Dear Jim,

When I looked out of the window this morning, the air was filled with what can only be described as large, white, fuzzy balls. They appeared to be floating weightlessly in the wind.

I looked around in wonder until Barbara nudged me and pointed over to the nearest tree. I saw that the pipe-like branches were releasing white fluffy balls like bubbles from a soap bubble machine. I looked around: it was the same with the other trees I could see around.

'They are seeds,' Barbara said in wonder.

'Like big, round dandelions,' I answered.

Barbara nodded, then pointed at the ground, where one of her small rodent friends was busy carrying away one of the seeds that had landed to its burrow behind our pod.

'A great day for stocking food for the winter, I would say,' Barbara observed.

I agreed and walked down the stairs into the grass. After some chasing and jumping I managed to catch one of the balls from the air before the wind could blow it away. It was indeed very soft and fluffy. At its center there was a hard, roundish core. I threw it towards the burrows of the small critters. It was soon found and carried away.

For a while, Barbara and I were just standing there, watching the fluffy balls floating across the land and the sky. I have attached a video for you, it was truly a magical sight. To celebrate this special moment we decided to have eggs for breakfast and watch the flying fluffy balls a bit longer.

After breakfast I didn't go to the building site immediately. Tom had asked me to have a look at one of his machines. He's already ploughing fields for next year and will sow wheat soon, so it will grow early in spring. He said his plough was acting up and wanted me to have a look.

I sat down on the ground, my toolbox by my side and worked on Tom's farm equipment. I was not too much in a hurry, so I kept looking up, watching the fuzzy seeds whirl in the wind. One time when I looked around I was surprised to see Peter walking up and down on a patch of ground which Tom had already ploughed. He kept bending down, picking up things and throwing them on the ground again. I assumed they were rocks which he found interesting for one reason or another and then decided that they were not interesting enough to keep. Sometimes, however, he kept staring at what he had in his hand for a longer time. These things he turned this way and that way and inspected them very closely, it appeared. Then he put them into a bag. He seemed to be completely unaware of me watching him.

'Any nice stones over there?!' I called to Peter and startled him.

'What?' he answered. 'Oh. Oh yes, sure. . . many interesting stones.'

'Want to show me what you found?' I called over to him.

'Uh-huh,' he said, almost unintelligible from the distance. He picked up another thing from the ground, put it into his bag and walked away. It seemed like he was preoccupied and did not even hear what I had said. I watched him walk away, still looking at the ground.

When I was done with my work and had put the whole plough mechanism back together again, I decided to try whether it was working correctly. I directed it to a pre-defined position and let it plough a few very short grooves. Everything seemed to go smoothly and without problems. I inspected the small patch of ground which was dug up. It looked just as it should have and I was happy that my job was done and Tom could go on with his own work whenever he wanted.

I was just about to turn away when I saw something half buried in the dark soil was reflecting the sunlight just at the right angle to get my attention. I bent down to the ground to pull whatever it was out of the ground. The object was a slightly curved sheet of what was probably stone. It was about as large as my hand and of an irregular shape, like it was a piece of a larger object. The edges were ragged, as if it were broken. When I looked around I noticed another, smaller piece which looked similar. I took both of them and went over to the river. When I washed them I saw that they were shining white. On the surface there was an irregular pattern of grooves and ridges. I looked at it for a while but couldn't say what it was. Maybe a strange stone? A fossil?

I'd had luck: the two pieces fit together, but they did not make a complete object. It was like having two pieces of a puzzle. There wasn't even part of the edge, let alone a corner piece.

I picked up all my tools and put them in my toolbox. I also put the plough safely back into the shed with the other farm equipment. I wrapped the two stones into the cloth I carry with me to wipe my hands and put them into my toolbox, then I went over to the building site to continue assembling the incubator. As I walked I watched the fuzzy seeds flying through the air and the red and yellow grass moving in the wind.

I was absent-minded at work, got a few steps wrong and had to re-do them. Fortunately nobody noticed. The others managed to get all the walls covered, which is great. Peter has not been at the building site today, so when I went back to my pod in the late afternoon I decided to give him a visit and find out what he had actually done in the field this morning. I put down my toolbox at the stairs up to my pod but took the two stones in the cloth with me. The sun was already close to the horizon.

I went over to Peter's new shed, where he seems to spend most of his time if he isn't on any field trips for research. I knocked at the door and waited. There were definitely noises inside. After a minute or two I knocked again. I could hear a grunt and the door opened just a crack and peter looked out at me, frowning.

'Oh, Sarah. Hi. What do you want? I am very busy at the moment,' he said impatiently, running his hand through his already disheveled hair.

I tried to look around him into the shed, which I knew was filled with shelves as storage place for his rocks and a worktop in a corner that served as a small lab. He successfully blocked my view.

'I saw you this morning. Found anything interesting in Tom's field?' I asked innocently.

'Oh, well, rocks, you know? It's what I do,' Peter answered. It wasn't very convincing.

I lifted the cloth-wrapped shards up so he could see them and unwrapped them so they lay on the cloth in my hand. Peter's eyes grew big.

'Rocks like that?' I asked.

Peter stepped away from the door and let me through, then closed it again immediately. I saw that he had installed a lock. I looked around, seeing as I expected shelves with labeled rocks. There was still plenty of space for extending the collection. The sunlight was shining through the opaque windows, immersing the room in a strange light. As I have told you, this was our first try on making clear sheets. I didn't get the specifications of transparency quite right in the settings of the OMR.

At first I couldn't detect anything out of the ordinary, but when I looked around the first row of shelves I saw that Peter had moved the furniture to make space for a table in the center of the room. There he had laid out more of the shards and he had actually managed to find a few that fit together. They looked just like the ones I had found. I put mine down on the table along with the others.

'What are they?' I asked Peter, while examining the objects on the table.

Peter leaned against a shelf and sighed.

'I don't know. It's not any kind of stone I have ever seen,' he answered.

'So, what do you think? It looks like they make up some bigger... whatever they make up if all pieces would be there,' I stated and turned around to Peter.

'Really, I don't know. But if you insist I will say it: it does not look natural to me. I have however not the slightest idea what it could be,' he said, visibly worried about what my reaction would be.

I nodded slowly. I wasn't sure what to think.

'But why didn't you tell anyone? Shouldn't they know?' I asked.

'I just want to be sure. Run some more tests, maybe find more pieces. And I'm worried about Pollak. Will he completely lose his mind when he hears about something like that? I also think it isn't urgent. Whatever that thing is has been buried in the ground not just since yesterday,' Peter explained. 'Might still be a fossil after all. Or the bones of a large creature?'

I nodded. I really wasn't sure.

When I left Peter's shed the light which came through the translucent wall panels had turned pink. I went outside (promising I would keep my mouth shut for now) and noticed it had become cold, so I hurried over to my pod. Barbara was already waiting for me.

Now I'm lying in bed, thinking.

Love,
Sarah

Tavaron

22.04.24 Front Page

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