Reference?

Darya Lang’s hands hovered over the input coder, while she stared at the display in total frustration. What could she write next? It was a point of pride with her that the entries in the Lang Universal Artifact Catalog (Fifth Edition) be as accurate and up-to-date as possible. It was not her fault that some of her recent proposed entries were being criticized because of the ignorance of other editors. She knew, even if they did not, that in certain circumstances an electrical signal could travel along a neural cable from inside a Lotus field to a computer outside. Although she had not seen it herself, she had the word of the councilor who had observed it, and councilors did not lie.

Not to mention the word of the embodied computer, E. Crimson Tally, to whom it had actually happened.

She chewed at her bottom lip, and at last made the entry.

Reference: private communication, Councilor Julius Graves.

It was the best that she could do, a far cry from the usual form of academic references that Professor Merada would consider satisfactory. But in this case, the less said, the better. If Darya were to add that the cited incident with the Lotus field had taken place on an artificial planetoid known as Glister, just before Graves and Tally and Darya herself had been thrown thirty thousand light-years out of the spiral arm by a Builder transportation system, to a location where they had encountered… well, don’t go any further. Merada would just lose his mind. Or more likely tell Darya that she was losing hers.