. Slight problem. Where are you now?"

"The mortal realm?"

"More specifically?"

"The Earth. The United States."

"Exactly." Alex smiled. "And while you might come the land of the platonic ideal of inbred nepobabies, in the United States of America, no law says I can't call a fuckface a fuckface. Fuckface."

The fae tried a different curse, yet Alex was not being twisted into any sort of goat, ironic or otherwise. "But, that doesn't matter! We're a higher form of being, our laws override yours."

"No they don't." Alex said with a confidence reserved for honey badgers and humans of age three. "Now undo all your bullshit and get out of my house."

"Nuh-uh!" The Fae's cocky smirk returned. With a flourish, he pulled out a deed. "It's my house, I got it off your mother, fair-and-square. She traded it for the heart your little brother so foolishly traded me. So you should get out of MY house."

"Contracts signed under duress are non-enforceable." She said in a bored, dismissive tone.

The Fae started to object, but the contract was already crumbling into dried daffodil petals in his hand. He tried to pretend this wasn't terrifying. Inexplicable happenings were supposed to be caused by him, not happen to him. "Are you a wizard?"

"Don't be stupid. I just know my rights." She said. "I'm betting you didn't disclose the full terms of the contracts either?"

The Fae shook his head, more from fear than as a response to the question. Of course he hadn't. If the mortals didn't do their due diligence and couldn't read Linear-B, that wasn't his fau-

The thirty years he stole from the youngest boy ripped themselves out of his body. A half dozen other deals began popping at the seams.

"How are you doing this?" He gasped.

"I'm not doing it. You are. You're idiot who runs on rules and laws who decided to come scam innocent people for your own profit and amusement."

"But it always worked before-" The Fae ran his mind through all his previous romps. Every single human had whined and begged about how unfair things were. Why was this one different?

He ran through those memories again. They were among his favorites so it was easy for him to see every detail. An old man trying to argue Fae law with him. A shepherd girl trying to use her own word games to trap him. A hippie saying almost the exact same words about non-enforceable contracts.

Almost.

He ran through the memories again and again. Always impressed or terrified or blinded by greed, the mortals always argued on his terms, always went back to his wording of the deal or contract, always appealed to the laws of his people and his own noble position.

None of them had ever argued jurisdiction. Once one of them had, it applied, not just now, not just to these toys, but retroactively, and, from how it felt, with interest.

"Oh." Was all the Fae could say.

"Yes. 'Oh.'" Alex smiled like the cat that ate the proverbial canary. "Children can't sign contracts, either, you know."

Everything the Fae had done to the boy snapped back at once. It felt like every seventh tendon in his body had been snipped simultaneously with tiny scissors.

"Nor can someone sign away the right to kill them to someone else, or sell themselves or others into slavery."

Alex's father reappeared in the living room, looking dazed. In his lap was Alex's youngest sister, now remembered by all present as a person that existed. The return of the father's moment was a minor loss, but there was one less neverwas in the Castle of Paradox, and the Baron would blame him for its unmaking.

"Also, names aren't transferable between people, nor are they the whole and sum of a person's identity in this country. The closest thing we have to that is a social security number. And if you steal one of those, well, identity theft is a crime here."

Mr. Baxter, Mrs. Baxter, Julie and Sam's lights all turned on at once, though they were still groggy and half-asleep and would be for hours to come.

A fortune in names, first, middle, last, with nicknames and pet-names and all between, all vanished from the Fae's purse. He could feel its lightness in his pocket.

The Fae turned on his heels. "I fear I must take my leave, so sorry for the inconvenience!"

He was halfway to the door. The impact on the back of his skull knocked him forward off his feet, sending him slamming into the polished wood floor. The projectile that laid him out bounced and landed by his head.

He'd been right about her having an iron horseshoe.

"You don't get to walk away." She said. He felt her steel-toed boot, soles made of entirely synthetic rubber and cleats of cold steel, press against the base of his spine. His hollow, bird-bone spine. "You don't get to fuck with people, say 'my bad' when you get caught, and run."

"Y-your law!" He gasped. He felt his bones cracking. He wanted to turn into something else but he couldn't focus. She was pressing down harder now, because she was half-kneeling. Her hand picked up the fallen horseshoe. "You have to let me go, or arrest me, turn me over to your police, right? You can't just murder me!"

"What are you?"

"I- I'm a Faerie of Arcadia, a sub-Prince of the House of-"

"So not a human. And not an animal." She kept him pinned.

"No!" He growled. Blood the color of an oil slick on the highway began to fill his mouth. The pain made him forget his fear for a moment, and he bared his true face, something between a bug, a wax store mannequin, and a pug-dog. "We-we're a higher form of life! Far beyond anything this miserable pile of dung you call a planet has to offer! You will pay for this impertinence the moment you break the law that holds me!"

"You're a lot of things. A bully, a pest, a liar. But you're not human. And you're not an animal. In fact, as far as the laws of this land are concerned, you aren't real."

Alex lifted her boot to kick him onto his back, then pinned him again.

"Th-then you can't kill me!" He laughs. "You can't kill something that's not real! You've trapped yourself! You'll have to let me go!"

"You haven't been to our 'pile of dung' in some time have you?" Alex asked. She nodded to a strange white book-shaped object that sat unopened, upright, next to the television, next to a pair of white and black crescent-moon shaped objects studded with small white and black buttons.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

--

Six hours later, a notification popped up on Alex's dorm room computer.