"Not a whole lot! And a lot of it's kind of in 'vague guesses' format - my vague guesses are pretty solid, I'm a Device and all, but they're not exactly specific or easy to articulate. Probably the fastest way to start figuring out the details is to sit me in front of a problem and see if I can solve it. Makes the difference between 'I think it can probably handle stuff that's written down pretty well' and, I dunno, 'yes, I can invent a spell to alphabetize books'. That was a random example, but I actually can invent a spell to alphabetize books, the matter manipulation part's almost harder than the sorting."
"Hmm," he says. "Well, what makes results interesting? What kinds of books have you gone through so far?"
"Hmmm... I wonder how well my magic can summarize," he says. "Might have to try it to see. Summarize and compare - pick out stuff like different research that did basically the same things and got basically the same answers."
Brilliance is not quite done his ice cream. Omnomnomnomnomnomnom now he is done his ice cream! He does a quick teleport to catch up to Kaylo.
"Hmm," he says. "Okay, bring me your list of books that mention channeling capacity the right way?"
"If getting the books is easy for you, it'll make things easier," he says. "Just while I'm figuring it out, so I don't have to mess around with an extra layer of search to physically find them and then an extra teleport or flight to bring the targeted ones. Why, is it a big stack?"
"Then it'll be easier to work with 'em stacked on a table than scattered around a bunch of shelves. At least until I figure out what the hell I'm doing."
Then he sits at the table and starts designing a spell.
He waits for the books to finish coming in. Then: "Read," he says, and his spell diagram unfolds beneath the pile. A thin film of rainbow-coloured mana rises to cover the books, gradually, starting at the bottom layer and working its way up. As each book is completed, it flashes slightly. Brilliance looks lost in thought.
The next actual spell he casts doesn't take an incantation at all, and has the effect of lifting all the books into the air and fanning them out vertically so that any two books next to each other in a stack have enough space between them for another book to pass by. "Okay - Category Sort." The books take advantage of their newly roomy configuration to rearrange themselves into three groups - about three-quarters of them on the bottom, about a tenth of them on the top, the remainder in the middle. The vertical gaps between categories are exactly twice the height of the vertical gaps between individual books in one category.
Brilliance contemplates them for a little longer, then says, "Information Summary." All the books in the bottom category and some of the books in the top category flash. "Information Summary." All the books in the middle category and some of the books in the top category flash. "Category Sort." The top category splits and rearranges itself - most of the books that flashed on one or both of the summaries stay where they are; all the books that didn't, and a few that did, rise into a fourth category above them. "And... Information Summary." The new top category flashes.
"Now I just need something to output to..." he murmurs, rubbing his head. "Of all the dumb things, I don't have good enough matter manipulation to just make the spell auto-write it, I'd have to learn how to work with matter well enough to conjure paper with stuff written on it, that's way harder for some reason than getting the information in the first place."
He turns at last to Kaylo. "Any suggestions? I've got three reports here - grouping the research by different things people tried and how it turned out when they did, grouping the theory by what theories they mention in about what level of detail, and grouping the miscellaneous crap like statistics and historical overviews by what kind of thing it is. I just need to get the reports out of my magic and into some kind of a format you can read, and I don't feel like writing them out by hand when there's bound to be a way to do it easier with magic."
"Uh, magical? It's - I don't know, spells can hold information apparently, I've got the whole text of all those books in here too, that's what Read was doing. Stored separately from the summaries, though. And I'm gonna dump it all as soon as I'm done with it, I don't feel like carrying around a library's worth of information about CC in my systems permanently even if there's room. I think the holding format's mostly supposed to be intermediary between reading or composing something and recording it somewhere, but I can access it directly like that because I'm a Device."