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She is humming, softly, and swaying, slightly, as she scribbles in her notebook, just aimless brainstorming that circles back to the same points oftener than not. Either way, she isn't paying much attention to her surroundings, even as the door closes behind her, and almost bumps into a table that wasn't supposed to be there before she looks up.
Christina Theodora and warlock Bruce
terra-forever
They certainly look a lot chiller than even the least frightening angels he's seen in pictures, but on the other hand they're not pictures, they're right actually there. Bruce gets up, aware that he's making either the best or the worst decision of his life (or was that when he entered the bar?) and opens the door.
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
She strides forth.
Hello, she prays, and sings in the inaudible tongue of the angels, I would like to speak with you.
no-others-before-me
She gets a response; not in a language, in direct concepts-only telepathy.
WHAT ARE YOU
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
She does not resort to words either, offering up her identity and the nature of her world and her God and Milliways and how she met someone from this world and was exceedingly curious.
no-others-before-me
This gets a noticeable pause.
But does she acknowledge him as the LORD of all that is, that's really the important question here.
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
Well, like, probably, but she wants to make sure she's fully informed about the situation before committing.
no-others-before-me
Hell is where all beings tainted by sin are naturally destined for! Here's a very vivid and detailed vision of the place, gratis. It's mostly a lot of people being various forms of on fire and screaming about it!
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
Ah. Good to know.
She ducks back inside Milliways and motions for Bruce to close the door.
terra-forever
Bruce shuts it immediately and relaxes a bit, though he's still pretty tense. "Is everything okay--well, not okay, but."
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
"Your God does, in fact, think torturing people forever is a good idea. We're gonna have to fight him."
terra-forever
The only reason Bruce doesn't start leaning against the door like something is going to try to get in is that he was already doing it. He makes several sounds that are probably the beginnings of words, then says "I agree on the goal there but frankly I am both useless and terrified."
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
"Being afraid makes sense. I'm kinda scared and I'm, you know, Jesus-y."
terra-forever
Her being scared too kind of doesn't help, but it's good that She understands why he's scared. "At least time is paused? We can plan and stuff."
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
"Yeah...hmmm...it would be nice if we had any known limits on his abilities."
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
"Excellent."
She asks Bar for any books written in Bruce's dimension that might be useful for figuring out his world's God's limitations.
The single book with the largest quantity of relevant content is the Bible, but there are also a handful of things written by demons on how to operate unnoticed on Earth, plus one treatise that was technically made publicly available before all extant copies, the theologian who wrote it, and said theologian's house were destroyed in a spontaneous fire. (Most governments banned all of his earlier publications after that, just to be on the safe side, but Bar only cares that something was published at some point.)
the-profoundest-act-of-worship
"Fuckin' me," she mutters under her breath at this anecdote.
If she hands out various copies of the Bible to the angels she has in here and splits the treatise and the demonic texts between her and Bruce, they can get through it reasonably quickly. What's the verdict?
From the Bible, they learn that either God can neither teleport people nor reliably predict the outcomes of His actions, or He really likes sending ineffective plagues on the Egyptians.
The theological treatise looks, at first glance, to be surprisingly benign for something that got its author killed. It's a rather abstruse document on how Heaven, being a realm of Spirit distinct from matter, must have different properties of space and time, with some speculation on what those properties are. For instance, Heaven and Hell as seen in prophecy both have a top and a bottom, and the treatise suggests that the local equivalent of gravity points in a single direction everywhere rather than toward masses. Furthermore, since Heaven and Hell are perfect opposites, they must have opposite directionality, such that objects in Hell fall towards objective cosmic up.
The demon books put the treatise into some very valuable context. Apparently a handful of demons took an interest in interplanar physics after seeing a piece of Heaven torn off and turned into Hell, and they theorize that that event may have caused lingering instability. This has a couple of consequences. For one thing, the bottom edge of Heaven is "adjacent" in higer-dimensional space to the bottom edge of Hell, and it may be possible for a small quantity of spirit to move from one to the other as the boundary "twitches" back and forth. Perhaps more interestingly, there's some speculation that a sufficiently large release of (earthly rather than spiritual) energy might destabilize a portion of spiritual spacetime, with disastrous results for any beings in the area. The first batch of books they get doesn't include reports of anyone testing that theory empirically.