Moments you want to see in the next book (TFT Spoilers)

bkwormlisa wrote:Note that in TFT, Nahrmahn pointed out that such a test might wake something up that they don't want to be. IE, perhaps detecting electricity will activate an AI/PICA/something in the temple that will look around, see what's happening, and have control over the OBS. Likely? Perhaps not, but there's always the chance and it would be Very Bad News. So while they certainly WANT to know, do they want it enough to take the possibly enormous risk?

That's been my feeling for a while.

Merlin's previous experiment set up on uninhabited islands far from anything what would appear to an eye in the sky to be settlements using steam power and connected by railroads.

If the OBS did drop rocks on it, no human being would notice, because it was too far from anywhere to be observed. The bigger question was whether it might phone home and report what it did, and what it would be calling that might answer.

TextEv says the original strike that converted the Alexandria Enclave to Armageddon Reef was under manual control with an Archangel providing targeting criteria. Does the OBS have an automated mode? The Archangels are long gone. If the OBS did phone home, it would be calling the Temple. Would the Temple answer and take the report? Would it let someone in the current CoGA hierarchy know it dropped rocks on something violating the Proscriptions? If it didn't, how would whatever might be under the Temple react? It might not obviously react at all. It might be a case of "It saw proscribed technology and destroyed it. It's still Working As Designed. Back to sleep..."

The IC also doesn't know what would trigger the OBS's "drop rocks on it" response. The one thing they are pretty sure of is that obvious use of electricity would be it if anything was. Then the question becomes just how sophisticated the OBS or a ground side controller might be. If it saw electricity someplace known to be uninhabited and far from anywhere, would it drop rocks on it, or would the local or ground based controller be sophisticated enough to conclude that the devices using electricity there had been made somewhere else and placed there, and it should start looking at plausible somewhere elses they might have come from. Charis would likely be the first place it might look.

As was mentioned in a previous book in a different context, this is the sort of mistake you get to make once.

I don't see the IC taking that risk unless they have some pressing reason to feel they have no choice.
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Dennis

Also, I believe the steam test was run BEFORE the IC knew about The Return because Paytyr wasn’t recruited yet. That upped the “What Might Happen” factor considerably once the possibility of waking someone as opposed to just something up was entered into the decision process.

PlaysWithBees wrote:Also, I believe the steam test was run BEFORE the IC knew about The Return because Paytyr wasn’t recruited yet. That upped the “What Might Happen” factor considerably once the possibility of waking someone as opposed to just something up was entered into the decision process.

I think it was less waking someone as opposed to something, and more the notion that the Archangels were returning somehow to check on Safehold. The IC was already resigned to a multi-generation effort to erode the Proscriptions and get Safehold fully industrialized and recreating TF technology. The prophesied return of the Archangels dramatically compressed the time horizon for the IC's efforts, and mandated their current strategy. They must spread industrialization as far and fast as possible before the return, so the only way the Archangels could reverse it would be to destroy human life on Safehold, and hope that whatever appeared as returning Archangels wasn't that crazy.
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Dennis