⛲⛈️ 12 Zeptember 2024 Day 10,316

the office of omniscientific optimization, the bureau of inspired investigation, the high heaven, higher heaven, and highest heaven depots, and the angelic intelligence agency are some of the many departments in the Heavenly Police State dedicated to espionage and espionage oversight. given the literally infinite resources at the disposal of the Godhead Government, one might suspect mortals to be under total age perfect surveillance. yet several caveats must be remembered.

while the liklihood any given particle in the known and unknown universe at any given time is being observed by *some* power, potentate, aeon or archangel approaches 1, the liklihood that such an event will be observed with respect to the other events which consecutive an intelligable context or narrative, and that such a narrative will be intercepted by that given observer's phenomonological objectives and hermeneutic agenda, of a much higher density of signal.

such signals are still processed,--see the angel of history, the spirit Wonshitang, the librarians of Babel. such a being might consume the entire history of the universe in a single sitting, including every subjective expirence of every denizen. they will cry for the tragedies of it's kings, celebrate the revolutions of it's peasantry, coo with equal awe at the the collision of stars and the resolution of quantum states. and when they have observed everything, the impact on any given thing observed may well be indistinguishable from an outcome where they had observed nothing.

furthermore, there are infinite possibile worlds, each with an infinite series of possible eternities leading forwards and backwards from each 4th dimensional time slice world-moment, on which divinities might operate.

the universe is just another name for a universe simulating machine. you didn't think they'ed go to the trouble of creating create a universe simulating machine the size of the whole universe and run it only once, did you? no, like third world countries which are overseen and operated upon with all the idiosyncrasies a given imperial bureau, with it's self-interested agents, factions, internal and external rivalries, histories, arcs, budget fights and reorganizational dramas is likely to have, reality tracks are the backyards and proving grounds, storage facilities and fail-safes of an equaly infinite progression of Divine facilities.

finally, we might note that while observation of the mortal world by parties with the faculty of omniscience may be absolute, as a fraction of overall observation it is minimal, perhaps even infentismal. this is because the vast share of observations by omniscient beings are made on other omniscient beings, who as a rule are endlessly paranoid, insatiably inquisitive, jealously secretive, and in service of that last tendency incomprehensibly occult. but even observations of rivals do not exhaust their focus, for Gods like the Trinity which divide their forces, en-memberings, incarnations and emanations tend towards a scizo-theology wherein they constantly observe themselves, to determine which movement of the transcendent mine is about to prevail before it does so as to preempt it, so as to take the credit or at least get one's sick portfolio in order. self observation is easy to fund on the basis that it allows one to identify weaknesses which enemies might exploit, even allows one to intercept (entrap) outside observers in the act. but in practice, the function of the omniscient faculties in the Heavenly Police State, as in the Western and Eastern and Central Depots during the period of the Eight Tigers, is to spy on their sub-, super-, and parallel-departments, superiors and inferiors, deepcover agents and openly celebrated analysts, field offices and headquarters, individual actors and broad institutional tendancies.

thus it should come as no surprise that the Department of Infernal Justice discovered through a trail of dozens of agencies and offices that a signal had been intercepted to assasinate the Godhead without any of them having alerted the Godhead's Security Detail, not least because the head of the detail was named in the assassination's conspiritors.

who else knows?

presumably the listed assets themselves know of the conspiracy, assuming the list is accurate and that they are witting participants.

presumably the agencies we tracked this information through, assuming they're aware of what they've found.

who are the listed agents?

there are 8 Ophanim of the second or third highest ranks, including Lord Owliensis, as best we can discern from their apparent security clearance. they're given ID only as days of the Ophanim Week. Owliensis is presumed to be one of the two who access the quantum entanglement master passcodes at the timeslice of the attack, listed as mr. Charmday and mr. Hexday.

how do you know they are ophanim?

the document makes reference to them arriving by hyper-chariot. Ophanim are privileged with a monopoly on that method of travel, and breaking such a monopoly would require Ophanim of the highest rank.

the other six Ophanim all engage in chariot travel or other Ophanim-exclusive miraculations. translating the mastercode is itself only possible for Ophanim and Seraphim. and Seraphim have been banned from the Mastercode Index since the Fruit of Knowledge Scandal.

any other angelic forcs?

the document was partial, probably intentionally so. we can infer the involvement, or at least the non-opposition, of an entity in high command in the highest heaven, whose agencies and honor gaurds are likely to be in a position to repudiate or consolidate a palace coup. it's likely that the Ophanim will enlist at least some of the choirs and clients as well. the troop movements are too cryptic and minimal for us to confidently decode, but it's likely to be inumerous enough to secure a few key positions while discreet enough that word won't get out.

except word did get out.

true, which brings us to how we initially noticed.

do we have principals on the list??

we do. in the quantum froath of a J-type star's final nanosecond before going nova, inserted midway through an epic dedicated to the Divinity's Incomprehensible Beneficence, there's a series of puns which don't *quite* conform to the surrounding register or dialect. this isn't unique--the piece had such neologisms and other comprable devices throughout, but in the case of 60 or so of the puns, there's a more cohesive alternative implied or already used elsewhere in a similar way. if you cross reference the lists and unscramble the alternated phonotypes, you get a fairly clear set of 4 names of demons--specifically, their true and secret names, names assigned and used by only a very narrow set of Divine orders, names specifically assigned and indexed by the Department of Infernal Justice.

you have the list?

here, your arch-grace.

better make it your serenity. if we blow the top off this I'll be deserving a promotion, and if I don't get that promotion I'll certainly be executed, since I intend on using some very illegal privileges to track this down which will only be forgiveable if that promotion is made retroactive.

as you say, your serenity. the list.

Albigritho the Insane. psychward. what's he in for?

apparently he tried to tempt the Son of God into cancelling the sins of the world by sacrificing himself on a wooden stake of some sort. it nearly worked, too--took them almost two thousand years to unravel the crash to the divine economy in that timeline.

I see. Delilithix Mistress of Crooked Shadows, the Impossible Tower. a political prisoner, I assume?

yes, she was prophesied to incite a revolution of proletarian demons against the Order of Crossed Cosmoi the 27 eons from now. not that she knows that--the last five generations of her family have been successfully isolated. we use her for large system analysis from time to time, though of course everything has to be run through the Future Burreau to make sure she's not smuggling manifestos in her footnotes. of course all her communiques were put under embargo as soon as her name was decoded.

very good. Ziggarati von Archinboldi?

a freelance imp of a cadet branch to the dynastic family. he's in the Iron Garden until he talks one of his uncles the arch-princes into paying off his gambling debts. he owes the Satanic Bank 28 hundred thousand hours of acute spiritual agony, payable in AAA sainted souls. he's been isolated too, but we used guards loyal to his hex-mother's clan, so he probably thinks he's about to be questioned for the family's graft he's been dipping into to finance those bets. incidentally, that's what the guards think too, and they're very eager to keep rumors about the graft from going public, so they're being quite cooperative.

thats the imperial lightning banshees?

and the psychosis herders as well, yes. the Count of Sublimated Wrath personally informed me the would be no limit to the services they would make available to us through their honor guard through the duration of this crisis.

this crisis? they know about the planned assassination?!

they know... something. something relating to the troop movements implied or assumed by the documents. according to the intelligence they've shared with us, an attempted heist is in the works, possibly already underway, on the Divine Storehouses. since the ruling imp dynasty made it's name changing money between the storehouses and the satanic bank,

they have more vested interests in the storehouses' security than just graft. though graft is a certainly a large portion of those interests.

understandable. we really must convince the Secretariat to invest more in white collar deamonic crime. after we clean house here first, of course. and what about this last name, Bartimaeus the Inscrutable. where have I heard that name before--i don't recognize it from the prisoner rolls.

(the Principality had a habit of reviewing all 201 billion spirits in the 15 Hells under his charge as Under-secretary of Infernal Justice twice a Day, once after pre-dawn choir and again before meditation in the Halls of the Abysmal Planes, which was his preferred watering hole for exchanging court intrigue and gossip.)

no, your gr-, excuse me, your serenity. he is not listed on our patients. we only have his Name by chance, as best as we can tell. it was shared with us when he staught to gain security clearance to interview a prisoner who was scheduled to be in our custody. his transfer was reversed by order of the Secretary's Office.

Not the Secretary themselves?

we have no way of knowing without clarifying with the Office. your spies judged it wise to alert you before bringing this matter to xir attention.

quite wise. if the secretary knows, they might suspect our office, given he visited here.

actually he didn't. his pass was in line to be approved, but then the prisoner was remanded back to the Void of Acute Negation. Bartholomew reapplied and appears to have been approved for entry, though whether he actually interviewed his prisoner we haven't been able to discretely verify.

which brings us to how you most likely know his name. he is the personal assistant to the Minister of Music.

*really?* that's quite interesting. the new one or the old one? the new new one, which is to say, the old old one. Yessifillium has been summoned back from exile and reinstated. his old honors have been restored and redoubled. word among the gossipmongers is that he's leading talks on the new harmonic program. meanwhile, the old new Minister has been force- retired, though she's retaining her title as Emeritus Minister of Music.

ouch.

precisely. so long as she remains a minister, she's blocked from being incorporated as clerk to another department without the permission of the First Secretariat or the Maridian of Personal.

and with all her honors, and her g. to be maintained at her own expense without a full ministers dole--has she been permitted absence from court?

no. her application for a fellowship at the celestial academy of music and a sabbatical in the Higher Heavens nature reserves were both publicly rejected.

so she's maintaining a full court presence, with retainers and honorgaurd?

and continuing to host a full schedule of a minister-level angel, not to mention taking on double the average mentorship load of a comparable emeritus minister.

she doesn't have sponsors willing to dole out that kind of cash, does she? not after being made Minister for what, not even half a millennia?

just over a quarter of a thousand years, by High Heaven's reckoning.

and she's maintaining herself, at court, through debt?

it seems so. which is of course risky because--

Because she alienated so many creditors pushing for a Jubilee at the turn of her first program.

but if she's not a minister, she won't be eligible for the jubilee when it does happen.

exactly. and the new Minister is pushing for an even further accelerated Jubilee, with the backing of most of the creditors precisely because it's a much narrower proposal. it seems that's what Bartholomew was visiting about.

oh?

the prisoner he wished to consult is a maximally secure fallen angel with close familial ties to the former captain of the Godhead's security detail. he specializes in Divine Economy, including Jubilee mechanics.

Bartholomew requested he be used to run the numbers on a jubilee.

as best as we can tell, no. he didn't make any request to do so when he applied. instead, he wanted to run a simulated jailbreak. if the fallen angel took the bait, he would experience an unbounded cascade of triggers and traps. if he abstained, it would indicate either he knew it was a false offer, or--

or he expected to be released and was hoping to earn favor by loyally remaining in his cage. or both

or both.

who was the fallen angel?

the (twin of) the new new Minister of Music. we don't have the results of the test, but it appears he passed.

why would the personal assistant have been granted this boon?

we have no idea. we cleared him for observation, not for the interview. but if he passed, it likely contributed to his twin's appointment. and if a jubilee is coming, it likely means that prisoners of demonstrated good behavior will be freed.

the assassination then

is either designed to stop the assassination before the jubilee can be called, or to prevent it from being rescinded, since any jubilees on schedule are most likely to be pushed through following the installment of a new godhead. except vice versa in the case of an assassination.

exactly.

the feigned jailbreak works like this. the prisoner is split into a hundred thousand fragment simulations. in some they are simply released, in others they are told they have been pardoned by one party but are being pursued by another, in some they are not released but told how to escape with implied information--information on how to save a friend, or kill an enemy, with the expectation that if they refuse to escape they may be granted a boon. if they refuse to leave under any circumstances, or escape in some but not others, certain loyalties, expectations, etc. are inferable. crosstalk between iterations may be permitted, or encouraged, or fabricated, performed subconsciously, etc.

in the course of pursuing the jailbreak--or for that matter refusing it--symbolic calculations may be presented to the prisoner, who will perform the operations without necessarily understanding the larger implications of the given variables.

..

charmday

hexday

chooseday

rexday

witchday

changeday

sexday

strangeday