[Alhaitham is also, despite what he just protested, going to take the can Kaveh passes over to him and take a curious sip. His nose wrinkles at the intensity of the carbonation, but he keeps drinking it slowly like he's trying to pick apart the flavors in his brain.

He twists the can to read the ingredients on the side while the conversation continues.] I haven't been able to use mine, but I also haven't felt any adverse effects from it not working right.

[So, there's that at least. He sets the can back down to start writing, and then add to the round robin of information:]

I tried looking through the records room of the city hall, but it's all cabinets of blank paper. In fact, there doesn't seem to be any sort of written documentation in the city--even the books are blank, or rarely pages of unintelligible filler text.