First Entry

September 26th, 2027 [1]

If anyone reads this, human or not, know that I sorry. For not seeing the rea truth. For releasing it. Now, as the last one of my speciez, I’ll try and warn you. I beg, don’t take my words as joke.

You may meet the same bad fate if you do.

Wryting is hard. Used to be easier, when I started, this journal I mean. Everything was less difficult. Even had a PhD, or have. Reading also hurts me head. My hipo theori is that being close to it did this. Shouldn’t have come to Mars. I miss my family. They are probably dead.

The sunset outside my window, one last piece of beauty before my end. The oxi rebre thing that let me breath inside the station are broken. I forgot the words, but I’m forgetting a lot now. Also because of the thing we found, probably.

I have only a few hours left before I suf can’t breath. I also might be the last living human. We lost communications with Earth, week ago? Nakamura was still alive, I think? I have to warn you. If a human reads this, I hope you learned. If you aren’t, I pray you learn.

Inside the time caps ball I leave this jornal. Read it, and learn. Study it, translate it until you under get it.

Make our deaths count for something.

Please. [2]

March 13th , 2027

Doctor Nawaz told the members of the research team to start journaling, now that we have landed upon the scarlet sands of Mars. Start with our aspirations and goals, why we decided to leave the safety of our mother Earth and venture among the sea of stars. She says it helps with the lack of contact with our families and friends.

For as many words I have studied among so many languages, I find myself lost at how to begin this accounting. One pleasant tea session with Nakamura and Riikka has given me the insight to begin by introducing myself. Who knows, maybe this journal might be studied several centuries after my demise by a scholar, much like Marcus Aurelius. [3]

I am Malik Archibald Ramírez, named after the Islamic scholar and my grandfather’s best friend. It can mean a great many things, but one of the most used translations is “king” or “ruler”. I proclaim this little piece of trivia due to its importance to my academic life. This knowledge ignited my desire to learn more about languages and the power of words.

That, and the moon ruins, of course.

My father said he would never forget the 1969 videos, where the now immortalized quote on the first step by Armstrong got overshadowed by Aldrin’s “Houston, humanity isn’t alone anymore” not much after. He said that he knew something changed, even if he was too young to understand, having only eight full summers by then.

And my father was correct, as usual. More expeditions followed, with greater urgency, so we didn’t let the soviets get a single screw from there. And when they realized they couldn’t reach the ruins fast enough, war came. Not the total nuclear holocaust many feared, but an invasion that saw my grandfather, from whom I share a name with, fight as a fighter pilot.

He never spoke much of it. The Third Great War, for control of the artifacts. Not many care to remember those times, which is understandable. But I always loved to hear about the achievements “Old Man Archie” received during the conflict.

But I digress. I suppose it is simply a way to explain how the greatest event in human history shaped my family on a personal level. When I came upon this world, over two decades had crossed along the sands of time, but so much had changed. The Internet in 1978, the quantum computers of 1984, the mastery over nuclear fusion of 1987 and so much more. Specialists believe we advanced decades, perhaps centuries, faster thanks to the research on the technology left by the Precursors. [4]

I wished to go there, see the ruins myself, catch a fraction of the sensations our brave astronauts must have felt when first encountering them. But when the Sojourner rover revealed an entire Precursor city hidden away among the crevices of Mars, my path had been set.

While our brightest minds figured how to send our people there, I studied Anthropology with a focus of archeological science. When they developed the cryo stasis system, I had finished my Master’s in Astrobiology and Planetary Geology. And when they first started taking candidates for the research teams, I had concluded my PhD in Linguistics and Semiotics. Everything to better prepare myself for this singular goal of reaching the ruins. [5]

And now, as I look upon the setting sun over the scarlet horizon, I feel relaxed. My life long dream has arrived at last. With all the sacrifices it took, I can say I have made it. I wish Maria could be here.

For now, me and the remainder of the team will rest for a couple Earth days to recover from the months of stasis. I will send a few messages back home to assure their worries on my well-being and then, we shall get to the hidden city at last. I believe this will be the single most grandiose event on our people’s history.

God, how wrong I was. [6]

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[1] According to prior research conducted by the High Circle of Theleshad, this date roughly equates to around seven thousand rotations before Elesyr.

[2] This section has been written by hand, differing from the bulk of the text, who seem to have been done by a machine. It also contains quite a few errors and revision, unlike most of what I managed to decipher so far. For the sake of preservation, they have been kept as is.

[3] I believe that the specimen’s words would count as “ironic”, according to what little we unveiled on human culture so far.

[4] With so little remaining of humanity’s culture to conduct proper studies, we know next to nothing on the species that predates them in the BC-783 astral system. This journal may offer a rare opportunity to understanding them, as the specimen may have left data regarding these beings.

[5] I do not believe in coincidences, but the specimen having a very similar scholarly background to my own makes me ponder on how the universe works in mysterious ways. I wish we could have shared a few words, even considering the primitive nature of their advancements.

[6] This part has been added letter, seemingly by hand using a more archaic, non-electronic, tool. For the sake of brevity, I shall put these additions in bold to better differentiate them from the main text.

Everything in this document has been fully translated from their original language into High Zatoreny.