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.
Another odd thing: the further we go into this cavern, the more slime is accumulating on the walls. It has the most peculiar odour.
Day 541: What have we done?
We never should have translated the inscriptions out loud.
The moons are down.
I can’t find her anywhe—[End of log]
Exhibit 11: Hutch, the New Roanoke mouser. During this period of colonial expansion, it was common for colonists to bring a cat to their new settlement. The cat was something of a communal pet for the community, but its main role was to kill pests in the fields or in food storage areas. The cat was alive and seemingly healthy at the time that the abandoned New Roanoke site was discovered.
However, when the cat was removed from the surface of the planet (along with the rest of the salvaged items), it coughed up a hairball, went into a paroxysm, and died shortly thereafter. One of the crewmen on the transport ship, whose father was a taxidermist by trade, stuffed and mounted the cat for posterity.
Exhibit 12: Heart-shaped locket, nickel plate. Clasp damaged, chain found knotted three times. No pictures within the locket. Testing revealed trace amounts of a gum adhesive on the interior of the locket, suggesting that there were once images of one of the colonist’s loved ones within.
Exhibit 13: An antique leather-bound copy of Dire and Akashic Chronicles by John Dee, with certain passages underlined. The notations seem to be in two hands: One uses red ink and a single underline, while a reader who used a blue pen (and much more pressure when writing) underlined certain passages twice for emphasis. While some sections are underlined by both parties, most are not.
It is worth noting that all of the sections containing dual underlining are written in Duriac, with one exception: “July 13th, Mr. Talbot came abowt 3 of the clok afternone, with whom I had some wordes of unkendness. He confessed that he neyther heyrd or saw any spirtual creature any more and left my howse.”
The Duriac passages remain untranslatable, according to Dr. Armitage.
Exhibit 14: Partial map of New Roanoke, hand-drawn on butcher paper. What remains of the map shows the location of the settlement’s water wells, mineral deposits, and nearby geographical features.
A green ink square has been used to note the coordinates of some important locale, but the missing section of the map is positioned just under this green marking, prohibiting the reader from determining what this mystery location could be.
Exhibit 15: Gamer’s dice (3). Hand-carved from bone. Six-sided, roughly cubic in form, approximately fifty millimeters tall. No further testing has been done on them to determine what kind of bone was used to create the dice.
Exhibit 16: Signet ring in 10 carat gold. A lion is formed from three initials, though there is some dispute as to which letters are used. Armitage believed the intertwined letters were BCH, while Yang argued that the letters were, in fact, PCD. Neither set of initials matched the name of any colonist, leaving Yang and Armitage to concur that, whatever the initials were, they referred to an ancestor of one of the colonists: possibly Elyoner Dare or Dyonis Harvie.
Exhibit 17: The “Eldritch Slime”. So named by Professor Armitage for its strange volumetric properties. The slime is semi-opaque and pale-green. Collected from the ground at New Roanoke by the salvage team, it has been stored in a liter storage jar (pharmaceutical grade).
Armitage found the slime unsettling for several reasons, the most prominent being that the slime has the ability to increase in volume by approximately ten cc every eleven months.
No plans are currently in place to “re-plant” the slime in a larger container, as no consensus has been reached regarding the proper procedure for safely doing so. Professor Armitage estimates that, within the next four years, the slime will have grown too large to be contained within its original storage jar.
THE KADATH ANGLE
By Maria Mitchell
Maria Mitchell writes. H.P. Lovecraft taught writers the importance of self-sufficiency. She is learning.
COSMIC SHORES AREN’T so distant when they nestle themselves between the synapses of self-sacrifice. Or what Amy thought to be self-sacrifice. She followed the zodiac into the sea and stood before a crystal promise. Glancing at the darkness over the Gilman House, she walked back to her house. Her mother, having never fully come to terms with her age, sat desolate in the corner.