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]

I guess I could make individual sections pinch off for new angels and swing by once a week to see whether they get added to the general population or turned loose.

[truthwright]

Sure. Do they get their very own bakeries? he laughs.

[dark_light]

Nah, this bakery will send them trays. Are you good for another enchantment?

[truthwright]

He giggles.

Go for it!

[dark_light]

Amariah kisses him and augments the angel tank. Incoming angels will get their own cells, with delivery cake, and automatically notify Amariah.

"Does the alethiometer know if I can enchant the mountain - or for that matter the land of the dead - to permit wishes to work normally?"

[truthwright]

"Can't. Twice," he says succinctly.

[dark_light]

"That's really annoying. Can I affect the land of the dead with wishes from the outside? I expect I can't do that for the mountain, given how you put the explanation of how it's anti-wish."

[truthwright]

"Depends on the wish; it can't effectively tell me more than that without a more specific question."

[dark_light]

"Restore the daemons, is what I was thinking."

[truthwright]

"No daemons in the afterlife."

[dark_light]

"So I am going to have to move everybody. Okay." She closes her eyes and thinks. "Has to hold a lot of dead people, and harpies. Has to collect the dead, as they die, and not overwhelm the limited number of harpies. Has to be daemon-compatible -" She pauses. "Has everyone in this worldsheaf got an external daemon?"

[truthwright]

He checks.

"No."

[dark_light]

"Okay. So those people are missing pieces but not creatures with their own names. I'll have to account for that. Space could be a problem, though less so with insubstantial shades - can we get a ballpark population figure?"

[truthwright]

"Uncountable. I'm really starting to think the alethiometer is just bad at math," he laughs.

[dark_light]

"Maybe I'll just make an infinite plane like Downside so I'll be able to teleport and mark locations there," laughs Amariah. "With - doors - can I wish or enchant doors between worlds in this sheaf?"

[truthwright]

"Yep! Either way," he says. "Maybe just - a door that takes whoever walks through it back to their own world? Kind of like Milliways, but smaller-scale."

[dark_light]

"Right. And harpies as gatekeepers - and some other mechanism to slow things down, so all the worlds aren't mobbed with dead people. My land-of-the-dead will be more comfortable, of course, but a lot of people are still going to want to leave. Maybe I can slow down if I let live people go visit it."

[truthwright]

"Okay. ...Speaking of visiting it, maybe we should be doing all our sitting around talking about stuff while we're in the six-thousand-times-slower time distortion thing where we left Ghosty," he suggests.

[dark_light]

"Yes. That's a good idea." Amariah pings the link about this, and teleports herself and Kas to the dock.

[pythbox]

Sue follows them there.

[lifes_sake]

Cam shows up a minute later, dockside time.

Didja miss us, Ghosty?

[pythbox]

Nah, I've been having a great time, she says cheerfully. Calliope's a blast. And the name thing caught on - now there's Aello and Ocypete and Celaeno and Nicothoe and Aoide and Clio and Melpomene and Sappho. They really liked the Greek theme for some reason.

[dark_light]

Cool.

Amariah resumes afterlife-design. She decides that after everyone has been moved to her afterlife and had a chance to spread out, insubtantiality should be optional, except insofar as people are going to get places to live with privacy, which none of them have in the afterlife, so those who opt to remain insubstantial will not be able to walk through walls with this power.

"Might want to give the harpies the power to distribute torching, assuming they're trustworthy gatekeepers in the first place," she muses.

[truthwright]

"...Yeah," says Kas, after consulting the alethiometer, "good plan, because right now it's possible for a shade to die and if they do they just - stop."

[dark_light]

"...has that happened before?"