we are not truly immortal

[dark_light]

After Glass's party is over with, Amariah and Kas go home.

Amariah fetches down their alethiometers.

"It's about time I took care of Alethia's afterlife, whatever it may be," she says quietly. "What can the alethiometer tell you about what I'll find?"

Comments

[endragoned]

Of course.

[lifes_sake]

Cam and Amariah continue flying up, and they discuss afterlife designs. This little dimension-thing has the convenience - or inconvenience - of slow time (to let just nine harpies sort all the incoming) and of already collecting all the dead, but the harpies could be set up on the dock area, which also has slow time and doesn't disallow daemons...

Then of course there's this "Authority" person.

"Is the Authority dangerous to us?" Cam inquires of the alethiometer.

[truthwright]

"Clouded Mountain is powerful and unfriendly," says the alethiometer.

[lifes_sake]

"...How powerful?"

[truthwright]

"The Authority is known in many worlds as God," says the alethiometer.

[lifes_sake]

"...I thought you didn't work on stuff outside this world. Do you work outside this world?"

[truthwright]

"You come from outside the worlds," says the alethiometer.

[lifes_sake]

"...So this world has parts?"

[truthwright]

"Where we are now is not the same world as where I come from, which is only one of many worlds I know."

[lifes_sake]

"How many?"

[truthwright]

"I know all the worlds."

Over the link, Kas asks if Cam would like some help with this.

[lifes_sake]

Cam would love some help with this.

[truthwright]

Kas starts talking to his alethiometer, leaving Aianon to tell stories to the harpies.

The problem's with the word 'world', he reports. Or - the concept. The alethiometer has a concept of 'world' and it's a lot like ours, but the set of worlds it knows about are all linked to Alethia. You could call them parts of Alethia, I guess. They're mostly the same way toward each other as, say, all the worlds that linked up to Downside before we got there, though. Some of them don't even have daemons.

[lifes_sake]

Okay, let's call worlds as in Syntropy is a world and Alethia is a world - "worlds", like we've been doing, and within each can be subworlds.

[dark_light]

Can alts appear in the same world in different subworlds? Because they could in Downside-linked worlds even before we showed up - Queenie died Downside, and we know Origin was linked because of Pattern.

[truthwright]

Well, I can't tell you about other worlds, but the alethiometer says it's heard of alts in worlds that are similar enough - most aren't. Uh, and it can't give a number for the worlds because they're not countable - not sure how that works.

[dark_light]

Can it do more/fewer? Than five hundred, than twenty thousand, etcetera?

[truthwright]

...It says there's more than any number I could ask it. I'm not sure if it's being rhetorical.

[dark_light]

Well, says Amariah. My to-do list just got ridiculous, huh.

[lifes_sake]

I wonder if any of the other worlds we know of are actually - sheaves of them like that, muses Cam. Syntropy might be. The manual talks about worlds sometimes, there are worldgates - I wasn't sure if it was just a local mechanism within a worldfamily, like a mini-Milliways, or what. Maybe it's like here.

[truthwright]

What's the difference? wonders Kas.

[lifes_sake]

Don't know. I'll need to find out more.

[dark_light]

Do all these uncountable worlds come through here? Jane said we were moving about six thousand times slower than her, which is a lot, but not enough to account for the uncrowded dock and the death rate of uncountable worlds.

[truthwright]

...It says most of the worlds are too - young? - to have people, Kas reports. It still won't tell me how many do.

[dark_light]

Not even more/fewer? Amariah sends plaintively.