Official HFQ Snippet #25

SHV wrote:"What we know is that St. Khody went to Zion to visit with Schueler and died there."
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You know, it was mentioned in a previous book that there were rumors that the "Archangels" had means to listen in on any conversation taking place in the Temple (aka, rooms are bugged).

If it's true (given Chihiro's apparent paranoia, it probably is), it's quite possible that Khody's trust in Schueler wasn't misplaced... but that Chihiro eavesdropped on the conversation.

McGuiness wrote:Happily for the sake of debate, the probability that the Hamilcar is still out there somewhere just went up dramatically. That also bodes well for Safehold getting back into space with cutting edge TF tech, since the Hamilcar would have records of just about all of it...

Must point out, that it may be quite probably not the same "Hamilcar" that was before. With those extencieve manufacturing capabilites and a millenia for AI to do the work, it could be rebuild into something, that even Gbaba would find themselves unable to deal with.

Dilandu wrote:

McGuiness wrote:Happily for the sake of debate, the probability that the Hamilcar is still out there somewhere just went up dramatically. That also bodes well for Safehold getting back into space with cutting edge TF tech, since the Hamilcar would have records of just about all of it...

Must point out, that it may be quite probably not the same "Hamilcar" that was before. With those extencieve manufacturing capabilites and a millenia for AI to do the work, it could be rebuild into something, that even Gbaba would find themselves unable to deal with.

That is an interesting idea, Dilandu. I think though that your assertion here would depend on how creative the AIs would be in terms of doing research that would be needed to improve Hamilcar. One doesn't normally think of AIs operating outside of their assigned perameters, but I suppose it is possible for there to be an AI assigned to coming up with and developing new possibilities.

But then on the other hand, as antitech as Langhorne and the rest of his gang were, would it occur to them to come up with something like that?

Don

Dilandu wrote:

McGuiness wrote:Happily for the sake of debate, the probability that the Hamilcar is still out there somewhere just went up dramatically. That also bodes well for Safehold getting back into space with cutting edge TF tech, since the Hamilcar would have records of just about all of it...

Must point out, that it may be quite probably not the same "Hamilcar" that was before. With those extencieve manufacturing capabilites and a millenia for AI to do the work, it could be rebuild into something, that even Gbaba would find themselves unable to deal with.

I'm not sure an AI would still be stable after a millenium by itself. Actually, probably not a millenium, more likely half that, assuming that Hamilcar was sent into its long term storage solution at or near the end of the surviving Angels/Archangels' lives.
Also, Hamilcar is likely either near-completely shut down and on a long orbit or hidden in the asteroid belt, or in a relativistic transit, not unlike what was done in Ender's Game to have Mazer Rackham around to teach Ender. If on a relativistic transit for the Return, the Key activates something other than Hamilcar.



Oooh .. I just had a thought about the return.
Presuming that the Terran Federation had the technological capacity to clone people, birth/grow a clone, install the full suite of implants, and before the clone can develop a personality of its own, upload a prestored personality download, presumably of the person the clone is grown from.
If the clone is then automatically placed into stasis once it reaches physical adulthood, and kept in a medically induced coma and given the TF's full suite of anti-aging treatments, you could arguably get around most of time constraints of normal stasis procedures without having to live through it, as you'd have, essentially several hundred years to work with for recovery between bouts of stasis. Say you need six months of "recovery" between every fifty years of stasis - and assuming this process started at age 20, you'd have 8000 years of real time elapsed by the age of 100, which isn't old by TF standards, and it would be relatively simple to start a new clone once the first clone started getting old, and if kept in a medically induced coma while outside of stasis, you'd have no issues with going insane out of boredom/isolation. The medically induced coma would also get around the question of "if this is going on, why hasn't it done anything during one of the wakeup periods" - the clone would stay in the medically induced coma until the timer for it to wake up for a Return visit went off, or the Key (or something like it) was activated. This would be an automated, although non-AI system.



@n7axw, the latest snippets give me the impression that Chihiro wasn't going along with Langhorne's plan because he was anti-tech, but because it gave him the opportunity for personal power. On the other hand, I don't think an AI would last long enough if it were active - purely automated, 'dumb' systems, sure, but nothing intelligent.

Hi Kytheros,

I just read those snippets as part of finishing up my rereading of Safehold.

I can see why you would gain that impression. However in the last snippet, the inner circle is doing exactly what we do on the forums... speculating as they try to make sense out of Kohdy's journal.

But we did at least gain a new perspective. The plot thickens.

Don

Here's some wild, totally unsupported speculation.

What if Langhorn and most of his faction are unwitting victims of mind control as well? I' m visualizing a conspiracy between Bedard and Chihiro that works like this: while San-Wei was off terraforming Safehold, Chihiro and Bedard did a little judicious modifying on Langhorn and Schuler's brains and anyone else that had been left behind- just enough so that Langhorn ad co would approve of Chihiro's Holy Writ. That way, Langhorn gets to be that front man (and take that lions share of responsibility) when it comes to keeping Shan-wei's faction under control. In this particular fairy tale, Langhorn originally did genuinely believe that that needed the religious aspect to keep the population under control for enough years that the gbaba wouldn't come calling, and he really intended to reveal the truth after several centuries.

Unfortunately, Chihiro and Bedard had other plans.

I think it would be particarly interesting if there were only one or two genuine psychopaths, but because of Bedard's ability to control minds and Chihiro's ability with propaganda, they achieved the Church of God Awaiting.

I like this theory mostly because it allows me to envision a scene where Langhorn and Schuler as AI ghosts manage to contact the Inner Circle. I have a pleasent little fantasy where a copy of Langhorn's ghost was installed as the Temple's environmental computer, but is currently limited by it's programming to be loyal to Chihiro, but Schuler manages to crack the programming and Langhorn locks Clyntahn in his beautiful corner suite and freezes him to death with air conditioning.

Kytheros wrote:Presuming that the Terran Federation had the technological capacity to clone people, birth/grow a clone, install the full suite of implants, and before the clone can develop a personality of its own, upload a prestored personality download, presumably of the person the clone is grown from.

They haven't. If they have something like that, they wouldn't need to bother themselves with the "Ark" project. They could just copy the personalites of all peoples in Solar System and shot them in storage on Von Neimann-type probes, guided by PICA's.

I suggested this once, and the RFC clearly stated, that the Federation was clost to this tech level, but didn't have time to actually achieve that. The Gbaba caught humanity on the verge of singularity; a few more decades, and Federation would be simply too powerfull to fear the Gbaba.

However, this technology may be developed by some AI onboard of "Hamilcar".

Dilandu wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Presuming that the Terran Federation had the technological capacity to clone people, birth/grow a clone, install the full suite of implants, and before the clone can develop a personality of its own, upload a prestored personality download, presumably of the person the clone is grown from.

They haven't. If they have something like that, they wouldn't need to bother themselves with the "Ark" project. They could just copy the personalites of all peoples in Solar System and shot them in storage on Von Neimann-type probes, guided by PICA's.

I suggested this once, and the RFC clearly stated, that the Federation was clost to this tech level, but didn't have time to actually achieve that. The Gbaba caught humanity on the verge of singularity; a few more decades, and Federation would be simply too powerfull to fear the Gbaba.

However, this technology may be developed by some AI onboard of "Hamilcar".

Dancing merrily out on the limb of speculation....

It could be that the Unfallen (at least some of them) came around to a modified version of the original Operation Ark plan. But rather than retaining an enclave with advanced technology to teach the rest after a safe no-emissions period, they decided that the enclave had to be much smaller and off the planet entirely. Maybe the War suggested too much possibility for tech leakage to them, and recreating an Alexandria Enclave afterward would be repudiating their original war aims too strongly to swallow politically.

So Hamilcar gets sent out, with several AI's and clever humans, to retain and advance a Terran Federation tech base (or retain it and otherwise work on uplifting Safehold later) but very quietly, while Safehold gets locked into a technological stasis by the shiny new Books of Schueler and Chihiro. In a thousand years, the "Archangels" return with Hamilcar, announce a new era, return the people of Safehold to the Heavens (orbit), and maybe along the way tell them the truth too.

The point of several AI's and clever humans is to keep it interested, lively, and mission-focused. With a bit of luck and a lot of genetic material on hand, the humans may reproduce, teach the kids, and become virtual personalities in time to refresh the AI population.

JeffEngel wrote:Dancing merrily out on the limb of speculation....

It could be that the Unfallen (at least some of them) came around to a modified version of the original Operation Ark plan. But rather than retaining an enclave with advanced technology to teach the rest after a safe no-emissions period, they decided that the enclave had to be much smaller and off the planet entirely. Maybe the War suggested too much possibility for tech leakage to them, and recreating an Alexandria Enclave afterward would be repudiating their original war aims too strongly to swallow politically.

So Hamilcar gets sent out, with several AI's and clever humans, to retain and advance a Terran Federation tech base (or retain it and otherwise work on uplifting Safehold later) but very quietly, while Safehold gets locked into a technological stasis by the shiny new Books of Schueler and Chihiro. In a thousand years, the "Archangels" return with Hamilcar, announce a new era, return the people of Safehold to the Heavens (orbit), and maybe along the way tell them the truth too.

The point of several AI's and clever humans is to keep it interested, lively, and mission-focused. With a bit of luck and a lot of genetic material on hand, the humans may reproduce, teach the kids, and become virtual personalities in time to refresh the AI population.

Well, it make a lot of sense - at least, as a reservation against the possibility that Gbaba eventually would found Safehold.

There it also states in the books, somewhere, that both Chihiro and Schuler returned to "the Dawn Star", which may be taken literally as they returned to Hamilcar or figuratively, as their bodies passed and their angelic spirits returned to God on the Dawn Star. As we are now having confirmed that the Hamilcar is refered to as the Dawn Star, I think the former rather than the latter.