William Stevens
Chief Scientist
Classified Document No. 021797-10X-L11
Over the past six months, a research team consisting of our best linguistics and decoding experts have painstakingly analyzed the available data from the Ancient Arrow site looking for patterns that would enable us to construct our translation indexes for the WingMakers' language, or pictography.
Their wall paintings are clearly designed to convey a set of messages, and we know believe that their purpose may be to facilitate the unlocking of the optical disc, particularly since there appears to be no technological solution. Hence our efforts have been to try and construct a translation index so we can make some sense of the symbols and stories that are encoded within the paintings themselves.
We also believe that the order of the paintings may have significance, so we are carefully reconstructing what we believe to be the original ordering of the 23 chambers. If the sequence is an important factor, and we believe it is, then we need to carefully assess the order in which these chambers were originally created. Presently, we have eight possible sequence scenarios for their creation, and we are working to narrow that to two or three if possible.
The factors and relevant variables in our analysis are the following (in no particular order of importance):
- The wall painting's apparent story
- The wall painting's symbols
- The wall painting's colors and relative shapes
- The wall painting's star patterns
- The wall painting's geographical landmarks
- The wall painting's subject matter
- The wall painting's relative size
- The wall painting's relative order in the 23 chambers
- The wall painting's position on the chamber wall
- The wall painting's relative distance from each other
- The possible relationship between the wall painting and the artifacts in the chamber
- The possible relationship between the symbols within a particular wall painting and the pictographs and petroglyphs painted or carved around the Ancient Arrow site.
Each of these factors is being weighted for their relative importance and impact in the design of our translation indexes. One thing that seems quite certain is that nothing has been constructed arbitrarily in the AA site. All the chambers, wall paintings, artifacts, pictographs, etc. seem to be designed as part of a master plan, and we're operating under the assumption that this master plan is a time capsule or communication bridge of some sort.
We are three months into the development of our translation indexes, and our programming is proceeding smoothly. Our only glitch arises from the number of variables, which places our odds statistically speaking at about 1 in 6.5 million. As you know, these aren't good odds, even with our WSX technology. But the weighting of the translation indexes will at least enable a priority ordering which will provide the focus we have, to date, lacked.
From my past memo, you'll remember that most of our efforts these past six months were directed at the restoration of the site to its original condition. After a thorough cleaning, the wall paintings are remarkable for their brilliant color and detail, probably due to the arid environment and the fact that the paint materials themselves are chemical compounds our scientists have never seen. Presumably, these paints have superior, molecular bonding properties. We assume they're a derivative technology from the WingMakers.
Now that site restoration is complete, our efforts are 100% focused on developing the translation software. We expect to be finished in approximately 45-60 days. Once the software is ready, we'll begin the process of elimination and priority weighting for the translation indexes. With a little luck, we'll be ready to test our first programs in early May. We're optimistic that our tests will prove successful in unlocking the optical disc.
One note of caution, however, if we are successful in unlocking the disc and acquiring its contents, we should not assume that our translation indexes will be effective inside the disc. It is our hypothesis, that the translation indexes to acquire the content will be different from the indexes required to read the content. Obviously, this is speculation at this time, but I want to manage your expectations a little bit; this could be a long decoding process.
For whatever reason, the WingMakers have encoded all of their communication and set-up technology barriers that make it virtually impregnable. I can't imagine what more we could do to acquire the content from the disc, but as always, if any of you have suggestions, please forward them to me.
