Words of Creation

"Which is really frustrating because no matter how much I carve, it still means nothing to me. I don't even have a theory." "I do, it's a map."

- Phil Coulson and Skye

The Words of Creation are a series of alien symbols that, once completed, reveal the blueprints of a city. They were found inside Todorov Building in Belarus, and later reproduced by John Garrett, Phil Coulson and other patients submitted to Project T.A.H.I.T.I. as a side effect of the GH.325 drug.

The Mystery Begins
"You need me to translate the Words of Creation."

- John Garrett

After Skye hijacked the eye implant signal, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Grant Ward completed Akela Amador's infiltration mission given her by HYDRA, using a set of glasses mimicking her eye implant. He found that the target of the infiltration mission inside the Todorov Building was the equation, that was being studied by two men.

After John Garrett was infused with GH.325, he started to display symptoms of insanity. Questioned by Grant Ward, Garrett told him that he was "alive" and "could do anything" while carving the equation on a glass piece inside the Bus with a nail.

Coulson's Symptoms
Agent Phil Coulson was given the Toolbox by Nick Fury, which led him to the S.H.I.E.L.D. secret facility, the Playground. Later that night, Coulson awakened and began writing the equation on one of the facility walls.

For a month, Coulson had Skye try to decrypt the symbols that Garrett had written. She looked into the Rising Tide for help to no avail.

When Isabelle Hartley grabbed the Obelisk, the symbols appeared on the artifact.

Melinda May began to worry about Coulson when, after eighteen days, he had not relieved his need to inscribe the symbols. She photographed his carvings as he wrote on a blackboard in his office in the Playground.

When Raina touched the Obelisk on the insistence of Skye's Father, the symbols appeared and glowed.

A fire took place, destroying Santa Maria de las Flores; the only artifact that remained untouched was a 500 year old painting. When the priest showed the painting to a bishop, he flipped it to its back and showed the symbols inscribed there. Gabriel Soto held a fundraiser to rebuild the church and Phil Coulson and Melinda May crashed the party to get the painting, not knowing that Sunil Bakshi, impersonating Glenn Talbot, had already taken the painting to his hotel room. Eventually, Coulson got the painting, but learned that the carvings were inscribed recently.

Skye saw the symbols scribbled on Coulson's desk. As she was researching the symbols, Lance Hunter told Skye to go to Grant Ward for consultation. When she did, he desperately hoped that she was not the one writing the Map. Ward told her that John Garrett did it more and more after he was infused with GH.325. This conversation made Skye realize that Coulson was writing the symbols.

When she confronted him on it, he told her that she may be an alien because she was not writing them. Their conversation was interrupted by a phone call from Raina. When they returned from dealing with her, Skye wanted full disclosure and Coulson gave it to her. He was upset that the Map were incomprehensible to him. She revealed that she believes the symbols are a map. Sebastian Derek went to a tattoo artist to have more symbols inked onto his body, to accompany the Map already there, as the pain helps him to remember.

Solving the Mystery
"It wants us to know; I can feel it." "Then, "IT" should tell us, because I have been trying to match the writing to constellation maps, navigational charts, genome diagrams, and if it is a map, it is a map to nowhere."

- Phil Coulson and Skye

When the body of Janice Robbins was discovered with the symbols carved into it, Phil Coulson was telling Skye that the meaning of the symbols must be solved because he no longer sleeps due to the unstoppable inclination to write them every day. Ultimately, Coulson used the Theta Brain-Wave Frequency Machine to learn that Robbins was one of six other patients in Project T.A.H.I.T.I. who were administered GH.325 under his authority. All of these patients wrote the symbols even after having their memories erased by the Memory Overwriting Machine and starting new lives. There were only two other patients still alive.

This led Coulson to Hank Thompson, who, instead of carving the symbols, made three-dimensional erections of them in his model train track set. During his confrontation at Thompson's home with Sebastian Derek, another Project T.A.H.I.T.I. patient and the killer of Robbins and the others, Coulson saw the track set and released what the symbols meant.

Alien City Blueprints
"It's not so much a map, as a blueprint. It's a city."

- Phil Coulson

Writers
The following is a list of people using the symbols of the Alien City Blueprints.
 * Janice Robbins
 * Lewis Seaver
 * Hank Thompson
 * Unnamed S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent
 * Unnamed S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent
 * Sebastian Derek
 * Phil Coulson
 * John Garrett

Appearances

 * Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
 * Season One
 * Eye-Spy
 * The Magical Place
 * T.A.H.I.T.I.
 * Beginning of the End
 * Season Two
 * Shadows
 * Heavy is the Head
 * Face My Enemy
 * A Hen in the Wolf House
 * A Fractured House
 * The Writing on the Wall

Trivia

 * Next to the blueprints seen in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode Eye-Spy, there are also pieces of Skrull language. In the comics, the Skrulls are a shape-shifting race from the Andromeda Galaxy.
 * The "miracle painting" with the Words of Creation inscribed on its back that "survived" the fire of the Santa Maria de las Flores church is called Virgin & Child by the Italian Baroque painter.