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Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by Astelon   » Fri Mar 15, 2019 9:49 pm

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but we know the Gbaba have their own domain they don't venture out of unless disturbed, and they don't seem to be especially concerned about what's beyond it save whether it contains a potential threat.


We don't actually know this, we know almost nothing of the Gbaba's preferred practices. In fact all we know is that they have frozen their technology. They could be sitting in their own territory fat and happy until they detect signals from intelligent life, or they could be sending scouts to find intelligent life. Either way they attack when it is found.

I doubt that implants are what the Gbaba did or could detect. They probably detected FTL communications, or ships traversing hyperspace.
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by DMcCunney   » Fri Mar 15, 2019 9:56 pm

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Kizarvexis wrote:What I was asking was, did Langhorne & company hide the wetware of the 8M colonists before the Day of Creation, so that Pasquale healers would not necessarily find it?
No. Why would they need to?
And once the colonists were reprogrammed, why not remove the wetware, so that the reprogramming would not be reversed? If the wetware was removed, then it would have been a fait accompli to the CoGA memories as no one else would be able to put it back without Langhorne and company knowing.
You couldn't simply just reverse the reprogramming.

Suppressing the colonist's original memories and adding desired ones as an overlay did not actually delete the original memories, but it was mentioned elsewhere that restoring the original memories would require access to a recording of the person's personality, or years working with regressive hypnosis. Otherwise, you would get a mix of real and false memories with no way for the affected individual to know which was which. Bedard apparently never bothered to store the colonist's original memories before she reprogrammed them. What Shan Wei did was effectively what Bedard did - add a new set of overlay memories that gave those she treated knowledge of where they really came from and what they really were. She could not restore their memories of who they had been back on Earth.
And we do have an idea how obvious it was from this in TFT.

TFTHardbackPg156 wrote:None of the circle's organic members could match that capability (PICA internal coms), because none of them had the "wetware" implants which had been standard for citizens of the Terran Federation. They could have had them, but any Safeholdian healer who saw them would instantly recognize them as neither natural nor explicable. Undoubtedly, they'd be put down as the work of more than mortal hands, and that was something none of them could risk when the jury about whether or not they really did worship Shan-wei, not God, was still out in so many Safeholdian minds.
There's obvious and there's obvious. I doubt the TF neural implants were obvious in the sense of clearly visible in daily life. They might be concealed by clothes.

Close examination by a medical professional would of course reveal them.

I know that everyone knew who the Adams and Eves were. They ere the adults and elders for everyone else after all. And since Safehold started off with 8M colonists, it seems that covering the wetware in the Book of Pasquale would be much easier than telling the thousands to hundreds of thousands of physicians individually, "oh, don't worry about that weird stuff in Adams and Eves as it is a natural thing for them". It could be an oral tradition, but with how oral traditions can be corrupted, it seems detailing it in the Book of Pasquale would be much safer and easier. Of course, from the quote from the book above, if the wetware was covered in the Book of Pasquale, then you would think that Merlin would have mentioned it.
Why would an Adam or Eve need to consult a Pasqualate?

Remember, they have standard TF medical nanotech like the stuff Merlin injects the IC with. They won't get sick. If they need medical attention, it's because they were injured.

But the Angels and Archangels are still alive and active on Safehold, and many still will be as long as the Adams and Eves are alive. The Adams and Eves all had base antigerone therapy, and I believe there's a FAQ entry that gives them an average lifespan after being awakened on Safehold of at least 120 years. The command crew have access to antigerone booster shots and will be around longer.

It's a safe bet an Adam or Eve needing serious medical attention will get it from an Angel, not a Pasqualate. (And that may just be "Take the injured party back to Zion and put them in a med unit", like the one in Nimue's cave.)
I don't think Chihiro claimed that. Those in the Alexandria Enclave drew the short straw by virtue of association with Shan Wei.
That's why I put it as an hypothetical. The Book of Chihiro had the history of Safehold after all. But on further reflection of the quote from TFT I did above, this seems a lot less likely. I was thinking it would be an additional reason for the Inner Circle to hide the wetware, but if that was the case, you would think that Merlin would have mentioned it in the quote above.
The reason for the IC to hide the wetware was simply that it would be something that should not be there. Any normal Safeholdian seeing it wouldn't know what it was but would know it shouldn't be there, and start asking questions the IC can't answer.

But it raises an interesting question. The TF neural implants are hardware, and a physical network port that can be plugged into. The organic wetware Owl comes up with uses a form of wireless transmission with no betraying surface hardware. Hard wired ports tend to have higher bandwidth that wireless ports. This may be significant at some point.
______
Dennis
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by Kizarvexis   » Fri Mar 15, 2019 10:44 pm

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DMcCunney wrote:
Kizarvexis wrote:What I was asking was, did Langhorne & company hide the wetware of the 8M colonists before the Day of Creation, so that Pasquale healers would not necessarily find it?
No. Why would they need to?


Because I'm sure out of 8M Adams and Eves some were hurt bad enough to reveal the wetware. Or needed an autopsy because of wondering about how one died, from non-apparent internal injuries for example. Yes, they do not get sick, but a muscle powered society is a dangerous place. If you don't put something into the Book of Pasquale to explain the wetware to the thousands (or after a few decades, hundreds of thousands of healers), it would be a huge waste of valuable time telling each one, as at least some of those healers can very likely run into the wetware from 8 MILLION Adams and Eves. Not to mention, but the Book of Pasquale is how healers were trained. I'm sure basic first aid is covered for anyone to use in the book.


DMcCunney wrote:
And once the colonists were reprogrammed, why not remove the wetware, so that the reprogramming would not be reversed? If the wetware was removed, then it would have been a fait accompli to the CoGA memories as no one else would be able to put it back without Langhorne and company knowing.


You couldn't simply just reverse the reprogramming.

Suppressing the colonist's original memories and adding desired ones as an overlay did not actually delete the original memories, but it was mentioned elsewhere that restoring the original memories would require access to a recording of the person's personality, or years working with regressive hypnosis. Otherwise, you would get a mix of real and false memories with no way for the affected individual to know which was which. Bedard apparently never bothered to store the colonist's original memories before she reprogrammed them. What Shan Wei did was effectively what Bedard did - add a new set of overlay memories that gave those she treated knowledge of where they really came from and what they really were. She could not restore their memories of who they had been back on Earth.


Reversing was probably a poor choice for that. You wouldn't necessarily put back the original memories, but add new ones telling what really happened. I guess I wasn't clear enough.


DMcCunney wrote:
And we do have an idea how obvious it was from this in TFT.

There's obvious and there's obvious. I doubt the TF neural implants were obvious in the sense of clearly visible in daily life. They might be concealed by clothes.

Close examination by a medical professional would of course reveal them.


Well I did quote a second paragraph from TFT that mentioned cosmetic covering, but it still would be glaringly obvious to healers, yes. Or if an injury revealed the wetware to a healer. Heck, even descriptions of wetware by a witness to a healer could be a problem.

DMcCunney wrote:
I know that everyone knew who the Adams and Eves were. They ere the adults and elders for everyone else after all. And since Safehold started off with 8M colonists, it seems that covering the wetware in the Book of Pasquale would be much easier than telling the thousands to hundreds of thousands of physicians individually, "oh, don't worry about that weird stuff in Adams and Eves as it is a natural thing for them". It could be an oral tradition, but with how oral traditions can be corrupted, it seems detailing it in the Book of Pasquale would be much safer and easier. Of course, from the quote from the book above, if the wetware was covered in the Book of Pasquale, then you would think that Merlin would have mentioned it.


Why would an Adam or Eve need to consult a Pasqualate?

Remember, they have standard TF medical nanotech like the stuff Merlin injects the IC with. They won't get sick. If they need medical attention, it's because they were injured.

But the Angels and Archangels are still alive and active on Safehold, and many still will be as long as the Adams and Eves are alive. The Adams and Eves all had base antigerone therapy, and I believe there's a FAQ entry that gives them an average lifespan after being awakened on Safehold of at least 120 years. The command crew have access to antigerone booster shots and will be around longer.

It's a safe bet an Adam or Eve needing serious medical attention will get it from an Angel, not a Pasqualate. (And that may just be "Take the injured party back to Zion and put them in a med unit", like the one in Nimue's cave.)


I mentioned earlier about injury or autopsy. The Adams and Eves were scattered across the planet. I'm sure if one was hurt bad enough, a healer could reach them before the angels could and reveal the wetware. Or if one died mysteriously, internal injury that was not obvious, a healer might investigate before an Angel got there.


DMcCunney wrote:
That's why I put it as an hypothetical. The Book of Chihiro had the history of Safehold after all. But on further reflection of the quote from TFT I did above, this seems a lot less likely. I was thinking it would be an additional reason for the Inner Circle to hide the wetware, but if that was the case, you would think that Merlin would have mentioned it in the quote above.


The reason for the IC to hide the wetware was simply that it would be something that should not be there. Any normal Safeholdian seeing it wouldn't know what it was but would know it shouldn't be there, and start asking questions the IC can't answer.

But it raises an interesting question. The TF neural implants are hardware, and a physical network port that can be plugged into. The organic wetware Owl comes up with uses a form of wireless transmission with no betraying surface hardware. Hard wired ports tend to have higher bandwidth that wireless ports. This may be significant at some point.
______
Dennis


Yes, I know that the wetware needs to be hidden because it is not something that should be there. That's why I said an additional reason to hide it. The book explictly states that the wetware is obviously not natural. But if there is info about Adams and Eves having wetware, in the Book of Pasquale and/or in the Testimonies, then that could be a way to show modern Safeholders being touched by God as well. Unless, there is also info about Shan-wei being able to put in those 'holy' items to her minions. She was fascinated by technology if I remember correctly what the Writ said about her fall.

Wired vs wireless could very well come up, yes.
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by FriarBob   » Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:52 pm

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Kizarvexis wrote:I mentioned earlier about injury or autopsy. The Adams and Eves were scattered across the planet. I'm sure if one was hurt bad enough, a healer could reach them before the angels could and reveal the wetware. Or if one died mysteriously, internal injury that was not obvious, a healer might investigate before an Angel got there.


It's unlikely there is any textev to prove it, but it seems likely that the Adams and Eves had to know those ports were there. We know they had cosmetic coverings, but that nobody worried about "hiding" them in the Federation. To me this suggests they weren't "huge" and not "glaringly obvious", but neither were they so tiny they could be overlooked as easily as falling off a log.

And even with the original Operation Ark plan of going non-technical (much less the bastardized version they ended up with), the people almost certainly wouldn't have known what they were. And if they were not invisible then these Adams and Eves would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to find them. If not from simple self-examination then in the course of being a husband or a wife.

So the question to me is not if they were hidden. They almost certainly weren't. True they also probably didn't glitter with internal lights or LEDs or the like either, or the brainwashed farmers would have asked too many questions about how weird they were. Perhaps they had been deactivated to NOT give off light? Possible. But otherwise they probably never did at all.

To me the correct question is how were they explained away. My guess here is these were explained as the mark of a true Adam or a true Eve. Some sort of gift to mark them until death as one of that blessed first generation, or somesuch similar tripe.

And with that simple and benign explanation likely no one thought twice about them again.


Kizarvexis wrote:Yes, I know that the wetware needs to be hidden because it is not something that should be there. That's why I said an additional reason to hide it. The book explicitly states that the wetware is obviously not natural. But if there is info about Adams and Eves having wetware, in the Book of Pasquale and/or in the Testimonies, then that could be a way to show modern Safeholders being touched by God as well. Unless, there is also info about Shan-wei being able to put in those 'holy' items to her minions. She was fascinated by technology if I remember correctly what the Writ said about her fall.


And this also fits with 'explained away'. And if explained away in the fashion I am guessing, it would be an 'obvious fraud' for Cayleb or Sharleyan or others to have it. Which would then appear to be a gift of Shan-Wei or the like.

But I don't remember her being described as being fascinated by technology, in part because I don't think the word technology is ever used in the Writ (or at least not in any quote yet given from it). She was described as 'the bright one who fell' but "bright" doesn't have to mean technologically-savvy. It doesn't even have to mean smart, that is very much the common usage but not the only one. And in this case it may be nothing more than a blatant parallel to the Biblical account of Lucifer.
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by Keith_w   » Sun Mar 17, 2019 8:19 am

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I was under the impression that the NEAT devices were internal to the user, probably directly connected to the learning centers of the brain and used by induction as Nahrman's personality extraction was.
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by DMcCunney   » Sun Mar 17, 2019 12:35 pm

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Kizarvexis wrote:quote="DMcCunney"]
Kizarvexis wrote:What I was asking was, did Langhorne & company hide the wetware of the 8M colonists before the Day of Creation, so that Pasquale healers would not necessarily find it?
I think you Are looking for solutions for something that is not a problem.

We agree the need for an Adam or Eve to consult a Pasqualate would be in the case of physical injury. And for minor physical injuries a Pasqualate would do fine. Serious problems they would have difficulty with would almost certainly be passed along to an Angel, because they were Adams and Eves. The Adams and Eves would all be in one of the original enclaves, and we can assume fairly regular angelic presence there.

But I don't see any reason for an explicit mention in the Book of Pasquale. After all, that's intended to be the standard medical text for Safehold for all time, but the Adams and Eves will be a temporary problem that will cease to exist when the last of them are dead. Why have a mention that will be meaningless to a Pasqualate down the road who will never see what is referred to?

I think it far more likely the Angels would simply explain to those alive at the time that the implants were a sign that they were created directly by God through the Archangel Langhorne, and not something a healer need be concerned with, because everything they would do would still be the same.
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Dennis
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by Kizarvexis   » Sun Mar 17, 2019 1:41 pm

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FriarBob wrote:
Kizarvexis wrote:I mentioned earlier about injury or autopsy. The Adams and Eves were scattered across the planet. I'm sure if one was hurt bad enough, a healer could reach them before the angels could and reveal the wetware. Or if one died mysteriously, internal injury that was not obvious, a healer might investigate before an Angel got there.


It's unlikely there is any textev to prove it, but it seems likely that the Adams and Eves had to know those ports were there. We know they had cosmetic coverings, but that nobody worried about "hiding" them in the Federation. To me this suggests they weren't "huge" and not "glaringly obvious", but neither were they so tiny they could be overlooked as easily as falling off a log.

And even with the original Operation Ark plan of going non-technical (much less the bastardized version they ended up with), the people almost certainly wouldn't have known what they were. And if they were not invisible then these Adams and Eves would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to find them. If not from simple self-examination then in the course of being a husband or a wife.

So the question to me is not if they were hidden. They almost certainly weren't. True they also probably didn't glitter with internal lights or LEDs or the like either, or the brainwashed farmers would have asked too many questions about how weird they were. Perhaps they had been deactivated to NOT give off light? Possible. But otherwise they probably never did at all.

To me the correct question is how were they explained away. My guess here is these were explained as the mark of a true Adam or a true Eve. Some sort of gift to mark them until death as one of that blessed first generation, or somesuch similar tripe.

And with that simple and benign explanation likely no one thought twice about them again.


I didn't ponder that, but yeah, the Adams and Eves would have definitly known about the wetware. Just seems to be an additional reason for it to be mentioned in the Book of Pasquale.


FriarBob wrote:
Kizarvexis wrote:Yes, I know that the wetware needs to be hidden because it is not something that should be there. That's why I said an additional reason to hide it. The book explicitly states that the wetware is obviously not natural. But if there is info about Adams and Eves having wetware, in the Book of Pasquale and/or in the Testimonies, then that could be a way to show modern Safeholders being touched by God as well. Unless, there is also info about Shan-wei being able to put in those 'holy' items to her minions. She was fascinated by technology if I remember correctly what the Writ said about her fall.


And this also fits with 'explained away'. And if explained away in the fashion I am guessing, it would be an 'obvious fraud' for Cayleb or Sharleyan or others to have it. Which would then appear to be a gift of Shan-Wei or the like.

But I don't remember her being described as being fascinated by technology, in part because I don't think the word technology is ever used in the Writ (or at least not in any quote yet given from it). She was described as 'the bright one who fell' but "bright" doesn't have to mean technologically-savvy. It doesn't even have to mean smart, that is very much the common usage but not the only one. And in this case it may be nothing more than a blatant parallel to the Biblical account of Lucifer.


Yeah, I went back and looked at when Nimue first woke up and Shan-wei was described as the assistant who helped Langhorne. Probably I thought that from the Inquistions thinking of the new tech as from Shan-wei.



DMcCunney wrote:
Kizarvexis wrote:What I was asking was, did Langhorne & company hide the wetware of the 8M colonists before the Day of Creation, so that Pasquale healers would not necessarily find it?

I think you Are looking for solutions for something that is not a problem.

We agree the need for an Adam or Eve to consult a Pasqualate would be in the case of physical injury. And for minor physical injuries a Pasqualate would do fine. Serious problems they would have difficulty with would almost certainly be passed along to an Angel, because they were Adams and Eves. The Adams and Eves would all be in one of the original enclaves, and we can assume fairly regular angelic presence there.

But I don't see any reason for an explicit mention in the Book of Pasquale. After all, that's intended to be the standard medical text for Safehold for all time, but the Adams and Eves will be a temporary problem that will cease to exist when the last of them are dead. Why have a mention that will be meaningless to a Pasqualate down the road who will never see what is referred to?

I think it far more likely the Angels would simply explain to those alive at the time that the implants were a sign that they were created directly by God through the Archangel Langhorne, and not something a healer need be concerned with, because everything they would do would still be the same.
______
Dennis



As FriarBob noted, the Adams and Eves would surely know about their own wetware. And in a muscle powered society, it is certainly easy for someone to get hurt enough to reveal the wetware, whether an Archangel heals them later or not.

Over a century is hardly a temporary problem. Nimue/Merlin first postulated (OAR) that the Adams and Eves would have at least 120 years of life on Safehold. So 12 decades hardly seems to be a 'temporary' problem where you would just leave out a description of it. Especially when the Adams and Eves will live out into multiple generations.

There very well could be descriptions of the wetware in the Book of Pasquale, I just think that it would have been brought up when Merlin is 'remembering' about Owl's solution to the wetware problem. It could be as simple as RFC had to cut some text for publishing reasons and that was something that could be cut without impacting the larger story.
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by phillies   » Sun Mar 17, 2019 2:24 pm

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Astelon wrote:
but we know the Gbaba have their own domain they don't venture out of unless disturbed, and they don't seem to be especially concerned about what's beyond it save whether it contains a potential threat.


We don't actually know this, we know almost nothing of the Gbaba's preferred practices. In fact all we know is that they have frozen their technology. They could be sitting in their own territory fat and happy until they detect signals from intelligent life, or they could be sending scouts to find intelligent life. Either way they attack when it is found.

I doubt that implants are what the Gbaba did or could detect. They probably detected FTL communications, or ships traversing hyperspace.


What we know is that when they mobilize they follow first-in-first out in calling up warships. Their tech is good enough that a ship can sit for thousands of years and not age. The equivalent in the US would be 'The Japanese have bombed Paerl Harbor' the responder being 'USS Constitution...mobilizing' . 'Old Union Steam Navy...mobilizing' 'Teddy Roosevelt's White Fleet...mobilizing' Did they actually freeze, or was the Federation eventually going to get another unpleasant surprise? The latter, of course, goves more and more interesting books.

Alternatively, the price needed to beat the Human Federation may have jolted them out of deep sleep.
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by DMcCunney   » Sun Mar 17, 2019 9:19 pm

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Kizarvexis wrote:As FriarBob noted, the Adams and Eves would surely know about their own wetware. And in a muscle powered society, it is certainly easy for someone to get hurt enough to reveal the wetware, whether an Archangel heals them later or not.
I believe I made a similar point.
Over a century is hardly a temporary problem. Nimue/Merlin first postulated (OAR) that the Adams and Eves would have at least 120 years of life on Safehold. So 12 decades hardly seems to be a 'temporary' problem where you would just leave out a description of it. Especially when the Adams and Eves will live out into multiple generations.
It certainly is a temporary problem.

Antigerone treatments in the Safehold universe appear to work similarly to Prolong in the Honorverse. There is a beginning treatment giving a longer base lifespan, and booster shots that improve upon that.

The Adams and Eves had all received the beginning treatment, which was described elsewhere as providing a lifespan of 200-250 Earth years. The colonists spent 40 years in cryo after arriving at Safehold while the command crew terraformed the planet sufficiently for the colonists to survive and multiply. The average lifespan after they were awakened was estimated at 120 years.

The command crew got the booster shots, and would live longer. At least some Angels would still be around after all the Adams and Eves had died. The problem you see only becomes a problem if no Archangels or Angels are still alive to explain it away. Since some still would be...
There very well could be descriptions of the wetware in the Book of Pasquale, I just think that it would have been brought up when Merlin is 'remembering' about Owl's solution to the wetware problem. It could be as simple as RFC had to cut some text for publishing reasons and that was something that could be cut without impacting the larger story.
Given the above, I see no need for a mention in the Book of Pasquale. Like I said, why have an entry describing something no Pasqualate would ever see after the Adams and Eves died? At least some Angels would outlive the Adams and Eves and be available to explain it to the early Pasqualates. Those following wouldn't need it.
______
Dennis
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Re: Series Re-read (sleuthing attempt #3)
Post by Kizarvexis   » Sun Mar 17, 2019 10:53 pm

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DMcCunney wrote:Given the above, I see no need for a mention in the Book of Pasquale. Like I said, why have an entry describing something no Pasqualate would ever see after the Adams and Eves died? At least some Angels would outlive the Adams and Eves and be available to explain it to the early Pasqualates. Those following wouldn't need it.
______
Dennis


Guess we will have to agree to disagree.

Keith_w wrote:I was under the impression that the NEAT devices were internal to the user, probably directly connected to the learning centers of the brain and used by induction as Nahrman's personality extraction was.


The wetware connects to the neural tissue, so there will be wires inside at the minimum. Probably gold as it won't react too much with tissue. Evidently, there were ports for a wired connection that could be cosmetically hidden. Probably some power source that could be wirelessly charged if the motions of the person can't charge it.

Merlin did say that Nahrman's personality extraction was a jury-rigged affair and that is why some of Nahrman was lost.
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