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There are three Bells in Milliways.
They want a fourth. A fifth. A sixth. A seventh.
And then Downside is going down.
autokinetic
ending-of
All at once, seven different people with the same face are collected from their various locations into a single room.
It's a large, round room, about the size of the lobby at the base of the tower. The entire outer wall is one large window, showing that the room is in fact at the top of the tower, with Upside spread out far below one half and Downside far, far below the other.
There is an eighth person in the room, sitting in a comfortable chair looking inward from the edge of the room, with Upside to her left and Downside to her right.
It's a large, round room, about the size of the lobby at the base of the tower. The entire outer wall is one large window, showing that the room is in fact at the top of the tower, with Upside spread out far below one half and Downside far, far below the other.
There is an eighth person in the room, sitting in a comfortable chair looking inward from the edge of the room, with Upside to her left and Downside to her right.
mind_game
Jane tries.
Jane can't. They won't tuck away.
Just to check, she picks up Nathan and puts him a millimeter to the left and then puts him back, just for a fraction of an instant that he'll notice but his human companions won't. He works normally.
I can't unstick you.
Jane can't. They won't tuck away.
Just to check, she picks up Nathan and puts him a millimeter to the left and then puts him back, just for a fraction of an instant that he'll notice but his human companions won't. He works normally.
I can't unstick you.
luminous_regnant
Golden's not party to the link, and while this is being tried she attempts teleportation under her own power and gets the same result.
jovahs_heiress
I think I gave it away. I neglected until it was too late to wish up a house and a working res code to go with my fake papers. I'm sorry.
self_composed
Stella's the first one to try talking.
"Hi," she says. "You must be the admin."
"Hi," she says. "You must be the admin."
ending-of
"That's right," she agrees. "And you're the ones who keep stealing people out of the queue." She focuses on Angela. "Mind telling me what exactly you hoped to accomplish by messing with my housing system? It works very well the way I designed it, and I don't appreciate having to waste my time undoing your changes."
jovahs_heiress
Angela closes her eyes. "We knew some things about Downside. Less about Upside. I meant to look around."
ending-of
"I see," she says. "Well, you didn't think it through very well. I'm not impressed."
dark_light
"Oh? How would you go about overthrowing Hell if it were you?" asks Amariah.
ending-of
"You haven't even tried overthrowing Downside," she points out. "But you did make a mess of spying on the greener half. And you temporarily eradicated control powers. Do you have a plan for following up on that, or should I put them back?"
cross_and_bow
"I think we all vote for not putting them back," says Juliet, "as they are a terrible idea."
autokinetic
"We had a plan for what to do if you turned out not to be a problem. Of course we couldn't start on anything less obvious than cutting out the control mess while we still assumed you might be."
self_composed
"Do you want to hear the plan? Are you by any chance just actually not that interested in ruling the afterlife and wound up with the job by default?" inquires Stella.
self_composed
"Insfoar as it's possible and desired by the dead, send people back where they came from. We've done a few instances of that already; I'm sure scaling up will be a population shock, but we can compensate with magic for issues of supplies and crowding and with one of our friends for issues of processing being a nightmare. For everyone else revamp the place to be less of a pointless hellhole. As the most obvious example, even if it was a good idea to sentence people to torture and it was a good idea for torturers not to have to physically subdue their sentences there is absolutely no reason for the power to continue work in other contexts. But the entire judgment and sentencing thing is pretty well fucked too. And if people still don't want to hang out here after modifications of that order have been made, we'll take them. We can fix up as many planets as need be to work like Mars does on my world, and funnel everyone who wants out there."
ending-of
"Torturers exist because the judges demanded them. Judges exist to sort people to their appropriate side of the cliffs. What are you going to replace judges with, and what annoying demands are those people going to make?"
autokinetic
"What," asks Aegis, "is the point of the cliffs supposed to be? This is the sort of thing we'd know if you hadn't interrupted Angela."
ending-of
"No, you wouldn't," she says. "At most you might have guessed, but I think you can do that right now."
jovahs_heiress
"It can't simply be to make things nicer for the people who your judges think are worth looking after. The only difference to the place that we saw is the plants. And if I had really died and really found myself there, I don't think I'd have woken up to find a place made for my husband, all my friends, even if only on my behalf - it looks like everyone is judged one by one. You're clearly immensely powerful - it would be so simple to make things pleasanter, even only pleasanter for the people you consider it worthwhile to be relatively pleasant to."
dark_light
"You're taking notes from somebody, if people are making demands that annoy you. Somebody wanted the cliffs," suggests Amariah. "Sometime. Long ago."
luminous_regnant
"You didn't have any good ideas for using all the phenomenal cosmic power to arrange things pleasantly for the people with the misfortune to fall under your jurisdiction and you settled for putting the people who might make slightly imperfect neighbors somewhere inaccessible," proposes Golden.
ending-of
She nods to Golden.
"The operative distinction isn't how pleasant I want things to be for someone," she says. "It's whether or not they're going to make trouble for the people around them. Upside is full of people who don't, generally, make trouble for each other. Downside is full of people who do."
"The operative distinction isn't how pleasant I want things to be for someone," she says. "It's whether or not they're going to make trouble for the people around them. Upside is full of people who don't, generally, make trouble for each other. Downside is full of people who do."
self_composed
"I don't know what magic system you're working with, but it can thwart mine in at least some contests," says Stella, "and mine would do a much better job of that goal. It does, on Mars. People cannot make significant trouble for each other on my Mars. Is it just - clumsy? Not very smart? So you have to rely on judges and cliffs and the like, you can't just ban troublemaking and have done?"