i am the oncoming storm

[autokinetic]

There are three Bells in Milliways.

They want a fourth. A fifth. A sixth. A seventh.

And then Downside is going down.

Comments

[self_composed]

"Do you want to hear the plan? Are you by any chance just actually not that interested in ruling the afterlife and wound up with the job by default?" inquires Stella.

[ending_of]

"I don't rule," she says. "I administrate. Explain your plan."

[self_composed]

"Insfoar as it's possible and desired by the dead, send people back where they came from. We've done a few instances of that already; I'm sure scaling up will be a population shock, but we can compensate with magic for issues of supplies and crowding and with one of our friends for issues of processing being a nightmare. For everyone else revamp the place to be less of a pointless hellhole. As the most obvious example, even if it was a good idea to sentence people to torture and it was a good idea for torturers not to have to physically subdue their sentences there is absolutely no reason for the power to continue work in other contexts. But the entire judgment and sentencing thing is pretty well fucked too. And if people still don't want to hang out here after modifications of that order have been made, we'll take them. We can fix up as many planets as need be to work like Mars does on my world, and funnel everyone who wants out there."

[ending_of]

"Torturers exist because the judges demanded them. Judges exist to sort people to their appropriate side of the cliffs. What are you going to replace judges with, and what annoying demands are those people going to make?"

[autokinetic]

"What," asks Aegis, "is the point of the cliffs supposed to be? This is the sort of thing we'd know if you hadn't interrupted Angela."

[ending_of]

"No, you wouldn't," she says. "At most you might have guessed, but I think you can do that right now."

[jovahs_heiress]

"It can't simply be to make things nicer for the people who your judges think are worth looking after. The only difference to the place that we saw is the plants. And if I had really died and really found myself there, I don't think I'd have woken up to find a place made for my husband, all my friends, even if only on my behalf - it looks like everyone is judged one by one. You're clearly immensely powerful - it would be so simple to make things pleasanter, even only pleasanter for the people you consider it worthwhile to be relatively pleasant to."

[dark_light]

"You're taking notes from somebody, if people are making demands that annoy you. Somebody wanted the cliffs," suggests Amariah. "Sometime. Long ago."

[self_composed]

"Somebody judgmental and dickish," mutters Stella.

[luminous_regnant]

"You didn't have any good ideas for using all the phenomenal cosmic power to arrange things pleasantly for the people with the misfortune to fall under your jurisdiction and you settled for putting the people who might make slightly imperfect neighbors somewhere inaccessible," proposes Golden.

[ending_of]

She nods to Golden.

"The operative distinction isn't how pleasant I want things to be for someone," she says. "It's whether or not they're going to make trouble for the people around them. Upside is full of people who don't, generally, make trouble for each other. Downside is full of people who do."

[self_composed]

"I don't know what magic system you're working with, but it can thwart mine in at least some contests," says Stella, "and mine would do a much better job of that goal. It does, on Mars. People cannot make significant trouble for each other on my Mars. Is it just - clumsy? Not very smart? So you have to rely on judges and cliffs and the like, you can't just ban troublemaking and have done?"

[ending_of]

"I invite you to design a law of physics that bans 'troublemaking'," she says. "I'll wait."

[self_composed]

"It wasn't just one, but Mars omits violence, breaking and entering is materially impossible, anyone who'd rather not deal with anyone else can mutually cease to exist to that person, the bank does not operate in such a way as to permit theft, and the city is set up to make noise complaints and littering and so on a nonissue. I have not been particularly circumspect about who I allow to live there, and there has not been a problem, and if there is, I will patch it."

[ending_of]

"If you ban violence here, Downside will riot insofar as it is possible to riot. There's nothing wrong with my bank. How many people are there on your Mars?"

[self_composed]

"Coming up on twenty million. We could have waited a bit until we had more impressive empires under our collective belt, but this seemed fairly urgent, what with all the torture."

[autokinetic]

"Doesn't a riot without violence add up to... peaceful protest?" says Aegis innocently. "Oh no, the horror, that's much worse than people being tortured?"

[cross_and_bow]

"And it'd only be non-consensual violence we'd cut, anyway, if people want to spar for fun or torture each other for the enjoyment of everyone involved we don't take issue with that sort of thing."

[ending_of]

"Eliminating only non-consensual violence is significantly more complicated with what I have available than you are claiming it would be for you. But it does have the advantage of restricting the immediate widespread unhappiness to people who want to engage in nonconsensual violence."

[dark_light]

"What is it that you have available, exactly?" asks Amariah brightly. "Perhaps we can help."

[ending_of]

She looks thoughtful.

Then she says, "Try this," and imparts to everyone present the ability to understand the prototype that is now represented by a point of greenish-blue light hovering in the exact centre of the room: to be given to everyone who is currently in any part of her domain, the capacity to decide on an individual basis whether or not to be affected by any injury that would otherwise occur, and to set separate preferred defaults for injuries caused by accident, by people in general, or by specific people.

[self_composed]

"Beautiful," says Stella. "It'll piss off your torturers, I imagine - why did you install those? However much complaining there was from the judges?"

[ending_of]

"The judges felt very strongly about it."

She implements the change. The prototype-light reports this fact and then vanishes.

[luminous_regnant]

"Well," says Golden. "I approve. As far as that goes. Have you got opinions either way on letting us siphon off people who can in all but the technical sense return to their lives?"

[ending_of]

She implements another change. This one goes unannounced.

"Siphon away."