Era Kringle. Ele voltou no tempo (ou avançou no tempo, dependendo da sua perspectiva) e criou as fotocópias para que Bob percebesse que estava em perigo. Observe a referência aos cotovelos (insetóides) no início da peça, bem como a essa troca:
The spectral shade in its ragged robe bobs its head—or whatever it has in place of a head. “The Christmas incursion—” I glance at the cold furnace again, then at my watch “—would have killed you. But without Forecasting Ops to warn us about it, it’d happen anyway, wouldn’t it?” Three minutes. “So you had to maneuver someone into position to deal with it even though you don’t exist.”
I remember sitting through a bizarre and interminable lecture at the Christmas party. But who else remembers sitting through it? Andy doesn’t remember Kringle’s talk. And I bet that aside from my own memories, and a weirdly smudged photocopy—emergent outcome of some distorted electron orbitals on a samarium-coated cylinder—there’s no evidence that the ghost of Christmases rendered-fictional-by-temporal-paradox ever visited the Laundry on a wet and miserable night.
Stross também (semi-) confirmou essa teoria em um tweet recente.
