version x6
BENEATH THE DESK LAMP
I pore over this printout. Been in store half a decade now. It's true we all want this very much. But it's defeating...
TASKED
The time is 3:30 am. I'm alone in the silence. Sometimes 
I hear a subway train pass in one of the tunnels below this archive. This is a folder of photographs, taken at the site. The project leader keeps driving us, giving us pep talks. But it's pointless. We haven't made progress in months. Perhaps it's time to admit defeat.
FUTILITY FELT
What have we got to go on? This is a needle in a haystack situation. We'll never understand what this means. The whole civilization was wiped out, no cross-references of similar names with any surviving language that we know of. Derek is convinced that these two glyphs here are the center of it all. Two syllables. The contorted brush strokes stare at me. What is the meaning you front for? Who do you represent? Talk, goddammit!
UNBOXED
I've never told anyone, they'd think me crazy... but the Bendezian alphabet has something that looks a lot like this one. But be real! Two cultures a thousand arid miles apart. But if you invert the crosshash orientation to allow for the directionality... uncanny. Found in words like Hein-pare, Rat-pare, for example... and if the other glyph, with some imagination, were B7, we'd get... Oh, enough - you're just a fantasist. What's this noise? I must have left the water running.