The Translation Puzzle and Super-Soldier

“Take the paper, throw it inside the thingy, aaaand… Voila! We have a machine-translated piece of something.”

“I don’t think it’s working very well...” Lily commented as she took a look at the screen showing the results of Kuro’s mess of exposed components and half-disassembled droids. “Half the text is still written the same way they were before, and the other half…”

“That’s because she’s using a half-baked system and a half-completed dictionary. Not a surprise we wouldn’t get much from it.”

“You know most of what I’m using inside this thing is a software you made, right? I only strapped the things together… somewhat.”

“And I told you they weren’t ready, didn’t I? I could manage something with time, but it’ll take time. A lot of time.”

Machine translation could go very far with enough processing power and the right libraries, universal translators were a thing for a reason, but whatever the twins were trying here wasn’t on point at all. At a glance, it was clear that more than half the text wasn’t translated, and, in the few instances where a whole line was readable, the syntax was still very bad.

Overall, the sudden idea the black-haired sister came up with after getting bored with the monotonous job was very far from giving fruit.

“Well… It was worth the try, I guess. Better than having no idea of what we’re working with, at least.” Kuro continued, moving a few other documents to the scanner attached to the top half of one of their work droids. “I’m saving the originals either way, so it’s not as if we’ll lose much by trying.”

“We lost time, some spare parts, and you made a mess of the room.”

“Details, I say! Useless details even.”

“Just accept you were bored and wanted to play around.”

“Never!”

“Can you explain to me what you mean there? Yes? I see… If you are interested, so why not? It could even manage to get you an interesting hobby.” Lily’s random words called the sister's attention as she spoke with no one, which soon became clear to be the comments of the audience. “Girls, can you two modify this program of yours? I have some interesting suggestions from the audience.”

“’The audience’, eh? Can we really go with… well… you know…” Kuro tried to ask, forcing her sister to dip in as she wasn’t as ‘tactful’ or willing to skip around the problem.

“Randos. Not to be disrespectful, but can some random stream watcher be useful in this situation? Linguists aren’t very common for obvious reasons, skilled ones in special.”

“It seems you don’t know enough about Amy’s dear fans, girls… The worst mine do is ask to be kicked sometimes, but hers are as close to a public menace as they can. And yes, I don’t care that you’re hearing this right now, ok? Go complain with my manager if you want so much, she's the same person you guys follow either way.”

Again, universal translators were common to the point that each tower city pretty much spoke the same language. The common language wasn’t even named nowadays since there wasn’t a point in doing so at all.

Due to that, just like with archeologists, being a linguist wasn’t a very sought-after or renowned profession. The most one could find around would be some wannabe that took the subject as a hobby or someone pretending to be one unless a very in-depth search was made.

Even in the university that Kuro and Shiro frequented, one of the few that was full of rare specialists, there weren’t more than three of them. One of which was in this room even.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that the members speaking in chat at the moment were die-hard Amy fans, Lily wouldn’t even bat an eye at the idea. It was too much of a coincidence for a single person with the right know-how to be around.

How weird would be if a half-dozen of them were having a discussion then?

But again, they were Amy’s die-hard fans, and Amy’s core fans were way too weird for Lily to understand. Whenever she went too deep into the identities of those, she would only get more perplexed at how the pink girl could attract so many hidden diamonds.

And so many hidden menaces.

It was theorized that the followers of the pink maniac could very well topple a floor if they wanted to. Most of them would simply accept when they were called maniacs or whatever even.

“Let me see if I got it right…” Kuro asked to try and understand what was happening. “Are you telling us that you somehow have someone that could help us translate these things watching? Like, for real?”

“Six of them actually, and you shouldn’t be trying to make sense of this situation. Even I’m a little baffled by this and I seem to be much more well-versed in my partner's fandom than you.”

“This rabbit hole seems to go much deeper than I imagined… So, what do you think, Shiro? Sounds useful and is more interesting than whatever we could do otherwise.”

“Not sure how much I can trust it, but go on. Maybe you people can surprise me... And I'm actually bored with this paperwork too. Where's the fun in working with ancient papers when I don't have the time to read them?”

"Makes me want to punch you, but whatever... Let's see what these lads can do! Not that I think they can do much."

“Oho? They’re taking as a challenge from some youngsters...” Lily kept on reading the further heating comments with a smile, only adding a little comment of her own at the end. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

The discussion in which the random watchers were focused on a moment before turned into a complete alliance in only a moment. Seeing anyone go against their self-proclaimed specialties was the same as giving them a common enemy. And a common enemy was the only thing that could make the internet join hands like this...

It was exactly like what Lily wanted them to though. Even if using her character and skills to influence civilians wasn't something she could be very proud of.

“I’m not sure of how I feel about inciting people we don’t know, but since we’re here already…”

“Well then, I’ll send you two whatever we get here and you work on the program.” The purple idol who would never admit how interested she was in this whole situation went on while preparing what they would need. “It would be best if you two could see the chat or if we could give everyone access to the code, but the latency is way too high down here. Only Amy knows how to mess with the relays to get it better, so…”

How they had a somewhat stable connection was already enough of a wonder as is, especially considering that it had to keep a stream going. Even if someone in the old room knew how the connection worked, it would take too long or be too janky to work.

As is, internet research was almost impossible without Amy around, so connecting with many people in real time was way too much.

Still, as long as Lily sent the pieces of data to the internal chatroom for the core fans, they would be able to help them translate and research it.

The fans could use both their knowledge and what they could find around while the twins would strap everything together on their end. Then, it would fall on the remaining person with nothing to do to glance at them in search of anything interesting.

It was enough of an interesting situation that even some of the audience members that were focused on Amy’s side of the stream were coming back. Some were even calling it a ‘special event’ based on how everything was going.

Not that any of that was a problem. It was closer to being a boon either way. A boon that didn’t take long to start showing results too.

Or to be specific, a boon that took less than half an hour to reach a good enough point.

“By the heavens, this is stupid…”

“Heck! It’s kinda readable now, isn’t it? It’s still a pain to make any sense, but I can get the idea… sometimes.”

“’Going to grovel to our magnificence and accept Amy’s crew superiority?’” Lily paraphrased the paid comment in a monotone voice but with a small smile. “Thanks for the tip, Bookworm86, but I don’t think Amy would like hearing you say this… Oh, now he’s paying a lot to say ‘sorry’ many times…”

“Again, this is so stupid…”

Their team was a few linguists with some knowledge, a bunch of data miners who knew more than they should, and a couple of gamers addicted to puzzle games. Not what you would expect or want in this situation, but enough to make it all work. Their actions were even calling the attention of the more neutral watchers to Lily's so-called event.

A very calling achievement considering that Amy was exploring a full-on derelict nuclear reactor right now.

They used obscure papers on the subject, word and letter databases, and even pure logic to reach this point, but it worked. Many words were still guesses at best and calling most of the text ‘readable’ was still a stretch, but a lot was translated and added to the database. It was even to the point that, although still impossible to fully comprehend, the files were somewhat understandable.

Be as it was, the combined efforts of all the people charmed by the mystery of the ancient documents solved the problem. Still, it was very work-intensive and possibly still wrong in the end, but the results seemed to be good.

“Hahahaha! Guess you people beat us this time, sorry for thinking you wouldn’t be useful and all.”

“I said that challenging them wouldn’t go well. It’s amazing what motivated people can do, and there’s nothing more motivating than proving someone wrong. Still, since all of you did so well, I believe some prize is fair, right?” Lily went on while keeping an eye on the file she was trying to read and bringing a dark smile to her face. “I’ll let you decide between getting this single wondrous swimsuit photo from Amy or fighting for a backstage ticket I have to our next live then. Have fun deciding.”

The chaos that ensued on the once peaceful and united group of hardcore fans couldn’t be described in a PG environment. Meanwhile, the instigator simply nodded and turned back to her current job. Lilianna wouldn’t even bat an eye at how easily she could play the character nowadays, so the documents were more interesting still.

And if that was of question, there was no point in using her own photos as bait here since hers were premium priced, but still somewhat widespread. Amy, on the other side, was talked to be unable to take off her idol outfit at all, so any photo of her without it was the stuff of legend.

“We were had by people who would brawl for a swimsuit photo… This is so stupid.”

“C’mon, we would too! I mean, we actually did that one time.”

“That’s beyond the point, Kuro.” The still bewildered white-haired sister answered in deadpan before turning to the person in the photo they brawled to buy. “So, what is our haul here? I heard the gist, but couldn’t pay attention too much with all the inputs coming…”

“To summarize, these seem to be records of someone that used this room.” Lily explained right away as she finished another report on logistics if she was reading it right. “I’m not sure of what kind of report, but they’re many and seem to come in constant entries. However, who was writing them was likely of military or aristocratic background... Part of the reason we could translate so much was how formal the whole thing was, to begin with."

“They all appear to start the same… It’s monotonous as heck.” The sister that was now even more surrounded by random machine parts spoke as she tried to read something on the files leaving her monster. “Who starts every single day with a medical checkup?!”

“I only got a little, but it seems to be some kind of diary. Something like an experimentation diary, maybe?” Shiro added in as she too opened some of the translated files. “If this was some laboratory, then checking everything up after waking up would make sense.”

“This no scientific report, from that, I’m sure.” The detective-turned-idol brought her own conclusions after going through some of the papers. “They start with these standard-like procedures, but much of what happens afterward changes too much. An experiment this random would never be useful, I think, and there’s also this word here we marked as ‘casualties’... For me, it looks more like reports on some crisis or war even.”

Other than the word 'casualties', the words 'base', 'guard', 'units', 'emergency', 'victory', 'defeat', and weirdly enough, 'artifact', appeared a lot. They came out so much, everyone was almost sure of their translation. And going by then, reading the others was somewhat doable, or at least seemed to be doable.

“Someone would take a checkup, then work on whatever chaos was happening or fight in this war, come back to write everything, and then end the day... Sounds reasonable.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Shiro called her sister out. “Do you see a bed or even a table here? More even, this room is pressurized and fortified, right? Why would you end your day here instead of anywhere else? And if you didn’t, then why are these papers all we have here?”

“Well… I… I don’t know. Maybe it was some crazy officer who wouldn’t trust a proper bed? Or a workaholic that never sleeps? It isn't that hard to do now, so why couldn't they before?”

“Sounds dumb.”

“Then give a better idea.”

“Simple. These papers were…”

“They were here because this someone had to be here.” Lily interrupted the sisters as she managed to get an idea of what was the purpose of this room in the end and pointed her head to the weird metallic box they had no idea how to use. “I can’t point out the exact why, but if we think all the instances of ‘artifact’ that’s used before starting the day are about this box then it wouldn’t be so weird. Some ways we read it can even make it sound as if this person wakes up inside this ‘artifact’ thing.”

“This thing is surely bigger than a person, but…”

“Wouldn’t it be a little too anticlimactic if this thing was just some ancient super-soldier bed?”

“It would for sure…” The purple idol continued before closing the open files she still had and holding her aching temples. “But wouldn’t it fit the scenario way too well if it did?”