Magic and technology [ OPEN ]

[prorenataa]

Who: Ingress nerds, coffee gods and OMG please help [ OPEN! ]
When: ICly this lasts across multiple days in the beginning of November
Where: The Ingress Room and Section U but also where ever your mingle takes you.
What: Trying to unwrap the puzzle of the Ingress and Ploitoas
Warnings: Language probably. If a thread requires a warning please place it on the comment line!

NOTES: This is a multi-part log for This Ingress Journal Plot. Since most folks were up for threading interactions! You DO NOT need to have signed up to participate in the first part of the log. Anything from noodling on the journals to blowing spitballs at the nerds.

For reference here is the IC announcement about this plot. Again you DO NOT have to have responded to them to come around and investigate what's going on.



OOC: This log is going to be split into three sections with a fourth spot for results to be posted as the characters work things through.

If at any time you have questions please do not hesitate to hit the OOC Post, PM prorenataa and nudge me on plurk at
Laekhund. My plurk is set up to accept p!Plurks from any users.

Some details:

1) ICly this log will cover just the beginning of November.
2) The mods have a plot kicking off on the 15th of November. Elements of this player plot lead into that plot.
3) These are the key IC events that lead up to this.

• This event introduced the Ingress Journals
  
• This IC call for help set off searches for one of the missing journal, leading to the discovery of the second.
  
• This is what one journal looks like and This is the other.

Go for it guys!

Comments

Part 1 - Ingress Journal Work [ OPEN ]

[prorenataa]

Located deep within the ship, the Ingress is the Moira’s stationary portal system. There is a wall of highly-advanced computer systems running along the length of the room that give no clear indication as to what they are for. The Ingress room is now temporarily unlocked.



Welcome to your home away from home for a few days. Some of you may be here because Tony Stark the shorter is a firm task master who runs your department. Some may be here out of curiosity or a genuine desire to help. Some may be here to blow spitballs at all the nerds.

Who knows what has brought you buy or for how long. There is plenty to do, though a lot of it appears to center around puzzling over at least two leather bound journals. Some people may be off in a corner trying to sort out the strange symbols and weird words on their own, perhaps they look like they need coffee.

Hint: Everybody in this room needs coffee.

Others might be discussing various translation methodology. No one method appears to work but maybe the key to success lies in a little bit of this and a little bit of that? Perhaps magic keys with a side of technologically advanced multi-verse language software, can accomplish together what one can't do alone?

Stare at the journals long enough on your own and it all seems to blur together with no hope of unwinding what it means. Maybe a new perception, in coordination with an experienced view, will help unlock a pattern that could help to build a code break?

Tired of all the noodling going on in that room? Need some fresh air, so to speak. Maybe you're taking a break in the Observation deck or down in the Mess Hall. Hey, some people have their best ideas while in the shower; we're not judging.

[OOC: We would love to tie the ultimate resolution back to IC threads done by you guys. If you end up running with an idea, please give us a nudge so we can look at incorporating it into the final results.

To give you a time frame, we're looking to post the results to all this work by Wednesday November 9th. So threads do NOT have to be finished, but just well enough along to give us an idea of what's happening. ]

OPEN TO ALL

[nightmarist]

[About a day and a half after work on the journals commences, Ronan walks into the makeshift research room and tosses a highly strange object onto the most populated table. Engineers and similar nerds might recognize it as a sort of puzzle box combined with a cipher key. By turning its various pieces and dials, one can translate the journals' runes into corresponding words in English, Greek, and several other mysterious languages. Needless to say, it's a convoluted thing that makes little logical sense, but it will work for anyone clever enough to sort out the complicated interface.

Ronan, for his part, doesn't intend to explain it. Partially because he can't, and partially because he's in a lot of pain and wants to do as little talking as possible. He looks like he's been mauled by a bear, bruising and scabbed gashes all down his face and arms. As soon as he's delivered the puzzle box, he turns away with the intention of leaving the others to it.]

Re: OPEN TO ALL

[forgeabettertomorrow]

[Darin, who's been doing his best to recreate the journals in the event something should happen to the originals jumps at the object, glancing up at Ronan.]

Holy--what the hell is thi--...

Whoa...! Are you alright??

[Darin's up and getting a seat for the man bearing unexpected gifts.]

[deconstruct]

[ there's nothing on this ship that should've caused that kind of damage to ronan, unless he either A, got into a fight with another crew member, B, went to scrap with fucking Ploiatos which should've killed him rather than just wound him, or C, found something new hiding somewhere. so, one of those three things was holding onto this cipher, and ronan was conveniently the only one aware of it, and that's all cause for concern, and kicking more answers out of whatever had it with them.

while the others are looking over it, andyr moves away from the table (he isn't smart enough for that kind of crap, let them figure it out), and follows ronan out into the hall, speaking up once they're out of ear shot of the others. ]

The fuck did you fight for it?

[voicelog]

[So, bruised up kid walks in and tosses a strange object on the work desk. Tony doesn’t know which he’s more interested in checking out. Let’s split it down the middle and make it 50/50. He needs an excuse to stop scanning these journals anyway.]

What happened to you? [He makes a casual gesture at his face before he examines the puzzle box on the table. Huh. He’s just going to assume it’s a personal contribution to help alleviate the headache that are these runes. Don’t mind if he picks it up.]

OPEN TO ALL

[forgeabettertomorrow]

[Ever since these journals were brought to Darin's attention, a number of worried floated into his mind.]

[Most prominent of which is, are these the only copies floating around? Are there more? And do we want to take the chance of something happening to these?]

[Sensing a chance to actually learn something about the Ingress, being a newbie and all, Darin' taken it upon himself to physically recreate each journal in a set of notebooks. He's going page by page, doing his best to copy every note, every symbol, every annotation. It's slow work, and he's been at it for a day or so without sleep. But the end result is coming along well. What he has copied so far is practically identical.]

[He has a third notebook at the ready, jotting down random notes of symbols that appear frequently, and if there is any context to be found.]

This is crazy...who knew I'd be doing something like this when I randomly wound up in space...

[newnova]

[ Sam is late (as usual). For a guy who can cross a galaxy in a second, he's not very punctual. But he heard they needed a translator, so he volunteered to help. ]

Hey, is this where people are working on the journals and stuff?

Liquid Snake | ota

[saveyourserpent]

Liquid's never exactly been the academic type.

Oh sure, he's always liked learning, in a way... his way. He's, well, technically a genius, after all. But he's never been to an actual school, and being forced to take classes on Mother Base as a kid mostly led to not paying attention. So his knowledge base is a little screwy, and Do Not ask him about genetics.

But when it comes to languages, it's an area in which he's always excelled. And now he gets another chance to utilize those skills... somehow. He volunteered, not entirely sure what he was in for. Really, he's not so sure he belongs. But he speaks seven languages fluently, has been working on a few others, and hey. Maybe he can find some patterns.

At least he's not a space vampire anymore... but that means the smoke powers he's been working on harnessing are back with a vengeance. Occasionally while working, he'll just, well, pretty much poof out of existence (more accurately, turning into a cloud of smoke), and much swearing can be heard while he tries to bring himself back.

He'll try not to be too much of a disruption.

When he's not working on dealing with his still-new disruptive powers, he might be staring at notes, trying to figure out patterns and the like.

"I feel like there's a correlation here, but hell if I know what it means."

[a_shadow]

Tex has been recruited to the project to make use of her AI abilities, seeing as how she can process information and pick out patterns more quickly than the human participants. Her attention is drawn when Liquid speaks up, and she looks over at him.

"I might be able to help," she offers. "What did you find?"

[L | OTA | here & Tower]

[ryuuzaki]

When the current owner of the third journal initially showed up to work on all three of them, he did several things. The first was to capture detailed images of the journal he hasn't had any access to up to this point. The second was to present a number of things he'd already determined from the ones he had had access to for a while -- some things, but without a key, not enough. General facility with cryptography and languages is one thing, but without knowledge of the original language, or some kind of automatic machine-assisted translation, there's only so much he can do. And really, any monkey could have figured out which of these symbols means "Ingress" within five minutes of opening any of the books. It's the rest of it that presents some difficulty.

So he can be found in his chair in The Tower during the day, a series of tablet computers on his knees: one displays magnified images of the journal pages and another is for his conclusions about them, and he taps away at them both when he is and isn't working on other things. While he's away from the Ingress Room, he has a tendency to fire off MID messages to anyone else involved in the attempted translation, explaining which specific pages he's working on, occasionally asking what others are doing. Sometimes he calls Shepard over: "Take a look at this."

In the evenings, he returns to the Ingress Room for a while. A few moments are spent with Ronan's key now and then... it's an interesting object in and of itself, and while he's skeptical of it at first, the results of using it do seem to make a certain kind of sense. However, between his own good memory and a series of captured images, he doesn't need to lay hands on it often. When he does, after the first few times, it's relatively fast. Writing some kind of program to automate this might be feasible, but also, in his estimation, probably a waste of time.

What he does seem to need to do is drink endless amounts of coffee, rather sweeter than most people would probably prefer. The first day, he has a slice of leftover chocolate cake with him, but not after that. Sometimes he disappears for a few hours in the late evening and then returns for a few more hours very late at night... he can't be sleeping more than four hours at a time... and one night, he works through the night, works in Tower all day, then comes back and works in the Ingress Room for several more hours.

Another day, he falls asleep briefly at the table. (Does someone wake him up?)

Other than that, when it comes to this project, he's a workhorse: focused and productive, occasionally willing to converse on the subjects at hand. Sometimes he ducks in over someone's shoulder and offers some minor correction, something like, "No, I think that one suggests transformation, not destruction per se," or "I'm not sure energy is strictly the correct reading there... look, it's slightly smudged. It might be alloy... I'd try both contexts." Sometimes he asks to see someone else's work so he can see if there's anything missing in his own, but this is somewhat rarer, and there are never any compelling results. Whether or not all of this strikes anyone as arrogant is immaterial; on the whole, he seems to proceed without much ego, only a desire to see the work completed and completed well.

Once in a very great while, while he works, he's caught with a very strange expression on his face, doubting and ambivalent, as he thinks, This is interesting... but are the desired results also my desired results? The task itself has his attention, but what would he do if the Ingress were fixed in a week? What will he do at the Midway Hub? Something that had seemed so impossible for so long may now be within reach... at the worst possible time.

[a_shadow]

It's no secret to her that he's become obsessed with this project, and it's not hard for her to understand why now that she knows about his profession. This must be just the sort of thing he feels he has the talent and ability to solve if he expends enough of his brain power on it. She doesn't like the fact that he has become less and less likely to stay in his room for the whole night—at first he's getting up early, but eventually he's not even bothering to go to bed at night. She's a bit resistant to coming and helping just because she's annoyed about the way the project is consuming him, but he convinces her that her AI abilities would be an asset to the translation effort, and so she has started spending part of her day working on it as well.

On this particular day, she arrives in the Ingress room in the late afternoon after spending the morning in the classroom and the earlier part of the afternoon working on the dry firing system. Daniel's asleep on the table. She shakes her head, a bit exasperated and bit fond. Figures. She approaches and sets her hands on his shoulders and begins to rub them.

ota

[arcreact]

[ Tony can be found in the Ingress room for pretty much the entire duration of the decoding process. Food and sleep never factor in unless excessively bullied, but this never seems to slow him down, either - almost like he's accustomed to work stints just like this.

He'll be spotted doing several things.

i. Sometimes he's sprawled cross-legged on the floor surrounded by laptops and notes, which he won't hesitate to pass along if someone asks. Sometimes he's dictating things to one of the computers, which, for people unfamiliar with JARVIS, might make him sound like a crazy person talking to himself. Other times he's actually hand writing on the mess of papers he's been working off of. If someone wanders by who happens to be clever and useful, he'll make a sharp "have a seat" gesture at them. Join the nerd circle.

ii. After several uninterrupted hours of that, he'll peel himself off the floor and stick his nose into whatever other groups of people are doing, asking questions or interjecting (unrequested, but you're welcome) insights. Remarkably, despite his reputation, he makes no attempts to micromanage. Letting everyone go HAM on the materials they have seems like the best way to actually make some progress here.

iii. And then, of course, there's the semi-hourly: ]

Who's got the coffee?

[ The most important question of all. ]

iii

[a_shadow]

[ Somehow Tex has gotten roped into helping with the translation effort, which seems to interest her less than some of the others who have gotten involved. But with Ryuuzaki spending so much time on this, she begins to realize there's no getting around the fact that things aren't getting back to normal until this problem has been solved. With her AI abilities, she's able to pick out patterns faster than the humans who are working on this. She pores over the images of the journal pages, making notes on one of the education department's data pads, and gets up periodically to restart the coffee machine. She doesn't really know why no one else seems to be able to run the damn thing. It's not that hard. But people are sucking down coffee like it's life-giving water, so someone needs to pay attention to keeping it full.

When Tony pipes up with that question, again, Tex lets out a little snort. ]

Who broke your legs? You know I've been the one who's refilled the machine the last three times it's been run?

[otiosity]

[Something cold hits the back of his neck. Whatever could it be? Hawke is sitting behind him innocently sniffling and deeply examining some kind of circuit board that she probably is completely clueless about.

She's working!

Also this keeps happening.]

iii

[seeingscarlet]

[Wanda is not a coffee fiend, but since she can restart the machine without moving, she'll do it if she notices the pot's been emptied. She'll even levitate it over for Tony to help himself, mostly because it should keep him quiet. She can only just tolerate him when he's not complaining.

Of course, he could have just stood up to get it himself, so when Tony's back is turned she takes the liberty of just slightly rearranging his things.

She is the helpingest of helpers, clearly.]

iii

[deconstruct]

[ andyr's come to recognize the pattern of coffee hailing shouts from tony, and started setting up the machine to be finished by the next and the next. he may not like the man much, but he seems to be making good headway on this whole thing, and it's a mutual goal to have it done. so long as tony's serving a goal andyr's working towards, sure, he'll reload his mug when it runs dry.

so by now, about the fifth one andyr's heard, when tony calls for more coffee, andyr's already standing behind a shoulder, and arches an arm over to place a new mug in front of him, nice and hot and fresh, depositing it wordlessly and heading back over to the book he'd been searching through.

there you go. be content and do your shit, please. ]

ota

[embiggened]

[Kamala is into this. She's not dressed in her Avengers gear but just her street clothes. There's a time and place for Ms. Marvel but now isn't one of them. She's here to help as herself, just as Kamala. So it's time to get to work.

i.

Kamala has shrunk down to only six inches tall, walking around the journal to see if she can any patterns. But also she has to make sure to dodge anyone who walks too close.]

Hey be careful!

ii.

[There's a long, literally long, arm snaking through and around your workstation with a cup of coffee. If you follow it, it leads to Kamala who for all intents and purposes, looks pretty casual about the whole thing. She has a massive pile of notes around her as well as a few other empty cups of coffee.]

This is is fun. I wonder if this is what being in college is like? Like serious study cram time all nighters!

ota

[otiosity]

[Though she's technically part of the Ingress crew. Hawke is distinctly out of place. She can't build anything mechanic nor can so do any form of magical translation. And this has made her incredibly restless much to everyone else's suffering. She moves around the room, poking her head into groups to listen to what they have to say or to pick up some of their notes and try to pretend that she can read them. Her massive dog, Kitty, follows happily at her heels. Mostly you can find her.

i.

[Sleeping or nearly half asleep at one of the tables. She keeps sniffling loudly like she's just getting over a nasty cold (which she is) and blowing her nose. It's probably very distracting. To be further distracting she takes the used tissues and combusts them into flames in her hand watching until they burn to nothingness. Show off.

If she's distracting you, she's clearly oblivious to it.

If she's asleep, she's oblivious to the fact that she's sleeping on your notes. Sorry friends.]

ii

[Okay so Hawke can be helpful if she wants to be but unfortunately her thought at being helpful was "make coffee" which is fine and dandy except she's never seen a coffee maker in her entire life. Which is why she ends up with a pot of thick sludge and water running from the machine all over the place.

Not that she's that concerned.

She's just staring curiously at the coffee pot in the light and shaking it to watch the sludge splosh up the sides.]

See? This is why you ought to use magic. Then you don't have problems like this. Technology. Pff.

so very open to all

[pidge_out]

[It took Pidge some time to get a more or less working laptop together, and even more time to rewrite the translation program she'd made to work with Galran and Altean languages back home. There was still work to do on both, especially with Pidge's unending quest to integrate and improve all the new tech she'd encountered in one machine, but it was enough to give Pidge a good starting point with all the journal stuff. So when Pidge gets down to join the nerd party, she's pretty much fully prepared to begin all the digging in the land and digitize essentially everything everyone comes across in the feverish searching.

Pidge doesn't leave the Ingress room. Pretty much ever. And she also doesn't seem to sleep much between whatever is being worked on. Coffee is pretty much Pidge's best friend and it seems to be about the only thing she's consumed since first arriving to help out, and her eyes have rarely wandered away from the journal's pages, the digitized notes that Tony sent when Pidge first offered to pitch in, or the screen of her laptop. When she speaks up it's really more thrown out into the air to see who has an answer or suggestion. Otherwise Pidge is diligently working on what she can, hyperfocused on the work.

Or occasionally dozing off in the middle of typing or reading. Because sometimes the coffee just isn't quite enough.]

Part 1.8 - Opening Section U [Closed]

[prorenataa]

Most characters who wander this area will find themselves having returned back to the main doors with an odd voice whispering repeatedly in their ear: they come to us.


Though strides were being made in unlocking the Ingress Journal language, there was a sense of urgency in the air and a couple of stones left unturned. In an effort to be as thorough as possible a small group got together to investigate a potential lead.

The Section U area of the ship.

When the team initially moves into this section of the ship they will begin to hear voices whispering in their ear "They come to us". Getting through these auditory hallucinations maybe require the help of the person next to you and what's worse, even shaking off the sound of the whispered words won't stop characters from finding themselves back at the main doors.

It's hard to tell up from down, left from right and getting separated while in this section of the ship is a very real danger. The buddy system is taking on a whole new meaning; better hope you like the person you just got set back to "Go" with, they may be the only thing keeping you from losing your mind way again.

As the team manages to push deeper and deeper along the hallway, it is interesting to note that while most of the systems are powered down, this is definitely a technologically advanced area of the ship. Many of the displays resemble what could be found in the Ingress room; though upon inspection it is obvious they are not tied to the Ingress itself.

When they reach the end, it will become apparent that while it feels like they've been traveling for hours (what with the constant loop backs to the main doors) the hallways is actually quite short and there are disappointingly few doors. One door is labeled LAB 3 Crewman Ploitoas. This is the door that the team is working to get Niko Bellic to.

Once Niko uses his card to access this door a few things will occur. All the doors on this deck will pop open, the voices will stop whispering and the loop back to the main doors will no longer happen. There is a definite sense of "all clear" in this section now, though it couldn't hurt to stay on your toes.

Otherwise the team is now free to investigate the open rooms. The following are items that can be found and scavenged, (within reason please!) from the area.

• LAB 1 & 2: We always wondered about those unlimited credit cards? Well, in here appears to be the backing to those cards. These rooms, which may have once been actual labs, are floor to ceiling bars of precious metals:
  
  
  These bars are heavy, but surely the captains won't miss one or two; right?
  
  
• LAB 3: It is obvious this was a workroom. There are note books with Ploitoas' name all over them, further confirming that this room was the beleaguered crew-member's work space. Though at the moment the work is in the same style of symbols and short hand as the journals already recovered; the language being worked on by the rest of the group back in the Ingress room. If nothing else, it provides more material to work from in attempts to discover a key.
  
  There are hints that at one time the room was maintained like any other lab; meticulous. But gradually it become more and more of a wreck, until it is the complete mess the team sees before themselves today. There is a bittersweet timeline in the state of the room itself and in the quality of Ploitoas' work, that appears to track the crew-member's descent into the creature he became, as he was altered by the Ingress.
  
  There are also recordings, made by Ploitoas himself. They start out as standard scientist fare, verbal notes of experiments and plans. But gradually they also become a record in and of themselves as Ploitoas grows increasingly altered, his words becoming unintelligible. Oddly enough, however, rather than sounding like monstrous grunts, or animalistic cries, there is a language quality to his noises.
  
  Just no language that can be translated; at this time.
  
  Though the desire to stay and explore may be strong, stronger still is the desire to gather up everything not nailed down and leave the sense of a man's tomb behind.
  
  
• LAB 4: This lab appears to have been, at one time, a lab about botany. Regretfully any organic samples in this lab have long since perished but there are a few notebooks laying about. Glancing at the notes would identify they are in some unknown language, though there are the occasional pictures that suggest work was being done to study the tree in the garden.
  
  Unfortunately the notebooks detailing what was being studied, and/or what findings had been discovered, are illegible.
  
  
• LAB 5: There is not much to this lab, perhaps it was never utilized. But that doesn't mean it's completely useless. There is equipment in this lab and while much of the equipment is the same as can be found in other, accessible, parts of the ship there are also bits a pieces that could be scavenged for the use of making moonshine and other beverages.
  
  Just saying.
  
  
• LAB 6: No idea what was going on in here or why but this lab is filled with the makings for stuffed animals. From the bunting, to various fabrics, some patterns and machines to seal/sew the stuffed animals closed. Hard to imagine why there was such a thing on board a ship like the Moira but perhaps the ship visited a planet that traded in stuffed bears?
  
  

[prorenataa]

[ Adrien stood in the hallway, leaning against one of the walls, just beyond the entrance to Section U. He had his hand gun out and was giving it another once over; it may have been about the fiftieth time he'd done so.

Nervous habit.

He was waiting for the others, after all he wasn't going to get very far without Niko and the other man had raised a very valid concern. Adrien wasn't interested in releasing more chaos on board the ship.

So he waited, staring down at the decking and lost to his own thoughts. ]

Part 2 - Section U [ OPEN ]

[prorenataa]

Once the initial group returns with their findings from Ploitoas' workroom, this means that Section U is now open to the entire crew. The creepy whispers and disorienting turn back to the main doors, no longer plague this section.

Maybe you want to go down and have a look at the rooms?

Perhaps you have given no cares about the nerds off nerding but hey, precious metals and stuffed animals! As said above, please be reasonable about what you pick up.

Lab 3 will have been cleared by the exploration group and the items taken back to the Ingress room for investigation but the rest of Section U is open and available for anyone who wants to go check it out/pick up some bits and pieces. If you have any question specific to the rooms themselves or what might be found in the other labs, please reach out to the Mods.

ota

[voicelog]

[ Y'know what's the benefit of being the equivalent of a living computer? You don't have to seclude yourself to a room just to work. He has already stored every single data they have so far on the journals (and what was brought back from Lab 3) in his mind as well as created a thorough scan of Ronan's key. He doesn't know how effective it'll be since it apparently has magical components to it and he can't be entirely certain if that'll affect the process. Still worth a shot. He is also directly linked up to the MID, so he can still communicate with everyone while he's wandering Section U.

Yes, that's right. He has decided to go exploring. Considering he's spending the majority of his time in the Ingress room, guy needs a break. It's not much of a break since he's still technically working on deciphering the symbols, but, hey, they don't call him the world's best multitasker for no reason.

So, let's see where we can find one Tony Stark at:

lab 1 & 2 Talk about hitting the jackpot. He's sending his alt a photo of this. Aside from that, he'll mostly be checking out what types of metals are available and possibly making plans for using them eventually. Nothing sketchy, of course.

lab 4 He's not a botanist, but he can be found flipping through the notes. No guarantees he'll be able to make anything out with them at this point in time, but, considering they're already all in the middle of decoding weird ass symbols, why not add more to the workload? He might consider visiting the tree in the gardens if anybody wants to accompany him there. It'll be a nice walk if nothing else. Maybe they can stop by the café along the way and pity them for not having a doughnut plant. Just saying.

lab 6 Uh... What? Have a very incredulous T staring at all the stuffed animals in the room. Maybe he should bring one back for Marian and Add-re-n.

Feel free to bug him about the Ingress journals or something completely unrelated while he's exploring Section U. It can be at or en route to one of the labs listed, or even one of the other ones that didn't get mentioned. He'll welcome the company either way. Just don't question why he's wearing sunglasses right now. ]

Tex | ota

[a_shadow]

When Ryuuzaki tells her about the things they discovered, especially the precious metals, Tex immediately makes plans to explore the area. She has one goal and one goal only, however, and that's to liberate some of the bars of metal for herself. In the end, she makes several trips—three, to be exact—and takes two bars each time. She isn't strong enough yet to carry more, and as for the amount of walking she has to do to make all these trips, she considers it part of her physical therapy for the day. Luckily she'd bought a handbag on the Collectives—she's not the type to carry a purse, but she figured it would come in handy sooner or later for something. She might be spotted gathering a couple of bars of metal and placing them in her bag, or she may be seen resting in place later, with a handbag at her feet—even having regained some of her strength, she may have overestimated in assuming she'd be able to carry two of these bars per trip back to the barracks.

Besides claiming some of the bullion for herself Tex continues to go down to the Ingress room after Lab 3 has been cleared so she can pick through the materials that have been moved there. It's all fairly fascinating, and she figures the sooner they work it out the sooner her boyfriend will go back to sleeping all night, so she makes it a point to investigate the items.

RESULTS!

[prorenataa]

It was always an amazing thing; seeing a crew come together, work together for results. In the end it had taken such a wide diversity of approaches, from pure technology and science, to magic and the strength of observation.

Even taking the risk of tackling Section U, unlocking Ploiatos' workroom, had been a necessary action. The room itself had told a tale. It was a mess, obviously trashed in the time before it was vacated, obviously a result of the occupant losing their grip on reality. That same occupant who had been responsible for people getting hurt; as evidenced in the recording shared by Captain Ira and First Mate Egan upon their return.

The room had evidenced how the slow but steady change occurred, the notebooks found within -as they were translated- helping to complete the picture of how the Ingress was directly responsible for Ploiatos' change. More answers would lie within that wealth of notebooks, written in the stricken crew member's hand, that additional material helping to tip the balance back in favor of the current crew.

It had taken them all, even those folks who had given their time to keep the coffee flowing and their fellow work-a-holics fed; heck especially those who had given their support! Mixes and matches of techniques, personalities and even motivations but the result was right there in front of them; all of them.

The journals were translated.

It had started small, a word finally unlocked. With that one word and the wealth of material from the journals and the notebooks, the puzzle of the Ingress Language began to unravel right before their eyes. First it came in the form of pages from the journals:





And from those, disquieting in and of themselves, words came more understanding. Suddenly the symbols that came spitting out of the stationary portal, feeding into the highly sophisticated computer system, were no longer a mystery.

They made sense. They were updates on the Ingress, the instructions on how to fix the Ingress and also coordinates, to be input once the Ingress was working.

Unfortunately there were no answers about going home, but the ability to translate Ploiatos' notebooks brought information about the Ingress to light.

The Ingress on the Moira was a portal like the ones on Amissis-Re, but where those portals had been stationary and tied to a specific planet, the Ingress on the Moira was designed to be portable. It was designed to take itself and the Moira to different places; at speeds and distances unheard of for even the fastest space ship.

The Ingress allowed the Moira to travel through its own, portable, timeslip; the first stand-alone/mobile Ingress in existence. It is meant to take the ship to places unreachable through normal space travel.

This may not come as a surprise to some of the crew members working on the project and in fact, there were other notes from a different source, which helped collaborated these findings. Those who had been at this for long enough to have begun to form their own suspicions. But now those suspicions were confirmed and the ability to fix the Ingress was in the crews'™ hands.

The captains gave their whole-hearted support for the work to begin. The symbols and signatures coming through the Ingress gave the readings to reach the Midway Hub. With their navigator unhooked from the ship and the ship itself decaying around them, reaching the Hub was a priority for the captains.

OOC Was all that TL DR? Okay, here are the key takeaways.

• The Moira is the first and only mobile Ingress in existence
  
• Having a mobile Ingress means the Moira can travel unheard of distances through timeslip technology
  
• The Crew has now translated the symbols and signatures in the journals and notebooks, to be able to actually understand the language being spit out by the Ingress.
  
• This will allow the Ingress Team (and any other sciency types) to fix the Ingress.
  
• The language coming from the Ingress consists of navigation coordinates, which will allow the Moira to use the Ingress and get to the Midway Hub faster than going the 'long' way.
  
• The Captains support this wholeheartedly. Fix the ship and Get.To.The.Midway.HUB!
  
• Other bits of information include, Ploiatos' transformation was the result of a malfunction with the Ingress.

The IC text blast sent out about the key findings, to help ensure the word gets spread around the ship. But anyone who signed up and/or tagged into the log is free to assume their character has this information as it came to light.