OrlandoNative wrote:SWM wrote:I never said that the Archangels were in cryogenic stasis. You are making unwarranted assumptions about the nature of the Return.
I didn't say you did. However, the novels to this point clearly point to an "awakening". Assuming they aren't off on some relativistic, slower than light speed journey (which would be hard if they're allegedly located somewhere under the Temple complex); that pretty much leaves cryonic suspension - unless they, too, are PICA's.
You are fairly new to this forum. In the past we have come up with half a dozen possible mechanisms to explain the Return. It does not have to be cryogenics. Also, there is absolutely no evidence that "they're allegedly located somewhere under the Temple complex". That is entirely speculation by posters on this forum. We don't know where the returning Angels are coming from.
However, while the story line doesn't explicitly say one way or the other, I can't see where there would have been a *need* to "hide" Nimue's PICA from the inventory if PICA's were available in abundance in the breakaway fleet. They would have been too useful, and I'm reasonably sure that many could have been destroyed by various accidents in the course of terraforming an entire new planet. Just because the person whose personality they were programmed with was no longer alive wouldn't have changed the fact that the artificial personality in the PICA wouldn't have wanted to help out as much as possible.
Also, given Dr Proctor's programming skills, if there had been an abundance of available PICA's, the "fallen" could have utilized reprogrammed PICA's to overcome the rest of the Archangels, since allegedly they didn't have anyone capable of doing the same in reverse.
We know for absolute fact that there were no other PICAs aboard the breakaway fleet. In fact, PICAs were specifically prohibited. Nimue's PICA was the only one, and it snuck through the rules as personal baggage. David has said there were no others. However, we know that the Archangels had all the resources and instructions to build a new PICA. In addition, building a new PICA from scratch without the built-in time limit is a whole lot easier than reprogramming an existing PICA. It would not require someone of Dr. Proctor's skills to modify the design.