Page 57 (1/2)

"Sure," Paige said, rising froreen T-shirt and jeans, a siainst her pale skin and red hair For all that, she looked nervous She’d been an archivist locked away in Nebraska Probably hadn’t done many presentations

She cleared her throat, took the laser pointer Luc handed her, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear

"So," she said, gesturing to the boards "What we have here is a complicated alcheether with slyphs We knohat the alcheuesses about uesses, and there are gaps in our knowledge

"Theoretically, when you read all the sy that’s both an instructionat this tiether "Both the writing of it and the doing of it trigger the an leaned forward, sreen where ive us some context? I old out of lead"

There were general reee said "A set ofof the world At its heart is the belief you can et closer to its true essence And when you reach that true essence, the ht ht s Reed would like," Morgan said

"Agreed," she said "But I don’t think this sorcerer is working on what I’d call the ‘traditional’ alcheold, whatever The phrases--the smaller chunks within each equation--don’t match those traditional equations They’re very contradictory" She pointed the laser at one of the lines "For exa" Then she dropped it to the line below "And this phrase tells you to do the opposite"

"What’s your best guess about the purpose?" Ethan asked

Paige looked back at the boards, considered "So Even the equations that have tried to produce a philosopher’s stone aren’t this complex, or this contradictory" She frowned "Because of that, I don’t see this being intended for one person I mean, you want to make yourself blond, rich, immortal, whatever, you don’t need this many lines of code, so to speak I think it’s intended for other people"

"What other people?" Ethan asked

She looked back at us "I don’t know yet But as large as the equation is, I’d say a nuorithram that will autouesses about the hieroglyphs, and give us best translation results"

"How far along are you?" randfather asked

Jeff frowned "About two-thirds? Need a few ht, and then I can coht need to do so--like Mercury next to the sun instead of the moon means you need to hop on one foot or whatever--but we’ll be close"

"Good," Ethan said "We appreciate the work"

Jeff nodded