Spiders In The Web

There are spiders in the web of worlds...

The message "There are spiders in the web of worlds" was one of the first things translated from Linear-A in 2019, after an alternate world had been found where the language had been understood for decades, and its libraries and academic journals copied or "borrowed". The meaning of the tablet is unclear and hotly debated.

Discovery

Prior to translation, the tablet had ended up in BREACH labs because, when it was found in 2016, it was alongside tools made of anachronistically advanced alloys and shattered skeletal fragments. This led to a fuller investigation, including a DNA analysis of the bones, which contained genetic markers showing it belonged to a previously unknown form of humanity.

The DNA alone might have been of interest only to those exploring human evolution, which had already accepted Neanderthal and Denisovan branches intertwined with Cro-Magnon, except for the tools found alongside the skeleton, which seemed to be typical of the era but which were clearly made of stronger, lighter materials deliberately disguised to look more primitive. Likewise, there had been thousands of DNA samples recovered from Crete and surrounding islands, and hundreds of thousands of living descendants of that ancient civilization, and these genetic markers were in none of them.

There was growing speculation that sometime, thousands of years ago, others had deliberately wandered the multiverse, but there had been little to offer support for this, as opposed to the more accepted view that breach events occurred occasionally in the past and were responsible for many, though hardly all, "unexplained phenomenon". This discovery -- not merely the skeleton, but the tools so obviously designed to avoid notice in the local community -- tilted the debate firmly to the "other explorers" conclusion, and attempts to argue the alternative strained credulity.

The discovery of pocket universes such as Hedgemaze or Hungry Pyramids made it almost impossible to deny there were, or had been, someone out there before. Theories that such places could occur naturally were baroque and violated Occam's Razor, though some still clung to them.

The Fragment

The small tablet was all that remained of what was probably a larger work; fragments of dried clay from the same "document", little more than dust or pebbles, were recovered from the chamber. Only this phrase, devoid of context, was intact. Debate remains on the meaning; it could be anything from the most literal statement, perhaps part of a report on local wildlife, to a coded message to a fellow dimensional traveler to part of a poem.

The person in the chamber has been named "Jameson" by BREACH scientists.

Spiders In The Web