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

[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?"

[saveyourserpent]

Liquid squints at his notes for a moment before shrugging and looking back over at her. "Quite a few patterns, but I have to admit I'm at a loss in regard to... well, a lot of things." Skilled as he is, it's a little outside his normal knowledge. But that's what all this working together's supposed to be for.

"Arabic, it's not."

[a_shadow]

"If it was, in my case, that wouldn't matter much," she says. "I assume that means you read Arabic." She comes over and leans over his shoulder just slightly, looking over the segment of the page he's studying. "It's all one block of text, isn't it?"

[saveyourserpent]

Liquid nods, tapping at the paper with a pen. "Yeah, suppose you could say it's sort of my specialty. As far as learned languages go, anyway."

'Like a native,' people always told him. Worked damn well in spy work until his country sold him out.

"I thought working on it a bit at a time might be a little simpler than just staring at the whole and hoping it reveals itself to the weary."

[a_shadow]

"I don't know much about translation, or languages, or writing systems, or any of this, but I guess what would make the most sense to start with would be to look through everything and see what symbols or combinations of symbols appear the most often. Wouldn't you think?"

She studies the page the book is open to, then flips it to the next one. She's not trained to use her abilities as an AI, so her reaction time is about the same as it would be for a human, but she's able to memorize what she sees, and so it's not long before she points out a certain combination.

"There, this combination shows up an awful lot." She figures a combination that shows up often must be the word 'the' or something.

[saveyourserpent]

"Yeah, that's what I've been doing, just on a bit of a smaller scale than the entire work." Saves some of the headache... although the fact that ever since the colony his body isn't quite cooperating with him brings its own headache along. Oh well, things are okay. They're okay.

"That, I've noticed. There's a few words or phrases or... well, who knows, they could very well be letters, that show up more often than not. It isn't quite as helpful as you'd expect, but if we get enough of these, maybe chart them..."

Learning by immersion, right? They'll figure it out. "Of course... none of this means it's an actual language." He was a spy once. He knows all about ciphers. (And Cipher, but that's different.)

[a_shadow]

"No, I guess that's true," she concedes. "I hope that we don't have to translate the translation, though—this is bad enough." She flips to yet another page and sighs. "I guess I'll start making some notes—keep track of common combinations and how frequently they appear."

[saveyourserpent]

"I've been starting on that, actually," he says, gesturing at his notes. "Feel free to continue it, though. I'm sure even if it turns out to be busywork in the end we'll have something figured out." Even a list of things is better than nothing, right?

"What you've really got to watch out for is when you have to translate the translation of a translation. I guess how many layers we need to crack will showcase just how secret this stuff's supposed to be."