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Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.
He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -
the Connecticut Yankee summons Demon Cam
from_scratch
from_scratch
"Yeah, sure. I'll hole up with your teenage boy contingent for a bit, you can draw up some plans for where you want a monorail to go, and I can overfly the island putting it all in place before I go into space and make satellites and touch down in China. Or maybe someplace that speaks Arabic. Arabic has probably been held to some consistency because of hangups about translating the Koran."
connecticut_yankee
"I'm afraid I don't know anything about Arabic.
Shall we go tell the contingent they aren't going to be besieged after all?
Maps and surveying were an early project of mine, so we should be able to have the plans done in days if we reuse blueprints as much as we can. Clearing the space may take longer, if you need us to have that done."
Shall we go tell the contingent they aren't going to be besieged after all?
Maps and surveying were an early project of mine, so we should be able to have the plans done in days if we reuse blueprints as much as we can. Clearing the space may take longer, if you need us to have that done."
from_scratch
"Ideal conditions would have an angel - a real one - helping me, but I'm not sure if you should summon one. We don't know yet if you can send me home. So, yes, clear the space." Cam gets into the ship's pilot seat.
connecticut_yankee
"If I try to send you home and it works, is there much of a risk that I can't just summon you back? If the sending doesn't work, we'd at least know not to try any angels."
from_scratch
"I have been a curious sort of individual, dwelling in Hell, taking summons routinely, for a hundred fifty years. I've never heard of anybody time traveling when summoned. I don't know why it happened this occasion. I don't know if it'll behave like summons normally do only with added time travel; I don't know if it'll interact with you having also time traveled, such that I go home and find that it's your original time, or this calendar year, or a version of my usual time in which all the things we have been up to are recorded history, or what. So, yes, I'd say there's a risk that you can send me home but not get me back, especially because I didn't actually exist yet during this time or yours in my own timeline - but I don't know how big the risk is."
connecticut_yankee
"Too much of a risk for the time it'd save, then.
I'll send out some people with maps and budgets to recruit labor from the nearest towns. With the sorts of wages we can offer, it should go by fairly quickly."
I'll send out some people with maps and budgets to recruit labor from the nearest towns. With the sorts of wages we can offer, it should go by fairly quickly."
from_scratch
"Sounds good." Cam takes off and heads back the way they came. "There are good economic reasons not to counterfeit currency, at least in large amounts, but that sort of problem doesn't apply as much to things with direct uses of their own, so if you run short of economic wherewithal I can conjure anything commonly bartered. Although if you have me doing livestock it's going to be excruciatingly stupid livestock; demons are terrible at minds."
connecticut_yankee
"This country could use more inflation, but counterfeiting isn't necessary. When I worked for Arthur my salary was one per cent the amount by which I increase the Treasury; I can easily afford hiring labor.
We could create more money for this—I suppose I arguably still have the power to authorize that—but that might make it a Crown project, and under the circumstances I'd rather have the new lines be unambiguously privately owned.
Are there limits to how far away you can create things? If we use that to send messages, it could save valuable time on the recruitment."
We could create more money for this—I suppose I arguably still have the power to authorize that—but that might make it a Crown project, and under the circumstances I'd rather have the new lines be unambiguously privately owned.
Are there limits to how far away you can create things? If we use that to send messages, it could save valuable time on the recruitment."
from_scratch
"There are hard limits on range but they're astronomical in scale - I could make a star without diving into it or having to move around to get at various angles. But to make something in a specific place relative to other stuff, I need to be operating off plans that refer in detail to the other stuff, or directly sensing the other stuff myself. So I can't just appear a letter on the kitchen table of every house in the country."
connecticut_yankee
"I was thinking of signposts appearing at major crossroads, but our maps aren't precise enough for that. And of course that sort of space might be occupied.
There are probably ways to accomplish this. Send copies of the newspaper with an advertisement in it down by parachute, perhaps?"
There are probably ways to accomplish this. Send copies of the newspaper with an advertisement in it down by parachute, perhaps?"
from_scratch
"I can rain leaflets over a large area if I get airborne first to have a look at the large area. I will even make them biodegradable."
connecticut_yankee
"This seems a bit like overkill for what's essentially a short-term job posting. I'm all for it."
connecticut_yankee
"Duplicating the next edition of the paper would be ideal, since of course the lead story will be our little stunt today, but most of the places that we can't deliver papers to the normal way will have never seen one before. Not sure what effects that might have."
connecticut_yankee
"Certainly priests, often someone who isn't. The priests wouldn't take kindly to this issue."
from_scratch
"Yeah. I could also drop little audio thingies if we recorded an audio message, but those do not biodegrade."
connecticut_yankee
"Unusual audio is an automatic association with today's angelic appearance.
We might be stuck with mundane methods for now."
We might be stuck with mundane methods for now."
connecticut_yankee
"The backup plan is to use the existing telephones and railroads to get as much of a head start as possible, then send messengers from there. It'll work, but there's little real chance of completing the project before the news that there's going to be a nationwide election spreads the sixth-century way."
from_scratch
"I'm pretty impressed that you were able to nonmagically reinvent phones and trains, have I mentioned? When you weren't even planning to time-travel, at that."
connecticut_yankee
"Well, thank you. I was a factory foreman back in Connecticut; had to know how things are put together. I have to say, though, the create-anything-imaginable approach has quite a bit of appeal."
connecticut_yankee
"I tend to assume that society progressed enough that most anyone from my century would be the best and brightest here. The things I know how to do are probably the most dramatic, but a teacher or a lawyer would be no less the best this Britain had ever seen. Either of them could work the same scale changes, if slower."