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The Valar announce that they've done as much as they can in Singularity (they can't bring back peoples' babies in that critical period either, but they can get them earlier versions) and are setting up portals between there and Sanity as soon as they are confident they've cleaned up the plague. A bunch of Elf architects have this wild idea for a fivedimensional city where alternating intersections are interdimensional portals between various Valinors and they get eagerly to setting it up.
dismissal
truth_is_beauty
No. Also now the salon angel is annoyed about being unexpectedly viewed at home; she thought she was done with this.
truth_is_beauty
Yes, but that just tells them that she looks like this person. They don't want to be fooled by twins or anything.
She thinks they are being a bit ridiculous and if they don't want to accept this as confirmation then they can consider the arrest unconfirmed. She's going to go get the demons now.
alicornucopia
Elsewhere, GCP representatives complain to Maitimo that this is not what they had in mind when they dismissed the demon who holed a planet on his say-so.
through-the-free-fall
"I'm really sorry to hear that. One nonviolent offender you were unable to arrest has now been arrested in a manner which is not compatible with extant verification procedures? That sounds, to be honest with you, like the kind of complication entirely typical of attempting to integrate two justice systems and expand law enforcement capacities to three new dimensions. I've been elsewhile impressed by your contingency planning; am I right in assuming you had a contingency plan for complications like an unconfirmed rearrest due to differences in procedures?"
alicornucopia
"We consider rearranging people's faces to the point where their families can't recognize them a violent crime whether it's done by magic or scalpel," says the representative. "We were expecting that if someone is arrested, they could be presented for noninvasive parlor trick confirmation of their bindings whatever the standards of prisoner treatment might be. If she can't be shown standing next to her summoner safely bound, she has not been arrested, she's been let off with a warning. If we can't assume you'll securely hold prisoners we can't reasonably cooperate with you on, well, holding prisoners."
through-the-free-fall
"Keeping prisoners in their native realms is significantly more secure than any binding; no occasion could conceivably arise that would tempt the summoner to snap the binding or dismiss the daeva early, the prisoners are not in contact with anyone who it is possible for them to harm, and cooperation with law enforcement on the part of the daeva is substantially improved. We can work with you on mutually satisfactory verification procedures, but I hope we are not in disagreement about whether, assuming the prisoner is contained as described, she is securely held."
through-the-free-fall
"I think you may be misunderstanding our relationship with the gods. They're gods. They do what they want. They are responsive to objections, but to a point. It will be damaging to future cooperation between our peoples if you treat them as the law enforcement branch of my staff."
alicornucopia
"We'd been led to believe that we were arranging a cooperative prisoner exchange so that we could be assured of - assured of is not merely told about - the safe containment of some particularly difficult criminals in exchange for the extradition of a demon principally responsible for damage within your jurisdiction, not that we were dealing with hostile divine forces," says the representative. "By all means clarify if that's not the case."
through-the-free-fall
"You are dealing with divine forces who are benevolent but possibly hard to shuffle through red tape. Is the complaint that the summoner who has been verified to have summoned a daeva under a binding, the same binding that the daeva has been verified to be under, could actually have a twin who is the summoner of the daeva in question? Can you just conjure for twins of Ambela and confirm that there aren't any?"
alicornucopia
"That question would be much less disingenuous if the criminal we can't verify were not a cosmetic angel."
through-the-free-fall
"You know the binding the daeva is under. You have no information about the summoner except that she is an Elf. I honestly do not understand what additional information you get from seeing them standing in the same place."
alicornucopia
"You have a point; given the ability to traverse worlds by portal the binding is completely inadequate regardless of who's maintaining it."
through-the-free-fall
"The binding prohibits traversing worlds by portal or by any other means including ones yet undiscovered."
through-the-free-fall
"Yep. Unless you bind everyone in every daeva realm, and possibly even if you did, landing there as an incarnate would very likely be lethal; we aren't setting up any portals to the daeva realms, but we aren't the only form of interdimensional travel around and it's possible that someone will accidentally find themselves in a daeva realm. If they do, there is no conceivable binding on a few hundred criminals which would save them."
through-the-free-fall
"I regret that you feel that way. Should I ask the Valar to stop collecting criminals?"
through-the-free-fall
"They are likelier to do so if I can convince them that the safety of your world or ours is somehow improved by their letting these people go. I assume you think that is the case; can you explain to me why?"
alicornucopia
"We do frequently manage to catch stubborn daeva by adding circles and our procedures are definitively safe once they're caught."
through-the-free-fall
"You've done very well with the resources you have. I expect a less disruptive system has a much higher compliance rate, and from the talk you gave me about close calls with snapped bindings you made it very clear that's a serious concern, one our method obviates."