Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

[Chris OFarrell]

Anyone else notice this part?

“But I must finish the President’s Speech to the Iron Worker’s Union.”

There was a hideous racking groan from the beast, muted only by its failing strength.

Wonder if the use of the 'I' word might have done something there...

[Vehrec]

So, tinfoil hats and succubi who can't get Bill to drop his pants. This is making me cackle with glee, although it would seem that the first thing some of our telepaths need to do is learn how to turn their own off switch.

In other news, the US economy still has a lot of slack. Taking that slack out of it will take a lot of effort, but produce a hell of a lot of supplies and equipment. And it might just breathe some life back into cities like Cleveland.

[hongi]

Great chapter. I actually thought Bill would get seduced and then when he turns around and blows the succubus away...classic.

I think you should keep it science vs magic. Up to a point. The demons should be half-understandable, as in we know their chemical make-up and how they fly, but I don't see the problem if there really was magic or supernatural powers.

[Sidewinder]

The scene with Bill Clinton was hilarious. Any other famous faces we'll see kick demon ass? Governor Schwarzenegger with a M134 minigun, perhaps?

We must at once contact the next herald and request an audience to humbly beg forgiveness for our trangressions and pay tribute to our new Lord and Master.

To start, we may offer the Dark Lord a great gift worthy of his glorious malevolence. This box here, with "W-80" on the side and those numbers that count down on that panel, which when it reaches Zero, will surrender our greatest power and secrets to him in tribute of his glorious reign....

You might as well put the SADM back in production, or develop new ones, for combating Satan's minions.

[Junghalli]

Awesome.

I second Academia Nut's take on what the story is really about, and Stravo's take on the reason angels and demons don't use science.

The part about heralds being exempt from attack makes me think that Hell lacks a reliable equivalent to radio, because a rule like that would make sense in the context of face-to-face meetings being the only possible form of communication. On the other they apparently have telepathy, maybe only a very limited number of demons are telepaths?

Something else I found interesting:

I blame this all on Yahweh. He was supposed to have softened this lot up, got them to believe anything and obey everything. I thought he had too. Abigor, you will rectify this. You command 60 of the 999 legions of Hell. You will take them and wipe these upstarts out.

It sounds almost like Satan is actually the master here, and Yahweh is a servant, not the other way around. Is this a glimpse into the cosmology you've set up for this universe Stuart?

[Stuart]

It sounds almost like Satan is actually the master here, and Yahweh is a servant, not the other way around. Is this a glimpse into the cosmology you've set up for this universe Stuart?

It is the first glimpse into the cosmology of what is going on here, although your take isn't quite accurate. Don't worry, all will become light (or darkness - imagine insane cackle)

I did a count of the Legions of the Damned by commander and came up with 999 so I've got an order of battle worked out. We're running into the calm before the storm right about now.

[Academia Nut]

The forces of Hell having to fight without the equivalent of modern communications? Oh, that will be fun considering that up until less than a century ago command and control was still at the "as far as you can shout" stage.

I can see the demons launching a multipronged blitz using whatever the fuck they use to get from Hell to Earth and popping up inside a lot of territory. They quickly capture the less well defended places, but get hammered as mass formations make them juicy targets for nuclear munitions (amusing thought: if after the first couple of nuclear attacks Hell immediately launches and assault on Heaven thinking that they've been suckered because it would be impossible for mere humans to have such earthshattering weaponry). Even while being forced back by superior numbers and toughness, modern emphasis on mobility and communications allows for an orderly withdrawal around major population, resource, and production centres with the intent of evacuation to safer zones whenever possible so as to conserve resources for the fight tomorrow. The demons and/or angels capture a significant chunk of the world's landmass and slaughter millions or potentially billions, but end up forced to consolidate as the logistics nightmare and their hideous casualties begin to overwhelm their advantages. Both sides settle in as the supernatural forces try and figure out why this world is so tough to crack, and humans lick their wounds and plan revenge that will redefine the word "Unholy". Surviving human centres become police state megapolises of varying harshness to control damage done by infiltrator demons and fanatics who think they can buy a better afterlife through cooperation. Life extension technology is second only to military research in importance, and everything else is cast to the wayside. I can see mottos like "Fight! Learn! Produce!" encouraging no slackness in daily life, in that if you are not fighting you should be a scientist making new things for the soldiers, and if not that you should be in the factories building more guns, bombs, and tanks for the wars.

Or at least, that is how I see it going down.

[phongn]

Or at least, that is how I see it going down.

I don't think he's aiming to write Warhammer 2K

[Academia Nut]

I don't see it being a stalemate forever unlike the hacks in charge of the metaplot for Warhammer (I like the fluff, but by the Emperor do something new!), as you know, part of this story is that progress and change trumps starting off with neat toys and then never going anywhere. I just expect it to take a while before he can have guys who literally jump feet first into Hell. A couple of decades at most, but those will be rough decades. This is of course presuming we have to work out from first principles the technology to do a dimension hop sort of thing.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I did a count of the Legions of the Damned by commander and came up with 999 so I've got an order of battle worked out. We're running into the calm before the storm right about now.

I'm sorry, by whom? I'm not familiar with this book.

[hongi]

It is the first glimpse into the cosmology of what is going on here, although your take isn't quite accurate. Don't worry, all will become light (or darkness - imagine insane cackle)

I thought it meant that Satan and God had some sort of agreement in which they both benefit. Wouldn't have a clue on the details though.

[fnord]

So I'm guessing Royal, Royal Dutch or US Marine Forces Celestial will take a while to gear up?

[Starglider]

Any other famous faces we'll see kick demon ass? Governor Schwarzenegger with a M134 minigun, perhaps?

I think you mean 'Governor Schwarzenegger with an XM214' (the 5.56mm version). It is just barely plausible that he could fire one of those from the hip.

The forces of Hell having to fight without the equivalent of modern communications? Oh, that will be fun considering that up until less than a century ago command and control was still at the "as far as you can shout" stage.

Maybe. We don't know the limits of their teleportation ability yet, and we know they have at least some telepathic abilities (of unknown range and jammability, though the aluminium beanie defence is encouraging).

but get hammered as mass formations make them juicy targets for nuclear munitions

It'll certainly be interesting to see what effect EM pulses have on them. It's possible that relatively small high-altitude airbursts will be able to stun huge numbers of them without doing major damage to nearby terrain & friendlines.

I second Academia Nut's take on what the story is really about

He's making sense. It's a little more original than 'magic vs technology... again'.

The demons should be half-understandable, as in we know their chemical make-up and how they fly

I've had the 'how to make large plausible flying creatures' argument with a lot of fantasy writers/artists. Unfortunately the 'use hydrogen!' answer doesn't really work, though I appreciate the effort (and the homage to the old 'The Flight of Dragons' animated film). There /are/ ways to make plausible huge flying creatures, even without making them look like actual birds/bats instead of half-gorillas, but it involves fairly exotic biology and I'm not inclined to nitpick this particular depiction.

[Slacker]

I laughed out loud at the Clinton bit. Twas a bit akward, given that I'm sitting in a polisci lecture at the moment. Quality writing.

[Stuart]

Oval Office, White House, Washington D.C.

“Sir, newsflash just in, Former President Clinton has just killed a baldrick at the McDonalds just down the road.”

“Damn, that will cost us at least one more seat in the House.” President Bush looked pensive for a moment. “I don’t suppose we could get my pappy to whack one?”

His public relations advisor shrugged, if one turned up in the right place it could be arranged, probably. But that was asking too much. “No Sir, not that we can rely on anyway.”

Bush’s mouth twisted, a pity to be disappointed so late in the evening. “How did it happen anyway? How did Bill, I suppose we’ll have to call him Wild Bill now, manage it? And what were the Secret Service up to?”

“The details are very brief, Sir, apparently he just blasted the baldrick with an automatic shotgun. Doctor Surlethe, the National Science Advisor is waiting outside, perhaps he can give you some more details.”

A sigh wafted gently across the room, President Bush really didn’t like being briefed by scientists. They tended to use such long words. Like any good politician, Bush knew that the time taken to say a four-syllable word was greater than the attention span of the audience. “Trot him in.”

Bush leaned forward in his seat, giving the impression of studiously examining the papers on the Presidential desk. “Doctor Surlethe, good to see you. A great achievement by the former President, but one that raises a few questions I think?”

“Indeed so sir. Mr. Clinton was very lucky that the baldrick in question was a new type, one that apparently has some unnerving capabilities. In accordance with your instructions, we’ve started naming the baldrick types we encounter. For example, the we’ve designated the flying baldricks as harpies, the aquatic ones as leviathans and the land-based one as behemoths. The one killed by Mr. Clinton was human sized and gave every appearance of being a human female, a very seductive one. It changed appearance into what we assume was its real form only when blasted with several dozen rounds of double-ought buckshot and automatic pistol fire.”

“Wait a minute, this thing was able to simulate people’s appearance? It’s a shape shifter? That means it could be anybody, you, me, anybody could be killed and replaced by one of those things.”

“Yes Sir, although things may not be quite that bad. The other thing is that this baldrick, we’re going to call this type a succubus, just materialized by the former President’s table and started to speak to him. The Secret Service men thought they’d fouled up badly but nobody saw that thing before it was standing next to the former President and speaking. It’s as if it simply materialized there.”

“That’s appalling. It means nobody is safe, one could materialize here and now.”

“Well, that all depends Mister President. There are pretty much two possibilities. The first is that the succubus really is a shape-shifter and can teleport around. If that is the case, then we can take the entire science section of the Library of Congress and toss it on to the landfill. Everything we thought we knew about the physical world is wrong. However, the other possibility is much more probable and something we can handle.” Doctor Surlethe paused for a second. This was going to be the tricky bit. “This option is that the succubus doesn’t change shape or teleport, it simply makes us think it looks the way it does.”

“How can it do that?” Here comes the long words Bush thought to himself.

“Mister President, are you familiar with the concept of quantum entanglement.”

Knew it Bush thought. Four syllables at least. “I’ve heard the term.”

That means no. Doctor Surlethe said ruefully to himself. Oh well, here we go. “Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more objects influence each other at a quantum level even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This leads to correlations between observable physical properties of the systems. For example, measurements performed on one system seem to be instantaneously influencing other systems entangled with it.”

Surlethe looked at the President, he wasn’t sure but Bush’s eyes seemed to be rotating in different directions. “What this means is that one quantum state can duplicate itself, transit information on itself if you like, to another without a direct contact. This has been experimentally demonstrated within a laboratory and we are just beginning to appreciate the implications of the phenomena. Now, the workings of the brain and nerves all use various kinds of energy fields, you’ve heard of brainwave measurement and things like that. We’ve been doing that for years. Now, theoretically, its possible that the succubus can entangle its energy field with those around it so that it transmits information to them, in effect it duplicates itself in them. So, the succubus holds a mental image of itself in its mind and uses this ability to entangle the sense transmissions in those around it so it duplicates that image in them. In short, all those around the succubus see it the way the succubus wants them to see it. It doesn’t change shape, it simply changes the way people see its shape.”

“And the teleport thing.”

“Easy, the succubus simply transmits an image of itself that isn’t there. It isn’t invisible, it simply tells the senses in its victim that it isn’t present. Now, if this is correct, we should be able to detect that energy field, there isn’t a part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can’t detect and measure, and work out a way to stop it. Only, we’ll need a live succubus for that and we haven’t got one. Until we get one, we won’t know which explanation is correct.”

“We don’t need a succubus Doctor, we’ve got the evidence we need.” Bush grinned to himself, just because he didn’t like using four-syllable words and usually mispronounced them when he did, didn’t mean he couldn’t understand them.

“We have Mister President?”

“This is Washington Doctor. The city with one of the highest crime rates in America. Knocking off fast-food restaurants and shooting the staff is a daily event. Or was, until the places started installing video surveillance cameras. Now, if I follow your explanation properly, the entanglement thing you talk about works on the energy fields in the brain. Surveillance cameras don’t have brains. The film should show us what is really there, not what it wants us to think is there. So, lets get that film.”

It took just under an hour. The manager of the 19th Street McDonalds had the interesting experience of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III arriving to collect his video surveillance tapes personally. Director Mueller carried the tapes went back to the White House where they were set up in the projection office just off the Conference Room. By the striking of the hour, the audience had assembled and the tapes were run.

“Right, here we are, we can see the former President and his two Secret Service men entering the restaurant …… will you look at that!” Mueller’s voice was incredulous. A jet black figure, human-sized but with a set of rounded stub horns and a long pointed tail entered through the open doors of the restaurant, only a foot or so behind the rear Secret Service man. By the time the doors had closed, it was inside. “He’s getting his food, going to the table.” The succubus had walked less than a couple of feet in front of the Secret Service agents, both had looked directly at it, but neither of them had seen it. The succubus spoke with Clinton while he ate, then the two left together. A few seconds after they left, there were the brilliant flashes of gunfire outside.

“There we are, Doctor Surlethe, it doesn’t teleport and it doesn’t shift shape. It just makes us think it does, so you can start to look for your energy field, right?”

“Yes Sir.”
Bush relaxed in his seat, running the implications of the scene in his mind. “Doctor Surlethe, your Quantum Entanglement theory was very interesting and, as far as I can make out, plausible. Don’t concentrate on it to the exclusion of other theories though. I’ve seen that happen all too often.

“Gentlemen, we’ve proved something else today. We can rely on our optical sensors even if we can’t rely on our own eyes and ears. That’s worth spreading to the troops, to everybody in fact. I doubt that this succubus thing that Bill killed so emphatically will be the only one that we run into, there will be more and we need to be on our guard against them. Closed-circuit television surveillance, remote surveillance so that the operator isn’t within the zone of control of these things, is essential. By Executive Order, I’m making the installation of such equipment a tax-deductible expense as from now. See that gets out as fast as possible.”

James Randi Educational Foundation, Florida, USA

James Randi rubbed his eyes. The last few days had been tiresome in the extreme, ever since the announcement that all mediums were being tested so that their abilities, if any, could be used in the war effort went out, the Foundation had been besieged by applicants. The big names, of course, had refused to show their faces. They were scared spitless of The Amazing Randi and with good reason. He knew the tricks they used and how to expose them, submitting to tests by him would destroy their livelihood. That reasoning hadn’t helped them, they had found themselves being picked up by the FBI, bundled into the back of a Chevvy Suburban and brought down to the Foundation. A few hours later, they had been on their way back, their fraudulent claims exposed and discredited.

“Not one. Not one genuine medium in the whole lot. There was a time when that would have delighted me but not now. We know there’s something out there but we can’t get at it. It was easier being an atheist, now I don’t know what to believe. Guess that makes me agnostic.”

“No, James. I know that the idea an agnostic lies between the extremes of atheism and religious fanaticism but it does not. It is a separate line of thought. An atheist denies the existence of any sort of god, the theist affirms it. An agnostic believes that the existence or non-existence of a god can never be proven, the Gnostic believes that the existence or non-existence of a god is subject to rational proof. If I understand your position correctly, you were a Gnostic Atheist. You denied the existence of a god and thought you could prove that your denial was correct.”

“And I was wrong, General.”

“Why James? We know now that there is life after death, that is undeniable. We know that the afterlife is ruled by beings. Why do you believe those beings are gods? We have already proved we can kill their servants with almost absurd ease. Why cannot we kill them as well? They’re probably more trouble than they are worth anyway.”

“We don’t like our gods, so we kill them. Now that’s a soldier talking.”

“No James, it is not. A soldier fights for those who cannot fight for themselves. Today we fight for all those who have died, who are being held in horrid slavery. We fight for all humanity, past, present and future. You are part of that fight, don’t forget it. In this war, you are as much a soldier as I.”

“General, while we are speaking on this subject, may I ask something? How does The Message affect you and your people? Few or you are Christian.”

“On one level James, The Message does not concern us. I am a Buddhist, so are more than 90 percent of my people. The Lord Buddha was not a god, he was a man. A very wise man who laid down rules for living one’s life as well as possible on an imperfect earth. Good rules that when applied mean one lives a good life. To us, being a Buddhist simply means following those teachings, I could give you a long lecture on what that means but here is neither the time nor the place. When we meditate we simply ponder the teachings of the Lord Buddha and try to seek enlightenment on how they can solve our problems. When we pray to him, we simply are asking him what he would do under these circumstances. Any question of gods or devils is quite irrelevant to that center core belief. In my country, we are animists, we believe that everything has a spirit that lives in it, a spirit we can talk to and who will talk back to us. So The Message didn’t affect us much. On another level, what does affect us is the assertion that all humans go to eternal punishment no matter what they believe. The Message made no distinction between the religions or stated that one would be exempt while another was condemned. All humans are subject to the same fate. So we fight. That’s why governments pay us the big bucks.”

“Which brings us back to where we started. We’ve been pulling in every psychic, every medium, every fortune teller we can find. When we’ve exhausted this country’s supply, we’ll start abroad. Yet, for all our efforts we have not come up with one single person who can actually speak to the dead. What if there are none? What if the dead are indeed beyond contact?”

The General finished her whisky and refilled her glass. “Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that so-called mediums cannot speak to the dead but that those who can speak to the dead are not mediums. After all, let us suppose that one can communicate with the dead. What will we learn? That the dead are subject to an eternity of hideous torture, without hope of end or reprieve. That the same fate awaits us all. Now, the grieving family of a dead person turns up on our doorstep. They want reassurance, they want to know that their beloved husband, or wife, parents or children have gone to the better place promised, that they are happy in their afterlife. Would you tell them the truth? That a terrible fate has fallen on them and that the same awaits their relatives?”

Randi shook his head. Such cruelty would be inconceivable. Thinking about it, The Message itself was an act of diabolical cruelty, one that only a truly foul mind could conceive. When Satan had proclaimed his dominion over the Earth and proclaimed that all its souls belonged to him, regardless of virtue or cause, he had fully lived up to his reputation. “So where do we look?”

The General sipped her whisky, savoring its smoky taste. “Imagine yourself as someone who can speak to the damned dead, know their pain and anguish, feel their agony, know that the same fate awaits you and that there is no hope, that the fate ahead is what inevitably awaits you. What would you do?”

Randi thought for a second. “I think I would go mad.”

The General looked over the rim of her glass. “Quite. So shouldn’t we start looking amongst the mad? Looking at those who hear voices, voices whose messages are so dreadful that they have driven the listener insane? All through history there have been those who have claimed they have heard voices that drove them to acts of rage or despair. They’ve always been treated as though they were insane but suppose they were not? Suppose they really did hear voices, either accidentally or deliberately. In ancient times, such people were described as possessed but in our arrogance we assumed otherwise. We assumed that they were sick, that they had a mental defect that we could treat. Perhaps they were not, perhaps they really were possessed by the demons who now assail us. That they were victims of the hideous game we are now playing to its final act.”

“So we should start looking amongst the mentally ill. That will be a long job.”

“It will indeed, James, but it is one we can move fast on. We are looking for specific kinds of people, those who hear voices that drive them insane. I think computers can help with this, we need to have the records searched so that we can find the most promising cases. Then we can bring them here.”

Office of the National Science Advisor, Washington D.C.

“Call for you, Doctor Surlethe. From Florida.”

“Thank you, put it through.” Surlethe waited for a moment. “Surlethe here.”

“Doctor, this is the James Randi Educational Foundation.” Surlethe recognized the contralto voice, one that had a threatening growl underneath it. The sound of a well-fed tiger that was eying a small animal with the thought that it had just a little room left in its stomach.

“Ah yes General. How is the research going down there?”

“We’ve hit a dead end, our initial concept was wrong so we’re changing tack. We’re writing off the known mediums etc as source material, its pretty obvious they’re all frauds and confidence tricksters. Instead, we’re going to start looking at people who claim to hear voices in their heads and are under treatment for such ‘delusions’.”

“So you and The Amazing Randi think that some of them really do hear voices.” Surlethe’s voice was bitter. Scientists had never forgiven Randi for exposing tricksters whose acts had fooled ‘scientific’ testing. Randi had pointed out that the skills needed to expose a fraud were different from those needed to conduct an experiment. It hadn’t helped, if anything it had made things worse.

“We do. What we need you to do is to get as much information on such cases to us as possible so we can start working through them. Also, I read the note about the search for energy fields? Can you get some instrumentation down here pretty quick, if we do start finding what we’re looking for, we should be able to measure what it is they’re hearing.”

“I’ll get the equipment sent down, along with some experts to install it. Thank you General, and good luck.”

Surlethe leaned back in his seat. A new front had been opened against the forces that were threatening humanity. While the armed forces were picking off the baldricks who appeared in earth, science and reason were striking at the very heart of their power. For the first time since The Message, Surlethe felt good.

[Shroom Man 777]

Mang, this is totally radical. Not only does it deal with the whole ass-kicking aspect, but it also touches on some of the deeper effects and implications of humanity being abandoned and consigned to damnation. And how, even in the face of damnation, humanity remains resolute and ready to kick ass.

It's a story of how humanity has grown up, basically.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I know he's an intelligent man and all, more intelligent than he lets on, but its unsettling to see GWB say 'Optical Sensors'.

[Kodiak]

I do enjoy the idea of "growing up" as a society beyond artificial constraints. I'm a practicing Christian, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the themes and principles presented here. I thought this quote was quite apropos of the good Doctor's final sentiments:

"And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; thou shalt power to bruise his heel, but it shall have power to crush thy head." Genesis 3:14-15

It also occurred to me that many people on earth might believe that this is all a trick by the devil. It wouldn't be the first time he's been given license to afflict mankind; just look at the book of Job.

[The Vortex Empire]

I wonder what would happen after death if they manage to kill Satan and Yahweh.

[White Haven]

...I just got the mental image of the sniper from Saving Private Ryan mumbling prayers under his breath as he assassinates Jesus.

[Slacker]

Well, where would they go, really? Detroit?

[Starglider]

“What this means is that one quantum state can duplicate itself, transit information on itself if you like, to another without a direct contact. This has been experimentally demonstrated within a laboratory

mmm right. Well, I suppose given the premise that an 'illusion' ability exists, it's one of the least implausible rationalisations.

So, the succubus holds a mental image of itself in its mind and uses this ability to entangle the sense transmissions in those around it so it duplicates that image in them.

'Entangle the sense transmissions'? Clearly we're not talking about reflected photons, since cameras aren't affected. So the good Doctor Surlethe eithers mean the target's retina/optical nerve/primary visual cortex, or their higher visual areas. In the first case, the succubus would have to mentally 'render' a view of itself from the appropriate angle and distance and superimpose it onto the correct cells in the target. This would be really really hard to do with biology as we know it, very prone to perceptual glitches and the succubus would have to effectively have a two-way telepathic link to everyone in the area to make it work (since the view has to change to match viewer eye movements).

Therefore it's much more plausible that this ability works at a very high level, inserting a mental suggestion to 'see dream woman instead of succubus' and letting the target's brain do all the work; effectively it's 'very reliable instant hypnosis'. Both of these can theoretically bypass equipment like night vision goggles, but the second case can do it more easily, because the succubus doesn't have to know what the project it wants has to look like through the equipment (because the user is confabulating the details). But of course it won't work on guards watching over CCTV.

...I just got the mental image of the sniper from Saving Private Ryan mumbling prayers under his breath as he assassinates Jesus.

An interesting question is whether this ability would affect a sniper on a hilltop half a mile away watching the succubus through a scope; is it omnidirectional with a simple range limit, or does the 'entanglement' effect somehow piggyback on the actual photons travelling from the succubus to the target, thus being literally a 'line of sight' effect? In the latter case presumably being piped through CCTV collapses the effect.

Yes I am taking this far too 'seriously'. No I don't care.

Given that this is Stuart writing, I have this premonition that once the speaking-to-the-dead intel project gets going, some spirit will suddenly turn up force all the others to stay silent while he speaks.

It will be Curtis Le May, bringing us the fruits of his decades of planning carried out even as he was being tortured; grid co-ordinates and flightplans for the first bombing strike on Hell.

[Enigma]

This may be a stupid question but will heaven's forces be in play and if so will they be on par as hell?

[KlavoHunter]

Given that this is Stuart writing, I have this premonition that once the speaking-to-the-dead intel project gets going, some spirit will suddenly turn up force all the others to stay silent while he speaks.

It will be Curtis Le May, bringing us the fruits of his decades of planning carried out even as he was being tortured; grid co-ordinates and flightplans for the first bombing strike on Hell.

If this does not happen I will light myself on fire in protest.

[Androsphinx]

Given that this is Stuart writing, I have this premonition that once the speaking-to-the-dead intel project gets going, some spirit will suddenly turn up force all the others to stay silent while he speaks.

It will be Curtis Le May, bringing us the fruits of his decades of planning carried out even as he was being tortured; grid co-ordinates and flightplans for the first bombing strike on Hell.

If this does not happen I will light myself on fire in protest.

I'm not sure why you think St. Curtis would be in hell to start with