Document 6: Cold Case

VIDEO BEGINS TRANSCRIBING — — —

“Alright, Jujubees, welcome back.”

In this video, the camera frames a different angle of the lodge's main room. One arm of the box throne is just in shot on the right, and the back wall with the fireplace and trophy animals is completely out of frame. In full view is a side wall of the lodge, where a huge chalkboard reaches almost to the slanted ceiling and dominates the scene. A box sits below the chalkboard a clear contanier of colored chalk and an eraser sitting on top of it.

Judy has changed her look, her hair is pulled back into a high, neat ponytail, and she wears a well-fitted maroon pantsuit. Her attire is back to what she usually wears for videos—far more professional than earlier. From her expression, it's obvious she means business.

“I’ve decided the best way of approaching my grandma’s last request is treating it like any other cold case. We’ve cracked enough of those on the channel.” She flashes a confident smile,“I’ll go over what that means for the new viewers, though, if you’ve been here for a while, stick around and listen. I’ve changed a few things, because unlike most of the cases we’ve done, this one is personal.”

Judy glares into the camera, as if daring her subscribers to disagree. “To be clear, I will be seeing this case all the way to the end, whether you guys watch or not. I know this is nothing close to what I usually do, and I'm probably going to need more help than ever to get to the bottom of it. So, I'd really appreciate it if all of the community members who can continue helping out. I understand if many of you would rather not. To make up for that, I made some calls to old channel friends to keep things interesting and fill in some gaps”

Judy puts a hand up, as if she could stall comments from the audience, “I know you guys prefer when I try to make it as far as I can into the case on my own. But cut me some slack here, and I think you’ll enjoy watching the team I've put together. First on the scene to help out is Fumushu.”

She gestures to the chalkboard next to her. “Would you like to say hello, Fumu?”

At Judy’s gesture, the chalkboard animates, appearing to draw a picture on its own with cleverly edited scribbles of chalk. A cute chibi anime girl with messy hair and a bun takes shape on the board with an enthusiastic “Hello!” written in a speech bubble above her head.

Judy explains, “Fumushu has helped the channel out before, mostly drawing animations for a few of my harder to explain cases. With how insane this project is turning out, I thought I would need some visual aids to help you understand what's going on. Not to mention, Fumu's general expertise in art, which has already proved invaluable. We’ll get to that.”

There is another quick chalk scribble sound effect and the animated chibi pumps her fist, her speech bubble changing to, “Excited and here to help!”

“We're excited to have you back, Fumu.”

“The next person who came to help out is Timothy, my editing wizard, apparently he lives in Colorado. When he saw my last video, he offered to come over in person to help sort through my grandmas junk. I know he’s not technically new to the team, but he was here when I needed him so Tim deserves a shout-out anyway”

Judy pauses, giving Tim the time to introduce himself.

A light blue holographic square scans into existence in the corner of the screen, labeled editor's box. Inside the box, in the same holographic style, a figure shrouded in a deep robe nods to the audience. The caption ‘Hello there’ scrolls across the bottom of the screen before the editor's box scans off the video in the same way it arrived.

Judy nods at someone behind the camera, likely Tim, letting her know she’d waited long enough for the edit.

“I did call one other person, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet. So I’ll keep who they are a secret, I will give a hint though. It's someone you’ve been begging me to get back on the channel.”

Fumu animates again as Judy finishes the introductions, her chibi character appearing in the corner of the chalkboard. She's smaller, wearing glasses, and holding a ruler, her speech bubble says, “Now that everyone has met the team, let's get started already!”

Judy smiles at Fumushu on the chalkboard, “In a moment, first let’s get the new viewers caught up.”

She launches into a well practiced introduction. “We are going to be treating this like a real cold case, so we'll start by looking for inconsistencies and insufficient evidence in records of the initial investigation. These areas are where it was most likely something slipped through the cracks—our best chance of finding a new lead when the trail’s gone cold.”

Judy reaches off-screen and grabs a legal notepad. “I’ve got a few things written down already, let's list them off.”

Next to her, Fumushu taps on the chalkboard with the ruler, a bullet point appearing with each tap.

Inconsistencies The assumption of magic. To accept this story as true, we must assume that magic is real and somehow fully unrecorded in the modern era. I’ve solved a lot of ‘unsolvable’ cold cases, but surely someone else has recorded the existence of ‘magic’ before me. Where is that record? Grandma’s Initial letter says all of her diaries are in the Golden Box. We found it, but there is only one diary. Was she incorrect, or is the ‘Golden box’ something else? Almost all documents discovered so far were written in English with Arabic numerals. Even if they were translated to English at a later date, we have found no indication of any awkward translation errors or any mention of original documents. This is exceedingly unlikely. There are no dates on any official documents, this culture was supposedly as advanced our modern world technologically, and had access to magic that bent the rules of the universe, but no documents are dated? Suspicious. I am unsure about the amount of stuff, if we believe the account that Mrs. Trinaday traveled there with nothing but the clothes on her back. How did she bring so many items back? ---added in post by editor Tim

“That accounts for the inconsistencies the team has found so far. If any Jujubee finds something we missed, get on the discord or comment and let us know.”

Judy frowns and flips the page of the legal pad. “Now, I really wish I could end it here and go right to investigating. But we also have to account for points of insufficient evidence—as galling as that is for this case in particular. There are unexplainable items in the lodge that support Grandma’s story. As well as numerous problems that magic inherently complicates, I mean, until we know more about what magic is, it’s impossible to tell what impossible even means. For us, that means until mysteries and magic are disproven, they stand in support of Grandma’s fantasy.”

On the chalkboard, Fumushu’s chibi appears next to Judy with a pouty expression and a text bubble reading, “Hey! Don’t be like that Juju. I believe your grandma!”

Judy looks back at the board in disbelief, “Seriously, Fumu? This is insane, full stop. What in the world could possibly prove magic?”

Fumushu’s chalky chibi remains static as her text bubble fills then erases with each sentence, “I’ve been right here looking at the same stuff you have Juju. From an artist's perspective, some of this just can’t be explained.”

Her chibi is erased then redrawn in a clear part of the board with a serious expression, “Look, here are some pictures of the wall trophies,”

Her chalk ruler ‘taps’ the board and, with each tap, a picture of one of the mounted hunting trophy heads is edited in.

“All these pictures are key points on just one out of the dozen or so trophies, stuffed and mounted in the lodge. There’s one in specific that is fascinating. The plaque calls it ‘The Basilisk’s Head’ I’ve put a quarter in the picture for scale. Look at that, the coin is the same size as one of its eyes! If this animal is real, the snake was proportionally bigger than any snake ever recorded on Earth! Estimates of its neck puts it at nearly two feet in diameter, two times bigger than an anaconda. If the muscle in its jaw scales proportionally, this beautiful boy’s bite could go through a small steel I-beam”

She taps on the picture, ‘drawing’ a measurement on the jaw, then jumps, a hissing noise edited in. The chibi’s face morphs to one of panic, and she runs away from the picture; face-first into the frame of another other picture behind her. The little chibi plops down to the ground, her eyes spirals, glasses knocked onto the floor, and a big cartoon bump on her head. Soon enough, though, she shakes if off and stands back up, her face returning to seriousness as she resumes the lecture.

“By everything, I can evaluate, the thing is real. Taxidermy is really hard to fake convincingly. I have no idea how you’d even begin to get the scales looking like this…. Keep in mind, it's not just this snake, there are a dozen other insanely well-done taxidermy animals mounted on the walls here. Faking any one of these, would take an absolute master at specifically faux taxidermy, and it would cost a fortune!”

Her eyes turn into little dollar signs, “I’ve asked some sculptors I know, they say just one would take six months to a year to make, and cost at least a hundred-thousand USD. Some said that if the artist was famous enough, that goes up to several million! Again, there are like twelve of these!”

Fumushu finishes ‘speaking’, erases herself, then draws back in next to Judy with a smug expression, “So what do you think about that!?”

Judy just sighs, “We’ll add it to the list. Tim, if you could, pop the mysteries list up on the board behind me.” she then turns to face the camera, “While you guys take a look through that, let me take a moment to talk about this video’s sponsor…”

As she speaks, a list appears on the chalkboard next to the previous one. Projected line by line as a hologram before fading away to regular chalk.

Mysteries The large page (Yellow tote) as well as a few other documents (Cardboard #55) are written in an unrecognizable language, and mostly untranslated. Why are these different from the rest? What do they say? We can confirm they aren't any recorded language. Do any conlang communities recognize the text? Is it translatable? Why haven’t they been translated? What is the device in the yellow box for? Who made it? It has a maker's mark (pictured), but an internet search shows no results. Internet searches for Grandma’s full name are weird. They confirm her missing/ presumed dead through her 20s. Then there are a few small articles of her being alive, and a few mentions of some crazy nonprofit she founded for interdimensional travelers. After that? Radio silence till her death. If this is a hoax, it seems to have cost her a crazy amount of money and been planned long before Judy was born. The art on display here is insane, there are a few oil paintings seemingly made with no tools. No brush strokes or other indication of how it was applied, like a printed picture but using paint instead of ink. None of my art friends have any idea how you’d even start to make something like that. --- Added by Fumushu The taxidermy is also seriously cool. If these aren't real animals, whoever made them has to be one of the greatest sculptors of our time. Bad taxidermy isn't too hard but making something that looks this real? No way! I need to get a real expert to look at these.--- Added by Fumushu The lodge itself is odd, I’m not sure where we get power from. There was a blackout in this area of Manitou recently, a landslide taking out some power poles. We never noticed, and the lodge never lost power. ---Added in post by editor Tim

“... Now back to the video, if you still need to read the list I’ll give you some time here to pause,”

Judy walks out of the camera frame, leaving the chalkboard alone and quiet. Filled only with circles of chalk dust from all of Fumushu’s redrawing, and the two lists.

Still off-screen, we can hear Judy grunt as she picks something up,“ Now that we’ve properly set up the case, it's time to dig deeper.”

As she speaks, she walks back into frame, her steps an awkward waddle. She’s straining, cradling a large, shiny cube in her arms.

“I’ve got some good news on that front, Jujubes, we’ve found one answer to one of our contradictions already. We were right, the yellow box was not the golden box.”

She sets the golden cube on the box just under the chalkboard.

“This is.”

As she sets the box down, Fumushu’s chibi is scribbled out onto the chalkboard as if sitting on top of it, a question mark in a thought bubble over her head.

Judy stretches out her arms to get some blood flow back now that they are free from the weight of the box.

“Unfortunately, it contains no answers, just more questions." The cube thumps dully as she raps a knuckle against it, "The biggest one? How does a fully solid, gold-plated cube have twenty years worth of Grandma's journals inside of it?”

END TRANSCRIPTION — — —