Entry 7: A letter and some strange photos

Wow, finally got some free time again. Sorry about the wait. We found a whole bunch of microscopic photos in this old supply closet buried behind a bunch of prep lab equipment. I still smell like dust and formaldehyde.

So I dug out some pretty amazing photos from Professor Barnes' filing cabinet. I don't know how old this stuff is, but the cut-and-paste is pretty amazing.

I think I must have missed a letter somewhere because Thom talks about some "notes" that he hasn't mentioned before. He also drops all these names- Asakili, Thorn Moon, T'talatch- as if Barnes already knows what they mean.  I'll hunt through the cabinet again and see if I can find something else that talks about these notes. In the meantime, enjoy.

First, the letter:

And a transcript:

"Barnes,

Here are those pictures we talked about.  The notes I found were a huge help in identifying the scenes through the Window. 

I took these on June 15th and 16th in Boston Corner.  I wish I'd taken a few more, though.  When I came back to the swamp on the 17th, the Window had closed up.  Although the notes say that Windows cycle to a different arm on the Hub every 34 days.  If I have correctly identified the path that connects to our solar system, then the Window should cycle back to Earth in about 5-6 months.  I will see what headway I can get with these notes before it's return. I’m still trying to decide whether I want to share my discoveries with the Astarapomp. The notes seem curiously hostile towards him, though I do not yet know why.

Here are my interpretations of the photos:

1.) A view of one of the Watchers in the solar system on Arm 3.  Two large moons or planets in the foreground.  I think the larger one may be Asakili.  I believe the two brighter dots in the upper left are also planets at a greater distance.

2.) A view under the arm of the Watcher, looking at a Long World. Possibly T'talatch?  Along with two moons in the lower left

3.) A view of the Thorn Moon from above the surface of the Watcher.  I believe the rounded, white objects may be the Sleeping Mountains the notes referred to.

4.) A view from the upper atmosphere of the Long World, T'talatch, looking at the Thorn Moon.  Taken three hours after the other pictures near dusk on the 16th.  I am unclear why this is the only time where the Window has actually entered the atmosphere of a moon.

5.) Several Phantoms in what I believe to be the Valley of Il-tho. I didn’t see them when I first took the picture. God, those eyes haunt me.

6.) A view of the Window in a swamp near  Booston Corners.  Have I told you the theory about why Massachusetts really gave up Boston Corners to New York? I’m still gathering information, but we can talk about it in more detail when I see you again.

                                                                                               

                                                                                                Thomas"

And here are the photos:

Note that Thom calls these dark figures "Phantoms" in this letter and others, but on the back of this photo he calls them "Revenants".

I'll have some more letters to post soon. In the meantime, enjoy!

Entry 6: A letter

Hey everyone,
It's pretty late and I've had a long day at the lab. But I wanted to post this last letter from the first batch. It gives a little more insight into that starfish-man Thom has been talking about.

And here's the text (with Thom's corrections edited out):

"Dear Barnes,

The old typewriter is back today. Lowercase g is still off, but I guess I can deal with that.

I got a better look at the Asterapomp in last night’s journey. Before he was smoky, phantasmal. But now I can see him with good clarity.  When I asked him about this, he said something about synchronizing his pattern more in line with my time and space dimensions.

He’s a starfish-man, Barnes. That’s as close as I can come to it. The mosaic scales covering his body look like starfish ossicles. Those four fat tentacles on the bottom are clearly starfish arms now. As are the wizard-hats on top. The wriggling things I saw inside it are tube-feet. I don’t know if this makes him less or more bizarre.

I’ll admit right now I know almost nothing about my host who has been leading me through this nocturnal phantasmagoria. The Asterapomp’s appearance raises some intriguing questions. He is echinoderm, but there are obvious human elements to his anatomy. The five faces set around his center, for one. The overall features are quite human-- particularly the noses. But, I don’t know, they seem more like someone’s impression of what a human face looks like rather than actual human features. And those strange gecko eyes. The mouths clearly do not have even remotely hominid mandibles holding them up. The way they move, they seem more like teeth-shaped plates embedded in the body wall- specially modified dermal ossicles, perhaps?

His five hands have thumbs on both sides like Clarke’s Overlords. The fingers are jointed, but they do not seem like human hands. I have the distinct impression they are starfish that have been modified into hands. Perhaps for my comfort?

I have not been able to get much of his history out of him. He is quite evasive on the matter. It is clear from his name-- like psychopomp- that he is meant to be a bridge.  He did say that there are other beings that I will meet soon. Beings like him, but not like me. More like his echinoderm half, perhaps? Am I going to met gigantic starfish?

On occasion I have seen him bearing a staff that resembles a Khakkhara or sistrum. He would jangle it lightly as he walked, the sound of which apparently caused other beings at the hub-station to move out of his way. Is it a staff of office? Or is it’s resemblance to the Buddhist monk’s instrument more than coincidental. I thought perhaps it was a control key to open the world-gates, but I have witnessed him opening them when he did not have this instrument.

 I’ve noticed that it bears decorations that resemble the Bubble-Comets. I have also seen representations of these creatures in frescoes around the hub stations. They are clearly important to the Asteroideans in some way. As incubation vessels, perhaps? I recall seeing a few embryonic starfish inside the “ghosts” at Boston Corner. But the Comet’s seem to be more important than just brood chambers.

Also, I finally got around to drawing some of those ships I saw in my dream where I went to the gate-hub. I’ve included them on the back of this sketch of the Asterapomp. My meager sketches don’t do the real ships justice at all, but at least they’ll hopefully give you some idea of the bizarre diversity of interplanetary vehicles and visitors that came to the hub.

I anticipate more dream journeys tonight. I’ll send you another letter with my findings.

 Thomas

P.S. I’ve finished the Schenectady Stockade piece. Though, I’d like your opinion on the accuracy of the British soldiers. Do you know where I can find a good portrait of Colonel John Bradstreet?

P.P.S. I tracked down that book on the Pavilion Lake microbialites. It’s checked out now, but I’ll grab it as soon as it’s back in."

Also, I noticed this interesting little doodle on the back of the last page:

Make of that what you will.

There are still several more packets of letters to go through. I'll upload some more stuff soon once I get a free moment.

Entry 5: The Watcher drawing

Hey everyone,
Just a quick update here. I finally found that Watcher drawing that Thom mentioned back in entry 3. It was folded up inside a copy of Invertebrate Zoology in Dr. Barnes' desk. Man, she was a bit of a pack-rat. I must have tossed out at least twenty used sandwich bags from that drawer. And a couple paint jars that must have been decades old.

Anyway, here you go.

This one also has a better depiction of those "bubble-comets" he keeps talking about. Not that this drawing helps clarify what they actually are.

I'll try to upload some more stuff soon.

Entry 4: Another Letter and A Drawing

Hey everyone.

It's the middle of the night, but I'm having trouble sleeping. Not really sure why. I have insomnia sometimes, I guess. But this feels a little different. For some reason I keep thinking about this strange guy I met outside the museum. Short dude dressed in this cream-colored suit that seemed a size too short for him. Smiled a lot. He said he was with a survey board and he wanted to ask me a couple questions. I hate surveys, but I also have a hard time being mean to a guy who's just doing his job. Anyway, he started asking me stuff about Dr. Barnes. But it was odd stuff, like how many shoes had she owned. And what colors. What were her favorite drinks. How many people were in her family. Nothing actually substantial.

And here's the weirdest thing- he had a clipboard, but he didn't actually write on it. Just kept rattling off questions. Eventually I asked him if he was going to write anything down, and he just sort of looked at the clipboard like he had no idea what it was. Like someone had just put it in his hand and sent him outside.  After a moment he pulled a pencil out of his pocket and started scribbling on the page. It broke in the middle of our conversation so I offered him my pen. And again, he looked at it like he'd never seen a pen before. He stared at it with this almost child-like look of wonder in his eyes. And then he just put it in his pocket and kept asking me about the age of Dr. Barnes' siblings, and at what time had she normally eaten dinner, without bothering to write on his clipboard.

And he smiled the whole damn time.

I humored him for a while, but finally told him I had to leave.  I don't know why I keep thinking about this guy. I mean, I've run into plenty of eccentric people on the subway in New York. Not sure what's so different about him.

Anyway, here's another crazy letter from the Dossier.

And here's a transcript in case you can't read it:

"Barnes,

My typewriter broke yesterday. I brought it into the shop this morning, but I could not wait until tomorrow to buy more before I write this down. I don’t want to lose it from my memory. So I’m using a typewriter at work to type this.

Tonight the Astarapomp took me through a gate. A swirling pool floating in the air. Inside it was- well I can’t say exactly. So much was flying at me as I went through the door. I saw lights glowing in an undulating sea. Or maybe they were stars? I got the impression that they were alive, somehow. Like those bioluminescent copepods we found in the water at Smutty Nose. I saw streaks of light. Nebulae of super-heated gas? We flew towards one. A tower of glowing smoke, like a storm cloud.  And streaks of darkness passing before it. I got the impression that it was a tower bigger than our solar system, though I couldn’t fully wrap my mind around the size. There were little fingers-- I don’t know what else to call them. Fingers reaching out from the glowing cloud. Embryonic suns embedded in their tips. We approached one of the fingers. Towards a sun white like a pearl. There was something like a starfish floating there in space. Black against the luminous tower. A starfish of featureless obsidian. Seven arms, trailing off into nothing like wisps of smoke. And a heart glowing blue like lightning. At first I thought it was a strange new kind of Watcher. But no, that didn’t seem right.

Then I saw the cloud of gnats all around it. At least that’s what they looked like at first. But as we drew closer, I realized they were ships. Crafts from other intelligent races, Barnes!

I can barely even conceive of their shapes. Even now, trying to picture them hurts my head. None of them looked like the spaceships you see in the pulps. Not like airplanes designed for space travel. They seemed organic. Alive.

 I saw one like a torus covered with needles that were constantly rotating in towards the center.

There was a spindle covered in barnacles. Somehow the sweeping of their arms propelled it through space.

One was a polygon that kept folding into more and more complex shapes.  It must have been nearly the size of Jupiter! There was something like an ammonite at the center of it, orbited by tiny moons. I think they were moons, anyway.  Gray and covered with craters. I wonder now if the whole structure might have been an entire planetary system encapsulated within a shifting crystal shell.

As we slowed, we passed close to a veined, transparent egg about the size of a large dog. Inside were hundreds of what looked like snail shells suspended from thin silk strands all pointing towards what seemed to be an elongated, luminescent worm hovering in the center of the structure. Spider-looking things as big as a thumbnail were crawling in and out of the shells and around the vessel.

There were so many more, Barnes! So many that I can’t even describe. I’ve sketched a few of them, and I’ll try to make a few more detailed drawings later to send to you.

We continued to approach the center of the odd Watcher thing. My memory gets a little hazy here, but I recall being enveloped in a thick, crimson mist. Then my feet touched a glassy plain. We must have been inside the heart of the thing. there was red light everywhere, produced by what I at first assumed was a ring of eight crimson moons in the sky. I thought it odd that the moons were arranged in two separate rows of four. I couldn’t see them clearly, for there were huge castles of vermillion cumulonimbus clouds obscuring most of the sky. But I swear I saw both sets of moons move slowly, the satellites staying in sequence as if they were linked. I couldn’t help thinking of them as bioluminescent spots on the backs of immense caterpillars.

The Astarapomp told me this was a gateway hub. That this was a place of doors to other worlds. Other universes. His creators have many of them scattered throughout the multiverse. A highway across space and time. The arms fading into nothing are the paths, bleeding into the other places.

After a while I saw the Living Machines. They were everywhere. Floating through the air, crawling on the ground, swimming beneath that glass floor.  They looked like animals. Many looked like protists. I consulted a book from the library later, and I swear some of them were like ciliates and amoeba and things called “Chrysopyxis”, “Stichotricha” and “Dictyostelium”. There were bigger animals too, like some of those weird fossils we saw at the museum in B.C.

They seemed alive, and yet their insides were gears. Tiny, intricate gears finer than those of a Swiss clock. Gears held within matrices of silver filaments-- perhaps those were the mechanisms that moved them? They were everywhere! The Astarapomp said they’d built the hub. That they controlled it. His people found them on a distant world and used their technology to create the doorways.

I want to study them in more detail. But it’s hard to study such fine detail in dreams. Or are these actual travels? I can’t tell the next morning. Perhaps I can persuade him to let me take one of the Living Machines home to examine.

I’ll keep you updated.

Thomas"

I looked for these sketches he mentioned, but could only find this drawing of those "Living Machines":

Also, this was on the other side:

I have absolutely no idea what this is supposed to be. Some kind of robot? And what the heck is a "New Motive Power"? I'll keep looking to see if he talks about it any more.  And I'll try to dig up those other sketches he talked about. They've got to be around here somewhere.

Anyway, it's super late and I'm finally starting to feel sleepy. Goodnight all.

Entry 3: Another letter, Another Weird Drawing, and Some Hasty Notes

Finally got some time away from scanning Dr. Barnes' slides. Here's another letter from the portfolio. It's a longer one. Three pages. After reading it, it looks like there's a missing illustration about something called a "Watcher". I'll look around her office and see if I can find it.

This "Eye of the Awakened Sleeper" is intriguing. I'm guessing this must be one of those gravitational lenses that Thomas' previous note hinted at.

I found the envelope he talks about in his letter. The sketches are pretty crude, but I'm assuming Thomas will elaborate on them in the rest of these sketches.

Here's a transcription:

"Barnes,

I had a dream. I know what was under that black mask concealing my memories.

 It all came so fast. So many images flashing by. I feel as if I was being thrown through space. Past world after world after world. Each one passing in seconds. And maybe I was, if I was indeed passing through one of those multi-armed hubs. The Astarapomp said he would show me the-- but I’m getting way ahead of myself.

After the dream, I woke up with my mind overflowing. I grabbed an old envelope on my nightstand and tried to get everything I could think of down at once. I’m afraid it’s all rather scribbled, but I was trying to get it all out fast as I could before it vanished from my mind, you see.  I can show you the original next time we meet if you really want.

After I had a chance to sit and process what I’d seen, I started making drawings to better describe the things. Those I’m including with this letter. I’ve labeled each page so you can follow along with my notes. There are still some things I don’t understand about what I wrote. What are living cogs? What is the Machine God? What of Boston Corner? I know it’s a city on the border of New York, but what is its importance? Who is Spears? So many questions. I wish I’d written more notes.  I’m hoping that meditating will reveal more to me. Perhaps a trip to Boston Corner is in order.

But for now, here are the parts I can recall.         

One.

 The Watcher. I glimpsed these before, in those dreams I told you, Susan and Ira about. The Astarapomp wouldn’t tell me exactly what they were. He seemed oddly hesitant about them. Just that they were The Watchers.  Giant starfish. Big as Jupiter. I figured out they’ve got a central eye made from dozens of interlocking photosensitive lenses. Kind of like an OSO telescope.  I got a sense-- like I was gleaning the Asterapomp’s thoughts (I felt as though I was standing on the beach of the Astarapomp’s mind and the waves were his thoughts lapping at my feet. Or my own mind, rather). Anyway, yes, I got a sense from his thoughts that the Watchers are looking fr for something. The Eye of the Awakened Sleeper, perhaps?

There is life on the surfaces of the Watchers. Their own ecosystems amongst the spines and bumps and pedicillariae. I couldn’t get close enough this time to see what that life was, but I distinctly recall seeing movement as we flew over the giant’s pebbled surface.     

I’ve seen more of those Bubble Comets near the Watcher. I think they’re attracted to them for some reason. Though I’ve never seen one land on the surface, or really interact with it much at all.

Two.

Eye of the First Awakened. I saw a star circled by a broken ring. The black night behind it speckled with more stars like mica dust. The Astarapomp claimed this is the eye of their first ancestor, watching its children. It is imperfect, though. A damaged eye.  He said it was damaged while trying to consume a Celestial Mussel? I don’t know what that is. Though, do you remember that stele Ira showed us at the museum? With the starfish? Remember that odd, bean-shaped structure attached to the starfish’s foot? Susan said it looked like a Mytilus edulis, complete with byssus threads anchoring it? I think she may be right. I’ll contact her and Ira soon. What an odd coincidence.

The Astarapomp referred to the broken sections of the ring as tide pools. There was the Tide Pool of the Nemertean, the Tide Pool of the Ambulacral Garden, the Tide Pool of the Glass Echiura and The Tide Pool of the Larval Sea. He also said the star at the center was the Gate to the First World. My head is spinnign as I try to understand what all of this could mean.

 I believe the Astarapomp, and whomever he serves, may be trying to find an undamaged eye. The Eye of the Final Awakened Sleeper. He showed me a model of it on some sort of floating screen. I thought it was a hologram display, but the floating lights were actually made of tiny worms no bigger than a hair. They emerged from something like an Edrioaster. What astounding technology.

Anyway, the Eye of the Awakened Sleepr is a complete circle of light surrounding a star. I have been trying to figure out what the objects are. Are they actual colossal eyes out in the depths of space? From a titan looking into our universe from elsewhere? Are they giant superstructures surround stars? Clouds of super-heated gas? Some unknown phenomenon? I refer to them as lensed galaxies on my envelope notes. I have no clue what that means.

I should note I dreamt about the Sleeper’s Eye a few times since before I met the Asterapomp. Even before I saw the Bubble Comets. It’s been in my dreams for about a year now. Sometimes broken. Sometimes a solid ring. Don’t know what it means.

So many mysteries. I await the coming of the Astarapomp in future dreams. I’ll keep you updated.

On an off-topic note, what did you think of the bacterial adhesion book? Sorry about the weird marks at the back. I asked the librarian about it. She said some pedantic student was trying to correct the grammatical errors. The publisher really should hire a better copyeditor.

I’m glad to hear Ellen is doing better. I’ll make some time in a week or so to come out and visit.

Thomas

P.S. It just occurred to me as I was looking back over this letter. I wonder if that stele Ira showed us somehow drew the Astarapomp to me. It seems odd that I’ve started having these visions now. But why no one else? Have you been having any dreams? I’ll ask Ira and Susan.

P.P.S. got another art commission. More from the Historical Society. A piece on the Schenectady Stockade. Hopefully they’ll pay me on time this time. I’m going to take a trip to the Mabee House for references. Would you and Ellen like to come? We can stop at Watkins Glen."

And here's that envelope he took notes on after he woke up

Here's one of the illustrations Thomas referenced in his letter. 

Entry 2: A Second Letter and a Strange Drawing

Here's the second letter from Thom. This is where it starts to get really odd.

In case you can't read it, here's the text: 

"Barnes,

I know this will sound unbelievable, but I needed to tell someone about it. And after what we saw in Van Meter and Mount Desert, I am hoping your mind will be more open than most to encounters with the supernatural. Or, perhaps hypernatural.

I had another nocturnal visitor. A guide, I think he was. That’s what he told me, in my mind. He called himself the Astarapomp.

 A school of Bubble Comets woke me up. He was waiting for me out on the lawn.  God, he was a strange thing! He was blurry, as if I were seeing him through murky water. As if he weren’t entirely in this reality. But I could make out many details. He was like a column made of interlocking blue plates or mosaic tiles. Five faces set radially at human head level, like the four faces of Brahma. His eyes were vertical and golden. With three pupils like a Tokay gecko. Five arms. He had no feet. Instead his body ended in five radial flattened tentacles or pads. And five flexible tentacles on top, like wizard’s caps. Or the petals of a fat flower. There was something moving in the top part. Cilia? Hairs? Tube feet? I couldn’t tell.

He pointed and something opened in the air. A door. Beyond, I saw huge rock columns like those hoodoos from Bryce Canyon. But the foliage was purple and red. And the sky was white with black stars. He led me inside, but I don’t remember what happened then. There’s a gap in my memory. I’m trying me best to recall. It’s like there’s a black mask, hiding what happened.

I’ll keep you updated.

 Thomas"

This one leads me to believe this is all an elaborate story between Professor Barnes and this Thomas guy. I wonder why they never published it? Or even mentioned it to anyone else. There's no record of anything like this in any of the biographies I found on Professor Barnes.

Regarding his description of the landscape beyond the "door", Bryce Canyon is a National Park in Utah. This is what it looks like:

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Also, here's the back of the letter: 

It's a pretty rough sketch, but I think this might be one of those "bubble-comets" Thomas described in his first letter. The handwriting is Professor Barnes' though. It says "Now I see them. Need to call Thom." Make of that what you will.

By the way, here's the first of a series of drawings included with this pack of letters. This is a depiction of the being Thomas refers to as the "Astarapomp"

front of drawing

back of drawing

The drawings on the back side are also intriguing. I think there's another letter that details this "Hub" more. I'm assuming these are creatures Thomas encountered when he went through the door. They're clearly echinoderms of some sort- he even refers to them as "brittlestars", "sea urchins", "edrioasters" and so on. I'm curious why he chose such familiar names when designing the aliens for his story. I mean, they seem way too close to Earthly echinoderms to be believable as beings from another planet. Unless they're supposed to be an example of extreme convergent evolution or something. But you'd think Professor Barnes would have pointed out the unlikeliness of that happening on two completely different worlds.  Who knows. Maybe the other letters will tell me more.

One thing I do find intriguing is the note about how the walking urchin's tube feet are it's "eyes". This is actually true in real sea urchins, but that fact wasn't known until a few years ago. Just an coincidence?

Entry 1: The First Envelope, a Letter and and Equation

Envelope front

Envelope back

Here's the first envelope from Professor Barnes' filing cabinet. Don't worry- that red stain isn't blood. I asked a friend whose an EMT and she said it definitely wouldn't look like that, especially not after all this time. I think it might just be safranin, a compound used for Gram-staining bacteria.

Not sure what to make of those little dark figures in the corner. Some doodle for a future painting, maybe?

The symbols on the back are intriguing. From my brief glance through the rest of the papers, it looks like they appear in a number of places.

Here's the first of the letters from this Thom guy:

In case you're having trouble reading it, here's a transcript:

"Barnes,

I saw another one last night. It drifted by my window as I was falling off to sleep. This one was much clearer than the one at the hotel in Pittsburgh. A jellyfish ghost, it was. Body made of gossamer bubbles. Trailing crinkled tentacles like a Portuguese man-of-war. There was a detached “propellar” (sic) of sorts-- maybe even a set of horns?-- that floated before the front of the creature. I cannot even imagine its purpose.  For lack of a better term, I’m calling it a Bubble Comet.

It passed so slow and quiet. I thought it was merely an hypnogogic hallucination. But when I rose to investigate, I saw it still floating beside the wall of the house.

I do not know what to make of these sightings. They are unlike any spirit I have seen before. And they are certainly not human-derived specters. They remind me a little of that apparition we saw on Mount Desert, but these are clearly different. I know you still do not want to believe in that, but I for my part know what we saw that day on the mountaintop. I don’t believe Susan’s explanation of “ball lightning” or “earthquake-generated pizoelectrical (sic) sparks”

 I cannot help feelingl (sic) like Hodgson’s protagonist at the beginning of The House. As if this vision is a portend of more to come. Is this my green house in the red amphitheater? I suppose I’ll have to wait and see.

On an unrelated note, I found that book on bacterial adhesion and movement you were looking for. I’ll send it soon, once I clear my library fines. They won’t let me borrow any more books until I’m paid up. Hopefully payment from this latest commission will come in soon. Though those Historical Society people always take forever. I didn’t get payment for The Fall of Fort Duquesne for three months.

I hope everything is going well with Ellen’s surgery. I’ll try to get out there soon. We should visit Watkins Glen again.

 Thomas"

Weird stuff. I wonder what he means by "that apparition we saw on Mount Desert"? I'm he's referring to Mount Desert in Acadia National Park up in Maine. Sounds like Professor Barnes was delving a little into the supernatural herself. Assuming this isn't all just a playful private story they're sharing.

Here's one more thing. A crumpled note with an equation on it. 

Equation front

Equation back

I asked around the physics department and discovered that the equation is a component of a theory called gravitational lensing. Einstein first came up with it, so I've read. The idea is that the gravity of a galaxy is so dense that it will actually bend light around it, so that an observer on Earth who is looking at said galaxy will see the light of other galaxies and stars behind it distorted by the gravity. This equation represents the angle of defraction of the light. Here's an article with a better explanation of the phenomenon.

The back of the equation has more of those weird symbols from the envelope. Make of that what you will.

I'll post some more stuff when I get a chance.

Introduction

I work in Collections in the Microbiology Department at Grenhaven University. Mostly cataloging. Which is a pretty big job since our records go back over 150 years and stuff has gotten a bit, well, jumbled is putting it mildly.

Dr. Meredith Barnes was a pretty big name in Microbiology. She had a diverse range, though the majority of her work focused on rotifers and ciliates. She was also an artist. Did a couple of Haeckel-style plates of her rotifers and other microbes. You’ve probably seen a few of them if you’ve ever been by the campus, especially the Beech Science Building. The main hall by the computer lab has a permanent gallery of her work.  She was pretty good friends with Walter Garstang, and I think she might have even illustrated a few of his poems from Larval Forms. I swear I’ve seen one of her drawings accompanying "Oikopleura, Jelly-Builder". Have to see if I can find it. Maybe someone at the MUGLi can help me (That’s the Merryweather Ulsten Grad Library for those of you who don’t go here).

Dr. Barnes passed away back in 2013, leaving behind a huge legacy at Grenhaven. And also several hundred boxes and filing cabinets of papers, slides, specimens, journals and other scientific delights. For the last few months, I’ve been digitizing her collection of microscopy photos for a project on Zooniverse. We were going to have workers enter the info on the photos into a searchable database. It’s a lot of work. There’s over four decades worth of slides- thousands of them. And even working a full day with two assistants, I can only do so much. 

Well, hopefully we’ll see that project soon. But anyway, as I was going through the stacks and stacks of photos, I found a couple of odd envelopes crammed at the bottom of one of the cabinets. They were beaten up pretty hard. Had a lot of water damage. A few were stuck together. I don’t think anyone had looked at them in years. Maybe over a decade. Most likely she tossed them in there and forgot about them.

 I figured they were just some old rough drafts for papers and was going to see if maybe the Museum Library would like them for the archives. But then I opened the first one. I don’t quite know what to make of these things. There are letters and drawings and even a few photographs. All from some guy named Thomas, or “Thom” as she wrote it on the envelopes. I can’t even find a last name anywhere.

I showed them to my supervisor. He figures they’re notes for some kind of weird fantasy she must have been working on. A series of paintings or something.  I know she was a fan of pulp fiction. There’s a whole box of Planet Stories and Weird Tales in a corner of her office (could be worth quite a bit if her estate will let us sell any).  The third floor stairwell in the Marine Collections has a poster illustration for The Moon Pool by A. Merrit that she designed in the style of Hannes Bok.

For a while the science department heads talked about donating them to the archives at the MUGLi. Maybe even setting up a special exhibit in the Hackmann Room. Then suddenly last week they changed their minds and said I should just throw it all away. There’s talk about how this “weird fantasy will damage Professor Barnes’ reputation” or something. I really don’t know what’s going on. But I am most definitely not going to let something this unique just disappear into the dumpster. So I’m posting it here.

There are a lot of envelopes to go through, and I’ve still got research to do and papers to write on top of the Zooniverse stuff. So posting might be sporadic. But I’ll try to get as much of this up as I can.

Hope you guys enjoy.

I'll start off with a couple of odd scraps I found in a little magazine envelope on top. A few of them have been partially burned. No idea why.

If I have some time, I might take these down to the Linguistics Departmetn and see if anyone can figure out what those symbols mean.

Front

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Front

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Front

Back

This one was blank on the back, so I only scanned one side.