(SPOILERS) Too worried about waking up Dad?

n7axw wrote:Apart from its sheer toughness --which in his last post on the subject RFC seemed to imply applied to its construction inside and out-- and the concern over colateral damage, the primary argument against destroying the Temple is that no one really knows the consequences of doing so. Do you really want to destroy the computer that could contain priceless info on the OBS and perhaps other things unknown to Merlin at this time?

However, someone is going to have to bell the cat on this issue sooner or later. I'm not sure how it should be done, but allowing the "archangel" to wake up on its own terms could be very dangerous indeed if there is any way at all it could be prevented.

Actually, I view it more likely that nuking the Temple would be a retaliatory strike. IOW, it doesn't matter how the Temple would react or if an Angel will get woken up because Charis and everything else that Merlin cares about on Safehold is GONE, quite possibly destroyed by OBS and that "Angel".

Basically, it'd be Kau-Yung all over again. Except Merlin still has his Mission to uplift humanity, so unlike Kau-Yung, he really doesn't have the luxury to blow himself up with the Temple.

evilauthor wrote:Actually, I view it more likely that nuking the Temple would be a retaliatory strike. IOW, it doesn't matter how the Temple would react or if an Angel will get woken up because Charis and everything else that Merlin cares about on Safehold is GONE, quite possibly destroyed by OBS and that "Angel".

Basically, it'd be Kau-Yung all over again. Except Merlin still has his Mission to uplift humanity, so unlike Kau-Yung, he really doesn't have the luxury to blow himself up with the Temple.

No, Merlin is no longer irreplacable.
Nimue is awake... and her original datafile is probably still available...

Michael Everett wrote:No, Merlin is no longer irreplacable.
Nimue is awake... and her original datafile is probably still available...

I thought OWL had only the ressources to build one PICA.

Boronian wrote:

Michael Everett wrote:No, Merlin is no longer irreplacable.
Nimue is awake... and her original datafile is probably still available...

I thought OWL had only the ressources to build one PICA.

No,OWL stated that creating the first copy of a PICA would seriously deplete several key materials neccessary to the task. Given replenishment of those materials, he could build more. The biggest problem would be the programming as the tech isn't currently available to record other personalities to 'ride' those machines.

evilauthor wrote:

n7axw wrote:Apart from its sheer toughness --which in his last post on the subject RFC seemed to imply applied to its construction inside and out-- and the concern over colateral damage, the primary argument against destroying the Temple is that no one really knows the consequences of doing so. Do you really want to destroy the computer that could contain priceless info on the OBS and perhaps other things unknown to Merlin at this time?

However, someone is going to have to bell the cat on this issue sooner or later. I'm not sure how it should be done, but allowing the "archangel" to wake up on its own terms could be very dangerous indeed if there is any way at all it could be prevented.

Actually, I view it more likely that nuking the Temple would be a retaliatory strike. IOW, it doesn't matter how the Temple would react or if an Angel will get woken up because Charis and everything else that Merlin cares about on Safehold is GONE, quite possibly destroyed by OBS and that "Angel".

Basically, it'd be Kau-Yung all over again. Except Merlin still has his Mission to uplift humanity, so unlike Kau-Yung, he really doesn't have the luxury to blow himself up with the Temple.

Merlin himself doesn't face those constraints. He could retreat to Nime's cave and wait a couple of centuries to start from scratch if he had to. But it could sure be tough on the folks he has come to care about, to say nothing about the EOC.

Don

Michael Everett wrote:

evilauthor wrote:Actually, I view it more likely that nuking the Temple would be a retaliatory strike. IOW, it doesn't matter how the Temple would react or if an Angel will get woken up because Charis and everything else that Merlin cares about on Safehold is GONE, quite possibly destroyed by OBS and that "Angel".

Basically, it'd be Kau-Yung all over again. Except Merlin still has his Mission to uplift humanity, so unlike Kau-Yung, he really doesn't have the luxury to blow himself up with the Temple.

No, Merlin is no longer irreplacable.
Nimue is awake... and her original datafile is probably still available...

Certainly.

I consider it more likely that Merlin would suicide by just letting his automatic reset happen rather than carry a nuke into Zion. Heck, doing that would make fixing his high speed data port easier to boot!

What would be gained by blowing the Temple? Nobody really knows for sure what is in the basement. It could be that the real control center is under a mountain like Nimue's cave or even out system parked on an asteroid or on Langhornre's flagship which wasn't dropped in a local star after all. If you blow the temple you also blow the computer in the basement, eliminating any possibility of finding all this stuff out.

Don

evilauthor wrote:

SWM wrote:Evilauthor, David never said that it would ever be necessary to destroy the temple with a nuke, whether carried in personally by Merlin or dropped from a flying shuttle.

What David said was that if it was necessary, Merlin would be willing to carry a nuke into the temple to destroy it.

You are making an awful big deal about a statement that was intended to show Merlin's willingness to do whatever is necessary, but only if it is necessary.

Of course.

But my point is that if it were necessary to nuke the Temple, Merlin has scads of options for delivering the nuke, none of which requires him to personally carry it in.

Given that he's immortal, he's arguably the LEAST expendable member of the Inner Circle. He's going to be around long after everyone else dies of old age. If the Inner Circle entirely dies out and Charis crushed, he has to be around to carry on with the mission.

Well at least he was the least expendable until Nimue 3.0 came online. But that just puts him in the top two least expendable members.

And unlike Kau-Yung, Merlin isn't going to die of old age before he can start uplifting humanity back to an interstellar culture. He's got every reason to NOT sacrifice himself to take out the Temple should it become necessary, and all the means to take out the Temple without sacrificing himself.

You are misreading what I said. I said that if it were necessary for Merlin to personally bring a nuke into the temple, he would be willing to do it. That is all that David was saying. You are reading too much into that statement. David was not suggesting that such a situation could ever occur--he was just saying that Merlin would be willing to do it if it were necessary for him to do it. NO ONE has suggested that it would or could ever be necessary for Merlin to personally carry a nuke into the Temple.

You people seem to really favor brute force solutions. Massive nuclear explosions that would destroy the temple & the city of Zion, killing millions and likely triggering some doomsday OBS program. Kinetic strikes on the OBS with huge celestial bodies, that btw, would not stop all their momentum when they hit the OBS but continue on, along with huge chunks of the OBS and its own kinetic projectiles to blast the planets surface and trigger catastrophic events, again killing millions, possibly all life on the planets surface.

How about something just a little more subtle? I doubt the people who built the OBS left its control entirely in the hands of a tactical AI, with the possible exception of the aforementioned doomsday solution. Most likely that control was exercised from the Temple. Having a lot of secondary control nodes leaves open the possibility that one or more of those secondary nodes could be captured or hacked and the OBS turned against the temple itself. The OBS master controls and manual overrides must be in the Temple itself. Moreover, the temple must have some way of communicating with the OBS. Cut the communications link and the OBS is rendered inert. After communications are interdicted you can take your time getting full control of the Temple and hacking the Temple computer. and nobody dies, with the exception of the Temple guard and unfortunately a few of the good guys assaulting the Temple. No mass casualties or destruction of the planetary surface.

Obviously the tricky part is determining exactly how the temple communicates with the OBS and breaking or spoofing that com link long enough to take over the Temple. Breaking the com link and taking over the Temple, seems to me to be a lot easier problem to solve than how to destroy either the OBS or to destroy the Temple without triggering the OBS.

Sharp Claw wrote:You people seem to really favor brute force solutions. Massive nuclear explosions that would destroy the temple & the city of Zion, killing millions and likely triggering some doomsday OBS program. Kinetic strikes on the OBS with huge celestial bodies, that btw, would not stop all their momentum when they hit the OBS but continue on, along with huge chunks of the OBS and its own kinetic projectiles to blast the planets surface and trigger catastrophic events, again killing millions, possibly all life on the planets surface.

How about something just a little more subtle? I doubt the people who built the OBS left its control entirely in the hands of a tactical AI, with the possible exception of the aforementioned doomsday solution. Most likely that control was exercised from the Temple. Having a lot of secondary control nodes leaves open the possibility that one or more of those secondary nodes could be captured or hacked and the OBS turned against the temple itself. The OBS master controls and manual overrides must be in the Temple itself. Moreover, the temple must have some way of communicating with the OBS. Cut the communications link and the OBS is rendered inert. After communications are interdicted you can take your time getting full control of the Temple and hacking the Temple computer. and nobody dies, with the exception of the Temple guard and unfortunately a few of the good guys assaulting the Temple. No mass casualties or destruction of the planetary surface.

Obviously the tricky part is determining exactly how the temple communicates with the OBS and breaking or spoofing that com link long enough to take over the Temple. Breaking the com link and taking over the Temple, seems to me to be a lot easier problem to solve than how to destroy either the OBS or to destroy the Temple without triggering the OBS.

Good idea, but have to proceed with extreme caution given what OWL told Nahmahn about the self defence capabilities of military AIs, when they were thinking about accessing Schulers Key!