Amirhan desert mission, day 332
We were planning on going to the Floating Rocks today, after our failed journey yesterday. However, we figured out fast we would not be going anywhere today. The temperature had risen just above zero, and stayed there for the entire day. The snow, not having reacted to heat as snow is supposed to react to heat when we first took some of it inside, had instead of melting become a kind of sticky goo. I'm not even sure how to describe it, since it's not in any of the normal phases of matter (no longer solid exactly, but definitely not liquid either), or in any of the few abnormal phases I've heard of. It looks exactly the same as yesterday, though, and we only noticed the change when Ismen went outside and got his boot stuck in the not-anymore-snow. We still did not get the boot off, so it is still outside, stuck.
Since we had a perfect excuse to not go do new measurements, we decided to spend the day trying to make sense of the data we already have from the last few days. I accidentally spent a few hours just scanning through the data before hunger broke my concentration and I realised actually making the computer analyse the data and interpreting the results would be a lot better use of the time in my hands. I would not get much out of scanning through columns and rows of numbers just with my head. So I left the computer running through the pictures from the desert badger's nest while we had lunch. The computer agrees with me. Between our first and second visits to the nest, there had definitely been some activity around the nest. We should go back there once we can leave the hub without getting stuck in the not-anymore-snow (I honestly don't know what else to call it) and try to find more badgers in the nest with the camera rover.
I also had finally time to get to the data from Floating Rocks. I first tried to simply get a sense of the data, like you do with new data. You draw graphs, calculate some basic numbers for the data. Already from them I could tell something was off. the graphs looked slightly wrong, the numbers the computer gave me didn't seem right. Only I could not tell how the graphs and numbers were off. I spent the rest of the day running the data through all kinds of programs and analyses, but in the end I had nothing more than I had started with: something was off, and I could not tell what it was. Everything looked normal. I checked our numbers from before, and the new numbers were not out of normal range. But there was something in them that was off. Maybe what is off is the complete picture. All the numbers are normal as individual numbers, but as a whole they are somehow wrong. I do not know. I have not yet found what it is. But I am sure there is something there. There has to be. Maybe all that is happening is me losing my mind.
Enembe and Ndali are still not back. Not that they could have gotten here through the not-anymore-snow outside, even if they were planning on coming today. Ismen said he had another memory-dream last night, from the world where Enembe and Ndali are and where there is no snow. But he said now, that they definitely remembered the snow, that they had left to buy a new power cord and some supplies, and the snow had disappeared over night, and no one in the village had known what they were talking about when they had explained about the snow. Neither did Ismen. In this version of his memories, he had no idea what the snow was they were talking about. They thought there were some kind of parallel time lines, one where the snow came, and one where it didn't, and somehow they had jumped from the snow time line to the non-snow time line while they were in the village. They seem to think I'm stuck here, in the snow-world time line, while there is no one else here. Except Ismen, who seems to somehow be in both, and who doesn't, in the other time line, remember being also here, like he here does. I told him we needed to communicate with Ndali and Enembe through him, but he said he did not think that could be done. It seemed he didn't remember any of this there, and the him here only got the newest memories from there non-snowy world during the nights, when he is asleep.
My scientific mind is almost giving up trying to understand. Amirhan was weird as it was when we came here. I do not need alternate time lines with memories mixing and different people and different events. But then, my curious mind is not quite ready to simply give in and decide this is not something that can be understood. I am getting a head ache only writing about this. I need to sleep on this.
I am truly beginning to hate Amirhan, no matter how fascinating it may be.
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The topic for tomorrow is Dark.
~matu
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