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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.
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autokinetic
luminous_regnant
"All right. I will take it very much amiss if you peer into my head, although I suppose that doesn't have to mean anything to you."
ending-of
"And yet," she points out, "you have asked me to give this power to your ally to be used indiscriminately on ten trillion people."
self_composed
"There are," Stella points out, "ten trillion of them."
autokinetic
"Was there a flicker of anything," Aegis asks, "resisting it from me or Juliet or Stella so we could special-process anybody who's as attached to their mental privacy as us? Is there a partial version of the power, maybe. Because that is a point."
jovahs_heiress
"If we were willing that it take a little longer, the standard lie-detection could augment a modestly prolonged interview process."
ending-of
"Anyone who dies to here will be transparent to judgesight. Anyone who is given the ability to torch will be transparent to my judgesight but not necessarily to anyone else's. If you prefer, I can replace Jane's judgesight with one that requires the target's consent to proceed, and you can redesign your process around that."
self_composed
"That's not the same thing as a partial version of the power. A partial version would be one that allowed - different levels of detail, maybe, or that only showed certain things. But maybe that's the sort of thing that our magic is better at than yours?"
ending-of
"Yes," she says. "And requiring the target's consent would be a better solution to your privacy concerns."
Meanwhile, she displays a prototype-light for an ability to distribute the ability to torch.
Two things of note: it is customizable for what parts of someone's state can be included as permanent that might not be by default, and therefore allows the user to inspect those during application; and if it is used on anyone whose universe of origin is not linked to this afterlife, but could be, the linking will occur. As such, she has also included the ability to determine whether someone's world of origin is linked here already or could be.
Meanwhile, she displays a prototype-light for an ability to distribute the ability to torch.
Two things of note: it is customizable for what parts of someone's state can be included as permanent that might not be by default, and therefore allows the user to inspect those during application; and if it is used on anyone whose universe of origin is not linked to this afterlife, but could be, the linking will occur. As such, she has also included the ability to determine whether someone's world of origin is linked here already or could be.
autokinetic
"A combination would be a better solution to our privacy concerns. More people would be willing to consent to being looked at blurrily, and all Jane has to be able to see for us to release people back among the living is the general contour, the highlights, not every thought ever. And frankly, if one of us wound up here and were offered a choice between being effectively alive again with somebody having read our minds versus not being effectively alive again, that wouldn't feel like much of a choice, and we're the most mental-privacy-concerned folks around. So, can you make the power adjustable, or can we, or what?"
self_composed
"You have," says Stella, studying the prototype, "what I'm going to call a bewilderingly good sense of design."
jovahs_heiress
"We could allow some people to route around an unwillingness to be read," Angela proposes, "if they had requests in from living loved ones who themselves passed muster."
cross_and_bow
"And Jane can eat all the Internets that there are and know a lot about everybody even without any mindreading."
luminous_regnant
"We should definitely field requests either way. On my world, whether someone has living loved ones who'd welcome their return is not going to be well-correlated with whether they died in the last fifty years."
autokinetic
"Conveniently, Jane'll easily be able to process any electronically submitted requests."
cross_and_bow
"Yes, Aegis. We are all very impressed with you for having brought something about as useful as minting itself to the peal."
self_composed
"And insofar as access to suitable electronics isn't universal we can go with something like how I did my job ad - 'tear this paper into eight parts to notify personnel' sort of thing."
ending-of
It turns out that it's possible for the Bells to create a filter, and the administrator to direct judgesight through that filter. The amount of information read is the same, but the amount of information delivered varies according to filter settings.
self_composed
"Excellent. And Jane can ask people for their consent whether the power requires it or not."
cross_and_bow
"But if they're asleep or just not feeling particularly communicative it might be good for the power to be able to detect willingness anyway."
ending-of
"It's not that it detects willingness; it's that it requires a decision," she says, and prototypes a change that will provide knowledge of the attempt being made and the filter settings used, and proceed only if the target allows it. The prototype for distribution of torching is still waiting for someone to request implementation.