The Beaded Tapestry

Making some progress.

My character Ellyna has been on my mind lately. I miss writing about her. I found a weaver pattern in a book I have had for many years: Uniquely Yours. I will modify the image so it represents my beaded tapestry fabricator. Maybe it is time to work on book two of her saga.

Created this dragon banner by modifying a bracelet pattern. It makes a nice addition to my workbench decor.

Dear sister,

A short note to pass the time as I sit and wait for my test to run. Mother will be here in a few hours and I want to have as much free time with her as I can. Father will not be joining her since he is busy with the tax deadline looming. This is always his busiest time of year and he has planned his own trip to Oxford in the summer. It is good to have time with both our parents alone. They always seem to act as one personality when they are visiting together. It will be nice to see the individual for once.

The Louvre has contacted me with an update on your progress to New London. Your ship is nearing the halfway point and they stated that everything is on schedule. After this the messages will be so delayed that there will be no update on your progression until after I have left for my own travels. It is still hard to grasp how far away you are from the Earth at this time. Since you are in stasis, this fact is not evident to you, but you are now crossing the threshold. From now onwards your will be closer to the Anomaly than to me. I hope our Black Swan will enfold you in her protective wings and guide you safely to your new home.

After mothers visit, I have one more month to prepare, pack and ship all the required equipment for my journey and research. It will need to be in the custom warehouse by mid-may in order for the clearance to be completed by my departure date in November. Such a long tedious process, but regulations on foreign material being introduced into the Alpha Centauri system and subsequently New London are very strict. I hope we have done our homework sufficiently or you and I will both have headaches at the end of our journeys. Whether that destination is the Phycodurus or the planetary body of New London, some major recalculations will need to be conducted if all does not go well. Luckily most of the materials we deemed necessary for your productions will be sourced from the New London environment. I envy these new discoveries that you will make during your time on the planetary surface. Maybe you will even find something unknown to anyone in your investigations. The planet has been occupied for two hundred years, but you have a tenacious mind. It is always searching for new material to enhance your creations; a new color, a new electrical emission or some other fascinating property. Such innovation will not have been seen before on New London. I cannot wait to hear what you have discovered when I arrive. Just make sure I can adjust my own work to your ever evolving creations. Our final product will not function if you exceed my capabilities to map your renditions wavelengths and other properties to the human experience. I trust you to keep to my limitations and the parametric of the human brain.

My test is now completed its run and I can button up the lab for the duration of mothers visit. Now for a bit of housekeeping before her arrival. My quarters are a disgrace.

Dream of science sleeping beauty,

Annalis

Dear Victoria,

I sometimes wonder how different my life would be without the innovative advances in epigenetic research. If these mechanisms for the information mapping had never been defined, I would not be a complete organism at this point in my life. Regeneration was a giant breakthrough using this innovative approach, and I thank them for their tenacity in solving the process of limb formation at the cellular level. Imagine a blueprint of life embedded within each cells chemical makeup. The final mechanics for this ability still are not fully known, but the capability of activating it within a specific cell location was a major step forward to understanding the entire system. Every time I flex my new hand these thoughts interrupt my current focus. I wonder sometimes if my limb is trying to tell me something.

Mother is coming up in the next few days to transport most of my personal belongings back to London. I do not have many items left here with me in Oxford, but there is still too much things to transport by mail carrier and also some things are too fragile. For one it would be entirely expensive and also most are irreplaceable if lost or damaged.
Grandmother’s tea service is on this short list, along with my collection of exotic plant specimens. Mother and father will tuck these away in our old room for safe keeping along with the items you have left. I think I will miss the tea service the most. It would be completely worthless to take this with me to the research station. It will also be impossible to find an alternative once I get there. I will have to forgo this daily ritual for the extent of my stay, since there is no practical way to replace the tradition in space. I hope you have found a suitable surrogate on New London. The pleasures of an elaborate tea ritual every afternoon is something engrained in us since childhood. I do not know how I will cope without it. I will have to find another vice for this calming activity; some replacement to realign the mind before beginning the afternoon routines.

I will keep the bare minimum of personal items for the remainder of my time here. It will hopefully prepare me for the years ahead and help me clear my agenda for the trip to come. Although my departure is still many months away, I must start the process of separation from the life I have known. For you it will not be as drastic a step since your final destination is the planet surface and a planetary life. For me I will be transitioning to life on the research station. A near military life if you think about it. Weekly safety drills, refreshed air and dispensed rations. Let us hope that is all I will need to adapt to. I will not even adventure into the lack of privacy I will encounter. I am trying not to think of that. I have a feeling the craving for wide open spaces like those I encountered in New Zealand will be higher on my wish list than any other amenities. Dreaming of a future where the dangers of a total vacuum are only a few centimeter away are gone. But the thought of being in close proximity to the Anomaly overwrites all these programs. It will be worth every inconceivable occurrence to be close to my subject.

Enough of these thoughts! As I have always said, it will all be worth the final realization of our dream.

Love, Annalis

Dear sister,

I feed your absence very heavily today. I now sit alone at my favorite coffee shop, watching the passing traffic out the window. Your presence sits beside me, but it is not the same as having you here. It is only a creative anime, entertaining me with animated stories about our childhood and occasionally throwing in an anecdote from our father’s vast library. Although it was long ago that we lived within the same general area of each other, the fact that I cannot hop onto a transport and be near you within a few hours is disheartening. I do not even want to mention the total lack of communication abilities we now face. So I sit here alone, imaging your face and drink my coffee in solo.

The college is out for spring holidays and I have taken this opportunity to enjoy a much quieter Oxford. Most students have vacated for warmer climates this week and I was actually able to grab a seat at my favorite haunt. The coffee has only improved since you your last visit and I am now on my second cup. I will need to return to the lab shortly, but it feels good to enjoy some time away from my calculations.

My appointment with the entomologist was postponed till June since Professor Simona was caught up in a battle against a bacterial outbreak in the bee population in South America. I gathered from her correspondence that the threat has now been contained, but over a third of the facilities inhabitants have been lost. Such a tragic occurrence since they were finally making strides in balancing the hives across the southern continent. She will be back on this side of the globe in late May and we can then make the final arrangements for her stowaways. She shared a model of the creature’s molecular structure with me. The DNA complexity is incomparable to anything I have seen in the related species native to the Earth. There are hints of advanced brain function beyond the capabilities of their Earth counterparts. I hope to have time on my outbound journey to study this feature thoroughly. From the narrative of your journey, I gather I will have several idle weeks during my own trip to the outer reaches of this solar system to do some extracurricular activities. I think I will fill it with something completely different to occupy my brain functions.

Well my cup is empty now and I will head back to my realm. I hope when you arrive in New London there is a pleasant coffee location waiting for you to discover.

Love Annalis

A spark…Only a flicker of life echoing down the fibers intertwined throughout the vast expansion of space. It occurs only momentarily, but it is a beginning. There… on the far reaches of perception, another flicker. This one is stronger and emits a crackly of electricity that passes down the thread where the new component is attached. A tang of copper flavors the entire matrix, setting off an adjustment to the once colorless structure. Flecks of gold begin to appear, scattered through the design. The change brings with it an emotional response. A type of flavor, something completely outside of optical or olfactory senses; a new type of sensory unit. The emotion is not defined, neither uplifting or deflating. Only a change, as if a wind blowing from a different direction. A stiff gale flowing off a glacier. Fresh and cold, stinging the senses into awareness. There is the sense of new awareness after a long dormant period. An extended era of brooding now complete. It is time to switch focus. Another needs her administrations. This will be a new challenge. Something that has not been attempted yet in her current form.

What passes for a shiver travels through her structure, agitating the new functions busy on her fibrous message pathways. They sense a new urgency, picking up their pace. There is work to do.

Dear Victoria,

I have been experiencing strange dreams of late. This is a passage from one of them. It is always confusing to write out a dream, even when I try to achieve the recording as soon as I awake.

A dream of the Anomaly… One of the few I am privileged to receive. I am sure this is what it was. I never envisioned the creature in this manner, but I wrote the narrative as I remembered it occurring. What surprised me was the exhilarating feeling of power. The feeling of the ability to do anything, fix anything and my knowledge of the universe was unbounded, infinite. As a scientist this was the most fascinating and enveloping of all the emotions offered by the vision. What else could be obtained from the occurrence is beyond comprehension, but some of the comparisons to cell components, such as kinesins and microtubules was obvious!

I have just returned from a long run. My endurance has now returned to the level before my accident. I will keep this pace until the time of my departure, ensuring I am in the best condition for the long stasis to the Alpha Centauri System. My thoughts return frequently to the advice you gave while you were preparing for travel, repeating constantly that being in top condition before the stasis process would make the recovery smooth and with minimal complications. Since I must also compensate for my new limb, I am putting extra effort into following your advice. The stories about your new friend on board the Derringer keep running through my head and even though I have a regenerated limb in place of a prosthetic, I am still going to do all I can to avoid any drawbacks.

My new arm is now almost completely indistinguishable from its partner. The nails are still not completely formed, but other than that I have no issues. During my final follow up with the technician last month, he said this will resolve itself. The nails have the longest growth process, but by the time summer is in full swing, I will have beautiful nails to polish. That was a bit chauvinistic to say seeing as he was wearing a fuchsia color himself that I would never consider wearing. It was easy to forgive him since this was my last appointment. There is not even an echo of the nerve twinges I once experienced and apart from the very odd dream last night, my sleep have not been disturbed.

In regards to my work, as much as can be arranged has been completed. The full mirror collection of equipment has been calibrated and programmed to start recording one year from the date of my departure. The exact day is a close estimate to your startup date of the units on the observation station. The calculations I performed took into consideration your travel time to New London, the set-up of the skeletal base of the studio and the configuration of the equipment for the altered planetary conditions. I believe the schedule of the equipment startup here will be within months of the pieces on your site. Although the units on the space station will start recording months before that, this data will not be useful in comparison to Earth data. Since there is no atmospheric distortion on the Phycodurus 8, the numbers from the Anomaly will be very different. I still need to finalize how this information will be utilized in our project, but I do not want to lose the opportunity to gather it. It will most likely be an additional enhancement if we can discover how to simulate it.

I will close for now. I want to compare my dream descriptions to some notes I took last year during a lecture on ATP production and brain function. I attended the lecture at the request of our old Friend Doctor Silverton, who was mentoring the speaker. She also invited you if I am not mistaken, but you were engaged on the other side of the world at the time.

I think I might have incorporated some of my memories of that topic into my Anomaly dream last night. There might be something to discover there.

Love,
Annalis

Dear Victoria,

I am now in Oxford once more, missing the sunny weather from my previous base in New Zealand. Since my return from Paris, there has been a constant drizzle marring the return of spring. I have remitted back to exercising on the simulator, but it does not have the same benefits as the great outdoors. As I gaze out my small laboratory window, I see few people brave enough to face the soggy external world. Everyone seems to be doing as I, hiding within the confines of the dry but drafty old buildings of the college.

I have spent the morning on improvements to the equipment that will accompany me to the research station near the Anomaly. Most are already with you, but after the last few months of interesting developments, I decided to add more measurement possibilities; mainly a means to perform signal comparison simultaneously and not just sequentially. This will hopefully widen the possibilities and accuracy when considering out final settings of the product. There will also be additional units to measure the frequencies outside of our current range. I said I would hold off on thinking of the audible range implications of the Anomaly, but you know how I am. I could not leave it alone. Only two additions will do it, but they both need to be modified for the space station conditions and the added transport complications. The units will be completed by the end of the week, so not much of an impact on my current to do list.

I have begun the preparations for my space travel. I will not be exiting the Earth from Brighten Station as you did, but will travel to Calais for my departure. The station in Brighten has sadly been closed due to the lack of passengers passing through her doors. The travel restrictions issued several years ago are taking a toll on the various ports here on Earth and the beautiful Brighten location is the latest victim. The only off planet ports left in the Northern Hemisphere are now in Calais, Greenland and Calgary. I realize the enormous mass exodus that took place over the last two hundred years was distressing to the world governments, but it is disturbing that this type of confinement has to be enforced. I am only happy that the restrictions have not effected out plans. Let us hope my permit will not be put in jeopardy because of the delay in my departure.

I have booked my passage on a similar liner as yours. It is not the same corporation, but one of the ships from the same manufacturer. I have followed your advice and spent the extra coin for a passenger liner and not an industrial transport ship. From your description it was not my wish to travel in that manner. Father also completed the final papers for my migration, so I know it will go as smoothly as possible. I have less equipment traveling with me than you have, but I have the extra complication of my travel companion from Professor Simona. We will meet again next month to iron out the process for transferring her secret cargo to me. The creatures will already be placed in stasis before we leave Earth, but the whole process of storage on the transport and transfer once we arrive at the space station needs to be elaborated.
It is an honor to be involved in this enterprise, but also a bit of additional stress. The operation is all above board and the institute has made all the correct permits for the removal of the creature to New London, so I really am only the escort. There is a bit of secrecy about the transfer since many groups on Earth and on New London have voiced opposition to the introduction of the species to foreign soil. There is also the environmental and animal rights groups to consider. Citizens voicing their concerns that the intelligence of the creatures has not been defined as yet, so there may be opposition from the tiny creatures themselves about being exposed to a new environment. I will not go into this with you, only that there is need for additional security about what I am traveling with when I leave the planet.

As soon as all my plans have been finalized, I will send you my itinerary by strip beam. Since it is a high expense to send this type of message, I will make sure I have all final instructions and information before I arrange it. This way you should receive it close to your arrival time on New London. I am not sure how long before the rest of my messages reach you. I may arrive before them knowing the usual interstellar mail system.

I hope when you get my travel time details it will cheer you that I am on my way. I feel very alone at this time without you and I cannot imagine what you will be feeling by the time I arrive.

Love,
Annalis

Dear sister,

Finally a moment to myself after two long days of presenting, listening and collaborating. My journal is full of notes from the other presentations and it will take weeks to sort through what is relevant to our work. The use of music and sound as a neurological healing tool dominated the conference. My mind is still buzzing from all the new ideas and horizons that can be explored in regards to our own agenda. I will create a thorough overview of what I consider relevant to share with you upon my arrival in our new home. There will be many static evenings after my research day is done on the Phycodurus 8, to shift through this additional information. We can compare notes on how this new progressive process can be utilized in our final product. For now, I will place it on the back burner as its use will cause additional complication to an already Byzantine project. Before I arrive, you will already be a year into our original process and I do not want to jeopardize any progress by introducing another element.

There are many small hideaways in Paris and I have found one to quiet my thoughts and compose a letter to you. I wished to do this yesterday evening, but the conference ran well into the night and I was exhausted by the time I returned to my room. The variety of speakers this year was overwhelming and I have to choose which to attend since many were presented simultaneously in different halls. My own talk was well attended and there was much interest in future collaborations. Although the first day was restricted to Louvre fellows due to the secrecy of our work, the second day was open to all researchers in the neurological community.

The introduction of our subject as an intelligent being, capable and adept at manipulation of its environment and the inhabitants around it, was received by my contemporaries with the expected response. First the hall was completely still after I read the statement of our new theory, without even a cough to break the shocked silence. The room then broke into a buzz of whispered dialog as the idea propagated through the hall. I guess it was a shock to hear from my own mouth words that I myself thought never to utter. The once abdicate for the neutrality of the Anomaly, now speaking of manipulation and favoritism.

I concluded with the new data recorded near the Flynn Foundation satellite and a hint of the corresponding signals recorded in other concentrated areas of traumatic illness and neurological disease. I showed in parallel the correlated patterns emitted by the Anomaly in reference to the events. This of course was pure improvisation on my part since I just became aware of this ability of the creature myself, but I could not resist sharing this new found knowledge with my audience.

I return to Oxford tomorrow. The next six months will move slowly for me, since this trip will be my last divergent activity before I board the transport to the research station. It will be difficult to leave Earth and all its familiar comforts, but I relish in the thought of what I will discover when I am in close proximity to the creature. What will our instruments have recorded by the time I step into the new lab? What will you have created in the year since your arrival? I will miss Paris and London, but the thought of these new experiences are causing my heart to pound with anticipation.

I think I will order one more glass of ale before I return to the hotel to pack. I feel sleep will not come easy tonight.

Love,
Annalis