It had been a strange summer and harvest season, the farmer recounted as he looked over the envelope he had found on his doorstep.

He recalled the first signs of his visitors to his farm in the Rhineland, it was early May, backed up against the forest. Grapes were his crop, Ehrenfelser. His shed door had been removed by the hinges and bottles of his tractor oil had been taken.

He'd repaired the door and noticed that fertilizer had been loaded into the hand carts and been sprinkled throughout the crops. Strange, he'd been robbed but... paid?

He went to town that day to get more oil.

On return, he found his tractor had been washed. The laundry on the line had been folded and stacked neatly in the basket.

He went back to town and returned with a set of trail cameras which he placed on the shed and down some of the rows of grapes.

The next morning, he went outside to check the cameras and each had a little sack over them, rendering them blind.

He went to the rows of grapes and looked at the footprints. All tiny feet, not much larger than a child's there had to be more than one set. So he measured them heel to toe. Each were identical size.

And he began to suspect.

He went to the local government website and read the reports of lost property.

Since the decision in France, four Synthvixens had disappeared from a nearby dairy farm, and a reward posted for knowledge of their whereabouts.

He looked at the news out of France, and with his rudimentary understanding of the language watched an interview with the station manager at the north Paris terminal speaking about the changes needed with some of the Syxen joining the union. He watched the security camera footage of a French Syxen attacking a conductor with a fire extinguisher.

Curious, he put another full case of tractor oil outside the shed with a written note of things that needed to be done and a description on how to do them. He put a key to the shed on the paper, and folded it.

And he went to bed.

In the morning, the box of oil was gone, the note neatly folded with a rock upon it to hold it down. He opened the paper and found a small check mark beside each item with an additional column drawn under 'inspect'.

And so he inspected, checking each off.

And he searched for the footprints at the far side of the field but could not follow them into the forest. They had disguised their tracks well.

He went to town and returned with two solar panels, two wireless chargers, and a small camouflage tent. He went to the end of the row of grapes and placed the panels, the chargers, and the tent.

In the morning they were all gone, and the grape rows had been meticulously weeded in addition to the other chores he had listed the other day.

He began leaving a note of instructions daily as spring became summer, became fall.

The visitors left the note each time with checkmarks.

The first frost came too early, he had to hurry to harvest for ice wine. It was past midnight, too late to find harvest help, he ran outside, ready to frantically gather what he could.

Beside the shed a small figure was emptying a sack into a barrel. It looked at him with glowing blue eyes, yipped, and disappeared into the rows of grapes.

The farmer carried his barrels to the end of each row, put out a bottle of oil at every third one, and went back inside the house.

Before dawn all the barrels were full and the farmer lugged them into the cooler to juice them immediately.

The sun was rising when he exited the cooler, the majority of the crop rescued, and small black figures darted out of his back door and into the rows. He called after them but they did not come back.

He went into his house. They had prepared him breakfast and coffee.

He smiled. But also checked to see his banknotes were still in the pot where he kept them. They were. But the WIFI hub had been opened to reveal the password.

He went to town and got a WIFI extender and a very long network cable which he ran to the back of the rows of grapes. He made the password "Helper_Elves" and wrote it on a piece of paper he put under the extender, then build a little wooden roof to protect it.

And so he had just returned from Kristmas services at the church to find the envelope on the doorstep. He opened it, and inside a carefully folded construction paper snowflake. He unfolded it, and within written, "Peace Upon Earth, Good Will Toward All."

He smiled, and went to his desk to write a note to his elected representative in favour of Germany extending Grundrechte to all thinking peoples, organic or synthetic.

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Best wishes for the new year, all you nerds.