Dear Victoria,


Such a lovely spring day! The sky is an indescribable color and the sun warms the bones and chases the winter frost from the marrow. If only I could capture this moment into a sphere to take out years from now and experience this day as I sit in the coldness of space. Days like this will not be a part of my life once my relocation is complete. It would be ideal to pull out this feeling and experience it whenever the confinement of my future home creeps up on me.


These random thoughts pass through me as I sit in one of the many parks that are scattered throughout Oxford. This particular one I frequent often because it has a beautiful tree lined stream flowing through it. Weeping willows dip their long fronds into the slow moving waters as tall oaks crowd in with wide roots jutting out into their midst. Ducks paddle parallel to the shore where I sit, voicing their opinion of my presence. Many have families trailing behind their V shaped trail through the water, stopping once in a while to gaze at my watching form.


My half eaten lunch sits beside me, forgotten in my fascination with the world around. It feels as if time is frozen in this moment, holding its breath so I can describe the beauty in a letter to you before the clock starts once again. There are no human creatures nearby to break the deception; only the timeless inhabitants that populate any scene such as this. Frogs and ducks, sparrows and fish, all following a repeating pattern that gives an illusion of a pause in time. A timeless scene, repeating itself throughout the history of the Earth. Whether taking place at this moment or three-hundred years in the past, there are no markers to place this occurrence in time.
I have tried to lock the moment away in my memory; capturing all aspects of this divine juncture. The color of the azure sky, the whisper of the breeze through the trees and the smell of new growth and humid air paints a mental picture that will alleviate my doldrums when the darkness comes. That would normally be during the middle of winter, but now it will be for my long stint on the research station. At lease I will have the brilliance of the Anomaly to relieve the coldness and colorless expanse of space.


In recent days I have been working on a new theory for our ever complicated subject. It all started when I tried to compose a response to my former student Lizbeth and relieve the conflict she has between her theory and the intellectual possibilities of the Anomaly. What if the evolution of our subject is so accelerated compared to our own experience that within the last decade the creature has gone from inert matter, to the intellectual being we are seeing emerging. We know so little about the origins of the creature, how can we make assumptions about the rate of its evolvement. Since its first discovery two hundred years ago it could have transmuted from a mere collection of electrical impulses into a complex calculated circuit. This idea has expanded my concept of the being to the point where I do not know where or how to place boundaries around my theory. When thinking in this direction there are so many unknowns that I do not know where to begin. I quite lost my train of thought when trying to explain this to Lizbeth that I stopped the message I was composing to her and switched to my research notes. I wanted to capture this new direction of thinking into our own study and not try and fit it into the picture I was painting for my former student. Again I have found another distraction to interfere with the wrap up of tasks I must complete before the fall. I will have to come up with another theory for Lizbeth. This one fits to well with the direction our own work must follow.


I must leave this idyllic scene now and finish my lunch on the way back to the laboratory. Mother is leaving tomorrow morning. A day earlier than planned since I need to head north the following day to meet professor Simona at her facility. Unfortunately I will not get to visit her incredible creatures during my visit this time since they are in quarantine before the trip to New London. The meeting is a few weeks earlier than expected, so I have some things to prepare today before I head out. It has been a lovely visit with mother. I will miss her clarity and straight forward advice in the years to come.

Love Annalis