Varlam invisibly visits the Bowels, leaving this note, written in svirfneblin, near the lever at the end of the first adjacent hall.

Svirfneblin note The unprovoked hostility of your kind draws out a wearisome and potentially avoidable conflict. You are clearly intelligent beings, and as such perhaps through reason and not combat we can come to a peaceful agreement for cohabitation and perhaps cooperation. I should like to begin correspondance through notes left in a specific location- [the word "either" is carefully struck through by a red line] behind the pillar supporting a lever mechanism in the Bowels of the machine near our "Upper" ward, [another strikethrough for "or at the enterance of your territory in the "Lower" ward, beneath a stone to the left (if one is entering it from outside)."]

I look forward to a response in either of these locations, but know that I will defend myself if attacked in the process of retrieving it. -- TLC

Varlam returns to the location in the Bowels; if the note has been removed with no reply, he goes back to the Tower to carefully duplicate his second original, with the omissions, and places this copy where the first note was.

Copied Svirfneblin note The unprovoked hostility of your kind draws out a wearisome and potentially avoidable conflict. You are clearly intelligent beings, and as such perhaps through reason and not combat we can come to a peaceful agreement for cohabitation and perhaps cooperation. I should like to begin correspondance through notes left in a specific location- behind the pillar supporting a lever mechanism in the Bowels of the machine near our "Upper" ward,

I look forward to a response in either of these locations, but know that I will defend myself if attacked in the process of retrieving it. -- TLC

The note is found and discussed. Someone then casts it into a pit.