He was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.
To grasp the full extent of this hugeness, a team of data scientists used a new computer program to analyze it, revealing some unexpected things about the extended saga.
It looms so increasingly large as to obscure its own hugeness -- a writhing, hydra-headed beast that renders itself nearly invisible by filling up our entire field of vision.