Mission Log 120, Day 210, Meteoroid Bridge:

So apparently this trip is supposed to last a couple years, which I'm okay with, however...

Someone ate the last partially hydrogenated pudding! And when I find out who it is, there will be trouble in the space silo. Pudding is my sustenance, and whoever didn't know that is a freak of nature.

Better have not been you Captain Abs... (Insert an eyebrow raise emoji for me would you Captain?)

But, pudding isn't the only reason I'm writing this log. I actually found something worth mentioning in one of these stupid things.

So Austin and I were collecting samples from local meteoroids in a new system a lightyear away from the Goldilocks Zone. It's actually quite fascinating, if I do say so myself, because we found a cluster of meteoroids stretching for miles in one direction. I mean you can't even see the end of them. Cline is trying to pilot us to the end so that we can measure the distance of it, but so far, there's no end in sight! I find it truly amazing that there's something like this that exists in nature. I mean if I didn't know any better I'd say that space people had made a never ending wall of rocks.

But it gets crazier.

When Austin and I were out of the ship, physically collecting samples, the meteoroids themselves were vastly different in texture and size. I mean don't get me wrong, they were all fairly large. I would guess about 381 meters tall which is the same as one empire state building. Their width was about two American football fields, so about 220 meters. And all them space rocks were about that size, but when we got up close, you could tell some were thinner and shorter than the one it was next to.

And that's what was also weird. They were, like, next to each other. I know N.A.S.A., you're probably like, "yeah space rocks float next to each other ding-dong," but that's the thing, they weren't drifting at all. It's as if they were fused together somehow.

Austin said that it's natural for rocks to stick together like that, but I think he's just as weirded out as I am. I mean, when we analyzed the texture in our lab, all the rocks were different. 

In not-so-scientific terms, it's like one rock was like a bundle of grapes: circular grains that are also porous. And the other sample was broccoli: smooth grains leading into a tight clump of something. It was weird.

Austin and I are in the lab now running a bunch of fancy-shmancy tests. Currently, I'm running a microscopic analysis on the grains to see if there's any life within them or if they show any more distinctive patterns. I doubt that life's possible, but hey, we found food rocks, so anything's possible.

I think Austin's comparing our newest samples to our previous collections. At the moment, he's wearing one of those grandpa monocles while staring at his copious amounts of very specific notes.

But yeah, I'll get back to you N.A.S.A.

Mission Log 123, Day 225, End of Meteoroid Bridge:

Hoo-rah! Cline made it!

We finally arrived at the end of the Meteoroid Bridge today.

And from what I understand, this may not be nature after all, which I was kind of hoping it was since nature is nice and predictable.

But here's the scoop. While we were flying next to the wall of space rocks, Rob was laser scanning the wall start to finish to gather enough data to reconstruct a 3D image of it. After some tweaking, he finally called us all to the briefing room, which is this small circular space. (It kind of gives me knights at the roundtable vibes.)

When we finally all arrived, he had us gather around the "roundtable." The blue paned glass in the middle of it was dull at first, but then Rob poked the table, did some fancy finger movements, and then the dull color transformed into a vibrant ocean color. After a few more adjustments from Rob, a holographic image appeared hovering above the table.

"This is Meteoroid Bridge in a nutshell," Rob gestured to the image from start to finish.

Captain Abs furrowed his dark caterpillar eyebrows, "What's the length?"

Rob typed in more commands into the computer and a scale hovered above the image. 

"Well," he swallowed from nerves. I could tell he was just as perplexed as the rest of us, "1.5 lightyears."

Amelia made a sound in awe. "What?"

"I know. 1.5 lightyears."

"That's the diameter of our solar system back home," Cline said in disbelief.

We all stood silent for a moment. Captain Abs had a hard look of concentration on his face. He knew what this had to mean. He sighed and then faced Austin. 

"Austin-"

"Dr. Austin Universum," replied the stickler of a man.

Captain Abs sighed. "Dr. Austin Universum, what did you find?"

Austin gave a scoff from what I can only assume is his 1.5 lightyear long ego. "Well, with the help of Maxine over here-"

"We found that the rocks themselves were actually all unique." I crossed my arms. I interrupted him partly to annoy him more, but also to show that I was not his assistant.

Austin licked his chapped lips and then typed in more commands into the computer. He was pulling up our findings. 

"We started cataloging each of the meteoroids we took samples of. Each of our samples had different variants in color, grain pattern, texture, and density. None of them were the same."

Captain Abs raised an eyebrow. "Is there a pattern?"

I leaned over the table. "Well, that's just it. The pattern is that there is no pattern. The only thing each of these meteoroids has in common is that they're all about the same size, but when you look at them closer, that's not even true. Some of them are taller and some are shorter, and thinner and wider."

Captain Abs crossed his arms. "What does this mean?"

"It means that these rocks weren't formed by the same thing or phenomena." Austin spoke quickly before I could reply. I swear, this guy would say phenomena in any aspect of his measly little life if he could.

Rob nodded. "That makes sense. I mean, the outside of these things are all different and when I entered the density ratios you gave me into the computer, they show that they're all different substances completely."

Amelia couldn't believe what we were saying. "Wait, how is that possible?"

"Well, the interesting part is that I found a match in the mineral structure in some of the meteoroids here to samples other missions had found across the galaxy. I can confirm they're from the same source phenomena."

Cline gave a look that made it seem like he was starting to get what we were saying. "So, all the rocks are different, and some are found on the other side of the galaxy, and here we have a giant wall made up of completely different things. How did they get here?"

Captain Abs finally took over the conversation, breaking his observational silence. "I don't think this was an accident. I think this is exactly what it looks like. Something made a wall."

Amelia, still skeptical, said, "But that's impossible. This has to be nature. There's nothing out here. Not to mention that if this is supposed to be a wall, space goes in all directions, what is it keeping out?"

The Captain nodded. "That's a good point, but for now, we have to keep going and research this formation more. This evidence suggests that this wall was constructed by something. Something put rocks from the other side of the galaxy here, and it's impossible for them to drift here that far on their own. Not to mention rocks don't just fuse together with no solar storm in sight."

We all looked at each other in awe.

Amelia clutched the edge of the table, still not believing all of what she was hearing. "So we're not alone?"

Captain Abs turned his back to us and paced toward the door. "Amelia, I think you should arm the ship and stand by for trouble."

We all swallowed and then we were all assigned new jobs by the Captain: Cline has to keep us flying to where we were going, Rob is supposed to make a program that can scan for any weird non-space signals around the ship, Amelia has to prep weapons, DJ has to ready the emergency pods, and then I get to work with the now grumpy Austin again to re-examine all of our samples for anything new.

My head is racing right now. This isn't what I signed up for.

God, I could use a pudding.