The structure

August 7th, 8:45 pm

We have found the best way to interpret the texts is by reading them like cuneiform. There are many words we don't know because of the multi-meaning words, but we are still able to understand some segments of text. *** has actually been working more on the architecture of the structure itself instead of the inscriptions or murals. He says he has never seen any architecture so obsessed with right angles. From his observations, he says that every single turn, corner, and room is at a right angle. There are no intricate designs or ornamentation on the walls; they are perfectly flat. It's truly fascinating. Tomorrow it will finally be my turn to enter the structure to digitize some more of the murals.

August 8th, 9:32

The structure is horrifying. Today was my first opportunity to actually see the inside for myself. I was sent to digitize a certain part of floor two, and even just getting to floor two takes over an hour of walking. The structure itself at the surface is 1 square kilometer, but to descend to the second floor you have to take so many winding turns it felt like I was walking for 4 or 5 km. Without the digital map, I would have ended up lost so many times. The structure, once inside, feels like a megastructure. It is completely silent besides the noise of your own breath and steps. The entire structure swallows your resistance. Wandering down the corridors, the dry, cold air feels stagnant, like it hasn't been disturbed for years, yet there is so little dust or debris anywhere. The perfect 90-degree angles of the turns, where the floors meet the walls, where the walls meet the roof, and the steps down to the second floor all feel surreal. Each hallway is the exact same height, every room is about two times the height of the hallway. The stones used to make the structure were sanded or smoothened down so much it looks like the wall is one continuous slab of stone, unless you look extremely closely, where you can then see the fissures between different stones. It is the most precisely measured and constructed building I have ever been in, even compared to modern architecture. It becomes hard to breathe after getting too far down, so you have to carry oxygen with you on the second floor, making the entire trip truly exhausting. This is interesting because the ancient peoples didn't have oxygen tanks, so how did they breathe in the structure so far down underground? After finally reaching the second floor, I had to actually get to work. The machine to digitize the inscriptions is kind of like a metal detector wand they use in airport security. After scanning the inscriptions I was sent to scan, I wandered around a bit. I did get lost, but luckily the map helped me figure out where I was. After spending about 30 minutes on the second floor, I headed back and got lost again. Luckily, I don't need oxygen on the first floor, otherwise I might have actually had some big problems. I did end up getting out of the structure after five hours. Tomorrow I will go down again, this time to the third floor.

August 10th, 8:02 pm

After two days of onsite exploration, finally I got to sit down and work. At least I didn't get lost yesterday, and that was probably because *** was with me; on the other hand, we got some pretty good new digital recordings of the inscriptions and murals. Today we actually translated an entire section of text. The section we translated was a story of some kind. The story is of a mother who birthed her daughter underwater. The daughter was able to breathe underwater but not on land, so the mother asked many people for help, and finally she was sent to speak to the orb. The orb gave her a way to see her daughter underwater. The orb gifted the mother a small gray plant, and if she inhaled the dust it gave off through her mouth, she would be able to see her daughter. However, the plant only allowed her to breathe for one hour at a time before needing to take more of it, and she couldn't take it underwater. The story ends with the mother drowning because she stayed too long underwater without going up to take more of the plant. Quite an odd story, and to be honest, I wish we had found something else to translate, seeing this story doesn't seem to talk about what the structure itself is. The story does, however, reference the orb. Notice how the orb here is asked a question, so it must have the ability to answer. This means the people probably saw it as some sort of living thing. The orb is always depicted, even in the inscriptions, as a purple sphere or circle. It's interesting to see a line of wedge-shaped marks and then this sphere, and then the line continues. The orb must have been quite fascinating. Recently we found a mural with the orb, where the orb is set in the middle of a room surrounded by people that seem to be worshiping it. The people in the mural seem to be forming a circle around the orb, and are taking a pose similar to the child's pose in yoga. All in all, there has been quite a bit of progress among the four of us. Today we also got a shipment of provisions for the four of us. Being able to talk to other people for the first time in a week was nice. Of course, having four adults living in essentially one house isn't ideal. It's why people normally like to bring bigger groups here. Seeing there are only *, **, *** and me here onsite, we don't really ever need supplies brought to us more than once over the entire month.