Agent Comments: We had some time to kill before the painters arrived. I had never known Pablo to posit himself as the subject of someone's work, but this was a special occasion, he told me, which had something to do with the nice house we were presently in, I am sure. I didn't really ask why the nice digs; Pablo was always "housesitting" for someone or other, usually an artistic patron sort with a crush on a beautiful boy in Pablo's orbit. The living arrangement typically ended when they ran up against the ferocity Pablo displayed in protection of his artists.

While we waited, it so happened that Defensor was playing Rentistas that afternoon, so we donned our purple kit and watched the game on a color television almost as big as some of the monitors at Site-87. The erstwhile residents of this house had excellent taste in mate, and Pablo brewed some during the commercial breaks. Between the excitement of the match and the buzzing in my head from what had to have been seven or eight cups of mate, I grew impatient to know why we were surrounded by eight blank canvases. Pablo explained the project to me.

"I have commissioned a series of self-portraits in an attempt to understand myself more," he said. "I am consumed lately by visions of myself in vast fields of wheat, chilled to my core by prairie winds. An alien landscape, certainly. But not an entirely unpleasant one! I feel a sort of connection to this place in my mind, and I must know more."

I knew why this was. Of course I knew why this was, but I could not tell him. It may amaze the researchers reading these dispatches, but I have not had need to be duplicitous with Pablo in the many years I have been his keeper. I dreaded him asking me for my insight, when all I could offer was lies. Quickly, to change the subject. Why self-portraits?

"There exists, Roberto, a dynamic relationship between the artist and his impetus. The artist depicts the concept, and in his depiction he changes the concept. You know, Heisenberg shit," waving his arms to demonstrate the scale of his thinking. "It is in the interplay of this relationship that we learn just what something is, and so I have called eight able artists to paint my portrait. Why am I seized with this vision of a place I have never been, so late in my years? I hope that this helps me to understand."

I couldn't help but blanch at this. To hold back from Pablo something of great importance to him. He must have seen my expression, and I hope to God he misread it. He leaned in, a whisper from a conspirator to his nervous partner in crime. "And you know, all of this would be terribly self-important and vain, of course, if the portraits were hanging in my own house!" He laughed at his joke, as was his prerogative, and then cheered wildly as Manteca buried an equalizer, and I don't know that I've ever enjoyed a Defensor goal as much as that one.

The artists arrived in the course of time, and got to work immediately, solemnly setting themselves to a task given to them by the great Joaquín Pablo Izquierdo de San Felipe as the man himself distributed beer from the house's fridge. Each artist feverishly labored to get their vision of Pablo up on canvas, as though the greatest honor would go to he who finished first. I have never seen, before or since, a concerted act of respect greater than that paid to Pablo by these eight young painters.

The first painter to finish, a young woman, rushed to show Pablo her handiwork. "Not yet!" he cried, averting his gaze, "it must all happen at once, a grand unveiling of a collected truth!" he pronounced to the room, laughing at the grandiose statement, but I could tell also deadly serious. He tossed the brash young painter a beer, and she reclined on the couch with us as we waited for the others.

One after another, the painters finished their work, and began their own personal assault on the contents of the house's kitchen and refrigerator. This arrangement was not unusual, as food and drink were an established part of the artistic currency in the neighborhoods of Montevideo. As the last painter finished and disappeared into the kitchen, Pablo sprang up from the couch, assumed a position in the center of the room, and closed his eyes. "Roberto, if you will do the honors of turning the portraits to face me!" he said with a flourish of his hand.

I went to the first portrait, the one painted by our speedy Young Turk, and snuck a peek before I turned it to face Pablo. What I saw was a perfect representation of Reverend Francis Abernathy, leader of the First Methodist Church in Dotson, Nebraska. His face was clear as day to me, as though I had the SCP-2188 file open in front of my eyes. My shock lasted for three seconds, as the various consequences and implications sped through my mind. He could not know, I reasoned. None of them could possibly know. But how? Another two seconds. How was unimportant right now. I turned the first portrait around. Each successive picture was another significant person in the town of Dotson. What kind of painters were these, anyhow? They looked nothing like Pablo. I faced all of the portraits, and told Pablo to open his eyes.

He slowly complied, peeking coyly at first, then slowly turning, examining the portraits surrounding him. He was confused at first, but a smile played slowly across his face, and as he kept looking, he laughed, as though he was beginning to just now get the punchline of a joke told two weeks ago, marveling at his own slow realization. "These people, they look as though they should live in this place that has taken such hold of my mind!" he said, the astonishment continuing to grow in his voice. "It's absolutely brilliant! They are the logical outgrowth of this place, brought here in the most irrational way possible! What a wonderful collection of portraits, well done my friends!"

I told him I didn't follow one bit, continuing with my habit of telling the truth to Pablo whenever possible. "Don't you see," he said to me, "they have always been here, in the realm of the unexpressed idea, waiting for their opportunity. And they got tired of waiting! So here they are, coming to us of their own accord, being themselves and being me at the same time! I am, we are, all of us are of this realm. The natural flow of something, I'm not sure what, it's returning somehow. Do you understand what I mean?"

I took a few moments to turn his words over in my mind. The professional filter told me that this was of concern, but a containment breach? So much of this anomaly was the exchange of ideas, happening in the open but impenetrable to all but we few, happening upon it by accident. No. A sublime moment, its participants content to let it be as it is.

"I understand completely," I told him.