I've also included some pretty cool drawings that tie into Thom's letter.
Here's the transcript (I've left all the spelling errors intact):
"B-
God, have I really only been gone an hour? It’s still dark out. It felt like days!
So much in my head all at once. The stars. The green sunlight under the water. The Sleeper’s Eye. The walking urchins. The spiral-worm heiroglyphs (sic).
Alright, I’ve had a bit to compose my thoughts. Let me start again.
I saw a shadow at the window last night and feared it was a phantom, but no. The Astarapomp. He lifted me out of my body somehow- I saw myself sleeping in the bed still, under my feet. He brought me through the wall, to the hemlock forest and up to that strange gable fragment. He opened the doorway and showed me the building on the other side. It was a house. A hive. A colony. I don’t really know precisely what to call it. Some sort of dwelling. There were members of multiple species inside. Different taxonomic orders, even, if they are analogous to Earth echinoderms. It was its own ecosystem within. I could have spent months in there studying all the ecological interactions.
This time the Astarapomp took me directly to one of their worlds. There was no transfer through one of the great hubs. Or perhaps there was? There are holes in my memory. We were underwater. I could see fish swimming overhead. Or something like fish. I saw sunlight streaming down in crepuscular rays from the surface far overhead. The water was so green.
The gabled building was only one small part of the city. There were more of those structures with the spiral patterns. And other buildings, too. The colonies were of shaped stone. Coral, I think. Possibly grown that way? But I also saw buildings that appeared to be formed from gigantic sponges in red and yellow. There were enormous tunicates, transparent and blue like glass vases. I saw other creatures moving inside them. More of the echinoderm creatures. And other things too. Giant worms. And there were beings that look almost human, yet still like seastars. Like the Astarapomp. There was a spiny thing that reminded me of a Chancelloria from Walcott’s Burgess Shale papers.
In the dwelling where he took me were brittlestars that ambled about on their arms, lifting their central bodies off the ground. I think they used the plates of their bodies to see, like the giant Watchers the send to other solar systems. I’d seen them before, briefly and at a distance, in the galactic hub he brought me to. But it was so much different seeing them up close like that.
The walking urchins. They were as big as my torso. Black. Red. Blue. They moved about on their spines. I think they use their tube feet to see. They were intelligent. I don’t know how I know that. Something in their movements seemed very precise. Deliberate. They seemed to exert some direct control over the brittlestars. Do these beings have some sort of hierarchy? Castes, even? Who rules them?
I saw their written language, though only briefly. They use worm tubes to form their sentences. Minute, filter-feeding creatures that secrete thin white tubes. I watched one of the brittlestars paint a dark blue fluid on a pale green translucent sheet- I think some sort of algae like Ulva? It sprinkled the naked worms on the sheet and when I saw it again a few hours- days? I don’t even know now. Anyway, when I saw it later, the worms had secreted their tubes along the blue trails. It seems their writing is tactile. Other brittlestars appeared to “read” the tubes by running their tube-feet over them. It seems like such an inefficient system. How do they take notes? Inventories? Perhaps this is only writing for more important works? Religious tracts? Ballads? What sort of ballad would a starfish write?
I’m sorry this is rather disjointed. There are just so many images in my head. I need to get them out before I lose them. I may jsut (sic) dismiss it all asa (sic) dream if I don’t.
I’ll make some drawings to accompany this letter. Though I used up all my drawing paper on those sketches of the Natchez Trace. All I’ve got left is this draft of my Lighthouse Library.
The Astarapomp showed me one of their libraries. A meadow of bulbous, ochre-colored bulbs. Like cacti or spurges. No. Like those fossils Ellen showed us. The helicoplacoids. With the ambulatory grove ambulacral groove running around it. He told me all their knowledge is stored in these organisms. In the noncoding sections of of their genes.
I remember he said something about our genes. Human genes. and our noncoding sections. He told me that is where the phantoms come from. What could that possibly mean?
He said I would continue the work of Spears. I would finish the New Motive Power. I would open the gateway. But why me? And what will happen when I finish it? How will I even finish it? Wasn’t the original Machine God completely destroyed?
I just now remembered the whale. No, not a whale. That’s what I thought it was at first. It was shaped like a whale. Long, torpedo body. But there were no fins. It rowed with flaps running along its sides. There were feathery tentacles at the front. Gathering plankton from the water.
God, now I remember the Eye! The Astarapomp took me up to the surface of the world. It was night when we breached the surface. There were so many stars. And the great blue sphere on the horizon. He told me that was the “Jupiter” of their planetary system. That it drifted closer to their sun than our Jupiter. That it had brought in schools of comets from the outer darkness, to create a string of water worlds like this one throughout the inner system. He said there were at least six other worlds like this one. One of them was inhabited by flatworm-beings from that place that he called The Tide Pool of the Glass Echiura. Another one held cuboid oligochaetes and a species of giant, sentient bivalves from the Tide Pool of the Nemertea.
But the Eye itself! The center of the disk was so bright. Like a smaller sun. And the ring around it. Almost complete. Only fragmented in a few places. He has told me in the past that the echinoderm race seeks out systems where theseEyes are visible. Yet, who among their species can actually see them if they live below the water? I did not think their plate-formed eyes would be able to form an image at a fine enough scale to see these astronomical structures. It must be the Astarapomp himself and his kind that seek them out. And I am also reminded of those humanoid starfish beings I saw distantly in the tunicate-buildings.
It occurs to me now that I have yet to see another being like the Astarapomp. Is he unique? An avatar for whatever bizarre god these beings worship? Something else?
Furthermore, why does he bear so many human features? I cannot help feeling he assumed he has this appearance deliberately for my benefit. Perhpas (sic) he- and any other beings like him- has this form specifically to communicate with humans?
There is so much more to relate. So many things I saw. The red kelp forest. The ghost starfish in the East. The glowing trench. The white runners in the dunes. So many images still flying around my brain.
And yes, I saw those plants from the bog in the mountains! The Devil’s Cupolas grew on the dunes amongst the tall grass. I saw one of the white runners drink from one with a curling proboscis like a moth.
The fig flowers were growing on the edge of a little tide pool. The pollinators here were tiny flies from the machine race. Can you imagine? Full of little gears no bigger than the width of a human hair. What creates these things? Do they reproduce like Earth flies somehow? Or is there some massive factory somewhere- perhaps several factories- manufacturing them en masse on assembly lines. If so, to what purpose?
I need to stop now and rest. I’ll write you more again soon. I may stay another day or so, though I have to get back to the library eventually. They’re expecting this brochure soon and I already started drawing on the draft I brought.
-Tom"
Also, here's an interesting doodle on the back of Page 8. If you can't read the text, it says:
"The hot Jupiter and its six water-worlds. Created by sheparding (sic) in comets from the outer dark"
"A white runner in the dunes"
"It's head was featureless as far as I could see"
"narrow legs"
"uncurled proboscis"
And here's a really interesting page depicting the weird language he mentions.
Text reads:
"I only saw the writing briefly. This doesn't do justice to the intricacy of their writing. I believe the worms are spirorbis or something similar. I'll ask the Astarapomp to teach it to me. Their writing has five-fold patterns like their bodies."
"This is the sentence starter 'character' "
"feathery filter-feeding arms"
"A spirorbis writing worm feeding. They only feed when submerged in water."
The text at the bottom right reads:
"I saw these balloon-like weeds in the cracks of the roads. They appear to be another kind of echinoderm."
And on the bottom left:
"Another weed"
"This bulb glowed"
"Perhaps a kind of crinoid?"
I'll scan the drawings and post them a little later.
