Right. The rest of the article talks about how these wormholes (or portals, they're really the same thing) would affect an empire. To quote one particularily interesting bit:
Wormholes do have one major trick up their sleeves. We have seen that wormholes don't permit time travel. But they do exhibit some very strange effects. Consider a colonist stepping through the home wormhole to transfer to the landing ship. Ship time and home time are running in synchronisation. If I wait 15 years at home after launch before stepping through then I appear at the travelling end at the point when the probe passes Andromeda. In crossing 2,250,000 light years of conventional space I travel 2,250,015 million years into the future as defined relative to the co-moving frame of the universe.
...
An elaboration of this argument gives grounds for believing that the nearest aliens are currently over a 100 million light years distant. In the co-moving frame, without wormholes, we won't make contact with them for over 100 million years. Which makes their existence an object of theoretical speculation that can't be resolved for millions of years.
With relativistic probes and on-board wormholes, though, we can reach alien colonised regions within decades of empire-time, no matter (almost) how far away they are. No probe can penetrate into a region of alien colonised space. Each civilisation defines its own empire-time that is in conflict with the empire-time of the other. A probe from Earth flying into a alien zone not only crosses alien space, but also crosses alien empire-time zones. As it approaches the alien home world it passes into the alien empire-time future. CPC forbids such travel by destroying lone wormholes that attempt to interpenetrate each others empires. Only a full scale invasion with masses of wormholes could ever succeed. Such an invading fleet would have to overwhelm the native wormholes (destroy them) and impose their own empire time on the stranded natives. Given the rates of economic growth we expect the advantage would almost always lie with the defenders. As the invading fleet cut deeper and deeper into the alien heartlands it find itself opposed by later and later alien time zones, more advanced technology and greater forces of numbers. Economic might, then as now, ensures protection. Brute force invasion would be suicide for the invaders and their whole empire: once defeated the invader's whole wormhole connected empire would be open to subversion from 'aliens from tomorrow'.
There is more to it than this, but the bottom line is that, using a portal network to expand your empire, war with aliens becomes essentially impossible.
Of course, this is only true once you've expanded enough for the temporal shift to become really obvious. Needless to say, this is most emphatically not the case for the Salvationverse Earth, and won't be for.. well, decades for colonists, millennia for earthlings, but only if someone actually tries to invade. It's fun reading. ^_^
Barring such hostile aliens we can expect to have contacted and be trading with alien civilisations within a few centuries or millennia of starting our wormhole exploration of the universe. This is a symmetrical situation. Not only will be meeting aliens within historically short period, but they will be meeting us shortly after their expansion begins. Consequently all the species of the universe will be linking up at about the same stage in their development. This gives us all shared interests and hence markets in common. We might expect each civilisation to go through two future phase changes. First phase change is when they develop nanotechnology and start redesigning themselves, speeding up etc. Second phase change occurs when they link up with the rest of the universe and get the benefits of the near- infinite economies of scale this brings.
If I read that right, a quick summary would be that if you launch one end of a wormhole off into space, you can walk through it a fairly short, at least on a cosmological scale, time later and the other end may in fact be far, far later on, at least according to any Earth-based observer. I.O.W., the other end of the portal is nominally in the future.
This is going to give me one hell of a headache thinking about it. It works, I can get it to work in my mind, but it is somewhat disagreeable to my mind for some reason, and I'm also holding out the non-negligible possibility of a mis-read on my part.
As to the last quote there, quite interesting. That statement presumes you get linear development; if a society banned (for example) research into nanotech, or strongly limited it, you might get them in a "stunted" stage of development in a raft of ways.
So what happens if two wormhole empires pop up on the same planet/system/galaxy billions (or trillions) of years apart and then make contact with the same alien empire(s), which then leads them into contact with each other? Is that even possible or will something explode before that can happen?
GrayAnderson wrote:If you get a big enough portal going there, you could (in theory) simply roll your Mars rockets through the portal and launch on the Moon without worrying about Earth's gravity...
Why would you care about the Earth's gravity if you had a portal in Earth orbit? Kick your rocket through the portal and it's in orbit and ready to go.
Because it will fall?
Coming out of a portal in Earth orbit is just a scenic way to die unless you're traveling fast enough to stay in Earth orbit.
Step one: Create Space Station in orbit. Preferably at a LaGrange Point.
Step two: Create Portal inside the space station (Assumption: that this can be done safely)
Step three: Assemble manned interplanetary craft in orbit, having sent the components up via Hell and then the Portal. As long as they arrive motionless with respect to the Portal (which is itself going to be moving rather quickly) this should be viable.
The whole thing would be expensive and might have to wait until the war and the slowly boiling economic crisis are over, but on my admittedly inexpert review it seems somewhat feasible. Of course, I might be drastically misunderstanding how portals work.
Any chance of seeing angels BBQued by high energy lasers? I guess laser would be a perfect weapon to fight flying angels since there would be no warning about incoming attack like it is with aircraft and missiles.
Land Phish wrote:So what happens if two wormhole empires pop up on the same planet/system/galaxy billions (or trillions) of years apart and then make contact with the same alien empire(s), which then leads them into contact with each other? Is that even possible or will something explode before that can happen?
It'll work fine.
The article actually covers that (you should read it), but the basic result is that they can, indeed, travel to each other through the wormholes of that alien empire.
Just to make things more fun - different empires reach the wormhole-building stage at different points in the universe's history. By finding an empire that got off to a very quick start, you can indeed travel back in time to whenever they got around to that start; however, that does not produce a causality violation, as you travel further in space than time.
Yeah, wormholes are nifty, and this is all well-established physics. They might not be possible to make, but if they are, this is how they'd work.
Baughn wrote:Yeah, wormholes are nifty, and this is all well-established physics.
Actually, it's a theoretical prediction of relativity which has never been confirmed through any kind of observation whatsoever. People take it seriously only because other predictions of relativity have been quite accurate, but it's still unconfirmed.
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
The really tricky bit about wormholes is that they only exist if some regions of space around the exit(s) have a negative energy density- for practical purposes, that requires matter with negative mass. Which I don't happen to have lying around the house, and I doubt you do, either.
I actually did read the article, but I guess the repetition of THOU SHALT NOT TIME TRAVEL threw me off a bit. Also a lot of this physics stuff is over my head if no one explains it to me in small understandable words, sort of like a 1st grader trying to do a multiplication problem on his own. While many of you are debating the possible real world physics of portals and all the parameters and what-nots needed for them to actually be possible, I'm over here going "5 * 5? Man that's TOTALLY 10!"
So, what happens when the soldiers from Myanmar and Thailand come through into hell at the same time, massive fist fights breaking out? Are the guys from Myanmar now technically POW's to be interrogated for info on what is going on? Or are they 'dead' and off limits?
Chris OFarrell wrote:So, what happens when the soldiers from Myanmar and Thailand come through into hell at the same time, massive fist fights breaking out? Are the guys from Myanmar now technically POW's to be interrogated for info on what is going on? Or are they 'dead' and off limits?
Most likely, yes, and no.
If someone dies with useful information, you can bet that no one is going to call them off limits on account of being dead.
Does Myanmar have any Hell contingent that hasn't been mentioned? I think this would come down to who (living) grabs who (deceased), but I'd expect that any Myanmarese/Burmese grabbed by the HEA would be worth interrogating, even as low as at the "fire team" level, to see how much they know what's going on.
"Yee's proposal is exactly the sort of thing I would expect some Washington legal eagle to do. In fact, it could even be argued it would be unrealistic to not have a scene in the next book of, say, a Congressman Yee submit the Yee Act for consideration. " - bcoogler on this
"My crystal ball is filled with smoke, and my hovercraft is full of eels." - Bayonet
Stark: "You can't even GET to heaven. You don't even know where it is, or even if it still exists." SirNitram: "So storm Hell." - From the legendary thread
All of this makes me think of another subject for Lords of War, the Platue of Minos or whatever it's called where the dead humans are "reborn" in Hell is going to be a very important place to hold whenever you're fighting a war on Earth since so long as you hold it you don't need to worry about capturing POWs just kill all your human enemies and then capture them as soon as they show up in Hell, and given the way people's bodies regenerate some very nasty people might do some very nasty things to the recently deceased of the opposing side if they had the opprotunity. I wonder how exactly control of it will get sorted out since something tells me no nation is ever going to trust any other one nation to to look after all the recently deceased once the dust has settled from our war with Heaven...
Edward Yee wrote:Does Myanmar have any Hell contingent that hasn't been mentioned? I think this would come down to who (living) grabs who (deceased), but I'd expect that any Myanmarese/Burmese grabbed by the HEA would be worth interrogating, even as low as at the "fire team" level, to see how much they know what's going on.
Myanmar has zero units in the HEA. Thus, Patreus is treating this as Myanmar vs. the HEA, rather than Myanmar vs. Thailand, and therefore all Myanmarese people are being grabbed as POWs.
Baughn wrote:The article actually covers that (you should read it), but the basic result is that they can, indeed, travel to each other through the wormholes of that alien empire.
Just to make things more fun - different empires reach the wormhole-building stage at different points in the universe's history. By finding an empire that got off to a very quick start, you can indeed travel back in time to whenever they got around to that start; however, that does not produce a causality violation, as you travel further in space than time.
And one of the results of that is that every wormhole-building civilization in the history of the universe would exist simultaneously from their own perspective, once they had made contact with each other. You could have our civilization, a civilization that existed 5 billion years ago, and a civilization that exists hundreds of billions of years from now in the red dwarf era, but once wormhole contact had been established between them they would appear simultaneous and each might only have been spacefaring a few hundred or thousand years from their time perspective.
Another interesting possibility mentioned in the article: you could send a wormhole out and have the ship keep going and going until time dilation was so extreme it could reach the far future of the universe within human-feasible timescales to the people on the other side of the wormhole. You could then have it report back as it watched the universe age and die. Or maybe even have it slow down, build a hotel there, and make the ancient dying universe a tourist attraction.
Baughn wrote:The article actually covers that (you should read it), but the basic result is that they can, indeed, travel to each other through the wormholes of that alien empire.
Just to make things more fun - different empires reach the wormhole-building stage at different points in the universe's history. By finding an empire that got off to a very quick start, you can indeed travel back in time to whenever they got around to that start; however, that does not produce a causality violation, as you travel further in space than time.
And one of the results of that is that every wormhole-building civilization in the history of the universe would exist simultaneously from their own perspective, once they had made contact with each other. You could have our civilization, a civilization that existed 5 billion years ago, and a civilization that exists hundreds of billions of years from now in the red dwarf era, but once wormhole contact had been established between them they would appear simultaneous and each might only have been spacefaring a few hundred or thousand years from their time perspective.
Another interesting possibility mentioned in the article: you could send a wormhole out and have the ship keep going and going until time dilation was so extreme it could reach the far future of the universe within human-feasible timescales to the people on the other side of the wormhole. You could then have it report back as it watched the universe age and die. Or maybe even have it slow down, build a hotel there, and make the ancient dying universe a tourist attraction.
A thought: it might be of interest to take tissue and genetic samples of the recently deceased undead to see how it differs from samples taken from the "mortal" body. This would help us define at least the broad parameters of what exactly the undead state is. For instance, if the DNA and tissues are completely identicle the odd aspects of the undead state like immortality are probably all due to some kind of continuous outside intervention in their metabolism. If there are significant differences then at least some of the more reasonable ones (like immortality) may be aspects of internal biology.
Also, assuming the approach of fueling relativistic rockets by pumping fuel through a portal works, I wonder exactly how fast we could make them go with modern technology. This is significant because if the empire time hypothesis holds then the degree of time dilation experienced by the ship will determine how quickly we can spread the portal network, and its very much in our interests to have as fast a ship as possible to take maximum advantage of the symmetric time dilation. As that site Baughn linked to points out, accelerating continuously at 1 G we could reach Andromeda within a human lifespan. But I suspect that with modern technology the ISM and impacting dust granules would become an insurmountable problem before we could get to such speeds.
In the "Relativistic Projectiles" thread in OSF Xeriar said the ISM starts to become a serious problem for RKKVs at .99 c. Bigger impactors could probably be dealt with by an extensive whipple shield of thin foil. At that speed I believe the time dilation factor is 7.09, so we could reach nearby stars like Barnard's Star in slightly less than a year of empire time (not counting acceleration/decelleration), and destinations up to several hundred light years away could be reached within a human lifetime.
Also of interest here, the possibility was mentioned of Angels using their wings for lift and TK for thrust, which suggests reactionless motion is possible, which in turn (IIRC) suggests the presence of some kind of absolute reference frame, which would suggest relativity is wrong. Unless maybe they're somehow using the TK to create some kind of rocket effect or something?
Junghalli wrote:And one of the results of that is that every wormhole-building civilization in the history of the universe would exist simultaneously from their own perspective, once they had made contact with each other. You could have our civilization, a civilization that existed 5 billion years ago, and a civilization that exists hundreds of billions of years from now in the red dwarf era, but once wormhole contact had been established between them they would appear simultaneous and each might only have been spacefaring a few hundred or thousand years from their time perspective.
I think it's still possible for a wormhole-travelling civilization to encounter a civilization that is far older in relative terms. As in "my people have been using wormholes for a hundred thousand years and now occupy most of three galaxies; yours haven't even managed to populate Alpha Centauri to the point of needing arcology-cities yet." Something along those lines.
Simon_Jester wrote:I think it's still possible for a wormhole-travelling civilization to encounter a civilization that is far older in relative terms. As in "my people have been using wormholes for a hundred thousand years and now occupy most of three galaxies; yours haven't even managed to populate Alpha Centauri to the point of needing arcology-cities yet." Something along those lines.
Well, yes, some may expand faster than others, I would suppose. A civilization that carried its wormholes in relatively slow ships which experienced relatively minimal time dilation, for instance, might be much older than one that carried its wormholes in fast ships by the time of contact and empire time merging.
Actually, there is one thing I'm not 100% clear on. Say we were to send a probe with a wormhole to Andromeda. We'd see the light from Andromeda that left that galaxy about 2 million years ago, while the probe at Andromeda would see the light from our galaxy that left it a little before today, but we'd experience the journey to Andromeda as only a few years of empire time if the probe was travelling at a sufficiently high fraction of c. So effectively the wormhole to Andromeda can be thought of sort of as a bridge into the future, insofar as that concept is meaningful at cosmic distances in a relativistic universe. Am I interpreting the theory right?
And yes, slower wormhole ships would mean the empire gets to grow older before meeting anyone, but we're still talking only a difference of decades to centuries, as opposed to the billions of years you'd expect without wormholes.
Incidentally, the interstellar medium is just that, interstellar. It's a lot cleaner in the intergalactic spaces, so you can get higher speeds there.
"You got chopped up a bit didn’t you?" The level of concern in Michael-Lan's voice was inversely proportional to the concern he actually felt for Uriel.
"I am lucky to be alive at all Michael-Lan. The humans fought back over El Paso and attacked me with their aircraft and missiles. I managed to duck through a portal in time to dodge their missiles but the portal was small and my wing caught one edge. It is badly broken and is slow to heal. Then there were fragments from the human missiles. A few got through the portal just as it closed and their wounds also are slow to heal."
I could offer you a stiff drink to take your mind off your wounds but I doubt if you'd understand the gesture. "Uriel-Lan, I have to tell you, the All-Seeing Father is not well-pleased with the attack on El Paso. Only a tiny proportion of the humans who live there died. This was far from the erasure of the whole city that he wished."
"I did what I could, the humans have changed Michael-Lan. Once my touch dropped them by the hundreds and the hundreds of hundreds but now it is hard to touch them at all and even when they feel it, they resist me. It takes time to bring my peace to them and their missiles and aircraft do not give me enough. I must take those I can and be satisfied."
Oh boy, that's going to sound good when I repeat it to Yah-yah. Michael-Lan thought with great satisfaction. 'Uriel-Lan says he'll do what he wants and you will have to be satisfied with it.' That should get him going nicely.
"We are at war, Uriel-Lan, The One Above All understands that." Michael-Lan managed to get the words out without choking on them. Yahweh had as little idea of what war against the humans meant as Satan had, less in fact despite the fact that Heaven had kept up to date with human progress and Hell hadn't. It was an old problem, one that went back uncounted millennia, there were people who just refused to hear anything that didn’t suit their pre-existing beliefs. Yahweh still had a mental picture of humans as trusting, thoughtless sheep and he allowed nothing to interfere with it. The idea that the sheep had turned into ruthless killers simply did not register with him. Michael-Lan took the train of thought further. Even if Yahweh woke up and smelled the coffee, it wouldn’t help him. It was one thing to read about what human weapons could do, quite another to see the reality and the meaning it imposed. The way humans filled a battlefield with fire and steel had no equivalent in Angelic memory.
"Michael-Lan, you know humans. Where should I strike next?" Uriel asked the advice, half-hoping he would be told to drop the whole idea.
Michael-Lan thought it over carefully. Texas? Where people were trigger-happy and armed to the teeth? Uriel wouldn’t fall for that again. He thought briefly about sending Uriel within striking distance of Nellis Air Force Base and the Tonopah test range where the humans had killing machines advanced even beyond their standards. The problem there was that the only viable target in Nevada was his beloved Las Vegas and no way was he going to let Uriel loose on that city. California? Now there was a thought. Suddenly inspiration hit him. A city full of Marines, surrounded by fighter bases and missile batteries and home to a large proportion of the U.S. Navy. Perfect.
"Uriel-Lan, rest here for a while. When you are fit again, I recommend you strike at San Diego."
Michael-Lan took a courteous leave of his convalescent guest, inflated his flying sacs and took off, heading for The Eternal City and his working offices. He had to make another visit first of course, one that Michael was looking forward to. On the way, his mind returned to the problem that was nagging at him, the second conspiracy that Lemuel-Lan-Michael had discovered. It was fortunate that Lemuel didn’t know humans nearly as well as he thought he did, for if he had, he would have recognized the pattern that his charts had revealed. A pattern that Michael-Lan had recognized instantly.
This second conspiracy was very different from his own. Michael-Lan's objective was simple, he was creating a situation where the ruling elite of Heaven was so rotten with corruption that one good kick would bring it down. His club and the activities that were centered on it had that as its primary aim. By addicting its members to the pleasures he offered, pleasures that were strictly and absolutely prohibited by Yahweh, he was creating a group that was united by its enjoyment of those pleasures and isolated from the rest of Heaven by that fact. When Michael struck, he would decapitate the leadership of Heaven and take over. It was a classic top-down takeover.
This new conspiracy didn’t work that way at all. While Michael-Lan was creating a new society, one that was slowly spreading out across the top tiers of Heaven, his unknown rival was building an underground army. La Resistance thought Michael. It was divided into watertight cells, with only those in the cells knowing who else was involved. In theory anyway, in reality things were never that close and the cells always had a degree of leakage between them. The point was, the intent of such an organization was to challenge the leadership tiers, to face them with a mass insurrection. This new plan was a bottom-up replacement of the whole system. It would mean a civil war in Heaven, the one thing that Michael was trying to avoid. Other than seeing human tanks in the streets of the Eternal City of course. Avoiding that took priority over everything else. He had to keep the humans tied up, chasing their own tails down on Earth for if they turned their full attention to gaining access to Heaven, it would only be a matter of time before the tanks arrived.
Beneath him, Michael-Lan saw a bronze-covered lodge, one of his smaller resorts that he had modified specifically for its one occupant. He back-winged, settled neatly on the landing porch and allowed his sacs to deflate. Then, he went inside.
"Belial. How do things go with you?"
The great demon, once a Grand Duke of Hell and the only one of Satan's crew to strike a solid blow at the humans, looked up at his visitor with petulance.
"How long must I stay cooped up in this bronze box? There is work for me to do."
"As long as I wish." Michael-Lan's voice was sharp. He didn’t know if the humans could lock in on Belial's mind but he wasn't taking any risks. "Unless you wish to take your chances with the humans?"
Belial shook his head. "I wish to strike at them, amongst others. I waste time here."
"Time is something we have plenty of, Belial-Lan-Michael. You will be pleased to know that your ex-mate Euryale is using her time very well indeed. She has made an alliance with an important human, one Gaius Julius Caesar and turning that to great profit. She has even made her peace with the humans and managed to throw all the blame for Sheffield and Detroit on you. She is rich, well, and prospers along with all her kind. Of course, the humans make them keep their head-snakes covered."
Belial was almost shaking with rage. "She will die in millennia of screaming for her betrayal. And the human she allies herself with."
"Not a chance Belial, Euryale is your problem, that I agree. But Gaius Julius Caesar is off-limits. He is under the protection of the others and they will not tolerate harm coming to him." Michael-Lan returned his voice to its friendliest tone. "Anyway, you will also be pleased that the Baroness Yulupki is also prospering and is now Queen of the Naga. They have set up a delivery service and put FedEx out of business. Not before time, they lost one of my packages once."
Belial clenched his fists and stormed backwards and forwards at the idea of his erstwhile underlings prospering under the rule of humans in Hell. Michael-Lan smiled gently at his rage, daemons really ought to learn to control their emotions, their inability to do so had been their downfall.
"Now, Belial, we come to business. How do we drop fire on human cities?"
"That isn't a problem, open a portal, one end in the lava pit of a volcano, the other over the target."
"That is a problem. As you should be able to tell from the air quality here, there are no volcanoes in Heaven. Somehow, I have to fulfill the prophecy of the Fourth Bowl of Wrath and drop fire on their cities."
"Why didn't you make a prophecy you could fulfill?" Belial couldn't believe that the coldly calculating Michael-Lan, Yahweh's Great General, could blunder like that.
"I didn’t make them. You know how these prophecies got to happen? I'd been on a visit to South America and I'd stocked up with some of the local products. A leaf extract the humans call cocaine. Anyway, on the way back, I stopped in what is now Mexico and picked up a load of some really great mushrooms. They're good Belial, you ought to try them. Give you really wild visions. Anyway, I got to wondering what would happen if somebody mixed up those mushrooms with cocaine. I didn’t want to try it on anybody important so I went to a place called Patmos, an Island that was the back end of nowhere. I found this tramp sitting by the roadside, begging for food, so I gave him a dosed-up mushroom salad, sat back and watched the fireworks.
"And, Belial my friend, what fireworks they were. Eyes flashing, jumping around, shouting and raving, Belial, it was a sight to behold I can tell you. How was I to know that some scribe would take all his ravings down and preserve them? I thought he'd just be dismissed as another lunatic and banged on the head with a rock or something. Instead he becomes Saint John The Divine and the product of my mushroom salad becomes the Book of Revelation. I tried to get it suppressed, really I did. But the Nicaeans just wouldn’t listen. Thomas Jefferson deleted it as well but his opinion didn't take, more's the pity. Still, no use crying over what's done. The prophecies exist and we've got to fulfill them. Now, no volcanoes in Hell, any better ideas?"
Belial shook his head. "We can't drop lava without a source. We'd have to go back to Hell and open up a volcano there."
"Tartarus is occupied by humans, its their main base in the North. They keep a very close watch on all the volcanoes. By the way, they gave Palelabor to your human slaves, they're running a profitable mineral extraction business there now. Iron, copper, titanium, you name it.
Belial slumped, his face in his hands. His beloved Palelabor in the hands of the humans who had once slaved in its depths. Michael-Lan reached down and patted him on the shoulder. "Don’t worry about it, Belial, you just work out a way we can drop fire on a few human cities."
The meeting with Belial had taken less time than he had thought so Michael-Lan decided that a brief visit to the Montmartre Club would be in order. He flew idly towards the Eternal City, enjoying the sight of the lush green farmland beneath him, the workers tending the fields that kept the Eternal City supplied with its food. That, of course, raised an interesting possibility. Michael wondered if it would be possible to grow some of his more hallucinogenic crops up here in Heaven and, if so, would they have the same remarkable effects as they did when grown down on Earth?
Once again, he back-winged neatly and landed on the ledge, this one of a temple devoted to Yahweh. Who else Michael-Lan thought with a certain level of scorn. Yah-yah never grew tired of people worshiping him. Still, he'd found a whole new planet full of primitive sentients he could convert into a new cult. Had things gone the way they had before, the discarded humans would have been condemned to Hell, there to disappear slowly, just as they themselves had replaced the ones who had gone before them. Michael-Lan wondered if, somewhere tucked deep in the bowels of Hell, there were still survivors of those earlier races.
He walked down through the confusing maze of passages that led to the heart of the temple. There was a trick to this, all the mazes in heaven worked on the same principle, if one put one's left hand on the left wall and never took it off, one would eventually reach the center. This one was the exception, at one specific point, if one changed to right hand on right wall, one would find the Montmartre Club.
Inside, Michael was delighted to note that his business was doing well. The music was up to standard and he got a respectful salute from Benny Goodman as he passed. He halted for a few minutes, listened to the number and gave an approving nod as it wound up. A quick look at the schedule showed the band had a good few numbers to work through before their shift was up. Then the center-stage would be taken by some angels pole-dancing.
Once in his office, far to the rear of the concealed structure, Michael sat down with the stock inventories. He'd replenished his supplies nicely, the Myanmar Junta had really come through for him. Such a nice group of people he thought genially, always willing to please and so reasonable and rational compared with Yahweh. He was working on his next liquor procurement scheme, getting good Scotch and Bourbon was turning into a real pain, when there was a knock on his door.
"Michael-Lan, I need help."
It was Maion, the young angel-addict he'd been supplying with heroin. Michael frowned slightly. "You know Maion, you're using more of this stuff now."
"I know, Michael-Lan but, I," she hesitated, tears in her eyes. "I need it."
"So do a lot of people Maion, and they all support their habit. They don’t come running to me asking for free supplies now do they?" Actually, a lot of them did and if they were valuable to him they got what they needed. Maion wasn't that valuable, not yet anyway.
"I know but…"
"It's not fair to them is it? They work to support their habits and pay their way. Why should you be any different?"
"I'll do things, for you, I promise."
Right on. Of course you will, you just don’t know what yet. "Would you like to work here?"
"Oh yes." The happiness in Maion's voice was obvious. "What will I have to do? Serve the drinks?"
"Oh no, I've got a much better job in mind for you than that. You'd make a good dancer I think."
Maion seemed slightly taken aback. "Well, I did learn the reverential dances for the temples."
"They'll do, for a start. The others will show you how to blend them into a pole-dance routine. And work out how you can lose your robes in the process."
"Oh." Now Maion really was taken aback.
"Come along, I'll take you to see Charmeine-Lan. She's in charge of the dancers."
Charmeine-Lan was in the costume room, making sure the next set of dancers were properly costumed. Michael introduced Maion to her and left them to get on with business. As soon as he'd gone, Charmeine-Lan put her wing comfortingly around Maion. "It's no big thing, really. All you have to do is do your dance when scheduled. Just remember, don’t let go of the pole when you're dancing, its there for your safety. Hang on to it in case somebody tries to pull you off the stage. It’s never happened and if somebody tries, security will deal with them. Apart from that, remember to keep to schedule, be down to skin and feathers by the end of the allocated time. Don't over-run and never under-run. Keep an eye on the stage manager, that's me, and if I tell you to slow down or speed up, then do so. Sometimes we have problems and I'll need you to cover a gap or something. Do that well and you'll get a lot of extra credit. After the show, you'll meet up with the customers on the floor. Socialize with them, if they want you to, you can do a little private dance for them, up close, its called a lap dance. All the girls earn a lot of money that way, more than enough to pay for your habit. Finally, some of the customers will want to take you to the rooms upstairs."
"No!" Maion was horrified.
"Yes, Maion. You'll do it and like it." Charmeine-Lan's voice was harsh and relentless. "You've got a habit, you'll support it and that means doing what the customers want. Otherwise you'll do without. You know what that feels like?"
Maion nodded her head, partly in acknowledgement, partly to hide the fact she was crying.
"All right then." Charmeine-Lan switched her voice back to the soft-friendly tone she'd used earlier. "It really isn't bad, Michael-Lan doesn’t allow anybody bad in here so they'll all be nice to you. If you're good and work hard at pleasing the customers, one will take a liking to you and reserve you. That way you won’t have to go with anybody else. Now, when a customer asks you to go upstairs, you tell me so I can get another girl to take your place on the schedule right?"
Another tear-stained nod from Maion.
"Very good, so let's get you a nice costume for your first appearance."
Last edited by Stuart on 2009-07-07 08:34am, edited 1 time in total.
Nations do not survive by setting examples for others
Nations survive by making examples of others
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
He had to keep the humans tied up, chasing their own tails down on Earth for if they turned their full attention to gaining access to Heaven, it would only be a matter of time before the tanks arrived.
Does Michael expect this to just blow over if he keeps screwing around long enough, or does he believe he can stay one step ahead of the humans forever?
Such a nice group of people he thought genially, always willing to please and so reasonable and rational compared with Yahweh.
Now, is this meant to signify that Michael is "evil," meaning he knows their habits and does not care, or stupid, meaning he doesn't realize that they are probably trying to fuck with him?
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