DMcCunney wrote:Bluesqueak wrote:It just occurred to me that while Merlin goes safely into the Temple without any problems, he shouldn't have. Because we have, I'm told, word from Himself that Chihiro's side had no PICA's.
Correct. We know Merlin and Nimue are the only PICAs on Safehold, and whatever is tucked away under the Temple doesn't include any.
Now, if Chihiro is fighting against the Fallen, who are Fallen because they use tech, and an android or PICA walks into the Temple (sounds like the start of a series of jokes) ...
...every alarm in the place should have gone off, especially if you know your side doesn't have any. A basic robot android, built to look like one of the Angels but with a bomb inside, could do a lot of damage.
What Merlin is concerned about is
use of technology in the Temple. Which is why he grits his teeth and shuts down everything internal he can, and relies solely on passive sensors. Even then, he discovers there is more tucked away in the Temple than he thought, though he can't try to find out what it all is without taking the risk of going active.
So, looking at the clues in the books - Merlin's SNARCS can investigate the orbital platforms without them blowing the place up. Steam power is 'under the radar', even though it's an obvious industrial revolution marker. Pytyr Wyllsyn's truth detector can tell Merlin is a PICA , but seemingly doesn't care. Merlin can walk into the Temple.
I don't think it's a question of being able to tell Merlin is a PICA. It's a question of being able to tell Merlin is
lying, even
though he's a PICA.
I don't see the verifier built into the Stone as having a specific "Hey! this is a PICA!" warning built in. The TF folks who built it wouldn't see a need. If you had to question someone using the verifier, you already
knew they were a PICA. A physical exam would tell you that.
But there's now too many times when COGA tech should have detected Merlin - and instead goes 'nothing to see here, perfectly ordinary technical demon looking like a human being, move along please.' No, I think someone on the COGA side knew - and made sure a PICA would not set off any alarms.
I don't see the Temple having specific PICA detector alarms. Why would it? As far as Chihiro and associates knew, there were no PICAs on Safehold, so why worry about detecting them?
I asked RFC about that at a con, saying "If I'm Chihiro, I might record my personality as I reached the end of my normal life, have it downloaded to a PICA, and return in glory to Safehold in a potentially immortal body and rule it forever." RFC said if he
could do that, Chihiro wouldn't have waited. He'd have done it right away. He would even have a cover story - his new, improved, non-aging body was his penance for not stopping Shan Wei, and instead of returning to Heaven to be with God like the rest of the Archangels, he was exiled to Safehold to atone for his failure. But RFC did state Merlin and Nimue were the
only PICAs on Safehold.
That opens the question of
why they were. PICAs would certainly have been useful to Chihiro and associates during the War Against the Fallen. And actually making them would have been well within the capabilities of the fabrication units aboard Hamilcar.
My belief is that they weren't made by the command crew because plans for them were not included in the information store provided to Operation Ark. You can't tell a fabrication unit to make something you don't have plans for. Owl could reverse engineer Merlin's PICA to learn how to make another. The command crew did not have that resource.
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Dennis