Mission Log 126, Day 231, We're Still at the Creepy Alien Rock Formation!:

Well, I have some good news and some not awesomely great news...

The rocks Dr. A and I re-examined have writing on them, and of course, it's a language unknown to mankind. ('Cause it couldn't' be something with Latin roots, right? That would just be silly.) I guess it's a good thing we have a language gal after all.

But dearest N.A.S.A. reader, you're probably wondering how we know it's a language. Couldn't it just be space debris or scratches from, you know, it being in space?

And here's my answer to that.

Austin and I re-examined everything like Captain Abs said. We put them under microanalyses, took core samples, and then carbon dated them. All of that data went fine and all of it came out exactly like it did the first time when we analyzed them.

I was ready to call all of our research a day, but Austin said he wanted to do another composition scan, so to make sure I was on his good side, I helped him set up a U.V. scan.

And for those of you who haven't studied xeno-examine principles, a U.V. scan means we scan local star clusters to see what kind of radiation they emit and then we replicate the same wavelengths we collected with our scanner. Then we bombard the rocks with intense amounts of the U.V. in hopes to make the outsides of them more clear. The theory is that the massive amounts of heat from the U.V. actually melt any outside layers of the rock that aren't in the structure of the rock itself. For example, if a meteoroid went into a plasma cloud, some of that plasma-ish stuff would stick to the rock and change the appearance slightly. The U.V. would then get rid of the gunk to leave just the space rock.

We didn't do this test before because, honestly, it just makes things pretty and shiny. It's like a geology deep clean and I've never believed in its functionality for anything. Besides, intense rays of U.V. could kill the bacteria, I've been searching for. (AND HAVE YET TO FIND.)

Yes, I'm salty about that.

But anyway, this test was kind of the, "last resort" for Austin as he worded it. Though I'm also pretty sure he just wanted to show me up by making it look like he worked harder than I did today on these gosh-darn rocks.

After checking over the U.V. analytics we gathered from some nearby stars, we programmed our scanner to replicate the same rays. Then, as I like to refer to it, we preheated the sun oven, stuck in our deliciously grimy minerals, and then waited for our timer to ding.

The results of our space baking actually made me rethink that this test was just a deep clean. I mean when we took them out, they were a different color. When we first got the rocks their hue was probably close to ashy coal, you know, greyish black. However, those light rays must have had some wizard magic or something because all of the rocks we put in the scanner are now reddish. They're not quite Mars looking though, I would compare then to a dark maroon.

And that's when we saw the writing markings.

At first we didn't know what they were. They looked like scratches from afar. So Austin and I ran some more tests to see what kind of force could have created such damaging looking slices.

And that's when it got weird. According to the computer, it took only a couple newtons, and if another drifting meteoroid hit our samples, the damage would have been way worse. The force used to make the scratches, and I can't believe this, came from something like a chisel. When we compared our findings to the N.A.S.A. database, it resembled carvings like our ancient human civilization did.

Something put those marks on them.

So clearly at this point A and I were like, "We need the Captain. This isn't normal." So Austin went to get the Captain and when he left he put down the sample he was holding onto our lab table.

I couldn't help but stare at what we had found. This was crazy.

I used a finger to trace the patterns on the rock's surface and that's when it hit me. I had seen it before. I looked at some of the other rocks that we cleaned and put them side by side with the one on the table. Sure enough, the lines connected. They were making a swirling pattern that led to a bunch of triangles inside these circles.

It wasn't a pictograph, and the carvings of these rocks were deliberate, which meant this was writing.

Austin returned back with the Captain. I looked up from the rock collection I displayed out on the table and shook my head in disbelief.

"Captain, it's writing."

Austin looked just as perplexed as the Captain before scrambling over to my side of the table. He was whispering angrily under his breath. I could tell he was bothered that I saw it and he didn't.

The Captain cleared his throat, "How do you know?"

I explained all of the boring science to him and he stood frozen in thought. "Did you tell Amelia?"

"No, but I can go get her."

He nodded at me.

"Dr.," said the Captain, "do you know if there's any particles left from the rocks after the U.V. blast?"

Austin went to our scanner and measured for residual particles using a magnetic field reader. "Yes, Captain. It looks like there's residual ionic energy from whatever coated the rocks before."

"Good, get Rob to create a program that can locate those particles. We're going to see if we can find where these came from.