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.