Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Future Lovecraft

Day 471: Several days ago, the engineers tried unsuccessfully to dig a new well. After Mr. Farre’s team abandoned their previous dig site, they attempted to draw water from a site farther to the east. However, the efforts at this site were also unsuccessful. Rather than uncovering more red water, however, the team broke ground into an underground cavern that the initial survey team must have missed.

There is still further digging to be done at the site, but Mr. Farre and Mr. Tydway brought me into the conversation, as some type of ancient writing adorned the walls of the cavern. As the debris is shifted, they say they will bring me images of the walls and any artifacts they find.

Who would have guessed I’d have a chance to use my doctorate out here in the colonies?

I’d expected my retirement to be boring. This could be the making of me.

Day 492: I got fed up with the digging team today and blew my top at poor Ananais. It’s no damn fun at all for them to bring me stray bits and pieces, so I’ve convinced them to increase the diameter of the dig and create an angled ramp into the cavern pit, so I can catalogue all of the findings myself.

It’s a testament to Mr. Farre’s character that he’s making way for me. I know, by rights, his priority ought to be finding more water, but, truth be told, I think he enjoys a good mystery more than most.

Except for books and the occasional show on the wi-vane, there’s not much in terms of entertainment out here. I think he likes this almost as much as I do.

Day 517: We had no idea. Or, at least, the survey team gave us no indication.

This planet, this whole planet, and our settlement in particular, had to have been populated. If not by an advanced civilization, then, at least, by a people who had a religion, writing and architecture.

There’s so much under our feet. There must have been a whole city, once.

I can’t translate it. Not yet. We need more text.

Day 533: The last bit of rock got chipped away, today. We found the source of the river, but more importantly, we found the center of the ancient city.

There is a stone ziggurat at the centre of the centre, a sacrificial altar at the top of it all. The altar is carved with circles and spheres, and it appears to be made of a red stone, while the rest of the pyramid is moss-covered greystone.

Translation is getting closer. Ananais is coming over, later tonight, to help me cross-reference the inscriptions against some of the books he brought. He says his great-grandfather left him a strange, antique book that has odd writing in it, too.

Exhibit 05:A rubbing from a bas-relief, graphite on butcher paper. Pictured are a series of concentric spheres with beams of light emanating from them, hovering over a cityscape. A border of skeleton-shaped keys frames the entire image. There is some text in an unknown language along the bottom-right-hand corner of the rubbing. Red pencil has been used to write initials on the upper left corner: “YOG.”

When questioned by DCI Yang and Lieutenant Colonel Chastewick about possible meanings of the initials, Professor Armitage declined to speculate.

Exhibit 06:Unopened bottle of Tokyo-style whisky. Ju-On brand single malt, aged 12 years. Slight moisture damage to label and minor tears on the wrapper around the cork, but otherwise in excellent condition. In fact, the condition is quite impressive, given the disarray the settlement was found in and the state of many of the other New Roanoke items enumerated here.

The only unusual markings on the bottle are five bloody fingerprints, too smudged to be matched with any certainty to any of the colonists.

Exhibit 07:Damaged solid state drive. Files include the following:

A: Translation.txt:Contents: jibberish symbols, letters, and numbers, save for one fragment in English text, which reads, “He no longer lurks.”

B:Video file of iridescent glowing spheres, four seconds in length. Thought to be some sort of meteorological phenomena.

C:Image, likely from a colonist’s personal library. Depicts a naked shoulder with a key-shaped tattoo.

Exhibit 08:Polyphasic rifle, damaged in such a way that it appears to be melted like a candle. Yang and Chastewick identified it as Bell & Dobson Mark Seven, making it the second artifact from this conglomerated firm to be salvaged from New Roanoke. Both investigators were at a loss as to what sort of environmental conditions could cause this level of damage.

Exhibit 09:Femur. Likely from male in his mid-forties. Remarkable in that it is the only human remain recovered at the site. It is unknown whom the femur belonged to, as many of the men in the colony were around that age.

Exhibit 10:The diary of Ananais Farre, lead engineer for the colonial dig expedition (incomplete). Partial text follows:

Day 460: We attempted to dig a tertiary well to increase the amount of potable water available, and also with hopes to increase water pressure at the South facility. However, when we began the dig this morning, we found that all water brought to the surface for testing was a blood-red, as if tinged with ochre or a microbial bloom of some sort.

As the samples sat waiting for analysis, they turned brown and began to solidify. I would say, “to clot,” since the water was so vibrant and red, but, of course, it was water and not blood we extracted from the ground. Testing was inconclusive, but, for obvious reasons, we stopped drilling and will not consume the water from the area.

We will begin digging at an alternate site in several days’ time, after reviewing the remaining candidate sites.

Day 490: While we initially thought the underground cavern was completely useless (except as a diversion for our resident academic), further investigation showed that there was an underground stream of clean, fresh water at this site. My team will aid with the clearing away of debris at this site, in an attempt to find the aquifer from which the stream stems.

This news is of course pleasing to Dr. Thurston, as it means more strange linguistic puzzles for her to pore over. I often think she must be very bored out here in the boondocks of the galaxy. She must miss the libraries of the old great cities, since she’s always asking to borrow my books.

Day 507: Dr. Thurston has full access to the cavern system. The team hasn’t found the source of the water yet, but the doctor has begun her attempts to translate some of the writing on the walls and on the artifacts we’ve turned up during the ongoing digs, as we follow the river underground.

Zulema was particularly intrigued by some of the wall carvings, at least, the ones further down, where there starts to be art and not just text.

The look in her eyes…I’m not sure I’d seen her smile once since we settled here, not until today.

Day 520: We found a door, today.

Or a seal. A big slab of rock used, Zulema and I think, to act as a final barrier between the outside world and what we think we will find beyond.

There’s so much text on the slab that Zulema is sure she can crack the code of the language today. And it’s the funniest thing. I think I recognize a bit of it from an old book.