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.
[L | OTA | here & Tower]
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.