unforum

[NovacaineX]

Unless they change the Perplex City Academy website we have no chance of getting into the library ourself since the code automatically tells you you're rejected no matter what you type.

Since it is the only student service that is linked I imagine they have planned to at sometime update it for allowed access, but not yet.

[Leeravitz]

Oh, well scratch everything I just wrote!! Violet *does* work at the Academy Library, doesn't she? I just re - read the 'About Me' on Quirky Acuity.

That settles that, then. If she's happy to work with us on this one, surely she knows enough about the systems to help...and, yes, that might make the job of getting to look at Salk's records rather easier. Why, because Violet's not just a user, but one of the people who probably has to check the books in and out. If Salk *was* in possession of an account, then all we need is Violet to call the data up on the database, and give it to us and...bingo!!

Of course, then she will presumably start to wonder why we're so interested in Salk...

And this all presupposes that he did formally hold an account, and didn't just take the books off open shelves...

Equally, given the hints we're been given about the society's 'ancientness', then who better to ask some leading questions than a certain self - confessed history geek??

So, surely the next step is to ask: how much are we prepared to tell Violet??

[Mikeyj]

I guess it's important to remember The Advisor's advice (hmm...that's awkward)...the advisor's suggestions, that Pietro shouldn't expect the Academy to be free from bad guys.

*MikeyJ takes deep breath (much preferring procrastination, but realising that it's boring and that sometimes one must just get stuck in*

I propose we tell Violet that we're following a lead and that we need her help. We send her a copy of the symbol from the mazes and say that we've come across it and need her to tell us as much about it as she knows. Salk knew the symbol without needing to research it, but then delved deeper. This is a bit more softly softly (catchee monkey) than telling her everything and getting her into the Academy Library researching things that might get her into trouble. She likes history after all so she must know something.

Appropriate do you think?

No need to tell her anything about anything...for now, althogh I'm sure she'll be curious. Hopefully she'll be accommodating after her hols

[Scott]

Asking violet fFor much of anything has never yielded much. Asking *anyone* fFor much of anything has never yielded much. but as fFar as asking her what books pietro checked out -- he probably checked out lots of them. he was studying the case fFor about 4 weeks. He may have looked up McGuffin books, and the occassional text on something else entirely.

Also please bear in mind they don't have Paper texts. I would tend to suggest there's some sort of physical hardcopy involved somewhere. But not Paper books.

Lastly, it was pointed out: the Sinister "V" could be violet. That was roundly dismissed, but it would be fFolly to rule it out completely. until we have more info, there's really no need to go exposing anyone or anything.

[Leeravitz]

It's a good point - I suppose I was writing as if the Library would be dealing in paper, when we have a number of indications to suggest that the medium's been superseded. On the other hand, it's not impossible that there is something in hardcopy that shows up on catalogues - if you use mircofilm, for example, it's serial numbered, and I tend to assume that a Library must store information in some format, even if it's as discs, chips, whatever the hell Perplexians call up information from. I suppose what I mean is that, if everything was theoretically accessible via keys, then what point is there in having a library in the first place. The other interesting possibility is that Perplexian libraries (as do our own - in part) serve to store ancestral materials, and that part of their remit is to preserve paper books from many centuries past - we've heard of things being written in manuscript form during early Perplexian history, so maybe the libraries hold stocks of manuscripts and paper books.

True, it does seem a little bizarre that students shopping at Earthworks etc. might get so overexcited about paper books if they are otherwise accessible within the society; but, then again, it's surely incredibly rare to be able to *purchase* paper books in Perplex City, although it may not be so rare to be able to view them. Perhaps there's even a bit of a collector's market in paper for the wealthiest denizens of the City.

And what better way to get access to the history of an ancient secret society than to root through ancient tomes??

Even studying history in our primarily paper based culture, a historian has to be prepared to plough through rather varied formats of informational storage: reading a mauscript is not really the same thing as reading a printed book, which is not quite the same as reading an account book, which is not really the same as reading a letter - it's only the medium that's comparable- as you trek further back through history, you have to learn new skills (paleographic, linguistic etc.) in order to be able to access the info. So maybe Salk was reading from both electronic and paper mediums, depending on how recent/accessible the works were he was studying.

Telling Violet what's going on is another issue altogether - it's true that we could mistakenly reveal too much to the wrong people by 'blowing our cover'. Equally, however, there remains a big problem about how we can pursue investigations most profitably when we have no direct access to Perplexian society ourselves. Our options are always either a) to wait until such time as things fall into our laps through the auspices of our intermediaries or b) force our intermediaries to initiate actions/investigations on our behalf, and then report back to us. I agree we have to be careful. The Reconstructionist debacle was a good demonstration of what sort of repercussions follow when we're not too careful. But, equally, Violet might never have been inspired to investigate in the first place if we hadn't suggested it to her. Whether the information we got from that little sortie is of any use whatsoever is, of course, a larger question. Perhaps at the very least, Violet might be able to give us a clue as to how the library systems work?

[Seej]

I agree that Violet seems like the obvious choice but I suggest that we drip-feed the information to her as slowly as we can for both her safety and the safety of Widow Salk (who, remember, we still haven't told anything about our discoveries in the maze program and is probably starting to wonder why we're keeping so quiet).

To that end, simply sending Violet the '3' symbol, mentioning we dug it up during some historical research on Perplex City and casually asking what it means might be an appropriate place to start. Whilst getting her to look into this symbol might raise a few eyebrows among secret society members secreted around the Academy, it's surely not grounds for harming/killing her. On the other hand, if Violet is indeed V then while she might become suspicious she won't have enough information to link us to Salk. How's this sound to you lot?

[Mikeyj]

Well that's two of us...

...with the Violet situation...keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

[Mosestrotsky]

The problem that I see in sending the symbol is that it may give the whole game away altogether. Remember this symbol represents the secret society as, according to Salk, people will recognise it. If we send this to Violet then we basically will state that we're looking into the ancient Perplexian bogeyman myth. Also she might just come back - "That's a 3 don't you have numbers where you come from"

I am not saying that not send the symbol just that we need to consider all the repercussions - good and bad - that may occur over this. Also we need to think about how to send the information.

In other words - "We found this symbol - does it mean anything to you" is about as vague as you can get but it opens up many questions.

Yes I think we need to be a proactive but also cautious. Then again we don't really have anything else to go with

i) The symbol
ii) Salk's library topics
iii) Ascendancy Point

Perhaps we should just ask her to give us information re Perplex City's past history. What we need to know is history and we tie in the rest with what we know?

[Mosestrotsky]

Also I went to the lacademy libray site and spotted this. I was under the impression we needed student access but we don't - though other of you may have known this. Just a document code.

Now if Violet could give us that - then that's all she need to do.

[Leeravitz]

Right. Okay. I guess there's then a question of what the 'document code' is. Does it refer to a single code that allows access?? My suspicion is that it might actually be tantamount to saying 'if you can log in with the Dewey decimal numbering (or equivalent) for a certain text, then we can call it up for you.' In other words, you'd need to have the specific code for a given text before you could find it, and that would require having a text in mind to look for.

In truth, I may have confused things by suggesting that we could access a catalogue. Clearly, if there's a way of doing that and/or accessing user records and borrowing archives, then this is more useful to us (a catalogue listing will, not least, allow us to find individual text codes in the first place). But maybe the access that we have is only geared up to allowing the user to directly get hold of known texts. Perhaps the tacit assumption is that the Academy based user has access to the Catalogue separately (or is told what to look for on a reading list) and all they need to do on - line is access the appropriate documents. Yes, that would make our investigation much harder, simply because, if we wanted to track down a book Salk read, we'd have no idea where to start without being offered some further information.

[tanner]

maybe we should just send the symbol or at least the character "3" to every email address weve got and see who responds with the secret handshake

[StarryNight]

[Seej]

Yup, neither box will currently accept input; old news. Just checked and it's still the same as it was when it first went up, as mentioned here. Current spec is that we will gain the ability to search for documents at some later date.

[Mosestrotsky]

But perhaps if we ask for information from Violet from her library - which others may well have done. Perhaps then it will go live (okay so its all down to the PM's and whether they have an agenda to give us the information but who knows). Whether we send Violet the symbol or just ask her for history we are expecting something back. Who knows sending the symbol might make a page live.

Anyway

[Crane]

*sigh*
[crankiness]
No, it DOESN'T!
The script for the library document window is set up so that NO MATTER WHAT YOU ENTER, it will tell you it's wrong. Got that? NO MATTER WHAT YOU ENTER!
[/crankiness]