shiny new world

[mrsparkle]

Sadde's running.

Not for any particular reason, just because it's faster. He's been meaning to go to one of the capitals for a bit and now, he supposes, is as good a time as any.

And eventually he's not running anymore, because he's close enough to civilisation that someone might spot him. Not that he wouldn't be able to notice them by scent before they saw him, but still. And as he makes his way to the Norway capital at this more leisurely pace, he notices the tiny, shiny key. He walks towards it and picks it up and immediately notices just how magic it is. He can tell by the way the key feels like things, and different things depending on where it is.

He verifies that what the key feels like is consistent in absolute location by waving it around a bit and seeing that the same place always feels the same. "Huh," he murmurs to himself.

He straightens up and thinks. The first obvious thing to try is seeing whether it opens any doors - a universal skeleton key sounds like the kind of thing a magical key could be - but the second obvious thing can be tested right there and then. He pushes the key into thin air with some purpose, as if he wanted to unlock an invisible door, and then turns it, et voilà, the faintest of door-shaped outlines appears before him.

He locks the door, and it disappears. Unlocks it again, and there it is. So he pulls it open and sees-

Comments

[mssparkle]

"Can you make new ones attached to, I don't know, a circulatory system or something that will keep them alive for long enough for the venom to turn them? They should have my DNA for me to be able to properly attach them to myself but- I should probably just try making my own before anything."

[from_scratch]

"I could attach them to a basement-dweller of you..."

[mssparkle]

"Attach them to a what now?"

[from_scratch]

"Oh, uh, demons can't make minds but we can make bodies. Result is kind of creepy, so if that's the sort of thing you have lying around you keep them in the basement if guests come over."

[mssparkle]

"Okay one, that sounds useful for this particular problem, but two, why can you not make minds?"

[from_scratch]

"No idea, just seems to be a hard magical limit, but I'm kind of glad we can't, can you imagine? Right now the equilibrium in Hell is that everyone is indestructible and has fantastic magical powers and can instantly replace anything of theirs you destroy. Imagine if anybody who felt like it could make an army of second-class citizens."

[mssparkle]

"Well, but, suppose you actually specify a brain in all its details, down to the cellular level, or maybe even molecular if that's necessary. Would that fail to have a mind?"

[from_scratch]

"There are no detectable flaws in the copy when we copy a human brain. We just get a basement dweller. It affects animals too, anything smarter than like a snail will be pretty clearly stupider than it's supposed to be. And fortunately at least in humans there's enough mind/body interaction that we also can't get female basement dwellers to carry to term and get Hell-dwelling humans that way, although we can get, like, cats, so there are cats."

[mssparkle]

"Hmm, I'd suggest something relating to souls but if even cats have basement-dweller problems... Do cats go to Limbo?"

[from_scratch]

"Not usually. When a person goes to Limbo, they get approximately their favorite thing, and that's sometimes a pet. Those have roughly normal intelligence for the species, it seems to these people like the pet has continuity with the live version if applicable, and they get indestructibility too - stuff in Limbo in general does in a kind of cool way, like, if your Limbo thing is a house you can give away everything in your fridge and find bacon there the next morning, run the water constantly with no real plumbing, etcetera."

[mssparkle]

"Hmm, can you make quantum computers? Can you copy quantum information?"

[from_scratch]

"Uh, our computer science didn't wind up going that direction to any significant degree..."

[mssparkle]

"When I'm from they're mostly speculative too, but there's people who think brains might be quantum computers and there's a theorem called the no-cloning theorem which says you can't create a device that can copy arbitrary quantum information."

[from_scratch]

"I suppose that could be it."

[mssparkle]

"I'd definitely want to tell a physicist about it."

[from_scratch]

"Once you have cannibalized a set of wings from a basement dweller of yourself you will be able to pass well enough to go visit demon physicists. I'd be surprised if the idea were completely novel to the world but I haven't studied that kinda thing very much so far."

[mssparkle]

"Fair. What have you studied?"

[from_scratch]

"I have my medical and engineering quals up to the highest levels available in organized demonic education, and I play the violin, and I have learned several languages the long way, and I can program, and I keep up with media, mostly human some demon smatterings of angel and fairy and Limboite."

[mssparkle]

"It's kinda weird that your universe's afterlife isn't actually an afterlife and just happens to sometimes collect dead humans and also has its own functioning society and such."

[from_scratch]

"I mean, Limbo only collects dead humans and it has a society too. You show up in Limbo and you have to learn the local weird pidgin language and learn how you're supposed to get water and, if available, food rations."

[mssparkle]

"Yes, that is weird as well. And it's even weirder that there are only humans, does that mean your entire universe is devoid of other sapient life?"

[from_scratch]

"Not necessarily. But if there are aliens, then they either don't go to limbo or the daeva realms, or they do it so unfathomably far away that we haven't run into 'em here nor there."

[mssparkle]

"Huh, yeah that's actually pretty reasonable, if all of those universes are infinite."

[from_scratch]

"They seem to be."

[mssparkle]

"Mmhm. Well anyway, how about that basement-dweller pair of wings?"