Today, I received an email from a stranger, one ‘Jane XXXX’ [my surname] which only contained this photograph:

I have since spent all evening struggling to put this photograph in any sort of context. Why have I received it? What is it of? And who — just WHO — is this ‘Jane’ who has sent me it?

One clue is provided by the fact (it is my knowledge) that, if I had been born female, I would have been called ‘Jane’. This cannot be just a coincidence: I therefore conclude that this photograph is from my female equivalent, who exists in another reality. Perhaps the baby is her child. Another possibility is that ‘Jane’ is my alternate-reality mother, and the baby is in fact me. Certainly, this appears to be a dispatch from another dimension.

It seems relatively non-controversial that the older man is constructing a replica of the baby’s head; but to what purpose, I am unsure. The sculpted head appears to be slightly larger than the baby’s own… perhaps it will shortly be joined by a body, and then the baby’s soul will be transferred into the model and it will become flesh, with the old, smaller baby-body discarded. The idea behind this is: perhaps this is how people grow in this reality.

The younger man is utterly inscrutable, I have no idea what his purpose is or whether or not we should trust him.

I am highly concerned about the presence of the somewhat bizarre tin men just visible in the left of the photograph. At first glance they appear as if they could just be some sort of garden ornament, but they are slightly too odd, I think, certainly to inhabit the average suburban garden. Perhaps it is the case that whoever’s garden this is has interesting taste, but I think that a more likely explanation is that the tin men are in fact representatives from the brutal and shadowy organisation of robots who rule over all the humans in this reality.

The brickwork on the house behind them is interesting as it appears local to the area I grew up in. The garden, too, could equally be from near me (though I do not recognise it). Other than the tin men, perhaps the most striking ambient feature of the garden is the bush made into a large, upside-down ‘U’. This may be some sort of gang or corporate symbol, in the universe that the photo is from. Possibly, it symbolises resistance to the tin men, although with them standing so near, it would have to be a secret symbol (and I find it hard to believe that our robot oppressors could fail to get wise to such secrets).

As to what purpose the photograph has been sent to me for, I think that, if my analysis is correct, then the intent is pretty obvious: I am supposed to realise something about this reality, and somehow EITHER liberate it from the oppression of the tin men robots, OR come to an understanding that this is the real reality and the world that I (and by extension, you also) inhabit is in fact fake, such that it melts away, a la VALIS, and is replaced with the real world in which we may or may not be ruled by tin men robots and where we definitely do engage in the sculpting of babies’ heads.

I expect to be receiving more photographs from this reality in the near future, and will keep you posted.