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Stuart wrote:
The Montmartre Club, Eternal City, Heaven

"You know what to do Maion. You've had enough practice. Everything perfectly clear?"

Maion nodded. She'd had a year to learn her part in this game although she hadn't the slightest idea what that part was or even that she was a piece in the game being played. In fact, she had no idea that there was a game in play. What she did know was that, once her shock and horror at what her work here entailed had worn off, she'd appreciated the security it provided. In this case, security was defined as an uninterrupted and guaranteed supply of heroin.

Poor junkie kid! I hope, when we liberate Heaven (One of the few times that it will be a real liberation.) that Maion and her fellow unfortunates get treatment. Knowing how these things work out, the girl will end up as a "camp follower", then in the gutter.

Stuart wrote:Maion took Lemuel by her hand and led him to the stairs that went to the rooms above. As soon as they were outside, Perpetiel and Charmeine exchanged high-fives. "Did it!" Perpetiel's voice was almost a shout of triumph.

"Of course." Charmeine sounded conceited. "Angels like that can't resist a bird with broken wings.

(Snort of contempt.) Since they were the one's who broke her! Yet another reason to give Mikey and his ilk a high caliber brain massage.

BTW, Stuart, mind if I do some fan art and/or fan fiction about this story?

Awww... Maion! I hope she and Lemuel have a happy ending together! She's so sweet, and so is he! What a poor guy! ^_____^

Mayabird wrote:Something about the angelic concentration camps bother me. It doesn't feel like it fits, just too modern I suppose, even if it's Michael's idea. I don't want to call it primitive, since it wasn't and peoples in the past had plenty of horrific and sophisticated torture methods, but it seems like something more pre-modern would fit better.

On the conspiracies, though, that I can see and it makes sense to have so many of them. Those angels have had nothing better to do than plot and scheme amongst themselves...and same with their human slaves who've figured out after who knows how many centuries that Heaven ain't all it was cut out to be. And heck, the baldricks were doing it too, but they were more overt and openly fought each other for power instead of being passive-aggressive like the angels were seemingly forced to be.

Well, Michael knows that putting up a concentration camp would really push our buttons (though it doesn't really mesh sociologically with Heaven), and he figures that if he can shift enough outrage onto Belial, he might be able to get away unscathed, though that's a little unlikely after those two nukes and the bunch of other stuff he's done.

Pelranius wrote:

Mayabird wrote:Something about the angelic concentration camps bother me. It doesn't feel like it fits, just too modern I suppose, even if it's Michael's idea. I don't want to call it primitive, since it wasn't and peoples in the past had plenty of horrific and sophisticated torture methods, but it seems like something more pre-modern would fit better.

On the conspiracies, though, that I can see and it makes sense to have so many of them. Those angels have had nothing better to do than plot and scheme amongst themselves...and same with their human slaves who've figured out after who knows how many centuries that Heaven ain't all it was cut out to be. And heck, the baldricks were doing it too, but they were more overt and openly fought each other for power instead of being passive-aggressive like the angels were seemingly forced to be.

Well, Michael knows that putting up a concentration camp would really push our buttons (though it doesn't really mesh sociologically with Heaven), and he figures that if he can shift enough outrage onto Belial, he might be able to get away unscathed, though that's a little unlikely after those two nukes and the bunch of other stuff he's done.

Maybe he's hoping that he can focus blame on Belial and Yahweh, and have the angels make noises about how Yahweh was keeping them in a State of Terror or something like that. I doubt it will hold up, but even Michael-lan has his delusions.

Michael's trying to play Chess when the game is Russian Roulette.

Fuckshit, again.

I thought of the ramifications portal beacon technology will have.

1st, it will be unnecessary to put nephilim in risk of possession when they remove their brain protection to let the portaleers home in on them.

2nd, given enough coverage with beacons it will be possible to open portals to practically any place on Earth. Assuming the exact point the portal opens up to is the [circumcentre, centre of incircle, centroid,...: your choice], by chosing slightly different beacons one could pretty much open it at any position one wants to.
Furthermore Sheffield and Detroit as well as the hypercanes are proofs of concept. We've got a volcano about to erupt, or already erupting? Put beacons in the crater and open a portal - voilà, the hot stuff goes elsewhere where it oughtn't be a problem. The hypercanes on the other hand however prove on thing: climate control.

I will add more when I think of more.

Buritot wrote:I will add more when I think of more.

Anyone with access to the earth and hell beacon networks and sufficient power can link any two places on earth at near instantaneous speeds. 7.0 earthquake in Haiti? No problem, we'll just open up a pair of gates, park one end near Chicago, and start rolling humanitarian aid through within fifteen minutes.

Plus, I think you could use it for continuous power cycles for stuff like hydroelectric but I don't know if you'd have a net GAIN of power from such a device.

Doubt it. Unless the ability to open portals is extremely cheap and easy, we might resort to using traditional energy means. Then again, Berzerkers had the ability to hop from Hell to Earth pretty easy during the Curb-Stomp War, so it would be a good way to travel in future.

Though what would really make my day is if we use the teleportation ability to colonize other planets. Think about it; we'd no longer be stuck to two or three worlds (Heaven, Hell, Earth), we could build colonies on Mars and Venus.

Of course, Salvation War being a hard science setting, I'm probably way off.

CaptainChewbacca wrote: Plus, I think you could use it for continuous power cycles for stuff like hydroelectric but I don't know if you'd have a net GAIN of power from such a device.

No no no, the first law of thermodynamics must surely still apply.

Colonel Olrik wrote:No no no, the first law of thermodynamics must surely still apply.

Indeed, there was some discussion about an energy cost/boost when portaling between locations with different elevation that would keep the continuous energy cycle from working. It was first mentioned after someone on a different site criticized the story for breaking that very law. Though I can't remember if it was mentioned in the story itself or just outside of it.

Sute wrote:

Colonel Olrik wrote:No no no, the first law of thermodynamics must surely still apply.

Indeed, there was some discussion about an energy cost/boost when portaling between locations with different elevation that would keep the continuous energy cycle from working. It was first mentioned after someone on a different site criticized the story for breaking that very law. Though I can't remember if it was mentioned in the story itself or just outside of it.

I'm pretty sure it was only outside.

Anyways, to take up the colonizing part: With beacons we'll only have to transport these to the locations we want to travel to (Mars, Venus, the Asteroids) which decreases the energy input necessary to establish a base there by magnitudes. it will only be necessary to fly one rocket to Mars, make successful planetfall and activate the beacons. The next step is opening a portal from a secure location (a.k.a. airtight) and wheeling/pushing our stuff through. A fun little exercise in logistics.

That is, of course, assuming that you can portal from Hell or Heaven to any point in our universe, and aren't simply limited to earth.

That's doubtful. The only thing that makes Earth special is that a bunch of not-so-powerful divinity-types have interest in it. Portals should be much more a universal phenomenon than that.

Pelranius wrote:

Mayabird wrote:Something about the angelic concentration camps bother me. It doesn't feel like it fits, just too modern I suppose, even if it's Michael's idea. I don't want to call it primitive, since it wasn't and peoples in the past had plenty of horrific and sophisticated torture methods, but it seems like something more pre-modern would fit better.

On the conspiracies, though, that I can see and it makes sense to have so many of them. Those angels have had nothing better to do than plot and scheme amongst themselves...and same with their human slaves who've figured out after who knows how many centuries that Heaven ain't all it was cut out to be. And heck, the baldricks were doing it too, but they were more overt and openly fought each other for power instead of being passive-aggressive like the angels were seemingly forced to be.

Well, Michael knows that putting up a concentration camp would really push our buttons (though it doesn't really mesh sociologically with Heaven), and he figures that if he can shift enough outrage onto Belial, he might be able to get away unscathed, though that's a little unlikely after those two nukes and the bunch of other stuff he's done.

To be fair, the first nuke was self preservation more or less.

I mean it'd be like, (bare with me) somehow a Japanese plane shot down the Enola Gay when it was over American Airspace, it crashes, and the bomb its carrying goes off, you can't really say that the Japanese willfully nuked America because they were only taking part in an act of self preservation, same with Micheal sending the ticking bomb back to us.

He also seems to know nothing about how the second nuke took place, so of the nukings Micheal is more or less innocent.

Of all the other stuff of course...

Colonel Olrik wrote:

CaptainChewbacca wrote: Plus, I think you could use it for continuous power cycles for stuff like hydroelectric but I don't know if you'd have a net GAIN of power from such a device.

No no no, the first law of thermodynamics must surely still apply.

Even if the law still applies, we could still exploit portals to create lots of hydropower from changes in elevation which would be impractical to exploit with a conventional dam. Either because the gradient of the river isn’t steep enough, or we have land we don’t want to flood. You could build a simple barrage to divert water from a river 500 feet above sea level, send it to hell in which it pours into another portal, then place the end of that portal back on earth 300 feet up in the air near the coast, with the water then flowing down a vertical pipe to a turbine at sealevel.

It would also work if portal was used to fill an artificial reservoir located in an out of the way area kind of like a pumped storage plant. This would once more reduce the trouble we have with finding acceptable dam sites, and unlike my first idea it allows for stored capacity.

michael didn't do the tel aviv nuke. He's outright thinking "I wonder who's idea it was."

Seriously? No one else is seeing this as "Michael is setting up Camps so when the Humans arrive they see other Angels that have been rounded up for fighting Yahweh and so humanity will have a reason to not kill every Angel they can get their hands on?"

Edward Yee wrote: I just had a strange thought... holy crap, so this is what "TBI" is?? It's a bit disturbing to think that a doctor from 'far enough back' that he would tell Michael-lan to get a newer doctor would recognize what had happened, and yet IRL few outside medical/military circles understand that this can actually exist, much less depict it.

People in the medical business are only just beginning to get a handle on how prevalent diffuse axonic brain injury is. It's beginning to look as if axon damage due to sheering forces in the brain is much more common than once realized. Now people know what to look for, they're seeing symptoms all over. DABI is being linked to things like shell-shock (once thought to be purely a psychological condition "shell shock" is beginning to be seen as a physical condition again - at least in part), concussion, PTSD and so on. Baby shaking deaths are also thought to result from diffuse axonic brain injury. DABI can range from mild, transient conditions caused by 'bruising' (very bad word but for want of a better. . . ) to critical comas. It's a weird condition because somebody can be walking around perfectly normally for several hours yet their brain is dying and there's nothing anybody can do to save them. They just drift off into a coma and that's that. The actual cause isn't the damage to the axons but a chemical imbalance caused by that damage. Essentially, the damage starts a cascade of chemical changes that ends in a massive calcium influx into the damaged axons that kills them. This has an impact in some of the areas I work in because one of the demands of designing new protective equipment is to reduce (as far as possible) lateral acceleration loads on the brain.

mayabird wrote:Something about the angelic concentration camps bother me. It doesn't feel like it fits, just too modern I suppose, even if it's Michael's idea. I don't want to call it primitive, since it wasn't and peoples in the past had plenty of horrific and sophisticated torture methods, but it seems like something more pre-modern would fit better.

I agree, it's quite out of character for Yahweh/Heaven. However, it's entirely in line with Michael's long-term game plan. Ahh, the dramatic tension . . . . .

EuelB wrote:, Stuart, mind if I do some fan art and/or fan fiction about this story?

No problem, please let me have a quick read/look at it first though. Just to make sure it fits the storyline.

Buritot wrote:2nd, given enough coverage with beacons it will be possible to open portals to practically any place on Earth. Assuming the exact point the portal opens up to is the [circumcentre, centre of incircle, centroid,...: your choice], by chosing slightly different beacons one could pretty much open it at any position one wants to. Furthermore Sheffield and Detroit as well as the hypercanes are proofs of concept. We've got a volcano about to erupt, or already erupting? Put beacons in the crater and open a portal - voilà, the hot stuff goes elsewhere where it oughtn't be a problem. The hypercanes on the other hand however prove on thing: climate control.

Be careful; remember that one can't open a portal from place to place on Earth (or in Hell or in Heaven). Portals can only be used to transit between Earth and Heaven or Earth and Hell. Even a Heaven-Hell portal is a very hard thing to achieve. Also. in passing, I'd discourage the use of "teleportation" to describe the process. A military unit, for example, has to forma portal to go to Hell, then have another portal formed so it can emerge at its selected point. A better way of looking at it is to compare it to air travel. A person gets on a plane at one airport, takes off and lands at another. So, once the portal network is established, people would go to a "travelport" (or whatever), transit from there to a travelport in Hell and then go from there back to their chosen destination on Earth. There are other problems; for example two portals close together following similar routes will tend to merge. Finally, the laws of thermodynamics remain. If a characteristic of the portals appears (for example) to result in a perpetual energy machine, then there will be something there to stop it happening.

Lonestar wrote:Seriously? No one else is seeing this as "Michael is setting up Camps so when the Humans arrive they see other Angels that have been rounded up for fighting Yahweh and so humanity will have a reason to not kill every Angel they can get their hands on?"

That was my thought as well when I read it. Granted I was skim reading it, but it was still my impression.

mr friendly guy wrote:

Lonestar wrote:Seriously? No one else is seeing this as "Michael is setting up Camps so when the Humans arrive they see other Angels that have been rounded up for fighting Yahweh and so humanity will have a reason to not kill every Angel they can get their hands on?"

That was my thought as well when I read it. Granted I was skim reading it, but it was still my impression.

That was definitely my impression and that was obviously Michael's plan to keep all the angels from being exterminated, but it was out of character for Heaven. Which is intentional, so I guess I'll have to wait and see. I can't help but wonder how the plan will backfire, though.

Stuart wrote: A better way of looking at it is to compare it to air travel. A person gets on a plane at one airport, takes off and lands at another. So, once the portal network is established, people would go to a "travelport" (or whatever), transit from there to a travelport in Hell and then go from there back to their chosen destination on Earth.

So basically, what you're saying is that they look exactly like evil versions of the Starcraft Protoss Warpgates.

mr friendly guy wrote:

Lonestar wrote:Seriously? No one else is seeing this as "Michael is setting up Camps so when the Humans arrive they see other Angels that have been rounded up for fighting Yahweh and so humanity will have a reason to not kill every Angel they can get their hands on?"

That was my thought as well when I read it. Granted I was skim reading it, but it was still my impression.

My thought that it was Michael more worrying about the skins of him and his cohorts rather than of all the angels in general.

Omega Scythe wrote: So basically, what you're saying is that they look exactly like evil versions of the Starcraft Protoss Warpgates.

Say what??????

Wow, this story has 46 parts? It must be pretty epic.

What's the plot of the whole thing. It sounds like it involves Judeo-Christian mythology.

Mayabird wrote:

mr friendly guy wrote:

Lonestar wrote:Seriously? No one else is seeing this as "Michael is setting up Camps so when the Humans arrive they see other Angels that have been rounded up for fighting Yahweh and so humanity will have a reason to not kill every Angel they can get their hands on?"

That was my thought as well when I read it. Granted I was skim reading it, but it was still my impression.

That was definitely my impression and that was obviously Michael's plan to keep all the angels from being exterminated, but it was out of character for Heaven. Which is intentional, so I guess I'll have to wait and see. I can't help but wonder how the plan will backfire, though.

The fact that everyone in it will report being tortured by Michael won't help him if his plan is to use them as proof of angelic resistance to Yahweh's dictatorial regime. If Yahweh is Hitler and the concentration camp is Auschwitz, he's positioning himself as Mengele. I suppose he would prefer to be Rommel, but if he wants to do that then he should avoid any association with the camp or the people doing the questioning.