Transcript

Panel 1

Kas sits in his front-facing office: a large desk dominates with a tablet-style computer and mounted screen. Between two windows he has a hanging canvas of a watery dragon. Kas uploads his photos, multiple windows up, showing his current research. On the desk the Dictaphone plays through headphones.

McCallun (from headphones): The more I look into the disks, the more I doubt this hoax hypothesis… They were at the house last night… who ever they are. Marx scared them off, he’s an old boy now maybe, but his bark is still there…

Panel 2

Kas has stacked the disks like a totem atop notes that show many of the unusual symbols.

McCallun (from headphones): Still, the end pieces show a clear <Coughs interrupt> code, the repetition of symbols on each disk imply a meaning, the pictographs are unusual but share an iconography with themselves.

Panel 3

Light comes through the curtained windows, Kas still sits hunched over his desk with coffee cups spread about.

McCallun (from headphones): Remarkably, we see a similar symbol in Asian neolithic Jiangzhai pottery… could there be a link? Certainly the patterns on the box or disks don’t match art or intaglios brought to Cyprus by Thothmes III in the same era or any local Babylonian relics. And the symbols on the end pieces, they’re more simple… <Coughs interrupt> but unique, no repetition on the other tiles which gives me the impres- <Tape clicks off, indicating it is finished>

Panel 4

Looking tired, Kas eats with one hand while changing tapes again, a table full of notes.

Panel 5

Kas, eyes wide, listens as the new tape starts with distortion obscuring his voice.

McCallun (from headphones): <Coughs interrupt> Marx is… gone. I don’t even… shit… I don’t even know when the last tape ran out. Something was downstairs. I don’t know how it got in but… <Coughs interrupt> I’m going to find a hotel, somewhere out of town. I ha- <Coughs interrupt> I have the disks.

Panel 6

Kas, still in shock, doesn’t notice as the food slips off his fork as he listens.

McCallun (from headphones): Whatever it was… It didn’t move right…

<sound of a car blinker comes through in the pause>

It didn’t move right at all… I spooked it with the flashlight, gods help me…

Panel 7

Kas heads out of office, some of the evidence put back into his satchel bag.