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

[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?"

[truthwright]

He consults.

"No."

[dark_light]

"Okay, that's good. Is there a way to catch all dead people? Including angels, who I gather don't leave shades?"

[truthwright]

"Uh..."

He asks.

"...So there's this stuff called - the concept I'm getting is something like 'sparkles'," he says. "It's a particle, but it doesn't work like most other particles. It's generated by conscious thought. If somebody makes this stuff, they're a person. So you can tell who is and who's not, empirically. That should be enough to wish on, right? If there's even a coin big enough to do that."

He asks that, too.

"There are no coins big enough to do that currently in this worldsheaf," he says.

[dark_light]

"...I. Have an arrow on me."

[truthwright]

"Then I'm pretty sure the alethiometer's telling me there's at least the potential for a coin bigger than an arrow to exist. But I'm not lining up to make it," he laughs.

[dark_light]

"Goddesses all. Ten pointed coins. Can you think of anybody in the deck who would? Or should I pop Downside and ask Eights?" asks Amariah, shaking her head.

[truthwright]

"Try Brill?" he suggests.

[dark_light]

"Okay. Tenners. Yambe Akka take me if I'm ever in screaming distance of the minting process for one of those."

She pauses.

"Kas?"

[truthwright]

"...Yeah?"

[dark_light]

"I just walked up to the Judeo-Christian God and tapped on his box. Do the witch goddesses exist?"

[truthwright]

...

He asks the alethiometer.



"No," he says. "They're - kind of symbols. Like the ones on the alethiometer, but a different set, for a different purpose."