What the Signature Page Says

The settlement form is four pages. I have all four.

The entity offering compensation is the Urban Infrastructure Assistance Program, incorporated in Delaware on March 19th of this year. The registered agent is a law firm in Wilmington whose other clients I cannot identify because their incorporation documents are also shielded. The signatory on the UIAP side is listed as "Authorized Agent — DO NOT PUBLISH."

I am publishing it anyway.

The NDA portion is page three. It runs approximately four hundred words and prohibits the signer from: discussing the specific cause of property damage; making public statements that attribute damage to "events of superhuman origin or extraterrestrial activity"; and filing claims against "any government agency, contracted party, or authorized representative" involved in what the document calls "incident response." The payment schedule is thirty days from signature. There is no appeals process. The form says the offer is valid for seventy-two hours from delivery.

The woman who gave me this did not sign it. She moved into her sister's place in Wicker Park. She told me she has twenty-three days to find permanent housing before the city's relocation assistance runs out. She asked me not to use her name. I am not using her name.

Darius found three other incidents in the past eighteen months. A block in Atlanta. A port district in Baltimore. A neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. In each case, the city's damage assessment records list structural damage from "weather events" or "industrial accidents." In each case, a version of UIAP was incorporated in Delaware in the weeks before the incident appeared in the news cycle. In Atlanta the company is called the Metropolitan Recovery Support Initiative. In Baltimore it is the Coastal Infrastructure Response Fund. Same four-page form. Same Wilmington law firm.

The parking garage manager on Wabash — I spoke to him Thursday — told me the city sent a letter last week asking him to return the records I obtained. He has not returned them. He kept a copy. He gave me another copy. I now have two copies.

Whatever this is, it is not improvised. It runs on a template.

I am still in Chicago.