Alyx Woodward (obsolete) @Alyx@computerfairi.es

page twenty-four

https://www.parallaxcomic.com/comic/page-24

the glass lozenge is now seen to have some intricate pattern in it. circuitry perhaps. Lomax and the cat both look at it in wonderment

then POW! a brilliant flash of light

we see it from outside the house, it's like lightning struck

a bolt of purple-pink energy strikes Lomax in the forehead

🔴 what are you expecting, some kind of "haha eff you Kara" (or whatever name they think still applies to us) message?

I mean, maybe! it'd make me feel better

ok I haven't given up on this, but it's resisting my efforts to decode it. tried an online tool and it gave me hilariously wrong results

there's software for semi-automagic decoding of substitution cyphers, right? there has to be

anyway time to move forward

bleh enough interruptions are coming up that I should just do something else for a bit. there's probably software for this too. I can just arbitrarily assign letters to mean the various symbols and then unscramble from there probably, bleh

anyway I'll get back to it

next most frequent, an uppercase pi and an uppercase pi turned upside down, both five times

"upside down pi" has a doubled occurrence; "uppercase pi" does not

at some point I'm just gonna have to try options instead of trying to reason it out

but let's assume for now that these three characters correspond, in some way, to the set of letters E, T, and A. the three most frequent English letters. E and T double up, but A hardly ever does, so "backwards gamma" probably isn't A

"plus" comes at the end of a word, sticking by the assumption that "." is just what it appears to be here. words do end in A but not often

counted up the frequencies (hopefully accurately)

three characters occur most frequently, six times. there's a plus or cross, something like an uppercase gamma flipped back to front, and a T tilted sideways

"plus" and "sideways T" appear always alone. "backwards gamma" has a couple doubled appearances. it could _still_ be E, though...the most frequent English letter. if this is English

ok here's a transcript. double-checking it...

there's just enough ambiguity about some of the characters that I'm not certain I can commit to this transcript entirely. I suspect the period might be just what it is in English, punctuation, but we'll see (maybe)

tempted to try to decipher the strange text. there's not a lot of it so the usual method of counting up character frequencies might not yield anything. but...eh, it's an exercise, innit

"speak key"

Lomax stammers out "w-what?"

"key accepted" [burst of onomatopoeia]

so maybe the thing was keyed simply to Lomax's voice, or possibly the voice of any speaker. guess we'll be finding out huh? maybe

now I know from experience that such scripts tend to be simply transliterated from some human writing, probably English in this case. and studying the short line of text I can see things like repeated double letters. so I bet there's a simple English statement concealed by the strange letters

then the glowing lozenge (held up almost perfectly in front of a windowpane with a cross pattern, in a manner not symbolic in any way) asks a question

oops, forgot to change the CW AGAIN

ok, page twenty-three

https://www.parallaxcomic.com/comic/page-23

but THEN the glass lozenge starts glowing very brightly, with a pinkish light, bright enough to illuminate the room. the cat's excited to see it but Lomax is stunned, tears in their eyes

the glass lozenge asks a question and here the comic has resorted to some kind of alien-looking script.

🔴 ooh it's like that scene in that awful "Golden Compass" movie where what's her name gets the alethiometer! hope this comic turns out to be better than that fuckin' movie

I really hope we don't end up having to read any Philip Pullman, Chara, I really don't

well anyway the thing looks ordinary enough and Lomax is sarcastic. "here, have this piece of glass!" they imagine Rodgers saying, "it'll make you better at math!"

but then

BUT THEN

page twenty-two.

https://www.parallaxcomic.com/comic/page-22

Lomax quite sensibly worries about what's in the box, calling Prof. Rodgers a "creep" (I mean) and, with the cat Ramsay looking on curiously, Lomax opens it

there's a small square, or lozenge really, of what looks like glass, polished with bevelled edges, laid in the box on a bed of velvet

Lomax picks it up and looks at it, baffled