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

[dark_light]

Amariah sits on top of the angel tank. Maybe one of them will talk to her now.

[pythbox]

Nope.

[dark_light]

Yeah, that's not too surprising, is it.

Are they going to - starve, or anything? Amariah asks. Do I need to fix this thing to provide them with angel food cake or something?

[truthwright]

They'll get uncomfortable after long enough without food, says Kas. The Authority's special somehow, maybe because he's so old. It doesn't much matter what food, though, and they don't need a lot or anything. You could totally give them a thingy that dispenses unlimited angel food cake and that'd keep 'em.

[dark_light]

You know what, that amuses me, I'm going for it if you're up for another enchantment.

[truthwright]

Yeah!

[dark_light]

Amariah designs a little enchanted bakery (enchantments cooperate more with their physical substrates than wishes tend to; the bakery part helps) which will produce angel food cake on demand. It too is editable; if she feels like supplying the angels with more variety later it will bake other things. Will that do? Do they need more water than what's in the cakes?

[truthwright]

Yeah. Magic fountain?

[dark_light]

Magic fountain!

[truthwright]

Magic fountain.

So... now what?

[dark_light]

Now I have a lot of angels in a fishtank; can they be obnoxious from there?

[truthwright]

...They might be able to fly the mountain around and make it slurp up enemy angels and kill them, says Kas. And they can still spy on anybody who goes near 'em. Uh.

He pauses briefly, then goes on,

Apparently angels can see a bunch of stuff, and it's impossible to make them not, and some of the stuff they can see is - people's essential natures.

[dark_light]

...Essential natures like how?

[truthwright]

Like... who you are as a person, what your life has been like, what kind of stuff you believe in.

[dark_light]

Then why didn't that solid angel know he was not going to get me to leave by saying so?

[truthwright]

Maybe he did.

[dark_light]

Hmm. How does piloting the mountain work? Also where the heck is it now?

[truthwright]

It's... in a world, says Kas, unhelpfully. Not ours. One of the ones that doesn't have other life. The alethiometer doesn't know how to pilot it, but it says you can enchant it to stick somewhere and stay stuck.

[dark_light]

If there's no other life here I'm gonna call it a fine parking spot. You okay for the enchantment?

[truthwright]

Yep!

[dark_light]

Enchanting!

[truthwright]

The mountain has been drifting through the air this whole time, a few inches a minute.

It slows, then stops.

[dark_light]

Are all the bad angels currently in the tank?

[truthwright]

Maybe. There could be bad angels hiding somewhere and the alethiometer wouldn't know about them.

[dark_light]

Why are we running into all these limits on alethiometer knowledge today?