The Salvation War: Pantheocide Epilogue Up

[Deebles]

It was explained that about HALF of all able-bodied demons were mustered for the conquest of earth, so that meant there was a big manpower shortage. My guess is this was the first time demons were ever faced with an active, aggressive insurgency.

It was at least hinted that it wasn't (Alexander came up, iirc).

And if they hadn't been supplied from earth they would have been wiped out in a week.

More of a sense of this would have been nice. A series of bloodless victories, with no serious counter being offered (beyond demons patrolling in pairs) didn't really cut it.

[Brovane]

The courts will have to decide if a contract with a specific time-table is still in-force after death. For example if someone is 20-years into a 100-year prison sentence according to what you say they are free and clear after their death. I could see contracts with specific end dates enforceable without opening the can of worms of contracts until death for pensions, Social Security etc. First Lifers are already being forced into service to help free the second lifers from the Hell Pit with conscription. Basically you are in it for the duration of the conflict just as in WW2. So it is ok to force first lifers into service but not second lifers?

Here you forget couple details again. First, the courts. Which courts?
Do they have authority in Hell?

What many people forget in threads like this, is that nations do not have much authority outside their own borders. US laws stop applying when you leave soil of USA (or unless you are soldier in US military in nation which has signed some very stupid treaties). This rather applies to Yamantau-group as well. Their authority only extends to those who accept it. They do not have similar authority as UN, which to some level can say it speaks for Earth as whole.

I am not 100% sure how situation is with Hell, but overall I undertand that Earth governments have not pulled conquistador on it and declared that land belongs to them now.

Issue with continuing contracts is that you cannot escape the can of worms.
If you declare that any kind of treaty will carry on beyond death, you are essentially declaring second lifer to be same person as first lifer legally.

Which leads to logical conclusion that all rights and privileges of first lifer have to come to second lifer as they are recognized as same person. So, if you had right to pension in first life, you must have it in second. Trying to enforce some contracts while denying others is not going to work.

And if you tried, you would only enrage second lifers who feel that they are getting the shaft by being treated as second class citizens who have duties but no rights. Which would only encourage them to flock to New Rome or any other independent entity in Hell. Who in turn have their own laws and courts and recognize those, not Earth ones.

What happened with Kim is pretty much something that took place during chaotic period when decisions were more or less of temporary nature.
Now with wartime conditions having passed, you have to think seriously on all consequences of given decision, both political and legal.

Last time that I looked the Hostilities didn't end until Heaven's forces surrendered. There is lots of legal questions swirling around here about contract(s). However if legally you are not the first life person when you die then what becomes of jail sentences? If I am 20 years into a 100 year sentence and I die then when I wake up in Hell reception area I am no longer legally that person so am I free and clear to walk away? I remember in the first book the Israeli's going after a Nazi from the first life. If he isn't the first life person legally then they have no cause in his second life to go after him. Also my question still stands. In the first-life people are being forced into military service, so why not forcing the second life people in service? For example is the USAF going to give up a pilot that they have spent millions in training on just because he died? In the novel there was mention of a collision between planes where several people died and hours later the same dead people where back to flying with their original countries again. In some ways they are going to have to in some ways to treat the first person legally as the second person. If not you could have a flood of people with long prison sentences or life without parole sentences committing suicide and then do you just let them walk away from the hell reception area free and clear? We also see mention of the dead partners in Goldmans-Sachs suing the SEC for canceling there trading licenses. At some point all these legal issues will need to be dealt with and it will be a issue in regards to what courts have jurisdiction.

[StrikaAmaru]

It was explained that about HALF of all able-bodied demons were mustered for the conquest of earth, so that meant there was a big manpower shortage. My guess is this was the first time demons were ever faced with an active, aggressive insurgency.

It was at least hinted that it wasn't (Alexander came up, iirc).

If memory serves me (and it usually does) Alexander and Churchill came up as examples of people we would not find in Hell: people who broke free from their torment, tried to stir shit up, got caught and eaten by demons. The end. It was when discussing Caesar's faction, and presented in contrast with its members: people who broke free, looked around a bit and ran like hell. With luck, they were picked up by Caesar inc. Without, they too were caught and eaten.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course, in either case we might find Alexander or Churchill in Hell, but there is no guarantee either way. The real point is that while "escape and evade" is possible in Hell (plenty of open land to flee into, feudal organization making it hard to search for an escapee, Second Life body eliminating the escaper's need for food and sleep), "escape and rebel" is not possible without heavy weapons because it brings you into conflict with demons that can rip you apart.

"Escape and rebel" would be a threat to demons that needed to be countered... but they can counter it easily just by being so big and dangerous. "Escape and evade" is not a threat since they have a nearly limitless supply of newly dead humans to torture, and losing a few every year doesn't really hurt them. So no, there's no obvious reason for them to ever learn how to stage a manhunt to catch individual escaped victims, any more than there's a reason for a human being to spend ten or fifteen minutes trying to hunt down a single escaped housefly. It's just not worth your time.

[[R_H]]

low caliber ammunition would be only effective when paired with gatling guns

They're not as effective from ground vehicles as from aircraft.

Hollowpoint in 5.56 mm would be totally ineffective, less effective than FMJ. The penetration would be completely insufficient.

It might offer some utility in 7.62 NATO, though. There are big game rounds that penetrate while retaining most of their mass. It might be a way to stretch some life out of all those 7.62mm machineguns, and even auto-rifles.

Don't alot of big game rounds use non-spitzer bullets to improve penetration and cause more damage to bone? What about a heavy non-spitzer bullet for 7.62N?

[Stuart]

Human Expeditionary Army Forward Headquarters, The Eternal City, Heaven

"There are three journalists and a gentleman from the Times seeking interviews with you Dave. General Michael Jackson sounded saddened and deeply sympathetic at the news. After what had happened to General McChrystal, the press were being kept at arm's length.

"They can keep seeking." General Petraeus nodded, then hesitated. "Only four?"

"There were five but one of the journalists stuck a microphone into Asanee's face and asked some impolite questions. She told him he had big brass balls and then asked if he had planned on keeping them. He left very quickly. Michael-Lan is here as well."

"Good. Mike, Yamantau want to know if there is an equivalent of the Minos Gate here in Heaven and, if so, where it is. Also, do bodies still come through it. My guess is that the division of Second Life humans between Heaven and Hell is beginning to become a real issue. Who goes where? And who makes the decisions."

"I've got a feeling it won’t be us David."

"I know what you mean Mike, civilian control of the military and all that. Do you want to try that line on Asanee?"

Jackson shuddered slightly at the thought. One of the subtler effects of the Human Expeditionary Army was that it had brought together armies that had never considered working with each other before. Many of those armies came from social backgrounds that were radically different from anything the others had contemplated. Concepts that some took for granted were unknown or even derided by others. Chief amongst these areas was the relationships between military and political authorities. Slowly, the various national contingents were beginning to have a genuine understanding of what made the others tick. Idly, Jackson remembered the fable about the Tower of Babel and how Yahweh had split humanity up by language to stop them building another such marvel. Was the H.E.A. now reversing that action as well?

Across the desk, Petraeus pressed a button on his intercom and asked the Duty Officer to bring Michael in. As he did, he and Jackson exchanged smiles. They made a point of meeting Michael here; although the rooms were oversized, they were still uncomfortably small for the big Archangel. It was quite impossible for him to either enter the room decorously or strike poses once inside. "Mike, do you get the feeling Michael isn't quite what he was?"

"You mean, has he had the stuffing knocked out of him? I got that feel as well. About time too, he was too full of himself when we got here. Tossing him out on his ear was a good move Dave."

"There's more to it than that. We need to keep a close eye on him. But, I meant that it may not be humanity's choice who goes where. We may find we have to play the cards we get dealt. We've still no idea on what lies the other side of that gate." There was a photograph on the wall behind his desk that showed the hazards of the Minos Gate. As an experiment, DIMO(N) had driven a HEMTT up to the gate and then backed the rear half in. The vehicle was now half-size, the part that had been pushed through the gate boundary had vanished. Nothing that crossed that boundary ever came back.

The door opened and Michael-Lan inserted himself into the office by way of a door that was intended for beings half his size. Petraeus looked at him carefully and was convinced his initial impressions had been right. Something had been knocked out of this Archangel, the cocksure, daring self-confidence wasn't gone but it had been dented and tarnished. And there was a calculating air about him, one that indicated he had been given a mighty problem to chew over.

"Michael-Lan. We want to clarify some points with you. It appears that humans haven't entered Heaven directly for many years. Is that correct."

"It is General. Yahweh closed the gates of Heaven to humans centuries ago. About the fifteenth century by your calendar."

"We thought it was earlier than that. Never mind. The humans who arrived here after that, how did they get here?"

"I went down to the Plateau of Minos and collected them. I had a deal with the Fallen Ones who worked there. I took the humans I wanted in exchange for opium. It worked out quite well, I had no intention of telling anybody about my pipeline and the Fallen Ones knew if they gave me up there would be no more clouds of bliss for them," Michael struck a penitent and regretful note that fooled nobody. "I only wish I could have saved more."

"I'm sure," Petraeus was sarcastic. "So, there was a time when humans arrived here directly. How?"

"There was a gate here, like the one on the Plateau of Minos. It still is there in fact, but no humans have arrived through it for many centuries. Poor Peter is really bored down there. I used to slide him a few shots of cocaine now and then, help him pass the time."

Petraeus shuddered quietly. "So, it's possible that Yahweh 'closed' the Gates because no more humans were coming through? That his 'order' was just a recognition of what was already established?"

"The order came first. Once Yahweh had given it, the number of humans coming through slowed down and stopped. At the same time, the number turning up at Minos increased."

"I see. Michael, I'm going to assign a military unit to take over guarding the site of that gate. You will take them there." Petraeus paused and thumbed his intercom box again. "Duty Officer, get me the commander of Third Armored. I'm going to be borrowing one of his tank battalions again."

Spearhead Battalion, Heaven

Her command had grown again. She now had an engineering company attached to what was still laughingly called a battalion. That meant the Spearhead 'battalion' now had eight full companies plus an assortment of platoon-sized attachments. Colonel Keisha Stevenson had the uneasy feeling that the only reason why it wasn't reclassified as a larger unit was that doing so would mean she got a General's star.

"This is it." Michael-Lan stood in front of the black ellipse, one that was guarded by a pair of pearl-encrusted metal gates. "Until Yahweh closed everything down, this used to be quite busy. It's only got a caretaker now, Peter. Nice old boy."

"That would be Saint Peter, I suppose." Stevenson wondered what her old church preacher would have said about this situation. He'd often waxed eloquent about what Saint Peter would do when faced with various members of his congregation but 'obeyed orders delivered at gunpoint' hadn't been one of the options considered.

"That's what you call him, sure." Michael's voice was slightly distant again. In the long drive up here, Stevenson had noted that. It was as if Michael's mind was elsewhere. Given what she had learned about him, that probably didn't bode well for somebody.

"Take me to him." Her voice was blunt. Her orders were to secure this entire area. She had the force needed to do it and those orders included clearance to do whatever that task required. Behind her, the tank transporters were lining up and unloading her vehicles. Getting here had been a ten-hour drive and if she'd brought her armor up on its tracks, half the vehicles would be left by the roadside as mechanical casualties by now. The tank transporters had been an optimal solution and Stevenson understood that being General Petraeus's go-to commander meant that her 'optimal solutions' had a very high priority.


Michael led her over to a hut built beside the gates. It was a small, ramshackle affair, one that would have been condemned as a slum in New Jersey but Stevenson's expectations had been changed by her time in Heaven. For here, and in the eyes of most of the human inhabitants of Heaven, this was as good as it got, better than anything they'd known in their earthbound lives. The door creaked open and a figure with a flowing white beard emerged.

"Michael-Lan, Great General, welcome to the Gates of Pearl."

The voice was obsequious and that made Stevenson's hackles rise. Humans didn’t have to tip their caps to Angels any more. There was a more-than-necessary snap to her voice when she spoke. "You are Peter, the guardian of this gate?"

He looked at her, initially almost with belittlement. Then he saw the uniform and the guns, and he took in the sight of the vehicles unloading. "You are a soldier, a woman soldier."

"I am Colonel Stevenson, commander of this position. From now on, you report to me, not him." She gestured at Michael and saw him nod. "Now, you are?"

"I am Shimeon Kepha Ha-Tzadik. Also known as Simon Peter and follower of Jeshua." He smiled sadly. "I am also caretaker here."

He looked hopefully at Michael who responded by producing a small packet of white powder. Peter whinnied with delight and produced a mirror, knife and a plastic drinking straw from a pocket in his robes. Slightly disgusted, Stevenson watched him cut a line and snort it up through the straw. Peter caught her expression and offered her a line.

"No." Her voice was even sharper and the dislike in it more obvious.

Peter looked at her, then his face brightened. "I have some liquor here if you prefer that. Built the still myself."

"Hokay, when did you learn to do that?"

"Back in the old days, when we were roaming around Galilaea with Jeshua. He used to do his preaching and the rest of us would brew up and sell the moonshine. Only, Jeshua would never stop in one place long enough for us to set up a decent business. As soon as we got the still set up and established ourselves, he'd move on and we'd have to do the same. That's what finished us in the end you know."

"Do tell." Despite herself, Stevenson was beginning to like him.

"We kept moving on and we never paid the tax duty on the moonshine we were selling. That really upset the Romans. They didn’t care about the preaching but tax evasion was something quite else. Then it turned out that Judas had been skimming. He was responsible for giving the local administration their share of the take but he was short-changing them and pocketing the difference. He'd made thirty pieces of silver on the deal before they wised up and sent some Maccabee killers out to whack him. Anyway, Judas decided the only way to get away was to sell the rest of us out to the Romans for tax evasion. Didn't help him much, the Maccabees got him and strung him up anyway. Anyway, the Romans were about to crucify us all but Jeshua talked them out of it and took the blame himself. He took the fall, we all got to walk so we carried on preaching his message for him."

Stevenson laughed delightedly and the old man seemed pleased. "You have got to tell that story to everybody down on Earth. I suppose Jesus – Jeshua is up here in heaven somewhere?"

Michael shook his head. "He never turned up; I suppose he's down in Hell somewhere. He was only a tool you know, he was possessed by an angel called Elhmas. Once he'd finished with Joshua, he just abandoned him."

Stevenson's head snapped around at that, so she was looking at Michael. "And what happened to Elhmas?"

"Most everybody thinks you killed him. Oh, not you personally, you humans. He was in command of the Incomparable Legion of Light when it was nuked. The Host is certain that he died there."

Stevenson nodded and tried a sip of the moonshine. It was surprisingly good. "Peter, got any more stories about the days in Galilaea?"

"Watch him Colonel." Michael sounded amused. "Peter loves a good story. He'll have you here for hours if you let him."

Stevenson was about to say it didn't matter and that she had plenty of time. Then, suddenly it did matter and she hadn't. Because an unconscious body had emerged through Heaven's Minos Gate and was on the ground.

USS Turner Joy. Seattle, Washington.

The band was playing "Anchors Aweigh" as the crew on the old destroyer made fast. Captain Reynolds gave the order "Finished with main engines" and the adventure was over. A new USS Turner Joy was commissioning soon and she would take over the reputation as well as the name. The DDG-120 Turner Joy was a Flight III Arleigh Burke class AEGIS destroyer with her own portal generation equipment built into her. Yet, she would be a cold, impersonal ship until her crew breathed life into her DD-951 Turner Joy already had her life, a phenomena that only sailors fully understood, but it was already ebbing away as her crew made ready to leave her.

"She'll be back in the museum soon." Sophia Metaxas looked sadly at the ship that had been her home for almost three years. In that time, Turner Joy had fought her battles on Earth, in Hell and in Heaven and had brought her crew safely back from every one of them. "It seems a shame somehow."

"She's steam-powered Sophia, the Navy is all gas turbine and nuclear now. When the war was on, she had her role to play. Especially since the Navy never expected to get her. That's all finished now. Now, she can return to honorable retirement again. She has a tale to tell after all, and it's one generations in the future will want to hear. Reynolds looked suddenly very sad. "I never did get Yahweh under my guns though."

"I expect she'll do a lot better than some of the museum ships have though." Sophia was trying to look on the bright side. The Museum ship fleet had not done well from the war. Mostly, they were too old and too far gone to bring back into commission the way Turner Joy had been brought back. Some had been stripped for spare parts, others of useful equipment. All had been neglected in the driving urgency to concentrate every effort on the ships that could help win the war. Olympia had sunk at her moorings as a result and it was rumored that Texas was in a bad way and unlikely to survive.

"You can count on that. Anyway, my new ship is officially adopting her. We'll be making sure our older sister gets proper care. We won't be leaving you in the lurch." Reynolds would be commanding DDG-120.

"Thanks, Captain. We'll be keeping her ready though, Just in case." Sophia nodded and turned to walk down the gangplank and back into civilian life. As she did so, another small increment of Turner Joy's life ebbed away.

DIMO(N) Headquarters, The Pentagon, Washington

It was over. General Schatten looked around at the rapidly-emptying offices. Within a few hours DIMO(N) would cease to exist. Its military research and development activities would be taken over by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, its civilian activities transferred to other government departments. He recognized it was inevitable, the Salvation War was over, there was no need for an organization like DIMO(N) any more. Others could take over the charge it had led, others could build upon the foundations it had laid. Just as James Randi's Institute of Pneumatology and closed down and dispersed when its work was done, so too would DIMO(N). In his imagination, Schatten heard the sounds of a trumpet playing Taps.

"What will you be doing now General?" Schatten heard the voice cut through his reverie

"Dr. Surlethe. Come to say goodbye to us all."

"And to thank you for a job well done. Considering you started off from a bunch of old texts and grimoires and made a start on turning the legends and myths there into the foundations of real science, you people pulled off a spectacular achievement. We've got a long, long way to go but it all started here. You achieved something else as well. You took legends and myths and replaced them with science. We really have got a long way to go but it will be facts and experiments that guide us all the way. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question. What will you be doing now?"

"I've been appointed the new Director of Celestial Intelligence. It won’t be announced until tomorrow and the Senate has to approve of course."

"That won’t be a problem. So you're the new DCI. So we will be working together after all. How do you fancy working with Homo Caelis?"

"Homo Caelis?"

"The genus that contains the Angels and Daemons. They really are closely related, you know. We had to call them something and that was the best bet.

"It'll be hard to think of them as anything but the enemy."

"We can't be sure they aren't. Not yet. And there is who knows what out there. We know there are at least three other groups up there. The Aesir, the Baals and the Olympians. Then there's the devils, we're not sure who or what they are. But, if Homo Caelis is the enemy, they are a defeated enemy. It'll be up to us to keep them that way."

Schatten nodded. "Still, there's Yamantau and what it represents. And we still have the H.E.A."

Surlethe grimaced. "I know, but it's spread pretty thin. We're straining every economy on Earth and a lot of the smaller countries don't like it at all. With the United Nations sidelined and virtually moribund, they feel they've been cut out of the decision loop. Which they have of course. How that will work out is still to be seen. Still, there's one thing we have to be thankful for. Humans don’t have to fear death any more. Not on Earth, anyway."

"No, we don’t have to fear death here any more. I just wonder what else is out there, that's all. And what lies beyond the Minos Gates."

Surlethe grinned. "Well, don’t tell The President that you're wondering. Even the thought of adding another few billions to the defense budget is giving him conniptions. Come on, let's get ourselves a drink. I think we've earned it."

[wickeddyno]

"That won’t be a problem. So you're the new DCI. So we will be working together after all. How do you fancy working with Homo Caelis?"

"Homo Caelis?"

"The genus that contains the Angels and Daemons. They really are closely related, you know. We had to call them something and that was the best bet.

Nitpick: it should be Homo caelis, species epithet lower case, both italicized, and the two words together are the species name, not a genus. Homo is the genus.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Does that Director position come with a promotion?

[Simon_Jester]

"There's more to it than that. We need to keep a close eye on him. But, I meant that it may not be humanity's choice who goes where. We may find we have to play the cards we get dealt. We've still no idea on what lies the other side of that gate." There was a photograph on the wall behind his desk that showed the hazards of the Minos Gate. As an experiment, DIMO(N) had driven a HEMTT up to the gate and then backed the rear half in. The vehicle was now half-size, the part that had been pushed through the gate boundary had vanished. Nothing that crossed that boundary ever came back.

Hmm. How does that work, exactly? I back a car into the Minos Gate; do the rear wheels 'vanish' as soon as the rear axle crosses the gate interface?

If so, what's holding up the passenger compartment and allowing me to back anything beyond the rear axle into the gate? Why doesn't the frame of the car fall down to the ground with the back wheels gone?

Or does the object remain contiguous until I start trying to pull it back across the gate, at which point the frame breaks across at the gate interface and I wind up with a two-wheeled vehicle consisting of the engine block and the front half of the passenger compartment?

What if I take a rear-engine car (say, a Volkswagen Beetle) and back it into the gate? The engine, drive train, and rear axle cross through the gate first; do I retain control of the vehicle after they cross the interface, or does the car die on me as soon as bits of the engine start disappearing into the gate?

"There was a gate here, like the one on the Plateau of Minos. It still is there in fact, but no humans have arrived through it for many centuries. Poor Peter is really bored down there. I used to slide him a few shots of cocaine now and then, help him pass the time."

Amusing, though perhaps a bit overdone...

"We kept moving on and we never paid the tax duty on the moonshine we were selling. That really upset the Romans. They didn’t care about the preaching but tax evasion was something quite else. Then it turned out that Judas had been skimming. He was responsible for giving the local administration their share of the take but he was short-changing them and pocketing the difference...

...Now that is not overdone. That is just exactly done.

[Pelranius]

Stevenson was about to say it didn't matter and that she had plenty of time. Then, suddenly it did matter and she hadn't. Because an unconscious body had emerged through Heaven's Minos Gate and was on the ground.

Possibly Jeshua? Given how badly Ellhmas felt about the whole business, maybe he put Jeshua into another one of the other bubble universes, probably just to prevent him from inadvertently causing any waves with the Heaven 2nd lifers and lower ranking angels, so to speak. And another third bubble universe might be a nicer place for Jeshua to live, just cut a deal with the Aesir or whoever there's.

Or possibly another species...

"We can't be sure they aren't. Not yet. And there is who knows what out there. We know there are at least three other groups up there. The Aesir, the Baals and the Olympians. Then there's the devils, we're not sure who or what they are. But, if Homo Caelis is the enemy, they are a defeated enemy. It'll be up to us to keep them that way."

So the Aesir, Baals and Olympians are part of Homo Caelis? Though I assume the chief deities of their respective pantheons would also be devils, if that is Yahweh and family's species.

[Pelranius]

He looked hopefully at Michael who responded by producing a small packet of white powder. Peter whinnied with delight and produced a mirror, knife and a plastic drinking straw from a pocket in his robes. Slightly disgusted, Stevenson watched him cut a line and snort it up through the straw. Peter caught her expression and offered her a line.

Wait a moment! If second lifers can't get drunk, then how can they get high off of cocaine? Unless Ellmas or somebody altered Peter's DNA.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Wait a moment! If second lifers can't get drunk, then how can they get high off of cocaine? Unless Ellmas or somebody altered Peter's DNA.

They can get intoxicated, it just takes MORE. I would guess coke produces a buzz, but not as strong as it would in a mortal human.

[Highlord Laan]

There was a photograph on the wall behind his desk that showed the hazards of the Minos Gate. As an experiment, DIMO(N) had driven a HEMTT up to the gate and then backed the rear half in. The vehicle was now half-size, the part that had been pushed through the gate boundary had vanished. Nothing that crossed that boundary ever came back.

"Let's see what happens when we poke it with a stick." I love science.

[Stuart]

Wait a moment! If second lifers can't get drunk, then how can they get high off of cocaine? Unless Ellmas or somebody altered Peter's DNA.

Different chemical pathways I would guess. Also, a question of degree. "Can't get drunk" could easily mean "need impractical amounts of booze to get drunk"

[Stuart]

Hmm. How does that work, exactly? I back a car into the Minos Gate; do the rear wheels 'vanish' as soon as the rear axle crosses the gate interface?

One would assume so; the only way to find out would be to go through and see.

[someguy]

More of a sense of this would have been nice. A series of bloodless victories, with no serious counter being offered (beyond demons patrolling in pairs) didn't really cut it.

There was the one battle where they raided a demon's hut, and one of them almost died because the demon gutted him with talons. Part of the issue was that humans being a credible threat was inconceivable to the demons, and so no real counter was offered until the humans had established themselves as truly dangerous, which required them to have already received modern weapons.

Different chemical pathways I would guess. Also, a question of degree. "Can't get drunk" could easily mean "need impractical amounts of booze to get drunk"

I thought it was mentioned that second-lifers can't get drunk because their digestive tract doesn't absorb any nutrients? That would give a very simple reason for cocaine to work - snorted cocaine is absorbed through the sinus' mucous membranes, a completely different delivery mechanism. In such a case, anything smoked, snorted or injected would also theoretically work fine. So second lifers who really wanted to get drunk could do so with ethanol fumes.

[Ellindsey]

"Most everybody thinks you killed him. Oh, not you personally, you humans. He was in command of the Incomparable Legion of Light when it was nuked. The Host is certain that he died there."

Veeeery nice. Not a single bit of it is actually a lie, but it completely misleads and deflects from the truth.

[wickeddyno]

Hmm. How does that work, exactly? I back a car into the Minos Gate; do the rear wheels 'vanish' as soon as the rear axle crosses the gate interface?

One would assume so; the only way to find out would be to go through and see.

But the other questions asked would tell us something about what happens -- as they said, does that end of the car fall to the ground as soon as its supports pass the boundary of the gate, or does there appear to still be a force supporting it until you try to pull it back, at which point it does fall to the ground?

I fully understand if you haven't really thought about the details of this yet -- for literary purposes 'nothing comes back' is sufficient for the time being. Sooner or later, though, you'll want to explore that and use its implications in the plot of the story (in Lords of War no doubt) or it'll be sitting on the mantle like Chekhov's gun, begging to be fired.

[wickeddyno]

"Most everybody thinks you killed him. Oh, not you personally, you humans. He was in command of the Incomparable Legion of Light when it was nuked. The Host is certain that he died there."

Veeeery nice. Not a single bit of it is actually a lie, but it completely misleads and deflects from the truth.

And I would be very surprised if Petraeus failed to notice that Michael didn't actually answer the question.

[Pelranius]

Wait a moment! If second lifers can't get drunk, then how can they get high off of cocaine? Unless Ellmas or somebody altered Peter's DNA.

Different chemical pathways I would guess. Also, a question of degree. "Can't get drunk" could easily mean "need impractical amounts of booze to get drunk"

My bad . The larger quantities does make sense though, since I imagine that the sheer endurance of second life bodies would filter and process stimulants and depressants more quickly, hence the need for larger quantities. Makes sense now.

[Sophie]

hmm.... would a polygraph work on Homo Caelis ?

[Simon_Jester]

hmm.... would a polygraph work on Homo Caelis ?

Since as far as I know they don't work with any real reliability on humans, I see no reason to assume they'd work on our distant cousins.

Hmm. How does that work, exactly? I back a car into the Minos Gate; do the rear wheels 'vanish' as soon as the rear axle crosses the gate interface?

One would assume so; the only way to find out would be to go through and see.

Hardly. I can back the car halfway into the gate without myself crossing the interface.

The question is: does the rear axle cease to support the car at my location on the Universe-B side of the Minos Gate at the moment said rear axle crosses the interface?

If the answer is "yes," then I will not be able to back the car all the way into the gate at all; as soon as the rear axle crosses the interface the remaining part of the car will tip forward or backward and hit the ground on the Universe-B side of the gate, much as if it had been chopped in two just ahead of the rear axle, with the rear portion being removed. The car cannot remain balanced on the front axle alone, and therefore falls on my side of the gate.

Likewise, a car with a rear engine (such as a Volkwagen Beetle) would find that the engine dies dramatically as soon as the rear of the car enters the gate, because necessary bits of the engine are now "missing" and the remaining engine parts on the Universe-B side of the gate fail without those parts being in contact with them.

This would prove that the Minos Gate acts as a kind of disintegrator, at least temporarily. Objects fed into the gate from the Universe-B side lose physical continuity, bit by bit, as they cross the interface. They may be reconstructed on the other side or they may not; we will never know, or at least not know any time soon.

Alternatively, it might be that the Universe-B half of the car does not fall to the ground after the rear axle crosses the Gate interface. In this case, we have confirmed that there is some supporting force exerted on the part of the vehicle on the other side of the gate, and that the gate preserves physical continuity of the car frame: I can balance the car's weight on a front axle in Universe-B and a rear axle in Universe-C.

In this case, the car is not physically divided in two until I try to pull the car back through to Universe-B, at which point I find that the interface only allows matter to pass through it in one direction, and I wind up dragging the severed front half of the car while the rear half vanishes to destinations beyond the fields we know.

(We could perform the same experiment with any other four-wheeled platform, such as a furniture dolly, and in no case would the experimenter have to cross the gate to see what happens)

[MysteriousDarkLordv3]

New carcass through the Pearly Gate? It could be that with Yah-yah deposed, his bans are fading from the "machinery" and people will soon be coming through both gates. Of course now we have to ask who is/was sorting the human souls and by what criteria?

As for the cocaine issue, they didn't say what it was cut with. Petey could be snorting pure uncut Bolivian Marching Powder in concentrations that would make an elephant's head explode.

The moonshine thing, though ... public knowledge of distilling technology was a ways beyond 1st century tech. Medieval alchemists had distilling processes but it wasn't commonly available until the Renaissance. Was Elhmas using special knowledge or was one of the Disciples a closet alchemist?

[ANTIcarrot]

"I've been appointed the new Director of Celestial Intelligence. It won’t be announced until tomorrow and the Senate has to approve of course."
"That won’t be a problem. So you're the new DCI. So we will be working together after all. How do you fancy working with Homo Caelis?"

We need to work a Hunt joke in here somewhere. We really do.

If the Minos gate does act as a disintigrator, does that mean it would be emitting Hawking Radiation? If so then might the minos demons at least have some familiarity with some level of radiation sickness (radiation tiredness for them?) even if the angels don't?

Not sure I like the drunken jesus version of history. Stuart has made a big deal of sticking as closely as possible to biblical literalism as a basis for otherworld reality. Rewriting a huge chunk of the new testiment whole cloth does undermine that position a little. From a secular point of view, we have enough on bible jesus without adding slander to the mix.

[nobody_really]

"Most everybody thinks you killed him. Oh, not you personally, you humans. He was in command of the Incomparable Legion of Light when it was nuked. The Host is certain that he died there."

Veeeery nice. Not a single bit of it is actually a lie, but it completely misleads and deflects from the truth.

And I would be very surprised if Petraeus failed to notice that Michael didn't actually answer the question.

I would guess that it would depend on how Col. Stevenson reports the information. "Michael-Lan said that Elhmas-Lan was leading the Legion when we nuked it" may not trip the bullshit detector as much as a transcript of the conversation. She would be reporting pretty damned accurately, especially after having some of that Heavenly hooch.

Well, now that I think about it a little bit, that statement would need to be verified as much as possible, hopefully with a second interrogation of that bastard Michael-Lan by Gen. Petraeus. If Michael-Lan goes into lawyer mode there, he will definitely raise suspicions. I would also be surprised if the HEA didn't have Michael-Lan's estate under pretty heavy surveilance, and may have already seen the unexpected visitor. I can see Gen. Petraeus showing Michael-Lan a photo of him and Elhmas, and asking who that is, with subsequent verification. Michael-Lan better be pretty fucking careful, and lay off the product so that he can think straight, if he wants to have a chance of being at least a middleman in the new Heavenly hierarchy.