The (not so) welcome Archangels

PalmerSperry wrote:

Iorwerth wrote:An AI option seems unlikely too as an AI could have been awake throughout and interfering on a regular basis and there is no evidence of this.

Not necessarily. There was, after all, no evidence supporting the existence of OWL prior to Merlin's appearance. AFAIK it's unknown if AIs have to be switched on and running the entire time.

It's the 1000 years thing I wonder about. It's clearly too long an interval if you're hoping to keep things on track - even without Merlin things where clearly going off the rails already.

There is kind of a biblical/modern allusion here to a literal interpretation of a thousand year return of Christ. Remember y2k, the arrival of year 2000 and the like? The same thing happened historically with the arrival of year 1000, only more so.

Don

I think the possibility of a PICA is really far fetched. Remember that OWL was able to do it only with haivng merlin available to analyze. The command crew would not have had that option (No PICAs cam from Earth, and given Langhorne's position of PICAs, the information required to design and build one would not have been in the technical databases brought along (which he would have wiped as soon as possible, and that information wasn't in the stuff that Shan Wei was able to hide away. Even if the information on how to build a PICA was available, they didn't have the master cyberneticist required to remove the 10 day limit, which would have been part of the design information.

PalmerSperry wrote:It's the 1000 years thing I wonder about. It's clearly too long an interval if you're hoping to keep things on track - even without Merlin things where clearly going off the rails already.

Not given their assumptions - in the debate among the command crew we see in OAR they were clearly expecting extreme social stability.

And without the Brethren & Nynian's organization to mess with things they might well have gotten that.

cralkhi wrote:

PalmerSperry wrote:It's the 1000 years thing I wonder about. It's clearly too long an interval if you're hoping to keep things on track - even without Merlin things where clearly going off the rails already.

Not given their assumptions - in the debate among the command crew we see in OAR they were clearly expecting extreme social stability.

And without the Brethren & Nynian's organization to mess with things they might well have gotten that.

Not if they had any knowledge of history. With 75 year lifetimes, Pournelle's Law of Iron Bureaucracy is bound to kick in WRT the Church.

fallsfromtrees wrote:I think the possibility of a PICA is really far fetched. Remember that OWL was able to do it only with haivng merlin available to analyze. The command crew would not have had that option (No PICAs cam from Earth, and given Langhorne's position of PICAs, the information required to design and build one would not have been in the technical databases brought along (which he would have wiped as soon as possible, and that information wasn't in the stuff that Shan Wei was able to hide away. Even if the information on how to build a PICA was available, they didn't have the master cyberneticist required to remove the 10 day limit, which would have been part of the design information.

Owl didn't build a PICA by examining Merlin. Nor did he copy the software with the 10 day limit. He spent somewhere around a man century in VR doing research to figure it out from his own files.

Read that section in LAMA where Merlin is in the cave after treating Hektor and being forced to reveal the truth to both Hektor and Irys.

My point is that the AIs available to the archangels would have been at least as capable as Owl with at least as much info if not more available to them. Had they been instructed to build a PICA They could have figured it out like Owl did.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:

cralkhi wrote:Not given their assumptions - in the debate among the command crew we see in OAR they were clearly expecting extreme social stability.

And without the Brethren & Nynian's organization to mess with things they might well have gotten that.

Not if they had any knowledge of history. With 75 year lifetimes, Pournelle's Law of Iron Bureaucracy is bound to kick in WRT the Church.

If they truly had knowledge of history, they would have known that Langhorne's plan was impossible. Langhorne clearly believed that a stable society could be constructed.

Regarding the cryogenic suspension hypothesis, there's one point people have been forgetting. The Archangels would not need to have cryogenic suspension last 1000 years. The Angelic War didn't happen until long after the Creation, and the surviving Angels lived quite a while after that as well. So the suspension would only have to last 600 or 700 years or so, if I'm recalling correctly. Still way longer than the devices were known to last, but not as bad as 1000 years.

SWM wrote:Regarding the cryogenic suspension hypothesis, there's one point people have been forgetting. The Archangels would not need to have cryogenic suspension last 1000 years. The Angelic War didn't happen until long after the Creation, and the surviving Angels lived quite a while after that as well. So the suspension would only have to last 600 or 700 years or so, if I'm recalling correctly. Still way longer than the devices were known to last, but not as bad as 1000 years.

The War against the Fallen was only about 70 or so years after the founding of Safehold. We don't know from textev exactly when, although as I recall there was a discussion of it when Paityr drops his little 1000 year bombshell. But given the Terran dates at the beginning of OAR, Operation Breakaway occurred in 2421, and the there is an indication of the start of the War dated Sept. 7, 2499. That only leaves 78 years for Breakaway to have flown to its new world, terra formed it and settled it. Nimue wakes up in the cave on Oct. 1, 3249, and Pei Kau-yung indicates that it had set her to wake up 750 years after he recorded his message to her. Given that there were no updates, that must be taken as the date he touched off his vest pocket nuke.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

SWM wrote:Regarding the cryogenic suspension hypothesis, there's one point people have been forgetting. The Archangels would not need to have cryogenic suspension last 1000 years. The Angelic War didn't happen until long after the Creation, and the surviving Angels lived quite a while after that as well. So the suspension would only have to last 600 or 700 years or so, if I'm recalling correctly. Still way longer than the devices were known to last, but not as bad as 1000 years.

The War against the Fallen was only about 70 or so years after the founding of Safehold. We don't know from textev exactly when, although as I recall there was a discussion of it when Paityr drops his little 1000 year bombshell. But given the Terran dates at the beginning of OAR, Operation Breakaway occurred in 2421, and the there is an indication of the start of the War dated Sept. 7, 2499. That only leaves 78 years for Breakaway to have flown to its new world, terra formed it and settled it. Nimue wakes up in the cave on Oct. 1, 3249, and Pei Kau-yung indicates that it had set her to wake up 750 years after he recorded his message to her. Given that there were no updates, that must be taken as the date he touched off his vest pocket nuke.

Don't trust the author.
He gets you looking this way and wham.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

SWM wrote:Regarding the cryogenic suspension hypothesis, there's one point people have been forgetting. The Archangels would not need to have cryogenic suspension last 1000 years. The Angelic War didn't happen until long after the Creation, and the surviving Angels lived quite a while after that as well. So the suspension would only have to last 600 or 700 years or so, if I'm recalling correctly. Still way longer than the devices were known to last, but not as bad as 1000 years.

The War against the Fallen was only about 70 or so years after the founding of Safehold. We don't know from textev exactly when, although as I recall there was a discussion of it when Paityr drops his little 1000 year bombshell. But given the Terran dates at the beginning of OAR, Operation Breakaway occurred in 2421, and the there is an indication of the start of the War dated Sept. 7, 2499. That only leaves 78 years for Breakaway to have flown to its new world, terra formed it and settled it. Nimue wakes up in the cave on Oct. 1, 3249, and Pei Kau-yung indicates that it had set her to wake up 750 years after he recorded his message to her. Given that there were no updates, that must be taken as the date he touched off his vest pocket nuke.

Right. But the Angelic Wars lasted decades, possibly over a century. And the surviving Archangels probably lived another century or more after that. So any cryogenic suspension might have to last only 500 or 600 years.

I'm not sure I believe they are using cryogenic suspension myself. But it seemed important to point out the difference between that and the 1000 years that people have been using in their posts.