The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[CaptainChewbacca]

Residents of hell don't need to eat or drink, and require almost no resources. Aside from a quiet room they really don't need anything at all, and I imagine if we keep going eventually hell may simply be a giant honeycomb full of 'residence pods' where everyone exists in a 2 cubic-meter space all their own. I don't recall the exact interior volume of hell, but we're a LONG way away from that.

All you need to do with a second-lifer is keep them occupied and happy.

[Nematocyst]

Remeber how in Inglorious Basterds Landa strikes a deal to save his own hide? Mikey could still do so inspite of his atrocities.

Heaven's (and therefore Michael's) atrocities are worse and span much longer than Landa's. Also, Landa didn't exactly come out unscathed from the deal he struck.

food for thought...Jesus is the son of YHWH correct?

Michael and Yahweh both acknowledge this, so yeah.
Your second theory is what I like more: the Jesus we already had was possessed by 'actual Jesus', and 'actual Jesus' is another Archangel or, as you said, another Yahweh individual

[old Infantryman]

...They also can't get drunk, either.

It will be interesting to see what behavioural patterns emerge in lieu so that individuals may 'ease springs'.

[GrayAnderson]

Remeber how in Inglorious Basterds Landa strikes a deal to save his own hide? Mikey could still do so inspite of his atrocities.

Heaven's (and therefore Michael's) atrocities are worse and span much longer than Landa's. Also, Landa didn't exactly come out unscathed from the deal he struck.

food for thought...Jesus is the son of YHWH correct?

Michael and Yahweh both acknowledge this, so yeah.
Your second theory is what I like more: the Jesus we already had was possessed by 'actual Jesus', and 'actual Jesus' is another Archangel or, as you said, another Yahweh individual

A couple of points leap to mind here:
1) I'm not sure what generating offspring from a deity and a human would involve, but the idea is pervasive enough in ancient religions that I'm not inclined to totally block the concept off. It's possible that it might be an F1 hybrid (essentially a mule, though possibly without the issues of sterility). It's also possible, given their apparent rarity, that deities need something odd to reproduce, though this seems a bit less likely.
2) We dealt with the demon/human offspring. Is there any variation on that with angels (given their non-specialization)? i.e. Can an angel and a human reproduce?

...They also can't get drunk, either.

It will be interesting to see what behavioural patterns emerge in lieu so that individuals may 'ease springs'.

I'm wondering if other chemical interactions can happen. It seems clear that exhaustion in some form can, as can pain. Possibly sex without the possibility of reproduction ("have sex" isn't the same as "reproduce", after all)? Also, a number of extreme sports could fill the gap if you can still generate adrenaline or some variant thereof (i.e. if the cutoff is to chemical interactions). If you can still have pain, I'd be surprised if endorphin production was cut off as well.

[Darth Wong]

They might try changing the legal definition of death. It has been done before based upon changing medical knowledge. Brain/head transfers are not completely unprecidented in medical theory. Nor science fiction. They could make a case that they have 'moved to another country' rather than 'ceased to exist'; which is what death is supposed to mean.

The legal definition of death is "Irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions and of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem." This definition is completely unaffected by the discovery of Second Life humans, and there is no reason why any Earth-bound legal system would change it. Moreover, if they did change it, I don't see why it would retroactively affect legal contracts signed before the change.

They also (potentially) have the financial clout to hire high-ticket lawyers and do things the complicated judicial way (and maybe even probono) rather than the easy way, which is what most normal people are stuck with. Of course becoming ex-pats this way would cause more economic and political restrictions, but the executives might prefer that set of rules to losing everything.

Executives will do whatever they can. But in this case, they would be trying to set a precedent with impossibly far-reaching consequences, all of which harm First Life humans for the benefit of Second Life humans. Remember that they will be trying to push through these changes in courts run by First Life humans.

But yes, it would be very bad for everyone on Earth is the second-lifers got their way. But since when do most people care how much their happiness inconveniences other people? I fear any restristrictions the HEA imposes upon the upcoming 2nd life economies will in the long run be as effective as restrictions Britain tried to impose on the post-revolution America.

Second Life economies will be hamstrung by the fact that precision machining can't be done there, not to mention the limitations of a work force which is not unified under any kind of formalized economic system and which is mostly composed of primitive illiterates who have little incentive to work since they don't need sustenance and have no families to build.

[GrayAnderson]

But yes, it would be very bad for everyone on Earth is the second-lifers got their way. But since when do most people care how much their happiness inconveniences other people? I fear any restristrictions the HEA imposes upon the upcoming 2nd life economies will in the long run be as effective as restrictions Britain tried to impose on the post-revolution America.

Second Life economies will be hamstrung by the fact that precision machining can't be done there, not to mention the limitations of a work force which is not unified under any kind of formalized economic system and which is mostly composed of primitive illiterates who have little incentive to work since they don't need sustenance and have no families to build.

Why can't it be done in an inside environment with an air filter (which Caesar's villas often have)? Also, your "mostly primitive illiterates" point is going to be increasingly valid in the long run, but in the short term it's not likely to hold nearly as well. The "top of the pile" is going to be mostly 20th century people, I'd think, a large number of whom are at least literate. As you get down in the pile, I agree that you've increasingly got those who're likely to be a cheap labor source as far as work product goes, but early on not so much.

[Darth Wong]

But yes, it would be very bad for everyone on Earth is the second-lifers got their way. But since when do most people care how much their happiness inconveniences other people? I fear any restristrictions the HEA imposes upon the upcoming 2nd life economies will in the long run be as effective as restrictions Britain tried to impose on the post-revolution America.

Second Life economies will be hamstrung by the fact that precision machining can't be done there, not to mention the limitations of a work force which is not unified under any kind of formalized economic system and which is mostly composed of primitive illiterates who have little incentive to work since they don't need sustenance and have no families to build.

Why can't it be done in an inside environment with an air filter (which Caesar's villas often have)?

In Hell, space-time itself is distorted and unpredictable.

Also, your "mostly primitive illiterates" point is going to be increasingly valid in the long run, but in the short term it's not likely to hold nearly as well. The "top of the pile" is going to be mostly 20th century people, I'd think, a large number of whom are at least literate. As you get down in the pile, I agree that you've increasingly got those who're likely to be a cheap labor source as far as work product goes, but early on not so much.

And what about the fact that they have little or no incentive to work? Take a real person with a job. Now take away weakness, fatigue, disease, hunger, thirst, all of the physical needs that humans spend vast amounts of money satisfying. Now take away offspring: the other thing that most employed people work so hard to provide for. Now take away retirement planning, since people have no period of elderly infirmity to plan and save up for.

How hard are people going to work at their jobs, once you take away all of these things they currently work hard for? Maybe a nice dwelling, but a lot of people might just decide to go nomadic; hell, a lot of peoples' retirement dream is to sail the world or drive around in an RV.

I would predict a lot of lazy people in Hell. Those who work hard would need some other incentive, like power, conflict with others, pleasures which must be paid for, or access to restricted places.

[xthetenth]

Even if the precision machining point holds true (IE no discovery of an accurate enough approximation of the rules to allow precision machining, I bet that at least some portion of heavy industry might be able to benefit considerably from the different rules at work (such as caused the different behavior of hell and earth tridents), so at the very least some industry would be attracted there, plus there'd likely be some impetus to take advantage of the labor pool to run factories to turn out items without such high precisions required.

Oh, and I just had a strange notion that I have a feeling that at least some environmentalist groups are going to get really worked up over the possibility of contaminating Earth's environment with exposure to Hell's. Never mind whether any cross-contamination does occur, just the thought of getting Hell dust and wildlife in earth is likely enough to incite some opposition to widespread use of portals or at least try to regulate that all portals have to go to clean air in Hell or something similarly impractical once things settle down with the military.

[GrayAnderson]

Second Life economies will be hamstrung by the fact that precision machining can't be done there, not to mention the limitations of a work force which is not unified under any kind of formalized economic system and which is mostly composed of primitive illiterates who have little incentive to work since they don't need sustenance and have no families to build.

Why can't it be done in an inside environment with an air filter (which Caesar's villas often have)?

In Hell, space-time itself is distorted and unpredictable.

Distorted, yes. However, I'm not sure how unpredictable it is...it's simply "inside out", but I'm not sure how much that is going to matter once techniques get hammered out for working around that. Here, I'd be happy to ask Stuart for his input, partly because you don't seem to have an issue with electronics working. Compasses, yes, but that seems to be about it.

Also, your "mostly primitive illiterates" point is going to be increasingly valid in the long run, but in the short term it's not likely to hold nearly as well. The "top of the pile" is going to be mostly 20th century people, I'd think, a large number of whom are at least literate. As you get down in the pile, I agree that you've increasingly got those who're likely to be a cheap labor source as far as work product goes, but early on not so much.

And what about the fact that they have little or no incentive to work? Take a real person with a job. Now take away weakness, fatigue, disease, hunger, thirst, all of the physical needs that humans spend vast amounts of money satisfying. Now take away offspring: the other thing that most employed people work so hard to provide for. Now take away retirement planning, since people have no period of elderly infirmity to plan and save up for.

How hard are people going to work at their jobs, once you take away all of these things they currently work hard for? Maybe a nice dwelling, but a lot of people might just decide to go nomadic; hell, a lot of peoples' retirement dream is to sail the world or drive around in an RV.

I would predict a lot of lazy people in Hell. Those who work hard would need some other incentive, like power, conflict with others, pleasures which must be paid for, or access to restricted places.

The incentives will exist in some form or another given time. Given the the eleven-figure number of people there, access is going to become an issue sooner or later. Put plain, a billion people can't all go to the beach on Labor Day Weekend, can they? Unless you feel like walking the whole way, travel is still going to be an issue. And while in New Rome access to politicians isn't going to be an issue for now, drop fifty million people in there and you're going to invariably get influence deals.

To be fair, you may well get a culture akin to that in Daytona Beach IRL, where people work intermittently to save up to do something but then head off, or where they work for a year or two on a contract and then travel for a few years...but at the same time, as people get pulled out of the pit, things which are plentiful to start with (land, fuel, etc.) will begin to go for a premium. And there's always going to be "experiences" (watching a movie in a theater, seeing a play, visiting areas of natural beauty which will invariably get fenced off by someone, etc.), not to mention consumption of food and other things for pleasure rather than sustenance (something you had the angels fuming about earlier in the novel).

In short, it's going to be a low-intensity economy, yes, but you're still going to have plenty of things subject to one form of scarcity or another. Hell is not, for lack of a better way to put it, a post-scarcity economy.

They also (potentially) have the financial clout to hire high-ticket lawyers and do things the complicated judicial way (and maybe even probono) rather than the easy way, which is what most normal people are stuck with. Of course becoming ex-pats this way would cause more economic and political restrictions, but the executives might prefer that set of rules to losing everything.

Executives will do whatever they can. But in this case, they would be trying to set a precedent with impossibly far-reaching consequences, all of which harm First Life humans for the benefit of Second Life humans. Remember that they will be trying to push through these changes in courts run by First Life humans.

I thought I'd follow onto this point: Yes, the judges are first life humans, but they are eventually not going to be. Assuming it comes before the IRL Supreme Court, you have the following:
Stevens, age 89
Ginsberg, age 77
Scalia, age 74
Kennedy, age 73
Breyer, age 71
Thomas, age 61
Alito, age 59
Sotomayor, age 55
Roberts, age 55
Five of the nine are over the age of 70; according to the Social Security Administration, that means that their actuarial life expectancies are about 12-13 years or less (in the case of Stevens, it's down to about 4 years, while Ginsberg has been suspected of being in ill health for some time). If we go with the court pre-Souter's retirement, then you swap out a 55-year-old female for a 70-year-old male; it doesn't help things much at all.

This carries over into the rest of the population, too: While nobody wants to be carrying the burden of the dead forever, there's that sticky fact that, especially as one gets into their 50s and 60s and accumulates health problems, the fact that you're going to be on the other side of that fence sooner rather than later becomes something to consider. The consequences are far-reaching, yes, but the fact is that I'd be hard-pressed to see a court consisting of a majority of people over the age of 70 effectively cutting their own throats in some regards. This is not to say that they'd be making the right decision, but I think most of us can agree that courts are capable of some impressive "stupid human tricks" on occasion, and if they paint the brush broadly enough (and make a big enough mess of things), they can probably clog up any electoral backlash which might come from their decision from their decision if they manage to load up the electorate with enough dead people via their ruling.

[Darth Yan]

I'm also curious as to what would happen to inmates sentenced to execution, and then death. Also, how would "life" sentences be effected?

[GrayAnderson]

Quick thoughts on possible rulings, as two funny ones came to mind. First, the obvious ones:
1) "You're dead, get over it." Basically, what Wong's calling for. You're dead, move along.
2) "You're not dead yet!" The opposite. Basically, a legal redefinition. Opens a can of worms, as mentioned before. However, quite plausible, and workable provided that they basically say "the old definition is out and we're interposing a new one, but the legislature has leave to redefine death in light of the current circumstances; their failure to do so to date, however, is an obvious oversight" or something along those lines. Basically, they issue an injunction but kick it to Congress...doing a classic non-ruling ruling.

Now for the fun ones:
3) "You're dead, but so what?" Just because they're dead doesn't mean they're not on the board of Goldman Sachs anymore. Their terms aren't up, and being dead doesn't result in their immediate dismissal. This sort of ruling would basically mean that the vote to pass out bonuses gets ejected on the grounds that a quorum of the board walked out of the hellmouth. However, this doesn't redefine death, so they'd still lose their pensions...but they'd still be on the board, at least pending the selection of successors. I would point out that this ruling could be tailored quite narrowly: Board members need to be able to attend meetings, but attending by teleconference isn't hard to arrange. Also, I would note that there is no rule out there barring a company from employing a Second Life human, and I've mentioned before that there are plenty of cases where this might be desirable. Basically, death doesn't automatically get you out of a contract.
4) "Death equals retirement/resignation." The members of the board are dead; however, that doesn't deny them their golden parachutes (which most such board members get in some form or another), just their pensions. Basically, when you die, you get severance pay all the same. Just because the means of resignation/retirement was also fatal doesn't mean that it's not still the same. I'd be inclined to put some language into a ruling on this point preventing it from being construed as a breach of contract unless it was a clear-cut suicide.

My preference is actually number three, but three and four aren't entirely exclusive: Three applies when death doesn't block you from performing necessary tasks (board executives, and probably eventually a fair number of "desk job" professions); four applies when it does (jobs requiring a physical presence at a given place). There's also some variation possible within (if a contract is not specific, then the dead person gets some discretion on how they want to proceed and aren't bound over automatically).

One final funny idea: Have at least one of the dead execs' spouses file a counter-suit over death benefits that would be coming to them, trying to get their spouse declared dead in order to get at money. Ahhh, marital bliss...

[Buritot]

In Hell, space-time itself is distorted and unpredictable.

Distorted, yes. However, I'm not sure how unpredictable it is...it's simply "inside out", but I'm not sure how much that is going to matter once techniques get hammered out for working around that. Here, I'd be happy to ask Stuart for his input, partly because you don't seem to have an issue with electronics working. Compasses, yes, but that seems to be about it.

Funny thing, isn't it? We've got large-scale effects in the sense of the line of sight not being equal to the path you take. But I would guess this also takes a toll in the microscopic department. Biologically it all works, mind you, but then the distance of axon to dendrite is what, 30nm? Any shorter distances are working with chemical bounds. High-Tech electronics on the other hand... I don't know what the minimum distances for conducting in current chips is but the distorted space may impart a higher error probability. (In effect, there is a slight limit on which computer chips reliably work in the Hell subverse)
But then it might be the other way around. Maybe the strange make-up of space in Hell allows for certain structures which wouldn't be possible on Earth.
Essentially, space-time in Hell isn't unpredictable. It's merely not understood sufficiently enough. Yet.

As for the size of Hell, wasn't Belials lair at whatever constitutes the opposite site of Hell in accordance to Dis? And, going by that, wouldn't the distance the planes flew to bomb the place allow for a rough guesstimate? I have 12,000 miles swimming in the back of my head, and a spherical body of 24,000 miles circumference is in surface are comparable to Earth. I don't know the water-land-ratio, though.

This carries over into the rest of the population, too: While nobody wants to be carrying the burden of the dead forever, there's that sticky fact that, especially as one gets into their 50s and 60s and accumulates health problems, the fact that you're going to be on the other side of that fence sooner rather than later becomes something to consider. The consequences are far-reaching, yes, but the fact is that I'd be hard-pressed to see a court consisting of a majority of people over the age of 70 effectively cutting their own throats in some regards. This is not to say that they'd be making the right decision, but I think most of us can agree that courts are capable of some impressive "stupid human tricks" on occasion, and if they paint the brush broadly enough (and make a big enough mess of things), they can probably clog up any electoral backlash which might come from their decision from their decision if they manage to load up the electorate with enough dead people via their ruling.

I may be mistaken and optimistic beyond held (which would be a first) but isn't the whole point of the Surpreme Court to uphold the ideals and morals of the existing and only possibly coming society? I know its decisions are based on the political, ideological and moral alignment of its judges but I gathered the features being looked for in judges are NOT egotism and shortsightedness.

At least that's the way it is for what goes for a surpreme court here - its decisions are regularly politically inconvenient and its known to admonish politicians to cut the crap in what they pushed through.

As for the implications of second-lifers for society, keep in mind nearly every (current) human owes its education to someone. That is in most cases your nation. The same goes for upbringing, care-taking, kindergarten and what else is being provided in the first two, three decades of your life. Basically, the first day you work you're in debt to society. You repay this debt via taxation and other stately instruments. You may pay insurances to provide security for enjoyable sunset years. You, as you are, are in the best case in a symbiotic relationship with your state in which one (quite literally) cares for the other.
Your death ends this relationship partly. Your second life is being partly provided by the nation you were born in since it was the environment of your formative years and naturally shaped your personality as well as your mind. It's not like you awake in a clean slate - you're skilled. Knowledgeable.
So would you be willing to restart caring for where you came from? Not eternally, as well as not in the amount as you have before.
But I wouldn't be surprised if there were universal treaties with Hell states regulating such things. I'd imagine some treaties to deal with this in such a way certain Hell states would have compulsory taxes (*) whereas other would make that mandatory. It's all in all a very intriguing thought experiment...

(*) Say, a VAT-like tax. It would be split equally among the states the inhabitants of the Hell state originated in (past as well as current states). say, Hellflower State is made up of 30% former US-citizen, 20% of former Frenchmen and 50% of former Prussians. 30% of the this tax money go to the US; 20% to France and the 50% proportionately to Germany, Poland, Denmark, Russia, ...

[Ruadhan2300]

What would you reasonably expect to get from that tax? currently the vast majority of the people in hell have absolute zilch they can give for taxes. I don't see that improving very quickly, the modern 20th/21st century humans may well have some funds they can access from their former lives, but I'd say that for now the returns from a tax wouldn't be enough to pay someone to go around that 11 figure number of people...well, I exaggerate, but it's likely not going to be worth the effort to do it until hell as a whole has something it can materially give.

Hellflower state? I like that its got my vote for inclusion in the story somewhere.

I forget whether this has been adequately explained. was there ever a time when the hell/heaven system actually worked as advertised? as in, you were pious and got into heaven by default unless you sinned? I've been vaguely understanding it that heaven closed the pearly gates somewhere around the same sort of time as Jesus did his thing. I'm thinking if Jesus was -after- the gates closed, that puts a whole seperate spin on him. A fair few comments have been made to the effect that Jesus might turn out to be good guy. I'm more in favour of him being a jerk. the hypocracy will be more fun
what I'd suggest is that old testament stuff is pre-gateclosure, while new testament is the stuff to pacify the masses and say basically, "YHWH is a bloody nice guy who totally hasn't/won't close the gates early - honest" in which case possibly Jesus is YHWH's PR man, improving his public image to appeal to a broader audience? it certainly worked...

[Nematocyst]

I'm also curious as to what would happen to inmates sentenced to execution, and then death. Also, how would "life" sentences be effected?

Demons require the pain of the tortured humans to survive, if I recall.
So we put an inmate to death, let the Centre in Hell know why is he there and then the demons put him in the Ring he deserves to be so that he can be tormented.
This was part of the terms explained in the 'conditional' surrender of Hell.

[TimothyC]

Nematocyst - If you reread it, you will find that the 'conditional surrender' was rejected soundly by the President Bush, and the HEA in general (by killing the demon that offered it). Also, the demons don't need to torture humans, that was simply a means of control that Satan used over his minions.

[Simon_Jester]

Why can't it be done in an inside environment with an air filter (which Caesar's villas often have)?

In Hell, space-time itself is distorted and unpredictable.

Not on the small scale. Spacetime in Hell is locally flat; the radius of curvature is measured in tens or hundreds of kilometers at worst. At the extreme limit of precision engineering, where distances of micrometers out of a meter matter, this is liable to be a problem. But I think you may be overestimating the scope of that problem.

[Darth Wong]

Why can't it be done in an inside environment with an air filter (which Caesar's villas often have)?

In Hell, space-time itself is distorted and unpredictable.

Not on the small scale. Spacetime in Hell is locally flat; the radius of curvature is measured in tens or hundreds of kilometers at worst. At the extreme limit of precision engineering, where distances of micrometers out of a meter matter, this is liable to be a problem. But I think you may be overestimating the scope of that problem.

Keep in mind that Stuart (the creator of this fictional universe and its de facto god) stated explicitly that Hell was an environment which made high-precision industry impossible. Whatever physical rationalizations you need in order to arrive at that conclusion, regardless of whether you feel the story has sufficiently fleshed them out, it seems reasonable to assume that unless we hear otherwise, it is in fact the case, and that future chapters will be consistent with that statement.

[Simon_Jester]

Keep in mind that Stuart... stated explicitly that Hell was an environment which made high-precision industry impossible.

Sorry. I must have missed that.

I would not predict that as a result from the weirdness we've actually seen. And I'm a bit skeptical that Hell could make high precision industry impossible without making the use of high precision machinery impossible. But I suppose that's irrelevant if the author has come out and said "no high precision industry in Hell."

Though I would very much like to hear the author explain his reasoning, because I have a haunting suspicion that this is like his calculation that a 100-ton rock falling from five thousand meters would be the energy equivalent of a ten kiloton nuclear bomb... where I still think he was off by four orders of magnitude.

[Darth Wong]

It is possible for an environment to permit the use of high-precision equipment without necessarily allowing you to build it. For example, let's suppose that there's a randomly varying small-scale space-time distortion in Hell which has a slight bias, hence it tends to probabilistically add up over large distances to a noticeable net distortion. If you're using lenses to make integrated circuits, it would tend to result in randomly distorted circuits, which are far less likely to work.

However, if you took an integrated circuit which was made elsewhere and put it into this environment, these distortions would not cause a problem because the circuit traces are already laid down and even if they distort slightly, they won't short.

[Simon_Jester]

That would work.

Though in that case, whether high precision industry is possible will depend heavily on what you mean by "high precision." Microchip factories are about as precise as anything gets. What about aircraft engines? Automobile engines? At some level of precision, the random distortion has to stop mattering, because otherwise it wouldn't be survivable for people either.

[Baughn]

It would work for a few years, until someone found a way to map the distortions and account for them while building things. Even if the mapping has to happen in real-time, it should still be possible for a computer to handle.

And it can't be all that serious, because all humans on our planet are themselves examples of extremely high-precision industry. We'd certainly sicken and die in hours to days (this may be off by an order of magnitude, but I hopefully erred on the high side) without the ability to self-repair and construct new proteins.

If our built-in nanofactories work, with no adaptation whatsoever, there's no way it won't eventually be possible to get around the problem.

[Darth Wong]

I don't see how humans count as an example of the problem or a rebuttal to it. Chemical reactions are driven by electromagnetism, and those laws of attraction would force molecules together correctly despite weird spatial variations. Also, we're not nearly so high-precision as you seem to think. If a car engine were built to the same precision as a human body (where your two legs might differ by a half inch in length), it wouldn't work.

[Ruadhan2300]

we work because as we develop according to our genetic template, we grow to match a defined functionality, rather than creating components and fitting them together exactly to specifications. its like I decided to build a house and realised I had a plank that was too short, so rather than going and getting a longer one, I used the shorter one and adjusted the rest of the house to fit.
I hope I'm making sense. basically, we use what we have available to create a system which does roughly what we want. precision never factors in.

my guess is that long term exposure to the Hell environment is going to bring up some health complications for first-lifers beyond the basic lung-cancer and hacking coughs. something related to the different physical laws causing disruption to earth materials over time sounds increasingly likely. some form of cancer one would imagine. probably whatever part of the body is most fragile will go first.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't see how humans count as an example of the problem or a rebuttal to it. Chemical reactions are driven by electromagnetism, and those laws of attraction would force molecules together correctly despite weird spatial variations. Also, we're not nearly so high-precision as you seem to think. If a car engine were built to the same precision as a human body (where your two legs might differ by a half inch in length), it wouldn't work.

The problem is: imagine there's a minor random element to the curvature of spacetime in Hell. The net effect on your body is going to be like having every part of you grabbed and twisted randomly through small distances. If the distances are small enough it won't matter... but if the distances are relatively large, I'd still be worried about things like small scale cumulative brain damage.

The question is: How small must this random element be for electronics and precision machinery to work at all? Given that upper bound on the size of the random element, what is the level of manufacturing precision we can achieve?

For example, if things in Hell are randomly squeezed or stretched by 1% of their length in unpredictable dimensions, things like artillery pieces might not work, because that 155 mm gun you've kept stored in Hell is now out of true. If the cross-section of the gun tube is now 156 mm across at the long axis and 154 mm across at the short axis, good luck firing the freshly arrived 155 mm shells out of it. The fact that the shells fit the guns indicates that any distortion effect from being in Hell is less than the tolerance of the guns for wrongly-sized shells.

[Hofner1962]

I thought the topography of Hell was a Klein bottle - basically a 3 dimensional Möbius strip. I was never under the impression that the effects were random. They were just different. Remember the secret door to the Heaven's Gate. "He had to go one hundred blocks to the left, ten blocks up, then five back to the right. It was a measure of how cunningly this place had been built that going 95 blocks to the left and then five up would not take him to the same place."

That is not a random space distortion, it is just that addition and subtraction are commutative there.