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

[diamondhack]

Better than nothing, I suppose.

[And even if she ends up at the same point as Tony, exhausted and in a swirl of unintelligible symbols, at least she gave it a try.

She's banking on having a fresh eye and a different mindset, though. Similar? Sure. but identical would be a stretch.]

I'm sure I could think of a way to wear you out, though.

[Maybe not that much.]

[arcreact]

[ Tony's stared at the thing for long enough that any fresh pair of eyes automatically has an advantage. The paths worn by his musings are growing more and more entrenched by the day. It's not exactly ideal for problem solving.

Naturally, none of that is what he actually discusses. ]

I'm sure you could too, what with all those brilliant ideas of yours.

[diamondhack]

Yes, keep telling me pretty things, you'll only earn more favor in my book.

[She's having to keep track of the repeated symbols, having to make sense out of nothing. Could there not be just one point of translation? One small symbol to mean one letter, like those damned puzzles?]

[arcreact]

[ Tony watches her work, guessing at what's going on in her head based on what she deigns to point at, write down, or stare at for a moment too long. It works somewhat well, for the most part. ]

I wonder if I can compliment you all the way to a revolutionary discovery.

[ It's as viable a method as any, at this point. ]

[diamondhack]

Wouldn't hurt to try.

[It's... barely coming together, more like figuring out that 1+1=2 and that's about as far as she can get.]

What I'm wondering is why any of this would have been kept in such old journals and formats if this ship is advanced. This thing can clearly pull us from different times and places, but its origin... [Isha sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose with prosthetic fingers.] We may as well assume the Ingress is a constant in all timelines and universes at this point.

[arcreact]

I've got a couple theories about that, actually.

[ Tony reaches for one of the journals sitting amid the messes of papers, thumbing through it absently. ]

One, whoever was writing this had reason to keep it secret and they were justifiably paranoid about network security. Granted, that raises about half a dozen other questions with no immediate answers, but the cynic in me finds it attractive all the same.

Two, a little less morbidly, they were an eccentric genius that preferred to work things out by hand like the Einsteins of old.

Three, returning to the morbid, we're literally just decoding somebody's bedtime journals right now like a group of easily suggestible fools.

[ He drops the journal back onto the pile, as if to punctuate that. ]

No matter how we slice it, all roads leads to more questions.

[diamondhack]

Information like this isn't just for an eccentric genius.

[She ponders his points, ponders the entire mess. Dark eyes search for the answer, nothing that seems to make sense, when...]

More like a Da Vinci than an Einstein. Maybe we've been reading this wrong. Da Vinci wrote in code and backwards. We might be decoding a bedtime journal, but even then, it's more information than nothing. Most historians would kill for daily accounts and records. Even if we don't know the technicalities of the Ingress, we'd know how it was used, what it meant, literally anything that could hint as to its previous uses or movements.