The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Simon_Jester]

If Universe C is 'real and noticeable to denizens of Universe A', it can interact with us and, by reciprocity, we can interact with it. This is apparently not the case. Everything Universe A sent to Universe C (like those drones we sent through Minos Gate) would be instantly destroyed, and viceversa. We would never see traces of Universe C

Still missing the point.

Let us say that there is an invisible, intangible dragon in my garage. You cannot interact with it. You cannot perceive it. You cannot be harmed by it, nor can you harm it in return. However, let us say that it can interact with me, and vice versa: to me, the dragon is real. The dragon sets me on fire. You can now observe me being on fire.

Even though you cannot observe what set me on fire, you can plainly observe that something set me on fire. You can further conclude that whatever set me on fire is real, and has tangible effects. It still exists, even if you cannot interact with it directly without the use of instruments such as, say, me.

Likewise, suppose that we have a Universe C entity that can exist with and interact with a Universe B entity, but not a Universe A entity. The UC entity is still "real" and observable to us in UA, because we can observe its effects on UB. This is true in much the same way that we can observe the existence of dark matter- we see its effects on what we can interact with.

[Bayonet]

Except that you cant build high precision stuff (like a nuke) in UB due to the spatial distortion effect.

That's not a given. If the distortions are predictable, they can be dealt with.

[Pelranius]

Speaking of the F-35, what happened to the few prototypes that are floating around? Do they scrap them, try to shove them into service or just mothball them?

I'd expect that they'd get mothballed. There's at least a chance the US will still want to build F-35s again after the war, though the odds are reduced by the glut of recent planes making it unnecessary to replace aging F-somethingteens. So scrapping the prototypes and burning the plans would be premature, even though it's a complete waste of resources to actually build the damn things in a factory that could be dedicated to building planes that have already been debugged.

But if we're scouring the museums for airframes, I guess it wouldn't hurt to throw in a few F-35s, who can carry a reasonable bombload (or are the prototypes built in such a fashion that they're not easily made combat worthy?)

[Sea Skimmer]

You aren't going to get any combat capability or remotely reliable operations out of the F-35 until the software works. Right now that might not happen... ever the way the program is going. Even if you stripped down the software package to be simplified, which they've already done to an extent in the actual program it would still be years of work to finish it. Meanwhile the production line could only turn out bare handfuls of hand built planes a year and no one but a few test pilots are trained to fly them. As far as I can tell the F-35 has not yet even conducted drop tank release trials, let alone any kind of weapon.

It makes way more sense to reduce the F-35 to a minor program, kept just barely warm for the postwar period, and send the software engineers to work on urgent projects like the INS guidance only AMRAAMs and 57mm AA tank that got rushed into service. Meanwhile they would begin converting the production tooling and production staff to work on more F-22 components. Eventually that would scale up to full scale production and assembly of the simplified F-22 as a second complete line. .

[folti78]

Speaking of the F-35, what happened to the few prototypes that are floating around? Do they scrap them, try to shove them into service or just mothball them?

I'd expect that they'd get mothballed. There's at least a chance the US will still want to build F-35s again after the war, though the odds are reduced by the glut of recent planes making it unnecessary to replace aging F-somethingteens. So scrapping the prototypes and burning the plans would be premature, even though it's a complete waste of resources to actually build the damn things in a factory that could be dedicated to building planes that have already been debugged.

But if we're scouring the museums for airframes, I guess it wouldn't hurt to throw in a few F-35s, who can carry a reasonable bombload (or are the prototypes built in such a fashion that they're not easily made combat worthy?)

IIRC the first 2 F-35 prototypes didn't have the capability to carry weapons. Also while the US scoured museums for airframes, they did it with the goal to gather enough planes to equip at least a squadron with them, with more non-flyable ones kept in reserve as parts donors and (depending on the age and tech level of the aircrafts,) mostly used them in training and second line duties. The handful of F-35 prototypes that were under construction at the time of the projects cancellation in TSW had the problems of being just non-debugged hand built prototypes and being too few to worth the hassle service. That's for the US, a more resource strapped country like the UK had to press the two mothballed TSR-2's into service, at least until they began to get new planes from the US.

[DKeith2011]

We can't, but they can.

No they can't. The spatial distortion is intrinsic to the dimension and occurs regardless of who's doing the work.

[DKeith2011]

Except that you cant build high precision stuff (like a nuke) in UB due to the spatial distortion effect.

That's not a given. If the distortions are predictable, they can be dealt with.

iirc Stuart is on record as saying that it wont work period. The story driven reason being a limiting factor on the economic power of UB.

[Simon_Jester]

Keith, could you provide citations on that? So far you've just said over and over "it won't work." This despite the fact that it would defy all common sense to make it absolutely impossible to produce precision machinery in an environment where life can exist without your cells being torn apart by little random oscillations in the size of the atoms making them up.

I respect Stuart enough to think he wouldn't try a cop-out like that, or at least wouldn't stick to it after seeing the problem, because it doesn't make any damn sense.

[rdfox2]

Of course, there's a simple solution to this, at least in the short-to-medium term.

Precision work isn't possible *now* due to the distortion effect, and won't be until there's time and resources available to do a detailed survey of both Heaven and Hell to define and map the distortion effect.

Only *after* doing that would it be possible to compensate for the distortion effects. Depending on how long it is before we feel secure in Universe-2, it might be decades or even centuries before such a survey could be completed.

[Nematocyst]

<example>
suppose that we have a Universe C entity that can exist with and interact with a Universe B entity, but not a Universe A entity. The UC entity is still "real" and observable to us in UA, because we can observe its effects on UB. This is true in much the same way that we can observe the existence of dark matter- we see its effects on what we can interact with.

Now I get it. I was too locked up in this universe to see that

No they can't. The spatial distortion is intrinsic to the dimension and occurs regardless of who's doing the work.

That may be possible. But the distances involved in a nuclear initiation are so short (I think) they wouldn't be affected by the spatial distortion.
Besides, we would have to use UB materials to build the nuke. Materials that are already 'used' to the shenanigans of the place.

[Ruadhan2300]

Nematocyst, that is an Awesome Sig.

[DKeith2011]

Keith, could you provide citations on that? So far you've just said over and over "it won't work." This despite the fact that it would defy all common sense to make it absolutely impossible to produce precision machinery in an environment where life can exist without your cells being torn apart by little random oscillations in the size of the atoms making them up.

I respect Stuart enough to think he wouldn't try a cop-out like that, or at least wouldn't stick to it after seeing the problem, because it doesn't make any damn sense.

Unless I'm completely imagining it, it was somewhere earlier in this thread. I'll do some digging as time permits, stuck at work atm.

My understanding of the A/B/C situation is this:

Anything created in a given Universe (A/B/C) will work/interact normally when in a universe 1 step removed. In other words, A works/interacts in B but not C, B works/interacts in A & C (by virtue of being in the middle) and C works/interacts in B but not A.

Remember the demonstration of an earth made trident? The charge simply grounded out as compared to the hell made trident. Apparently any given item carries enough of its local laws with it to function properly one step over from home.

Of course, this is my understanding and could be completely wrong.

No they can't. The spatial distortion is intrinsic to the dimension and occurs regardless of who's doing the work.

That may be possible. But the distances involved in a nuclear initiation are so short (I think) they wouldn't be affected by the spatial distortion.
Besides, we would have to use UB materials to build the nuke. Materials that are already 'used' to the shenanigans of the place.

This next bit is based on my understanding from up there ^

If C is so different from A that no interaction is possible then you can throw all the earth made nukes you like through a portal, nothings going to happen.

If I'm wrong and it does turn out to be possible to build a nuke (every single bit of the device) purely ouf of UB materials in UB or that A & C can interact directly, then yeah, nuke'em till they glow if that's what called for.

[Junghalli]

If I remember right, while the differences between Universe-One (ours) and Universe-3 (beyond the Minos Gate) are such that they can't interact, that's not the case for Universe-3 and Universe-2 (Hell and Heaven). That could be problematic in its own way.

It does open a nasty possibility, similar to this:

More importantly, Greg Egan skips over the question of why all of humanity, all the polises, and Old Earth, have suddenly turned peaceful simply because everyone is free, immortal, and rich. It only takes one aggressor to make a war, and during the twentieth century, offensive technology has considerably outrun the defensive. No present-day shield will withstand a direct hit by a nuclear weapon. Whether offensive technology overpowers defensive at the limit of achievable technology is another question, and obviously the answer is "It could go either way."

But even if the various "polises" - different operating systems - in Diaspora were surrounded by utterly impermeable defenses, that would create another moral problem, this one even worse: that of an evil polis, where the rules against coercion don't hold, and some ruling class creates and tortures countless trillions of sentient victims. By hypothesis, if defensive technology beats offensive, there is nothing that anyone can do about this evil polis; nothing that can break the defenses.

It would really have sucked if Hell was an analagous situation.

Then again, if information (minds) can be transferred from one domain to another it means some interaction is possible, so the place isn't completely impenetrable. But it would be pretty tricky if, say, physics was sufficiently different that most physical structures from our universe couldn't survive there.

Well, they don't consider the principle of reciprocity to be a basic axiom; they believe that the laws of nature cheat. Vulnerable gods are only going to exist in a universe that doesn't play favorites, and that's not the one that they think they live in.

Picture the cosmos as being like a Looney Toons cartoon, with humanity as the villain, and you have a good image of how typical believers expect human efforts to cross God to go.

The analogy I like best is somebody inside a computer simulation trying to fight somebody who controls the simulation. There's a physically plausible scenario where the principle of reciprocity doesn't apply; you can easily hurt such an entity with a few taps on a keyboard, but it would find it pretty hard (maybe impossible) to hurt you from inside the simulation.

Edit: that might actually be an interesting alternate take on this premise. The most plausible way for humans to beat the malevolent programmer would probably be to find a way to upload ourselves into bodies in the "real universe" in which it exists. Reminds me a little of this.

[Nematocyst]

The analogy I like best is somebody inside a computer simulation trying to fight somebody who controls the simulation. There's a physically plausible scenario where the principle of reciprocity doesn't apply; you can easily hurt such an entity with a few taps on a keyboard, but it would find it pretty hard (maybe impossible) to hurt you from inside the simulation.

Sounds like ReBoot. They pulled Salvation Wars one after the other in there.

Nematocyst, that is an Awesome Sig.

Thanks! It was inspired by Tucker McElroy's speech in Chapter 67, which in turn was inspired by a post in the thread that sparked the Salvation War story.

[GrayAnderson]

Except that you cant build high precision stuff (like a nuke) in UB due to the spatial distortion effect.

That's not a given. If the distortions are predictable, they can be dealt with.

As I recall, the comment wasn't that you couldn't build it...you just couldn't build half of it in UA and half in UB because the parts wouldn't work with each other at a certain point. If you build it all in UA or all in UB, it works fine...it's dealing with differing parts that's the problem.

[Kuroji]

I'm kind of curious, if Universe B builds a nuke (notwithstanding any possible issues now) and lobs it into Universe C... is it possible that the physics of that universe might be different enough that it causes the bomb to fizzle? Sure, the uranium/plutonium will go over there, but we have no idea how physics would work on that plane, and whether the distortion is more pronounced on a subatomic level. A critical mass that works in UB might not in UC.

[Commander Xillian]

Everyone seems to be forgetting the quick and easy fix for this.

Just block off the portal! Seriously, just dump a fuck-ton of rocks on it and problem solved.

[Nick79]

As we know from earth-made tridents not working on hell or earth, and hell tridents working in both, the laws of where the thing is built(born) are what apply to how it will function. So, how do we convince an orc to go through that Minos gate... I do believe they are the only known true natives of the heaven/hell/other pocket worlds; so much is unknown about the deep past of angels and demons, other than that they are closely related to HUMANS, something which would explain why THEY can't go through that gate.

This also makes me wonder how living and having children on earth would effect the next generation of demons or angels - even hell vs heaven created quite a change.

[Nick79]

Everyone seems to be forgetting the quick and easy fix for this.

Just block off the portal! Seriously, just dump a fuck-ton of rocks on it and problem solved.

Except, that would not work out so well for the dead of earth, who begin their second life from there.

[nobody_really]

I also remember a comment that Hell and whatever is on the other side of the Minos Gate can't interact other than receiving and sending bodies, and it was just too bad for daemonic society that it wasn't the case with our universe. As for who or what is communicating with Memnon, we don't know if it's something on the other side of the Minos Gate or a being that is in another planet analogue in the Hell/Heaven universe, or even a being that is currently in Hell or Heaven. That may get answered later in Pantheocide or Lords of War. We'll just have to wait until then, if ever. And it's easy to imagine a universe where the weak and strong nuclear forces have different magnitudes that prevent a fission or fusion reaction from occurring the same way, and which would render a delivered nuke ineffective.

[barricade]

I rarely comment on here as I know I'm outclassed by several people present in knowledge, but I had a thought a few minutes ago that might be interesting.

I know very well Stuart's dislike of the idea that Earth starts finding a mass of famous people. In general, I agree with this as otherwise it takes away from the modern day characters far too much. Even those up in Micheal's bar is pushing thing. However I thought of one that might just be more intriguing as to what they might think of their legacy, rather then what the modern world could give to them.

Beethoven.

Not a famous scientist, statesman, engineer, industrialist, or military leader, but someone with a far more subtle gift.

[Simon_Jester]

Ha.

Well, we won't see him, but he's an interesting example because he's one of the few premodern people who can contribute something to modern society. Assuming, of course, that he's still more or less sane after spending 200 years bathing in fire.

[Captain Trek]

Since UA entities can exist in UB, they can presumably work out the A-B-C physics, after which they can create systems in UB that can operate in UC, even if they cannot go there, themselves. We could, for example, nuke UC using weapons built to the rules of UB.

Assuming that the problems relating to the slightly different laws of physics in universe B can be overcome with regards to building "precision" devices, I was thinking that it would be very a good idea for us to build UAVs or Stargate-style MALPs in Heaven and Hell out of materials native to those places and send them through the Minos Gate to see what's on the other side, just as we sent that Preadator through the Hellmouth in Iraq. Because, let's face it, there's going to be a serious political push from Earth-siders (though likely not so much from the Angels or Demons, with the second-life humans being the wild-card) to see what's on the other side of that gate if only for the faint hope that the dead second-lifers or the angels and demons many now feel remorse for having had to kill might be somewhere on the other side. Besides, weren't the DIMO(N) people talking about punching random portholes into other universes and exploring them to find all the other "gods" people have worshipped over the centuries, just in case any others are hostile? Well, wouldn't exploring the Minos Gate be a good place to start on that front?

Anyway, I think building unmanned exploratory devices with Universe-2 materials and under Universe-2 physical conditions would be a damn side better than asking teams of angels or demons to go stumbling blindly into a completely unfamiliar situation, which is, of course, our other option...

A question though, could building a Universe-2 piece of equipment with materials and feedstock entirely from Universe-2 but with tools and manufacturing equipment from Universe-1 possibly work? Because if that's the case I'd think surely we could get a Universe-2 UAV up and running with little trouble... Also, will the oil coming out of Universe-2 behave differently to regular oil when used a feedstock in Universe-1 equippment? I'd imagine, based on what has been said here, that it would, but only in as much as the performance of, say, fuel made from Universe-2 oil would differ slightly (possibly resulting in a slightly different Octane-rating for two samples of petrol that are otherwise identical* except that one was made from Universe-1 oil and the other from universe-2 oil)...

*As difficult as it is to get that to occur.

[Edward Yee]

SQUICK warning: Some supposed pics of Hiroshima/Nagasaki affected (other than the last two), for possible comparison to "The Heaven Incident," please try to ignore the comments... completely NSFW either way.

[Scorpio]

Hi everyone, long time lurker, first time poster.

I just had a thought, what if the reason that angles and deamons don't use their entanglement abbilities for communications is that they can't. Either it doesn't work on members of the same species or something in their neural architecture prevents it. If this is true it brings up the possibility that Elhmas, aka the guy that played Jesus in real life, could still be alive. Since he is Yah-yahs son the restriction wouldn't aply to him, since he is neither an angel or an engineered species(probably). He could have been working through his leutenant, could have given him some line like "I will infuse you with my spirit" or something along those lines. Also since he knew enough about humans to split his force he might also know enough to not want to be anywhere near them. Something that might add a little weight to my theory is the fact that Elhmas was last seen above the column

The mighty Elhmas, son of He Who Is Above All and leader of our host? He is back there, I think. He was over the column when the thing happened.

and I don't recall Yah-yah, Satan, or Elhmas ever being described as haveing wings or the ability to fly.