This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
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
through-the-free-fall
"Care to walk through the portal into Tirion with me and discuss the other aspect of the problem?"
through-the-free-fall
Tirion! There are offices here for daeva who do want to consult with attorneys; he finds one. He closes the door.
"Demons can make Elves."
through-the-free-fall
"I very badly wish I were. Our system is badly optimized for handling miscellaneous murderers because the thing we are trying to prepare for is possibly needing to arrest a significant fraction of Hell. It's a secret; doesn't work naively. But it only takes a few weeks to figure out, and if someone publishes how then they'll all be able to."
through-the-free-fall
"The day we met Cam we asked him if he could do resurrections, not aware of any of the implications. He tried; it didn't work. Demons can make us new bodies around legitimate copies of our chips, and that's a healthy Elf, but a new body around a demonic chip did nothing. Later, during the war - I was dead at the time, so this is secondhand - someone thought to wonder what went wrong, exactly - whether he was making blank chips, or corrupted ones - and if they were corrupted, if there was a way to restore them. It turns out it's even simpler than that. Read the data from the chip, write it to a new one, all of which can be done with a conjurable machine the size of a chair, and making a body around that goes fine."
through-the-free-fall
"I am sure that without that context our insistence on handling Cam - and on having a system for daeva that is far more designed around scalability than due process - are damaging to our credibility. But you can imagine why we are reluctant to offer the context too freely."
alicornucopia
"Yes. Yes, I can see that. Well. To the GCP the important things are that the daeva know we'll go for them if they hurt someone - outsourcing to you was a controversial idea for that reason - and that once we have them they know what's going to happen with us, namely trial and sentencing and internment, whether they like it or not. Even scaling up you can probably improve in those areas, especially since you seem so willing to - chat - with them."
through-the-free-fall
"Yes. And those are eminently reasonable priorities. I absolutely want there to exist certainty that they will be arrested if they hurt someone, and I think we can achieve an acceptable process afterwards. I think you do a very good job at both goals and we would love to have you as resources in accomplishing that. Just - while explaining ourselves fully to as small a circle of people as possible."
through-the-free-fall
"Do you think it would be conducive to future cooperation for your superiors to know this?"
alicornucopia
"Some of 'em will take my word for it. Maybe enough of them to pick policies that work out okay on the cooperation front."
through-the-free-fall
Nod. "I hope that's so. If that's not enough let me know and we can figure out what to do."
through-the-free-fall
"Has the GCP investigated the claim that summoners become daeva when they die?"
alicornucopia
"I don't think so? Maybe they do. My usual position is as a contact for law enforcement."
alicornucopia
"It's definitely a thing on the extranet lately, my wife's thinking of delivering a sermon disclaiming it."
alicornucopia
"Well, of course. Heaven and Hell are just called that, they're not where people go to be judged upon death."