Speculation regarding the return.

I just had an idea regarding the return of the Archangels.

We know that cryogenic suspension is most likely not a feasible solution, no one had used it for more than 30-40 years and the theoretical upper limit was ~150 years (ref. HFaF, Paityr Wylsynns' family secret) .

We also know that PICA's are most likely out of the question.

But what about cloning and NEATs? Clone the bodies at an appropriate time and use NEATs to pattern them after the originals.

Ay or nay?

Joat42 wrote:
We also know that PICA's are most likely out of the question.

But what about cloning and NEATs? Clone the bodies at an appropriate time and use NEATs to pattern them after the originals.

Ay or nay?

Could be, but I think that PICAs are not out of the question. I mean, the archangels could be in a computer the way Nahrman is, with time slowed down for them, and then transferred to a PICA when its time...

Do they have cloning? And for that matter, automated person-growing systems? And I guess the clone would be in some sort of suspension until fully grown and NEAT'ed?

We don't have much information on the sub-light drives in this universe, but I wonder if it can accelerate a ship to 90-95% light speed, at least outside of a solar system, where particle densities are lower. Time dilation might make the journey short enough that their suspension systems would be viable.
Detection by the Gbaba wouldn't be much of an issue, assuming they set a course that didn't pass through a star system.
The only time they would be emitting any energy would be the relatively short accel/decel periods (maybe a day or three depending on acceleration rates. Even a week 3-4 light years from the nearest star would probably be pretty much undetectable.

The ship idea has been shot down. Clones and NEATS, however, that would be interesting. Kind of begs the question why there wouldn't be a continued command presence, though.

I can't remember the reason for the theoretical 150year limit if it even said, but if it was a matter of maintenance, then couldn't the maintenance be performed every 100 years or something like that? Also, wouldn't there be enough cryo pods for a person to switch to a new one every so often? We don't know the size of the Church below ground, so there is a chance that the pods for all of the colonists could have been moved there, or to the orbitals giving a rather large number of pods for continued cryo.

RunsInShadows wrote:I can't remember the reason for the theoretical 150year limit if it even said, but if it was a matter of maintenance, then couldn't the maintenance be performed every 100 years or something like that? Also, wouldn't there be enough cryo pods for a person to switch to a new one every so often? We don't know the size of the Church below ground, so there is a chance that the pods for all of the colonists could have been moved there, or to the orbitals giving a rather large number of pods for continued cryo.

I guess that could work, but the question asked earlier still stands: if they were waking up every 100 years or so, why wouldn't they appear to "restore faith" and prove the Church true?

I like clones-and-NEATs idea, though. Perhaps they can't make new NEATs and they have limited supply of them? They might've chosen to appear once every 1000 years to be able to keep an eye on humanity for as long as possible.

shayvaan wrote:We don't have much information on the sub-light drives in this universe, but I wonder if it can accelerate a ship to 90-95% light speed, at least outside of a solar system, where particle densities are lower. Time dilation might make the journey short enough that their suspension systems would be viable.
Detection by the Gbaba wouldn't be much of an issue, assuming they set a course that didn't pass through a star system.
The only time they would be emitting any energy would be the relatively short accel/decel periods (maybe a day or three depending on acceleration rates. Even a week 3-4 light years from the nearest star would probably be pretty much undetectable.

The problem with this is that a ship doing this is likely to be highly visible. I seem to recall there was even a telescope survey at one point to see if there was any evidence of interstellar travel like this (which did not turn up anything).

Hildum wrote:

shayvaan wrote:We don't have much information on the sub-light drives in this universe, but I wonder if it can accelerate a ship to 90-95% light speed, at least outside of a solar system, where particle densities are lower. Time dilation might make the journey short enough that their suspension systems would be viable.
Detection by the Gbaba wouldn't be much of an issue, assuming they set a course that didn't pass through a star system.
The only time they would be emitting any energy would be the relatively short accel/decel periods (maybe a day or three depending on acceleration rates. Even a week 3-4 light years from the nearest star would probably be pretty much undetectable.

.

just out of curiosity what was the survey looking for?
Propulsion emissions or energy from particle collisions?

If the latter, I can see the problem, if the former, I would imagine a drive system capable of a few hundred G's would accelerate to the necessary speed in a relatively brief period.
The problem with this is that a ship doing this is likely to be highly visible. I seem to recall there was even a telescope survey at one point to see if there was any evidence of interstellar travel like this (which did not turn up anything)

Hildum wrote:

shayvaan wrote:We don't have much information on the sub-light drives in this universe, but I wonder if it can accelerate a ship to 90-95% light speed, at least outside of a solar system, where particle densities are lower. Time dilation might make the journey short enough that their suspension systems would be viable.
Detection by the Gbaba wouldn't be much of an issue, assuming they set a course that didn't pass through a star system.
The only time they would be emitting any energy would be the relatively short accel/decel periods (maybe a day or three depending on acceleration rates. Even a week 3-4 light years from the nearest star would probably be pretty much undetectable.

just out of curiosity what was the survey looking for? Propulsion emissions or energy from particle collisions?

If the latter, I can see the problem, if the former, I would imagine a drive system capable of a a few hundred G's would accelerate to the necessary speed in a relatively brief period.

The problem with this is that a ship doing this is likely to be highly visible. I seem to recall there was even a telescope survey at one point to see if there was any evidence of interstellar travel like this (which did not turn up anything)

The idea of traveling near the speed of light for the time dilation effect to keep the archangels alive seems a bit farfetched, given what could be done with a cryo chamber and the proper nannites. (Assuming the repair robots kept the cryo chamber up and running.) Yes, traveling at near light speed would work in slowing the aging process drastically and allow an archangel to return in 1000 years. It also explains how the archangels would "return," because they'd have been away for centuries. (Nobody but RFC knows what "return" actually means, hence this discussion)

If the archangels are traveling at relativistic speeds and are light years away, using the key to call them back to Safehold would require an FTL signal, or a fairly powerful signal to the Oort cloud or wherever a ship on a long, elliptical orbit with archangels in cryo inside it happens to be. In either case sending such a signal is a very bad idea with the Gbaba looking for that sort of thing!

A ship traveling at relativistic speed would reasonably explain why the key could only be used once - sending an FTL signal is dangerous, and the archangels are going to age more quickly as soon as the ship decelerates. They wouldn't have been young when they left, and it may not be a trivial process to jump into hyperspace when they're traveling at over .9c. (They'd need to do that to return to Safehold FTL) How far away are they from Safehold? You can't orbit anything at .9c, so unless they altered course from time to time, (sorry about the pun!) they'd end up hundreds of light years away. Does a course correction require them to slow down? Also, at that speed the energy requirement to speed up (or even turn) the ship approaches infinity.

How long does it take to slow from .9c and arrive at Safehold? It would have to be fairly quick if they returned in answer to the key, but it doesn't need to particularly speedy if it's just the method the archangels use to return after 1000 years.

The ship would need to jump into hyper to fly back to Safehold at FTL speed, which at that speed would be suicidal in the Honorverse. TF ships can slip into and out of hyper with no speed impact, (or so it appears from OAR) so calling back a ship moving at relativistic speed may not be that difficult. It's still an overly complicated way to keep archangels alive to "return" in 1000 years, although it would explain their absence and only being able to use the key once. Unfortunately, we have no textev that TF ships can accelerate to near light speed - they used hyperspace after all, which is FTL. They also accelerated in hyper, and when they weren't cloaked they were fairly easy for the Gbaba to locate there, so the hyperspace of Safehold isn't the same as that of the Honorverse.

Since there's conflicting reports that all the ships of Operation Ark were actually destroyed, including the Hamilcar, I can't find the textev that verifies it. If it's true, there aren't any archangels scheduled to return by spaceship.

Let's look at a few other ways that the archangels could return or respond to the use of the key...

I've always thought that if you woke up from cryo, spent a month or so getting back in shape and making sure your body was functioning properly, created fresh nannites and whatever other treatments were necessary, then put yourself back into cryo for another 40 years (which was a safe number in OAR), you could do this for millennia. An archangel could have done this over the past 900 years and aged less than two years! It seems highly unlikely that they're doing this though, based on the lack of oversight during the past few centuries as the Proscriptions and the CoGA both went off the rails. Gunpowder? Really?

Let's turn to the cloning idea. I'm sure cloning was as strictly controlled by the TF as PICAs were. After all, that's a completely new human being you're creating, so I'm sure legislation would have been put in place to prevent making clones for organ transplants, personality transfers, etc. A clone would have the legal rights of any naturally conceived human. So as hideous as Langhorne and company were, I don't know if it would have occurred to them to clone themselves, install NEATs at the appropriate age, and copy their personalities to them.

This assumes that transferring a personality from person to person is possible, which for all we know it might not be. Transferring your personality to a PICA specifically designed to hold a digital copy of your mind, and then having it update your memories with only the new experiences it had during the 10 day period your personality was in it is very different from overwriting the existing mind of a clone!

That's so sick, twisted, and "gotta be illegal" that I can't believe the TF wouldn't have outlawed it. That said, I'm sure there were some who tried it to achieve immortality. The joke's on them though - consider, you copy your personality to your clone and it works. Now there's a younger you with your memories and personality, but you are not in it! You're still trapped in your aging, failing body, and you're going to die !

As far as everyone else is concerned, yes, a copy of you indistinguishable from your younger self carries on as if it were you. But you my friend still have a date with the Grim Reaper! Somehow that aspect of mind transference always seems to get overlooked.

Turning to the archangels, who never met a law they wouldn't break if it suited their purposes, they'd certainly have no reservations about making clones of themselves and transferring their minds into them. (If this is possible even with TF tech.) Then the old archangel dies off, and the young one is just as certifiably nuts as the old one and wants to keep Safehold trapped in the social matrix that Langhorne created. However, if this sort of thing had been going on under the temple or anywhere on the planet, the CoGA wouldn't have been allowed to run this far off the rails.

The fact that clones have never come up in the discussion of what the TF could do makes me think that it was blatantly illegal to clone yourself and transfer your personality to that clone - if it could be done at all. It would be tough for megalomaniacs to turn over the reins of power to others, even younger versions of themselves. So don't bet on it.

Which leaves Artificial Personalities, who would go nuts if they were constantly active for centuries, even if the computer they're living in is powerful enough and has plenty of storage to provide them with digital friends and any other archangels who'd like their personalities copied into it. That way the APs would have some "real" people to interact with. Even so, APs tend to go bonkers after a while, as Merlin explained to Nahrmahn. The best way for archangels to return as APs is to shut them down for decades or centuries at a time. That could certainly explain the lack of supervision over the past few hundred years.

PICAs would be just as likely to go nuts, even though they deal with the real world and real people. The archangels lacked the brilliant cyberneticist who hacked Merlin's software (and screwed up his high speed port in the process) and I doubt it occurred to them to reinvent the PICA, since they may well not have had the instructions to manufacture them, and most likely didn't have anyone to program them - or an existing unit to copy. PICAs were rare toys in the TF, so it's unlikely there were any other than Nimue's included with Operation Ark. Given their rarity and use in dangerous environments or dangerous activities for the rich and adventurous, I don't think it would have occurred to the Archangels to use a PICA as a way to achieve immortality. Toss in their anti-technology mindset, and I'm positive they wouldn't.

So I've eliminated clones, PICAs, and spending shifts in cryo. That leaves the possibility of APs in a sophisticated Artificial Reality in the temple basement, and they're "asleep" so they won't go bonkers waiting for the thousand years to pass. Why they didn't wake up every century or so is a mystery, but at least the theory of one or more APs fits the data we have - the church went off the rails, as did technology, and nothing intervened to stop it. APs would also be able to respond immediately if the key were used.

We aren't entirely sure whose side those APs will be on. Since the bad guys won the War of the Fallen and theoretically built the temple, the best guess is that they aren't going to be BFFs with our heroes. What or who would respond if the Wylsynns used the key? Why is it a one-time deal? An AP could wake up and address the problem, then shut down again, and probably would have already dealt with the current corruption in the church and deviations from the Proscriptions. So an AP that checks in from time to time is out.

So the possibilities of what the "return" of the archangels could/could not be:

1. Living archangels traveling either at near the speed of light to achieve time dilation and age slowly, with the intention to return in 1000 years. (But possibly not in response to the key being used.) This would explain why there's no active supervision of the CoGA. Not gonna happen if there's no spaceships left.

2. Archangels in cryo in a spaceship on a long elliptical orbit of the Safehold system, set to return and awaken after 1000 years. They may wake up every few decades to make sure their bodies are all right and to refresh their nannites, then go back to sleep. This would also explain why there's no active supervision of the CoGA. Again, not a possibility if there are no spaceships.

3. Archangels under the temple in cryo just like in the second possibility. If they're under the temple though, they'd certainly take the time to check on how things are going in the world outside when they wake up, so they would have stepped in and put a stop to the corruption in the church and the erosion of the Proscriptions centuries ago. Since that didn't happen, either there are no archangels in cryo under the temple who wake up on a regular schedule and check what's going on, (which they most certainly would do!) or they're really stretching the safe bounds of cryo technology and sleeping beyond the maximum 150 years during which cryo can theoretically sustain life. That's not something megalomaniacs who made themselves gods are likely to do - they'd want to survive and make sure their plan was functioning properly at all costs! So I highly doubt there are any archangels in cryo on Safehold.

4. Clones - not an option for some of the same reasons listed above. If it's possible to pass one's personality to a clone, that clone would live a life centuries long, and as an archangel it would have kept an eye on the CoGA. Since that hasn't happened, no clones.

5. APs living in an Artificial Reality under the temple. The biggest flaw in this theory is that the APs were paying attention, they'd have kept the CoGA on the rails. However, as Merlin explained to Nahrmahn, APs tend to go nuts, so it's reasonable that they'd shut themselves down for decades at a time - but centuries? Still, this is probably the theory that makes the most sense, although it's strange that no AP has woken up to check on things for at least a couple of centuries. Then again, maybe the plan was always to awaken after 1000 years unless awakened by the key, so they've been shut down for centuries.

6. PICAs - It's quite unlikely that the archangels had one, and quite possible that they didn't have the plans either. Even if they had one or more available, they didn't have Dr. Proctor to crack the software, and he was the premier cyberneticist of his generation and he screwed it up! PICAs may be even more susceptible to going nuts, since they live in the real world and watch friends and loved ones die, generation after generation. Merlin is going to have problems - his current mental state is one of the reasons he was willing to let Nimue be created, and perhaps with each other they'll be able to keep too many bats from taking up residence in their belfries. They also aren't subject to the 10 day limit, but any PICAs the archangels had would most likely would be, and they can only be activated by their owners once they shut down. (Which everyone espousing this theory seems to overlook.) The suggestion that PICAs could work in shifts and pass their memories on to another PICA isn't possible due to TF requirements that each PICA be designed to be operated only by its owner, and capable of memory transference only with its owner. (Mental compatibility is hardwired into the hardware.)

So when the archangels "return" it will be as living humans arrived from spaceships (unless there isn't one left) or as APs. Archangels in cryo under the temple are out, clones are out, and PICAs are out.

Feel free to jump in and tell me what I missed and why I'm wrong. I'm sure that RFC will make fools of us all when the truth comes out.

Even if they had one or more available, they didn't have Dr. Proctor to crack the software, and he was the premier cyberneticist of his generation and he screwed it up!

They may not have a premier cyberneticist of his generation, but they have a lot of time, and a lot more resources. Let's not forget - the simple-minded tactical AI, working with AP of middle-to-renaissance era men (definitely no cyberneticist at all!), were able to re-invent PICA in almost no time!

The Archangels have great more sophisticated AI's than Owl; they also have VR systems, production capabilites and a lot of time. They could simply re-invent the PICA from zero, by a few centuries of R&D work, and gave this PICA any programming, that they want to. Actually, they have a lot of time to not just re-invent the PICA's, but to invent something much more effective. After all, they have a good part millenia of waiting; they may simply install some scientific programs in their AI's and go to sleep.

P.S. Actuallym it's a pretty interesting solution, isn't it? The Archangels couldn't just threw away the possibility, that Gbaba may eventually stubmle upon Safehold. So, it seems pretty logical to have some R&D working for millenia; just to have something else in case of.