How Charis 'MIGHT' react to the Testament of Scheuler.

Salisria wrote:But we've been assuming that if Langhorne's clique had any PICAs, they kept the ten day limit since the Wylsyns had been told the Key could only be used once. Under that restriction, there's no justification for any of the archangels to have PICAs so as to give them longer lifespans.

Could the Temple have built PICAs without a 240 hour time limit? Yes, but I doubt they'd have had the inclination or imagination to do that.

IIRC those limits were built in at a fundamental level to the PICA OS, and it took a top level programmer at the very top of his game AND desperate situation to get around them [and there were side effects]

Therefore the temple angels may just not have had the skill/capability to do that - or maybe even the awareness it was just about possible.

isaac_newton wrote:

Salisria wrote:But we've been assuming that if Langhorne's clique had any PICAs, they kept the ten day limit since the Wylsyns had been told the Key could only be used once. Under that restriction, there's no justification for any of the archangels to have PICAs so as to give them longer lifespans.

Could the Temple have built PICAs without a 240 hour time limit? Yes, but I doubt they'd have had the inclination or imagination to do that.

IIRC those limits were built in at a fundamental level to the PICA OS, and it took a top level programmer at the very top of his game AND desperate situation to get around them [and there were side effects]

Therefore the temple angels may just not have had the skill/capability to do that - or maybe even the awareness it was just about possible.

Considering that OWL of all people was able to design a time-unlimited PICA 2.0 and build it without all the resources available to the Temple angels, I sincerely doubt that they lacked the skill/capability to do so. Their failure to do so was certainly some combination of not thinking about doing that and not wanting to do that.

What's more intriguing is why the Alexandria angels didn't do that. They certainly had the skill and idea. Their failure must have been due to some combination of not wanting to make Nimue Alban's sacrifice meaningless and a lack of resources. Imagine if you will that instead of waking up in her cave accompanied by a recording of Kau-Yung, Nimue awoke accompanied by a time-unlimited PICA of Shan-Wei. It would be a completely different and less interesting Safehold, but a War Between The PICAs would be consistent within the technology available to the Terran Federation.

Salisria wrote:Considering that OWL of all people was able to design a time-unlimited PICA 2.0 and build it without all the resources available to the Temple angels, I sincerely doubt that they lacked the skill/capability to do so. Their failure to do so was certainly some combination of not thinking about doing that and not wanting to do that.

OWLs PICA2.0 is based on Merlin... which is, as far as we know, the only Earth built time-unlimited PICA ( and it was subsequently tinkered with after leaving Earth to remove the time limit. )

And it took time for Merlin to consider the situation stable enough to risk the examinations of it's PICA internals by OWL, as both weren't sure it was not going to incapacitate/destroy Merlin in the process.

Guillaume wrote:

Salisria wrote:Considering that OWL of all people was able to design a time-unlimited PICA 2.0 and build it without all the resources available to the Temple angels, I sincerely doubt that they lacked the skill/capability to do so. Their failure to do so was certainly some combination of not thinking about doing that and not wanting to do that.

OWLs PICA2.0 is based on Merlin... which is, as far as we know, the only Earth built time-unlimited PICA ( and it was subsequently tinkered with after leaving Earth to remove the time limit. )

And it took time for Merlin to consider the situation stable enough to risk the examinations of its PICA internals by OWL, as both weren't sure it was not going to incapacitate/destroy Merlin in the process.

Except that isn't what happened. Because of the risks, Merlin's PICA wasn't examined at all. Rather, OWL used what was known about PICAs to reverse engineer a compatible OS and compatible hardware that could use the backup of Nimue Alban.

I'm currently relistening to HFQ and there was a mention of the Federation allowing time-unlimited PICAs for emancipated personalities. So unless for some reason Langhorne's clique had purged the information on how to build them from their records, they had the capability. Whether they had the inclination is a separate question that I think is probably answered in the negative.

IIRC, there's a comment by Himself to the effect that PICAs were anathema to Langhorne - he seems to have found them really beyond the pale and wouldn't have used one if he could.

Chihiro, OTOH, would have jumped at the chance to put himself permanently in charge. So clearly he didn't have the capability to build one [we do have confirmation that there was exactly 1 PICA that survived the fall of Earth, so he would have had to build his own]. This makes me wonder if Langhorne was either already pretty selective in what he allowed to go into the databases the colony fleet took with it, or purged them of info that he _knew_ would be of no value at the same time he, ummm... amended the mission brief. Others have pointed out that there's no good reason for the designs and specs for PICAs not to have been included in what presumably was a general download of all of humanity's accumulated knowledge. If correct, and I think they must be, there has to be a reason Chihiro couldn't get at them.

Salisria wrote:I'm currently relistening to HFQ and there was a mention of the Federation allowing time-unlimited PICAs for emancipated personalities. So unless for some reason Langhorne's clique had purged the information on how to build them from their records, they had the capability. Whether they had the inclination is a separate question that I think is probably answered in the negative.

Louis R wrote:IIRC, there's a comment by Himself to the effect that PICAs were anathema to Langhorne - he seems to have found them really beyond the pale and wouldn't have used one if he could.

Chihiro, OTOH, would have jumped at the chance to put himself permanently in charge. So clearly he didn't have the capability.

It's stated in OAR that Admiral Pei's conspiracy reached the conclusion that any openly declared PICA that made it to Safehold would be required to be surrendered by Langhorne, which is why Nimue ended up switching ships so that her PICA could be smuggled there.

As for Chihiro, there's the question of whether he would view a PICA copy of himself as himself.