Sandbox Discussions

[Kappa]

...I mean, that would still be pretty fucking terrible, because what David Galen wants is widespread civil war on Barrayar and revolution on Komarr. A lot of people would suffer and die over this. If you then resurrected them all, he would feel deeply cheated.

[DanielH]

And you couldn’t appeal to any sort of sense of fairness by killing all Vorkosigans, resurrecting anybody who died in the massacre, waiting an appropriate length of time, and resurrecting all Vorkosigans? That’s not exactly a good solution, but it certainly has a sense of fairness about it.

When I said I’d do something better, I suppose better things do include “kill him for now and resurrect him when a better option presents itself”.

[Aestrix]

David Galen is the sort of person whom I suspect the best solution for is "Kill him, do not resurrect, leave him asleep in stasis in Downside." Because any situation where he doesn't get the awful things he wants he would be upset with and fight, and any situation where he gets what he wants is, by definition, awful and terrible. Lesser of two evils to just kill him and leave him there.

[Kappa]

What Aestrix said. I mean, he'd be pleased about resurrecting the people who died in the massacre, sort of, but basically these are David Galen's win conditions:

1. No remaining Vorkosigans alive or happy.
2. Komarr under independent self-governance and properly grateful about it.
3. Barrayar preferably occupied with ongoing horrible problems of some kind, or maybe just cut off from the wormhole nexus or suffering total societal collapse, but in any case totally powerless to ever retake Komarr even if it wanted to.

[DanielH]

I suspect that he would be ok with Barrayar-the-political-entity having fallen and Komar being self-governing, which will probably happen at some point. Failing that, he can resign himself to not fight the situation anymore if both Barrayar and Komar are uninhabited because their respective stars have died; he might wish he were woken up earlier, but if he awoke from Downside-stasis after a few billion years to two dead stars I doubt he'd do much about the politics.

The problem there is that there would still be alive and happy Vorkosigans after those billions of years. What if you got Elspeth to tell him that the Vorkosigans were innocent, and here's past-sight with which he can check for himself? There is almost certainly some standard of evidence he'd accept, even if that isn't it.

On a mostly unrelated note, it appears that Milo will encounter the Peal before any Miles with that name. Will this cause them to use a different template name than we do?

[Alicorn]

I think Mileses will be swayed by the "league" joke and the announcement that the Nexus instance is the closest available to template.

[Kappa]

The Mileses will go for the "league" joke as soon as it becomes available. XD

I think you overestimate Galen's willingness to accept evidence.

[DanielH]

I did say that might not cut it. Just that when you have a multiverse of magic available, much of it being good for information-gathering, and he is in fact wrong, there’s bound to be something. Or you could strand him in another universe; if he woke up Downside pre-Jane, he seems like he’d be only slightly worse than the average Downsider.

[Lambda]

I think that we encountered a nonrepresentative sample of Downsiders. In particular, disproportionately many of them were torturers or contractors.

[DanielH]

I was taking that into account: if completely unable to affect Komar, Barrayar, or any Vorkosigans*, but able to live a relatively normal life and talk to the dead Komarrans, he shouldn't be that bad.

* Except for the ones who are dead. How far does the guilt-by-association extend? Would he try to harm only tte ones alive at the time, all the Vorkosigans, the family before it became Vor, …? Would he become a torturer just to use Control over them?

EDIT: this has gotten off topic. My point was, there is probably a better long-term option eventually. Similarly, a Chelsea Preserve is a good long-term option for all involved once you get a critical mass oo Chelseas and Aftons. The same solution wouldn't work here, but surely *something* would. It's an unchecked item on the Bell To-Do List, albeit at a lower priority than whateverDownside World #17 happens to be. Bells want to give immortality to everybody, and he is somebody, so they still have work to do.