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

[ending_of]

"In what way is that your business?"

[luminous_regnant]

"We are a curious people," says Golden dryly. "Do you have any objection to our setting up various structures hither and thither to make siphoning go more smoothly?"

[ending_of]

She frowns.

"Tell me more."

[cross_and_bow]

"The population here has got to be outrageous. Even if fewer than one percent died recently enough in their worlds' timelines - which don't necessarily match up with the local timeline; Shell Bell spent about seventy years here before returning to her home world and finding that only a few months had gone by - that's going to be a lot of folks. We'll want an equivalent of the Crescent for it, and a computer system installed in it to handle transit so we're not just eternally propping open one bottlenecked door to Milliways."

[autokinetic]

"How many worlds does this place hook up to, seventy-three? The first representative from each one we don't have tapped yet will need to go through Milliways to show one of us the place, but that's only a few dozen trips, we can leave Template here to do it maybe since she doesn't have an empire yet."

"Sure," says Template, "I don't even know how long ago I died, back home - I do want to go back, but a couple weeks won't make a difference."

[jovahs_heiress]

"And something to handle people who need to be special-processed because something about the way they died left them duplicated. I don't know how relatively common that will be, but at least some worlds have it as a recurring issue," says Angela.

[cross_and_bow]

"Yeah," shudders Juliet, "I wonder if we can set up something automatic - it's an evil to merge one, but maybe an arrow to set up a permanent fix for it? Will that allow custom parameters? Can Jane make wishes?"

[autokinetic]

"Unclear." Aegis touches a triangle on her bandolier. "Not through me, anyway, we could try putting coins in the server room in the new Belltower."

[luminous_regnant]

"We'll need to send people with anyone who's going as part of a first resurrection wave into a world that isn't operated by one of us. Before we disband I want Elspeth linked up and summarized for; she can insta-train anyone with the processing power to handle the pour. I can supply at least many of the necessary personnel."

[dark_light]

"As long as we throw enough hardware at Jane she should be able to administer everyday issues, but there ought to be an appeals system so people can get in touch with one of us if they need to."

[ending_of]

"I can solve the duplication problem," she says. "There are seventy-four worlds represented in the queue, and occasionally a new one arrives. I can also make you a building. Describe your requirements."

[self_composed]

"...Er, how will you solve the duplication problem? Because sometimes the duplication problem is 'the one who's in their original world is a horrendous mockery of their original self', not 'there's two and we can solve this by getting rid of one'."

[jovahs_heiress]

"The building will have to be big. Probably bigger than the Crescent. Virtually everyone goes through the Crescent, but in order to give everyone the best chance of going home, everyone will go through our building much faster."

[dark_light]

"We can edit the details on the fly as we see how things unfold. 'Big' is the basic requirement," agrees Amariah. "If we can empty the catacombs in - what's reasonable - a year? - then we'd like to do that. They're just waiting to be judged, aren't they, that's the point of having them asleep?"

[ending_of]

"...A year is not a reasonable time to empty the catacombs in."

She looks at Stella.

"Do you mean her body's second occupant?" she asks, indicating Juliet. "That's not duplication. They're distinct people."

[cross_and_bow]

"Oh god does she still exist I tried to banish her from existence I didn't even just kill her," exclaims Juliet.

[ending_of]

"Nothing from any of the worlds that funnel here can be destroyed past reclaiming," she says. "I have her in a kind of storage, not physically instantiated like the queue in the catacombs."

[cross_and_bow]

"Is that what you do with all the vampires like that kind?" asks Juliet. "Can they just - stay there till we think of something?"

[ending_of]

"They already are."

[cross_and_bow]

"Okay. Good. Eugh."

[luminous_regnant]

"What," inquires Golden, "is the population of the catacombs?"

[ending_of]

"Steadily increasing, ballpark of ten trillion."

[self_composed]

"Twenty-seven million and change per day for a year - I dunno, we'd have to throw a lot of hardware at Jane but the hardware doesn't even all have to be magic besides whatever sensory equipment we give her to tell where people are from and such, we can do huge amounts of it with just squares and more with pentagons. I bet it's doable in a year, at least optimistically barring catastrophe," says Stella. "We'd automate a lot, there might be stragglers who have special cases of some kind, most people won't be possible to send home at all because it'll have been too long since they died and they'll just be in and out without the step where someone evaluates their deeds and determines how many hours of agony matches up to putting a city on the moon. If Jane looks at twenty thousand people per minute - okay, maybe we aren't looking at so much a Jane building as a Jane town, but the limiting factor isn't Jane here."

[autokinetic]

"Jane's awesome," says Aegis.

[luminous_regnant]

"It is not," says Golden dryly, "as though anyone involved requires sleep. Perhaps a year is too quick - we will not go at a rate of twenty thousand per minute for the first week, perhaps the first month, and it may be that fewer things fall into understood patterns than we think or that it is harder to fold the dead into the worlds of the live than we hope - and we should prioritize the awake people, who are doubtless trillions more on top of the sleeping ten - but two years, or five, yes, I think so."