The Salvation War: Pantheocide. Part Eighty One Up

[Gil Hamilton]

Clear? As mud?

Reasonably so. The "High to Low" GPE portal seems more dangerous than the "Low to High" for a person. After all, going from Low-to-High, chances are a person wouldn't be able to make it through it all; doing that work all at once would be like pushing through a brick wall. High-to-low however, would immediate attempt to suck you through. Poking a finger through the interface would likely dislocate it or rip it off, as the finger would gain KE to match the PE difference.

It would be a good way to hurl boulders if you had a suitably high mountain range to chuck rocks from, though.

[Ilya Muromets]

On another note, has anyone seen the latest vandalism on the story's page on TVTropes? There's been some guy who keeps delting the Complaining About Shows You Don't Like/Watch entries and Your Mileage May Vary.

Looks like the complainers are even pissed that anyone dare point out that many of them complain about the story purely on the basis of how much they don't like it, even if they haven't even really read it. And, looking at the IP in the page's history, I'm pretty sure it's the same IP of the guy who tried to put the link to that whine-blog about the story on the page before. Man, Stuart is right. It is sad just how much time and energy they're investing in hating the story for childish reasons.

[Baughn]

From sufficiently low to sufficiently high would indeed be like a brick wall (though you could push through very slowly), but you're missing the real horror.

See, humans have moving components. Blood, individual molecules in cells.. things generally aren't lashed down. So if you push a finger through a portal from low to high, assuming it's not quite enough to stop you entirely, you get..

- Blood will be forced out of the offending finger. Yowch.
- Tissues will be subjected to forces they were never designed to handle, possibly tearing them. Uh-oh.
- Individual organelles in your cells will be squashed against the rear cell wall. Um...
- Individual molecules will be squashed against the rear of organelles, likely putting them out of action entirely. This sucks.
- Individual atoms in the molecules will also feel the force, likely unravelling a lot of proteins. Ravioli, anyone?
- And, oh yeah, the electron clouds of individual atoms will be ever so slightly squashed, but you won't notice that.

[Baughn]

Interesting as it is to speculate about, this can't be how it works.

For one thing, the notion of potential energy is not well-defined between separate universes. For another, earth's gravitational field varies by 0.02g between the equator and the poles; the effect is too large (to the tune of instantaneously acquiring the speed from falling 30 kilometers), so if this was how it's compensated for, portals would be useless.

Most likely it works the same way as is assumed for wormholes. That is, gravitational field-lines get threaded through the portal; effectively, if a 70kg person walks through a portal, then the near portal gets 70kg heavier while the far one gets 70kg lighter. The same holds for the other fields, by the way, but you're generally neutral in those.

You still have to cope with tidal effects from the crossing, but those are tiny in comparison. No more than a 1g acceleration even from surface to orbit; we can handle that easily enough.

[Old Peculier]

From sufficiently low to sufficiently high would indeed be like a brick wall (though you could push through very slowly), but you're missing the real horror.

See, humans have moving components. Blood, individual molecules in cells.. things generally aren't lashed down. So if you push a finger through a portal from low to high, assuming it's not quite enough to stop you entirely, you get..

- Blood will be forced out of the offending finger. Yowch.
- Tissues will be subjected to forces they were never designed to handle, possibly tearing them. Uh-oh.
- Individual organelles in your cells will be squashed against the rear cell wall. Um...
- Individual molecules will be squashed against the rear of organelles, likely putting them out of action entirely. This sucks.
- Individual atoms in the molecules will also feel the force, likely unravelling a lot of proteins. Ravioli, anyone?
- And, oh yeah, the electron clouds of individual atoms will be ever so slightly squashed, but you won't notice that.

Has this force actually been established in story?

If portal physics works in such a way that perpetual motion machines are impossible, then we are talking only really about energy, not force. Your idea, I think, is that the portal will exert a force on the body, so that the lifting device will have to use more energy (not physically necessary, but mechanically likely) to lift the body through.

I prefer the idea that pushing a mass 'uphill' destabilises the portal, which will break down if the portal generation power is too low. If we want to move a mass 'uphill' we must either push it very slowly, with a slight increase in the power required to keep the portal stable; or we must hugely increase the power being transmitted by the portal generator, allowing us to push through faster. Either way, the GPE is paid. If we do cause the portal to crash, only some matter would be transmitted, (whatever had been pushed through before portal collapse).

The advantages of this idea is that it does not require the invention of an arbitrary force. I would argue that the destabilisation of the portal is not arbitrary, because the portal which breaks physics can't exist, so therefore must cease to exist!

Interesting as it is to speculate about, this can't be how it works.

For one thing, the notion of potential energy is not well-defined between separate universes. For another, earth's gravitational field varies by 0.02g between the equator and the poles; the effect is too large (to the tune of instantaneously acquiring the speed from falling 30 kilometers), so if this was how it's compensated for, portals would be useless.

Most likely it works the same way as is assumed for wormholes. That is, gravitational field-lines get threaded through the portal; effectively, if a 70kg person walks through a portal, then the near portal gets 70kg heavier while the far one gets 70kg lighter. The same holds for the other fields, by the way, but you're generally neutral in those.

You still have to cope with tidal effects from the crossing, but those are tiny in comparison. No more than a 1g acceleration even from surface to orbit; we can handle that easily enough.

What happens to the far portal when enough people walk through it, and it becomes massless? Collapse? Speeding away from Earth at the speed of light?

[Baughn]

You're perfectly right that such an arbitrary force would be, well, arbitrary.

Using the portal generator's energy has the same problem, though. The potential energy differences are huge - even for different parts of earth's surface, no generator we've got can handle it. But more problematically, it's incoherent; there is no universal answer for how much energy should be required, so it doesn't matter where it comes from; it still doesn't work. You would normally be able to calculate by doing a theoretical calculation of how much energy it'd take to go between the points by a different paths, but there are no other paths.

On the other hand, we already know that things moving quickly through a portal get a shock. We've seen a few planes do that, right?

Honestly, I don't know what the answer is. I can't come up with something that's both coherent and matches the demonstrated physics, which may indicate a failure of imagination on my part.


As for massless portals.. well, I'm not sure. It would be nearly impossible to hit exactly zero, and negative-mass portals work just fine, but you need to ask a physicist. What happens for zero-mass wormholes?

I'm not sure it's the portal itself that changes mass, though. More like, from a distance you see it changing mass. The mass itself technically belongs to the object that passed through, and however that works (I haven't got a prayer at understanding the math), there might be near-field effects that remove the problem.

[Old Peculier]

The solution to insufficient power generated is to push slowly as I said. If we are lifting say a 100kg body say 300km up, that's less than 300MJ. Transmitting at 10MW, that would mean it would take less than thirty seconds to push the body through, moving it (him/her?) slowly. (Less than in that I've simplified due to laziness, possible more than in reality in that I'm assuming everything's really efficient).

300km by the way is about ISS (actually closer to 350km but I'm already ignoring reduced gravity). 10 MW is deliverable by, say, a couple of Navy AN/SPY-1 radars.

EDIT: Re-did example as totally messed up by three orders of magnitude somehow, making it look even harder than it would be.

[Baughn]

Sure. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, it's just that we have no indication that it is being done.

[Buritot]

The real conundrum is the fiber-optic cables laid through the portal. That shouldn't be possible; if light won't pass through the portal in the open air it shouldn't pass through when it's bouncing down a glass pipe, either. Trouble is, the portals are black; nontransparent in the visible range.

That has already been addressed. It is right there is no transparency for the human eye, but Stuard (?) gave the following simile: You've got a sheet of paper - you can't look through it. You can however shine a flash light at it and see a brighter circle on the other side.
Voila, information transition. I think the sciency explanation was normal light doesn't have the energy required to overcome the energy barrier unscathed (its wavelength falls below the visible spectrum - hence the blackness), but focused light (lasers, high powered fibre optics) can cross the barrier with supposedly less frequency dampening.

Couldn't that also mean that the portal itself could be used as a sort of focusing medium, if one found the proper resonance/frequency?

My Bad. What I said in my previous was pretty much wrong. I thought abvout it over work and came to the conclusion the amplitude was affected, not the frequency. Otherwise the radio transmission by the predator wouldn't have been usable since the frequencies would have been passed down to a channel the military wasn't explicitly allocated to or the equipment wouldn't even be able to handle. (say, we're working with 100kHz and it would drop to 100 Hz, the receiver might not work work that frequency)
If by contrast the amplitude is lowered the signal would be weak, but there.

On the PE/KE debate... is it likely the difference in energy at high-low would express itself as motion? Maybe it would just heat up a bit... wait. 100 kg water need 226.1MJ to evaporate. At 30GJ a human being would become glorified steam. Damn. Well, at least that line of thought can be disregarded.

[Gil Hamilton]

On the PE/KE debate... is it likely the difference in energy at high-low would express itself as motion? Maybe it would just heat up a bit... wait. 100 kg water need 226.1MJ to evaporate. At 30GJ a human being would become glorified steam. Damn. Well, at least that line of thought can be disregarded.

The argument is that energy must be conserved in this instance.

E = T + V = constant

Because energy is a constant, if you go from High-V to Low-V, T must go up. While I'm sure you could talk about Boltzmann distributions and say that this will necessarily lead to an increase in temperature in fluid molecules, I'd think the bulk of the energy would translate to motion along the velocity vector of the object when it transits the portal. As you note, however, all of the KE translating into molecular motion comes with a "painful exploding death" part for humans.


EDIT: However, it's trivial. Were I writing the story, I wouldn't address the issue at all and just assume that portals have Weird Ass Physics, then roll with it. It's not worth the aggro in a story unless you are wanting to make it a major element.

[Baughn]

One could argue that it'd eventually turn into heat. Probably inside the crater inevitably formed when you hit a nearby mountain.

But seriously, the potentials involved are just too large. It'd require an absurd degree of fine-tuning; being even a few meters off would turn a portal jaunt into a dangerous jolt, and the gravitational field varies by far more than that. Moreover, such a portal would have near-supersonic winds going through in one direction or another.

No, I really don't think this is the answer.

[Highlord Laan]

Also, I think using portals to put things in orbit would likely be a very bad idea. If atmosphere travels through the portal sur to pressure differences on each end, then opening a portal in space would be opening a hole to an infinite hard vacuum in the middle of a pressurized environment.

While explosively decompressing an entire planet sounds like something that would be be interesting to watch from a distance, I think people would like it to be avoided.

[Old Peculier]

Also, I think using portals to put things in orbit would likely be a very bad idea. If atmosphere travels through the portal sur to pressure differences on each end, then opening a portal in space would be opening a hole to an infinite hard vacuum in the middle of a pressurized environment.

While explosively decompressing an entire planet sounds like something that would be be interesting to watch from a distance, I think people would like it to be avoided.

Or according to my way of looking at it: the portal simply collapses.

As for the 'downhill' problem, it seems to me that if a portal had to dump a load of energy then EM radiation would be consistent with the mechanisms with which we know portals to act. An EMP with a duration characterized by transit time of the body would make sense to me. The faster the body travels through the portal, the shorter (and therefore more intense) the pulse would be. Pulse intensity could also, of course, be increased by increasing the entry portal's effective height above the exit portal. Hence, by firing a mass at high speed through a portal on, say, the ISS we could make a great big EMP in Universe 2. You know, if we wanted.

EDIT: OK, let's take a 50kg body, 1m long, and raise it to ISS, that's 175MJ to raise. Remember that the ISS is moving at 4000m/s relative to a point on Earth's surface (is that right?) and make the portal move in it (possible?) that's another 1500MJ-ish. Fire it back to Universe 2 at 300m/s and assume all GPE and some KE is converted into an EMP.

Let's say that the body keeps a KE which corresponds to a velocity of 300m/s (ie. the velocity with which it entered the portal), but the rest (ie. from the ISS orbit velocity) is converted for the EMP. This means that the yield of the EMP is about 1.7GJ, and occurs in perhaps 0.00333 seconds. The average power for the duration would be 510GW.

This is pretty a weak yield overall compared to a nuclear EMP, but is more localized, and possibly directional. I have no idea if it would an effective weapon against anything.

[Buritot]

An EMP with a duration characterized by transit time of the body would make sense to me. The faster the body travels through the portal, the shorter (and therefore more intense) the pulse would be. Pulse intensity could also, of course, be increased by increasing the entry portal's effective height above the exit portal. Hence, by firing a mass at high speed through a portal on, say, the ISS we could make a great big EMP in Universe 2. You know, if we wanted.

Now that's creative appliance to develop weapon technology.

Also, I think using portals to put things in orbit would likely be a very bad idea. If atmosphere travels through the portal sur to pressure differences on each end, then opening a portal in space would be opening a hole to an infinite hard vacuum in the middle of a pressurized environment.

While explosively decompressing an entire planet sounds like something that would be be interesting to watch from a distance, I think people would like it to be avoided.

We wouldn't really decompress a planet but rather a bubble universe, at least until we find universes with solar systems or some such in them. I know its been postulated they exist and our is a proof of concept for one, but it isn't evidence they're easy to reach.
Never the less, suppose we could find an appropriate bubble universe, devoid of life, and open a portal from it to Mars. BOOM! Instant atmosphere! (Yes, I know, not really instant) That makes terraforming rather easy.

Now I've thought of another conundrum. Hellgate Alpha didn't spit grime, right? I mean, otherwise we'd have had an inkling of the atmosphere prior to sending the drones and people through. However atmospheric exchange is possible, judging by the hypercanes and the Black Lizard. What is the reason for that? And while I'm at it, did the Angels scoop up hellgrime and transported it to Earth, where they dumped them in the air drafts?
Of the top of my hat I think of two possible reasons: They direct the portal was opened or the size. Let's be blunt, Hellgate Alpha is huge. And it was opened from Hell. Yet no grime at the doorstep.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, though.

All that portal thinking... it's a real paradigm shift.

[Simon_Jester]

That has already been addressed. It is right there is no transparency for the human eye, but Stuard (?) gave the following simile: You've got a sheet of paper - you can't look through it. You can however shine a flash light at it and see a brighter circle on the other side.
Voila, information transition. I think the sciency explanation was normal light doesn't have the energy required to overcome the energy barrier unscathed (its wavelength falls below the visible spectrum - hence the blackness), but focused light (lasers, high powered fibre optics) can cross the barrier with supposedly less frequency dampening.

Bleh. Just call it an intensity drop-off; waving your hand about coherent light getting through where incoherent can't is just a way of advertising that you haven't sat down and looked at the solutions to Maxwell's Equations thoroughly enough.

The explanation that a portal drops off the intensity of light passing through by, say, two or three orders of magnitude makes a LOT more sense; you could plausibly boost a signal through that, but to the naked eye it would seem black (assuming equivalent lighting on both sides of the portal). Of course, in that case, portals can act as one way barriers to light in some conditions- open one in a sealed room to broad daylight on the other side, and you'll be able to see the (attenuated, distorted) light coming through the portal because it's brighter than the ambient lighting.

Also, I think using portals to put things in orbit would likely be a very bad idea. If atmosphere travels through the portal sur to pressure differences on each end, then opening a portal in space would be opening a hole to an infinite hard vacuum in the middle of a pressurized environment.

While explosively decompressing an entire planet sounds like something that would be be interesting to watch from a distance, I think people would like it to be avoided.

Oh, that's easy enough to handle. Just put the downhill side of the portal inside a vacuum chamber... The real problem is imparting orbital velocity to the stuff you push out of the portal before it hits the ground.

Now I've thought of another conundrum. Hellgate Alpha didn't spit grime, right? I mean, otherwise we'd have had an inkling of the atmosphere prior to sending the drones and people through. However atmospheric exchange is possible, judging by the hypercanes and the Black Lizard. What is the reason for that? And while I'm at it, did the Angels scoop up hellgrime and transported it to Earth, where they dumped them in the air drafts?
Of the top of my hat I think of two possible reasons: They direct the portal was opened or the size. Let's be blunt, Hellgate Alpha is huge. And it was opened from Hell. Yet no grime at the doorstep.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, though.

All that portal thinking... it's a real paradigm shift.

Hellgate Alpha was opened from the Martial Plains of Dysprosium, a place used by the legions of Hell for reviews and (I gather) exercises. It stands to reason it would be located somewhere relatively free of massive dust storms... relatively.

Whereas the angels can open their portals directly from locations where there's a major dust storm going on already.

[Baughn]

Is there some reason why you can't make the orbiting portal move at, well, orbital speed?

That way things passing through it would come out non-falling. Or at least non-falling-to-ground.

Of course that's a blatant violation of conservation of energy, but we've established that already.

[Buritot]

Buritot wrote:
That has already been addressed. It is right there is no transparency for the human eye, but Stuard (?) gave the following simile: You've got a sheet of paper - you can't look through it. You can however shine a flash light at it and see a brighter circle on the other side.
Voila, information transition. I think the sciency explanation was normal light doesn't have the energy required to overcome the energy barrier unscathed (its wavelength falls below the visible spectrum - hence the blackness), but focused light (lasers, high powered fibre optics) can cross the barrier with supposedly less frequency dampening.
Bleh. Just call it an intensity drop-off; waving your hand about coherent light getting through where incoherent can't is just a way of advertising that you haven't sat down and looked at the solutions to Maxwell's Equations thoroughly enough.

I didn't at all, actually. I only had a simile in mind Stuart had used to describe why the portals are black. I took the wrong conclusions and corrected myself the next time I got online (in this post).

Is there some reason why you can't make the orbiting portal move at, well, orbital speed?
That way things passing through it would come out non-falling. Or at least non-falling-to-ground.
Of course that's a blatant violation of conservation of energy, but we've established that already.

Now you're mentioning it... no. When we're portaling to Earth we don't get ripped to pieces by the difference in our non-speed and the speed of Earths surface. I think we can reduce the problem though. The portals don't move relative to Earth, so... is it reasonable to expect portals not to move in respect to Earth when they're opened in orbit? Would they stay geosynchronous even if they're not at the required altitude? If so... we have a somewhat easy way to remove the scrap belt Earth has accumulated since the Fifties.

Or... I'm pretty much shooting in the dark right now, but since portals are established by the quantum entanglement and quantum physics incorporates some crazy perceiving-makes-it-so-and-so stuff... it would be kind of cool if the portals anchor is ruled by the perception of the emitter/receiver. In other words, your frame of reference is Earth if you're on Earth, but your orbit/trajectory if you're in orbit. So opening a portal to Earth would get a static location in regards to Earth, or a static location in regards to your spacecraft if you're in orbit.
Though the wandering sky volcano above Detroit makes me doubt that.

[Simon_Jester]

I didn't at all, actually. I only had a simile in mind Stuart had used to describe why the portals are black. I took the wrong conclusions and corrected myself the next time I got online (in this post).

Your link doesn't lead me anywhere, are you sure it goes where you meant?

Stuart's simile works very well as long as it only affects the intensity of light passing through, though it does (again) have the side effect that it should be possible to do remote viewing of an area through a portal if you sit in a dark area and the other side of the portal is brightly illuminated.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Though the wandering sky volcano above Detroit makes me doubt that.

The wandering volcano was the result of an improperly created portal; recreating it would likely be hazardous.

[Buritot]

I corrected it. Here. Or you could scroll up a bit

Well, he didn't deny that possibility. I'm wondering what the difference in illuminance for that would be...
A clouded winter day is 3000lx, a sunny summer day is 100000lx. The night provides us with 1lx, and that only if we're really gracious, a tenth or hundredth is more likely. Now, the factor at work here is at least 10k. If we want see something from the other side of the portal, it needs to be reaaaaally bright.
Though due to the dimensions of the portals I wouldn't be surprised to see a certain diffusion at work here. It is entirely possible the bright side wouldn't allow us to see the surroundings of its portal but would simply make the portal shine in grey or only allow for blurry visions.

[Baughn]

The portals don't move relative to Earth, so... is it reasonable to expect portals not to move in respect to Earth when they're opened in orbit? Would they stay geosynchronous even if they're not at the required altitude? If so... we have a somewhat easy way to remove the scrap belt Earth has accumulated since the Fifties.

Something is keeping them stationary compared to earth, on earth, and I'm betting it's electromagnetic interaction with surrounding matter. That's what does it for everything else.

This means that you could embed an orbital portal in a material ring, with attached thrusters, and it'd follow the ring around. Simple.

Or... I'm pretty much shooting in the dark right now, but since portals are established by the quantum entanglement and quantum physics incorporates some crazy perceiving-makes-it-so-and-so stuff... it would be kind of cool if the portals anchor is ruled by the perception of the emitter/receiver. In other words, your frame of reference is Earth if you're on Earth, but your orbit/trajectory if you're in orbit. So opening a portal to Earth would get a static location in regards to Earth, or a static location in regards to your spacecraft if you're in orbit.
Though the wandering sky volcano above Detroit makes me doubt that.

..no. Just no.

I have to crack down on this. It's a pretty common misconception, but quantum physics says nothing whatsoever about "perception". The key words which provide an apparently classical world on top of quantum mechanics are decoherence and einselection, both of which are completely physical and well-specified.

Nothing mysterious is going on. Human consciousness doesn't even enter into it; in fact, human consciousness takes place at a level so much higher that quantum mechanics pretty much doesn't affect it at all.

[Buritot]

The portals don't move relative to Earth, so... is it reasonable to expect portals not to move in respect to Earth when they're opened in orbit? Would they stay geosynchronous even if they're not at the required altitude? If so... we have a somewhat easy way to remove the scrap belt Earth has accumulated since the Fifties.

Something is keeping them stationary compared to earth, on earth, and I'm betting it's electromagnetic interaction with surrounding matter. That's what does it for everything else.

This means that you could embed an orbital portal in a material ring, with attached thrusters, and it'd follow the ring around. Simple.

I don't think so. If it was simply matter, the portal would have drifted along with the wind, but it didn't. It might be the local geomagnetic field, or gravity composition, but unless portals extend invisible tendrils to anchor into solid matter that's not likely.
To be honest, I kind of wish it would be so simply as attaching thrusters to a portal to move it, but it would too convenient - that makes it suspicious for me.

Or... I'm pretty much shooting in the dark right now, but since portals are established by the quantum entanglement and quantum physics incorporates some crazy perceiving-makes-it-so-and-so stuff... it would be kind of cool if the portals anchor is ruled by the perception of the emitter/receiver. In other words, your frame of reference is Earth if you're on Earth, but your orbit/trajectory if you're in orbit. So opening a portal to Earth would get a static location in regards to Earth, or a static location in regards to your spacecraft if you're in orbit.
Though the wandering sky volcano above Detroit makes me doubt that.

..no. Just no.

I have to crack down on this. It's a pretty common misconception, but quantum physics says nothing whatsoever about "perception". The key words which provide an apparently classical world on top of quantum mechanics are decoherence and einselection, both of which are completely physical and well-specified.

Nothing mysterious is going on. Human consciousness doesn't even enter into it; in fact, human consciousness takes place at a level so much higher that quantum mechanics pretty much doesn't affect it at all.

Yeah, as you see I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around that stuff even in the loosest sense. Like I said, a shot in the dark.

[Baughn]

Sometimes reality is convenient. In the case of the "floating" portals, I expect it's simply that the anchor effect extends a few meters, and the solid rock has a lot more mass than air.


For quantum physics, I can recommend this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_ ... _sequence/

It isn't all that hard, really, it's just that most people get very confused by it, and then they teach their confusion. You sound very confused. This article series will help fix that.

[Edward Yee]

On another note, has anyone seen the latest vandalism on the story's page on TVTropes? There's been some guy who keeps delting the Complaining About Shows You Don't Like/Watch entries and Your Mileage May Vary.

Looks like the complainers are even pissed that anyone dare point out that many of them complain about the story purely on the basis of how much they don't like it, even if they haven't even really read it. And, looking at the IP in the page's history, I'm pretty sure it's the same IP of the guy who tried to put the link to that whine-blog about the story on the page before. Man, Stuart is right. It is sad just how much time and energy they're investing in hating the story for childish reasons.

Did a minor clarification regarding the TakeThat about the Israeli Navy, hope Stuart doesn't mind me quoting his response regarding the USS Liberty question earlier.

[Stuart]

Control Room, INS Tekuma, Mediterranean

"Just why the blue blazes are we heading out towards the Atlantic?" Captain Alex Ben-Shoshan had a thousand spirits sitting on his shoulders, telling him there was something seriously wrong. His Tekuma had killed the Scarlet Beast with her nuclear missiles. So why had he not heard anything from the operations center in Tel Aviv? He would have expected at least something, even if it was only a terse acknowledgment that his missile strike had been successful.

There was something else that was worrying him. After firing his missiles he had gone deep, cleared datum and then evaded. That was standard doctrine after firing any kind of missiles for by doing so he had given away his position more surely than a glowing neon pointed would have done. Evading the hunt that would surely follow his launch had been drilled into him ever since he had been selected to take command of this submarine. But times were different now, humanity was fighting on the same side, more or less. So, they shouldn’t have been hunting him. Why were they?

It wasn't just one nation either. Since he had started evading, he had picked up a mass of different sonars lashing the water in an effort to locate him. American SQS-53s, Russian Platinas, British Type 2050s. Others that were a lot less distinctive in their transmission characteristics.

Lieutenant Midyan Yitzchak looked over from the communications station at the rear of the command compartment. He had supplied Ben-Shoshan with the forged messages that had authorized the missile launch and then set the Tekuma on course for the Straits of Gibraltar but after that, the supply was ended and future actions were left vague. He hadn’t received any more visions from his Angelic leader either. In fact, Yitzchak noted, he'd never received any such messages while he was on the submarine. Only when he had been ashore.

"Sir, perhaps there will be messages for us from the command center in Gibraltar?"

Ben-Shoshan nodded thoughtfully. Then he asked the one question every diesel-electric submarine driver had engrained in his soul. "Battery status?"

"Twenty percent charge Sir. Clearing Datum cost us heavily." The Engineering Officer was seriously worried. It wasn't good to run the batteries below seventy percent charge and a fifty percent charge level was regarded as critical. He'd never seen a charge meter drop to twenty percent before.

"Come up to periscope depth. Prepare to snort." The spirits sitting on ben Shoshan's shoulder were screaming warnings again but without charged batteries, his submarine was completely helpless. "Navigation, set course for Gibraltar and maximum snorting speed. Engines, run the diesels as soon as the snort is up and get those batteries charged. Communications, get through to Tel Aviv, find out what is going on and why."

Yitzchak looked down at his knees in an effort to hide the grin on his face. Getting a message through to Tel Aviv would be a useful trick. The place was a smoking hole in the ground. "Very good Sir."

The Forum of Indefatigable Exaltation, Eternal City, Heaven.

Markets were something that the higher-class angels never really bothered much with. They had the Ishim and Cherubim to look after such mundane things for them. And the Ishim and Cherubim had their human servants to carry out the routine drudgery of going to a market. At most, the Cherubim made sure the Ishim weren't skulking off when they were supposed to be working and the Ishim did the same for the humans. It was a nice system, like everything else in Heaven it was set up so the humans did all the real work and the Angels got all the benefits. Rank really did have its privileges.

So it was that the market in the Forum of Indefatigable Exaltation presented its usual appearance to a casual observer. The stalls were set up in their usual places, the merchants behind them shouting out the benefits of their wares and the unique advantages that patronizing them would bring. The humans crowded around them, buying the good needed to keep the Angels in their state of sybaritic luxury while they also tried to secure a few things that would alleviate their own grinding poverty. There was an unspoken, unmentioned sub-trade going on as well, one in which the merchants gave under-the-counter discounts to their human customers so that the latter could at least have some resources of their own. There was even an unofficial language by which the merchants could advertise the percentage kickbacks they were offering without alerting the watchful Ishim and Cherubim. Surely, the argument went, this must be approved because The Eternal Father of All was omniscient and all-knowing and must be aware of the kickbacks. And since He must know yet did not interfere then He must approve.

A more perceptive observer might have noted a few details about the market this day that didn’t quite fit into the superficial normality. One was that the Ishim and Cherubim were distinctly nervous. They spoke carefully, watching around them while they did so, and for all that, they kept their conversations to banal triviality. The wave of arrests by the League of Holy Court had ceased, for a while at least, but they all knew those arrested were being interrogated and would name others in the hideous conspiracy. With Satan dead at the hands of humans, cosmic balance demanded that a new force must arise. With this effort crushed, who would be next to be overwhelmed by the sin of Pride and try to rebel against The One Above All?

Another change was in the crowds of humans who thronged the Forum. As they passed in the crowds, news was passed from one to the next. The deaths of the Leopard and Scarlet Beasts, The Immaculate Lord's own pets killed. Deumah was a brain-dead hulk, breathing but without thought or wits. But above all was the story of the Great Gray Bird.

"A great portal in the sky opened and through it flew a strange gray bird. It flew in silence yet when it passed overhead there was a great crash as if of thunder and the dreadful scream of the bird hurt our ears. It turned around and flew back towards the portal, flew so fast that our eyes could barely follow it. Our Lord, Israfil, was standing in front of it and the Bird spat fire at him. The ground erupted around Israfil and he fell. Then the Gray Bird left and the portal vanished. We ran to Israfil but he was dead, his body so torn apart so that barely one part of him remained attached to another."

"Did you see this for yourself, Jerome?" The speaker was doubtful for many told the story of the gray bird.

"I did. With my own eyes and I had the Blessed White Blood of Israfil on my own hands. He died quickly I think but on his face was a look of great fear."

And so the story passed from teller to listener and soon those who had heard it would pass it on, many also asserting they had seen the Gray Bird with their own eyes and they also had the white blood of the slaughtered angel on their hands. The story was the cause of another subtle change for those who heard it made the link to the other words that spread amongst the human population of Heaven. That the humans on Earth had wondrous machines that could kill even the mightiest of Angels and Daemons. That, when The Eternal Enemy had invaded Earth, the humans had slaughtered his Army, invaded his Kingdom and killed him. Surely the gray bird was one such machine? And if humans could invade Hell and kill The Eternal Enemy, could they not also come here and. . . . At that point, even the bravest refused to think further.

And so the crowd eddied and swirled throughout the market. The stallholders and merchants did their business and sold their produce, replenishing their displays now and then from the carts that were parked behind their stands. In the swirling mass of humans and angels, none noticed that there was two more carts than stalls.

When it came, the blast was stunning in its effects. The mass of C4 explosive, carefully wrapped with fragments of gold and silver and set amidst masses of semi-precious stones, turned those riches into a spray of deadly shrapnel that scythed through the crowds, leaving death and destruction behind them. The paving stones of the Forum ran with blood, mostly red but white as well and occasionally a trace of silver. The gentle babble of voices was replaced by a cacophony of screams and the wailing of the wounded. Dozens around the cart lay dead, many more still lived despite severed limbs and mutilations previously unknown in Heaven. Such events had never been contemplated before and there existed no precedent for dealing with them. Angel or human, those who still had their wits and bodies intact panicked and stampeded for the steps that were the only way out of the forum. As they pushed and crowded at the bottleneck represented by the steps, that was where and when the second bomb went off.

Upstairs Room, Montmartre Club, Eternal City, Heaven.

Maion very carefully made sure that a goblet of the purest water and four Excedrin tablets were waiting on Lemuel's bedside table. Then she glanced around the room to make sure that it was freshly cleaned and that everything would be pleasing to Lemuel's eyes. At sometime during the night, a small packet with her morning heroin fix had arrived and she had taken it, injecting the drug between her toes so the needle mark wouldn't show. She was well aware that her heroin addiction was the cause of her being in this room and the sleeping angel on the bed was her only way out. Satisfied that she had done all she could, she fanned him gently with her wings. Sure enough, he snorted and woke up.

"Arrgggh. My head." His voice was suffused with suffering.

"My Beloved Lord." Maion watched Lemuel carefully, afraid that the endearment would be going too far, too fast, but he was pleased by it. "Drink this and take these medicines. They will greatly reduce your suffering."

"Truly The Lord of All was right in saying that indulgence brings grave punishment." Lemuel's voice was cracked with the force of his hangover."

Tears started to form in the corners of Maion's eyes. "I am such a grave punishment?"

Lemuel almost panicked at the thought he had hurt her. She'd been the only female in weeks, months, who had shown him any courtesy or consideration, let alone the love and attention he had the right to expect only from his mate. "No, no. You've been wonderful. You are wonderful. I just feel so ill."

"Perhaps the strength of your prayers for Our Holy Father has taken too much energy from you. I have some food prepared, and more water. Would you honor me by taking refreshment before I go back down to the floor." She went over to a side table and fetched the dishes containing Lemuel's breakfast. It was, of course, his favorite. He drank more water, feeling its coolness soothe the parched tissues of this throat while the hammering in his head started to ease.

"Go back down to the floor?" Lemuel was confused.

"I have no patron most noble Ophanim. So, I must go down to the floor of the club and serve those who are down there. If any want me and have the price then I must go with them. Some of them are nice." Maion shuddered theatrically. "But if I had a patron, then I live in one of the apartments here and serve only him. I would still perform my reverential dances downstairs but would not have to work the floor."

Lemuel finished his food and grinned at her. "I think we can fix this. Maion, would you accept me as your patron?"

"Oh, yes Sire." Maion's eyes shone with genuine happiness. For the first time in more than a year she could see a way out of the trap she was in. "We must speak to Charmeine-Lan to make the arrangements."

"Then let us speak to her without delay."

By a "strange coincidence" Charmeine-Lan was just outside their room when Lemuel and Maion left in search of her. Unseen by Lemuel, Maion gave her the high-five success signal and that caused Charmeine-Lan to relax. The scheme had gone off perfectly. "Was Maion satisfactory Most Noble Ophanim?"

"Very much so. I understand I can become her patron?"

"That is so, although I must warn you that it is not an inexpensive undertaking. You must pay rent for her new apartment, and an allocation for her living expenses. For that you may visit her any time you please, you may eat in the club without charge and Maion will be reserved for your service alone. She will continue to dance in the club but that will be all. You will also need to give her an allowance so she can keep herself properly."

Lemuel nodded. Charmeine-Lan pulled a pad out of her robes and wrote quickly on it. "This will be the amount in question. Maion's allowance will be for the two of you to agree on though."

Lemuel looked at the number in shock. His heart had sunk when he had heard Charmeine-Lan listing the things he would have to pay for but the total amount was a small fraction of what he had expected. He could afford it easily and still give Maion a generous allowance. Watching him, Charmeine-Lan carefully his her amusement. The amount she had been told to charge was indeed a small fraction of the usual cost. Michael-Lan had told her the business would eat the difference.

"Could we see Maion's new apartment please?" Lemuel spoke carefully, this was a major step for him and one he wasn't certain how he could justify to himself. Other than the fact that he was being frozen out by his formal mate and Maion had shown him the first tenderness he had known in months.

"Certainly, come with me." Charmeine-Lan took the couple up another flight of stairs. "We have a few apartments vacant. This is a nice one."

It was a simple suite of rooms, not so very different from the one in which he had spent the night with Maion. Lemuel looked around with his lower lip pushed out. In contrast, Maion's eyes were shining. "It's lovely Most Noble Ophanim."

"Hmm. Charmeine-Lan, is this the best you have?"

"Well, we do have some better ones, but they're usually for . . . . Well, let me show you one." She led the couple down the hall and around a corner. "These apartments are much quieter and a little larger."

She opened the door and Maion gasped. This suite was much larger and more luxurious. The bare stone walls in the other suite were here covered with semi-precious stone and the furnishings were opulent rather than just comfortable. Charmeine-Lan gave Lemuel another note with the extra cost on it. Again, the amount was small enough to raise his eyebrows. "We'll take this one."

Maion dropped to her knees, her wings swept over her head. "Most Noble Ophanim, I don’t know what to say."

"Well, you can start by calling me Lemuel." He patted her on the rump as she ran into her new apartment. "Charmeine-Lan, my work may call me away for unknown periods. So there shall be no misunderstanding, I will pay you for a year in advance. Is that acceptable?"

"It is indeed. If you like, you can leave Maion-Lan-Lemuel's allowance for the same period with us and we will be sure she gets it on schedule."

Lemuel looked at her doubtfully. He could see several objections to that plan. "I will consider your kind offer and return to you on that. Now, I will give you a note of hand for the year's payment and you can reclaim the gold at your convenience." The money would be drawn from the amount he and Onniel had saved over the years. And if Onniel found out and didn’t like it, she could leave.

The business completed, Lemuel was about to join Maion in their new apartment when two rolls of thunder swept over the Eternal City.

The Forum of Indefatigable Exaltation, Eternal City, Heaven.

"Remember I once told you that humans went in for overkill? Well, this is what I mean." Michael-Lan waved his hand at the devastation in the market. "First bomb was over there, it panicked people and crowded them into the killing zone of the second bomb here. Standard human tactics. They're good at this sort of thing."

"Humans did this? In the Eternal City?" The sudden change from his delight in Maion's company to his horror at the scene of carnage was more than Lemuel could endure.

"I thought so." Now the zinger thought Michael. "Only, after the bombing we have started to find these scattered around the City. He held out a crude poster.

"The search for justice knows no mercy. We demand the release of all the political prisoners seized in recent raids. If our demands are not met, the blood of those who die in future will be on your hands. The League of Divine Justice."

"League of Divine Justice?" Lemuel was confused and still in shock. "Who are they?"

"Not human. Humans would have made reference to 'the people' and phrased this differently. The reference to The Divine and the way this is written sounds to me like a group of Angels who are trying to copy humans."

"We have another conspiracy?" Lemuel looked even more shocked.

"We surely do. We've just got rid of one and now we're faced with this. How's the investigation into the other thing you were looking into by the way?"

Lemuel faked a complete lack of concern. "It's nothing to worry about. The more I look into it, the less there is to be concerned about. Just over-enthusiam, that's all. It doesn't amount to heresy or blasphemy, we might as well not worry about it any more. Compared with this horror . . . " Lemuel stepped back as he turned to wave and felt his sandal slide on something. Looking down, he saw it was a part of an angelic wing. He barely avoided vomiting.

Michael-Lan nodded sympathetically. "Your decision of course, but I think you are absolutely right. This atrocity must take precedence." Especially since it means that I can now claim credit for the nuclear destruction of Tel Aviv and if anybody argues about it, we can link them straight to this. "We will have to get back to headquarters and see if Salaphael knows anything about this." If he has any sanity left.