Kakai wrote:Bluesqueak wrote:Hello - long time lurker here, posting to make a possibly stupid suggestion.
Somebody from the Sisterhood has been captured, and she has a poison locket.
Ninian herself (known to have such a locket) did say that she might need to make a quick trip to Zion, back in LAMA. And Ninian is someone who the Inner Circle could not allow to be interrogated.
(snip)
Hi, Bluesqueak, and welcome to the forum! Feel free to help yourself with a virtual drink at the virtual bar.
Regarding your suggestion, this is a distinct possibility, especially in the light of what you've just noted. The possible "good" - well, relatively good compared to other member of Saint Kody's being captured - thing about this turn of events is that as a member of the Inner Circle, Nynian likely has nanites in her bloodstream, which means that if push comes to shove, killing her would be as easy as sending a kill-signal to the nanites.
A bad thing about this turn of events would be that nanites' presence in her body could alert whatever monitoring system the Temple has, which could... considerably hasten the timeline of events, to say the least.
I didn't think about the connection between this and the cover art, but that would be way cool (and it would mark the important moment of the first time a
Safehold cover matches the events in the book). The downside, however, would be that you'd have to explain to the volunteers why the
seijins cannot enter the Temple with them. Surely an agent of God could safely walk into the world's most holy place, right?
But if such a raid would happen, seeing this from "native" perspective would be an absolutely fascinating read.
Having given it a lot of thought in the past, I can't see how someone's internal nanites could be detected externally unless you're looking at a very close, intensive scan similar to what was done for Sharleyan with Merlin's medical suite. Anything like that would very obviously require some obvious behavioral changes such as stopping 'in prayer' in a specified location in an entryway or something. Possible, but unlikely.
Nanites are tiny, by their very nature as molecular machines. They physically can't support large power sources, and I doubt that they're powered by radioisotope power systems (
like NASA uses for various deep space probes and landers) for very obvious reasons. Since you can't just stick a battery onboard (at least one that's useful for much of anything), you need to look at alternatives.
Most likely, molecular machines used internally would be powered chemically through the hydrolysis of ATP. That's how the various molecular machines, such as ribosomes and kinesin or ATPase, are powered. If you already have the metabolic processes available, it'd be foolish not to take advantage of it. Even if it did increase the subject's caloric needs, possibly significantly. You could also use broadcast power, which would make sense in industrial applications, but not so much inside a human body.
Chemical power systems would be pretty much impossible to detect, let alone differentiate from normal cellular functions. Assuming you could detect trace metals externally, the same would apply there as well.
The bigger issue would be their communications, but again, size is the limiting factor here. You can't mount a very powerful transmitter on a molecular machine. Assuming they don't communicate chemically like you see with cell signaling (entirely possible), you'd have to have a very low-power
mesh network that uses some variant of a flooding technique (since nanites are constantly moving through the body). Those sorts of signals would be absurdly low-power, and unlikely to ever be picked up outside the human body. Mainly because our body chemistry is
very good at absorbing RF signals. Even external transmitters can be significantly degraded when positioned close to our bodies.
IF nanites were able to be detected, it wouldn't be because of their physical presence, but their communications. And even that's awfully iffy. I'd hope that military nanites had some sort of functionality to deactivate in certain situations, but that would require some sort of external signal since none of them have neural implants. No doubt RFC will surprise us all when the book is finally published
.
The other thing is that while the Inquisition's dungeons are located at the Temple complex, they're a native addition and not part of the original building. So it wouldn't be tied into their sensor systems in any case. I suppose the Temple's systems could have installed some wireless systems, but that seems needlessly dangerous on their part considering that any native buildings would require more human maintenance. It's not like the Temple systems could tell the humans that the device they found is divine and not demonic in nature.
