New Instructions

Damien nods, his relief almost palpable that the heavenly host -- the heavenly host no less! -- will be looking over his father. However, the relief is rapidly replaced by anxiety as he contemplates keeping this big of a secret from his father.

"Jezreel, I believe it would in your best interest to have Damien perform in the field. Then, based upon your observations of his disposition, perhaps aided by your mother's talents, the proper Superior can be selected for him."

Jezreel nods, her expression solemn.

"Uh," says Detective Ross, "Is it all right if I go?"

"Yeah, yeah," says Detective Neelon with a wave of his hand, "I'll see ya soon tomorrow monring."

Turning to Damien, Michnelion continues, "Damien, most soldiers have to prove themselves in the field before becoming a Soldier of Heaven. As Jezreel is your recruiter it is she," he says, shooting a serious glace at the young seraph in the room, "who will decide the nature of your task.

Jezreel nods again, and from her expression you can tell she is taking this responsibility very seriously indeed.

"However," he says with emphasis, "at the moment, Judgement asks you, Jezreel, to aid it.

"Judgement, sir?" Jezreel asks, then realizes this is a stupid thing to say. After all, Michnelion has already told her that he Serves Judgement, and since the Elohite has already mentioned that he wanted her help, that should have been obvious. Feeling a little flustered by the sudden serious her life has taken, and half wondering whether *all* Servitors of Creation feel this nervous when approached by Judgement, or if it's just her because of her Father, Jezreel nods again. "Yes, sir. Of course. As long as Lord Litheroy and Uncle Eli don't mind."

As I understand, you are a Servitor of Revelations, and therefore possess the skills of a detective already."

Wanting there to be no misunderstanding of her position or loyalties (or of her willingness to reveal the *whole* Truth), especially when dealing with a Servitor of Judgement, Jezreel meets Michnelion's eyes with an uncanny directness. "I am a Servitor of *Creation*, sir," she says firmly. "But I am currently on loan to Revelation."

[Michnelion]
"Oh." He reaches down and opens a drawer in his desk and pulls out a manilla folder, opens it and leafs through it. "Ah, yes, my mistake."

Not quite sure how to read that tone, Jezreel hastens to add, "I meant no disrespect, sir. I just wanted everything to be clear from the outset-- all things considered." Her leaving the strained relations between Judgement and Creation in vague terms has nothing to do with a desire to conceal it from Damien; it's just that she assumes that everyone in the room already knows about it, and Dodai has stressed that it's impolite to restate the obvious, especially when the subject is unpleasant.

Once Jezreel realizes that this must be Michnelion's file on her, she stares at it with open curiosity. What else does Judgement report on her, she wonders. But she decides it would be wiser not to ask...

And responding to the question about her skills, she corrects the older Angel, "I am currently trying to learn the skills that Lord Litheroy values in a Servitor, sir. But at the moment, my best detective skills relate to using the computer to dig up information. Most of my other skills are focused on the arts or in dealing with children."

Damien watches the conversation between Michnelion and Jezreel, his head moving back and forth as if he were at a tennis match. Judgement, Creation, Revelation... Damien feels like he will never be able to get the hang of heaven's politics. Indeed, he feels some surprise that heaven even *has* politics.

He does not comment at this juncture.

"Excellent. Jezreel, we have need of your skills, and perhaps the skills of Damien here, as God has seen fit to place him here at this time in this situation.

Damien's ears perk up, and he turns to look at Michnelion. He feels the mixed undercurrent of fear and excitement that one usually feels when at the very top of a roller coaster, just about to make the big plunge. There is also an eddy of bemusement in there, hearing a real, honest-to-God *angel* talk about God having placed him, Damien, somewhere.

"I will make every effort to aid you in the best way I can, sir," Jezreel promises, and you can tell she takes this vow very seriously.

[Michnelion]
The situation is this:

"An agent of Archangel Gabriel is believed to be on the verge of outright rebellion against heaven."

Jezreel shudders at the thought of any Angel going through the Fall. She nods, not taking her eyes off of Michnelion, drinking in all the details which he is giving her.

"It is a Kyriotate of Fire named Shije, a former servitor of Lightning, and because of this it's perhaps one of the most difficult beings to discover and track. Because of the delicate political relations between Judgement and Fire, a Triad will not be called in . . . immediately, not until sufficent evidence is gathered to warrant one.

Damien blurts out in surprise, "An angel is rebelling against _heaven_?" He sounds incredulous, but suddnely feels stupid as he remembers his bible stories. He adds lamely, "Again?" Suddenly he realizes that he should have quit while he was behind, and rushes in with, "I mean, I'm sorry, I didn't mean, I mean...."

The Elohite smiles faintly and says, "Have another Danish," before continuing.

Jezreel looks down at the floor at Damien's question, steadfastly refusing to meet anyone's eyes. Her face is bright red. "It still happens," she admits; her tone tight and clipped.

Finally Damien shuts up before digging himself irretrievably into a hole.

The young Seraph nods again, so that Michnelion can be sure she's listening, but she does not interrupt him.

"Judgement has a personal interest in this case and so is willing to go out of its way to aid you. You have been selected because of your relative neutrality to the matter, the appearance of your vessel, and also because of your lack of strong political alliances as of yet. In short," he says, looking at Jezreel right in the eye, "you're the perfect person for the job. Your computer skills also make you very valuable to those of us with little to no experience with this aspect of the Corporeal Realm. Phalgus has spoken highly of you."

Young enough to be embarrassed by the praise, Jezreel blushes slightly. Then hearing the comment from Phalgus, she says, "He has?" Her tone holds disbelief. "I... I thought he was upset with me because I was still... seeing... my Father..."

[Michnelion]
"He made no mention of your father, only that your skills and position made you very appropriate for the task at hand."

Jezreel nods solemnly. "I will do my very best to prove the faith that Phalgus has shown in me, sir."

At this point Damien can tell that the young Detective Ross is beginning to look confused.

And Jezreel either has not notice the human detective's confusion or in a rare display of discretion has decided not to explain.

"We have reason to believe that Shije will be hiding out in inanimate vessels," says the Elohite, "it may very well be spread out over the entire city. We just can't be sure. All we know is that we need your help."

Jezreel nods again, not interrupting.

"Inanimate vessels??" Damien says quietly, confused. However, he falls silent and listens as Michnelion continues.

Jezreel nods. "It's not very common, but some of the Kyriotates chose non-living bodies. I don't know any personally, but I've heard that a lot of the Servitors of Lightening do that."

"Apparently Shije has been accessing Heaven's Network, Kirharaseth."

Jezreel nods again wide-eyed.

OOC: Does Jezreel herself even have access to Heaven's mainframe?

OOGM: Ahhh... whoops, mis-spoke. Kirharaseth is Heaven's Network. The mainframe isn't really accessible from the net. That you know of. I'm made the necessary change above.

[Chary]
OOC: Ahhh... Gotcha.

[OOGM: Rob, Damien would recognize the name Kirharaseth from when he was cruising the Angel's websites and servers. :]

"Hey!" Damien says, recognizing the name Kiharaseth. "That's where Orc and Jean are sysadmins!"

Again, realizing that he needs to rein in his enthusiasm given who he's talking to, he adds lamely, "Right?"

The Elohite looks at Damien with an unearthly calmness. "Yes. Yes, you're right." the older angel glances at Jezreel before continuing.

At first Jezreel is not quite sure how to interpret the Michnelion's glance. But after thinking about it for a second, she decides that the Elohite must want the representative from Revelations to explain the situation to her new Soldier candidate, so she says, "Lord Jean is the Archangel of Lightening, Damien. And Orc is the Angel of Networks, one of Lightening's higher ranking Servitors."

Michnelion pulls out a sheet of paper from beneath the stack of papers on his desk, glances at it, then hands it to Jezreel. "Here is a list of the places he's accessed Kirharaseth from. We've tried tracing them, but he's somehow been able to block all but one of our traces."

Jezreel takes the offered papers, but before she even looks at them, she asks, "Is there a pattern, sir? In the locations from which he has tried to access them?"

The Elohite points to a number circled in red ink. "This location is in the Riverdale Middle School."

[OOGM: Rob, do you remember the name of the school where Damien goes? Because, this is meant to be it.]

Damien visibly reacts. "Hey! That's my school!"

Damien stops and thinks for a moment. "Say, if... what's his name?... is using inanimate vessels, and accessing computer networks, does that mean he's... uh, possessed the computer? Cool. I mean... um, yeah."

The young Seraph shrugs, unsure of the Truth of the matter. She turns to Michnelion to hear his answer.

...

[Jezreel]
"That doesn't really answer my question, sir," she says. "I mean, is there a pattern to what information you do have? The net addresses and such?" Not really waiting for an answer, I take a quick look at the list of access points, trying to see if there is any pattern I can see on quick glance.

Of all the information on the page, only one number has been circled: an IP address which appears to be the only IP address where someone would be accessing a computer terminal.

"You're welcome to look through our files of recorded information yourself, but our programs were only able to locate one terminal for certain, and that was the one in the school."

"Yes, sir," Jezreel says, "I'd like that. No slight on your abilities, sir, but sometimes a new set of eyes can be a help..."

Jezreel nods yet again. "I guess we should start there," she says.

Damien looks over at Jezreel. "So you wanna go look and see what's going on? You told me you didn't go to school anywhere. Could you get a transfer to Riverdale arranged? Then you could go there every day!"

(Damien thinks to himself, and then maybe there'd be somebody there who wasn't ashamed to be seen being nice to me.)

"I suppose so," Jezreel says, not really sure of what all enrolling in school might entail. "I don't think Dodai would mind if I started going to school. She'd probably think it was good if I started socializing a little with kids my own age."

Damien looks at Michnelion. "Can you guys do that kind of thing?"

The angel almost answers but for...

Back to Jezreel, Damien continues at a furious place, "Or, we could go look at the Riverdale computer and see if this whatshisname has left any traces behind. You'd know what to look for, right? I've already hacked in, so it won't be hard...."

"I'm not really sure exactly what I'd be looking for," Jezreel admits freely, "But I would probably be able to tell if anything were obviously Celestial in origin."

Realizing again that he's let his mouth move too quickly for somebody sitting in a police station, he looks guiltily at Michnelion and says, "I didn't change my grades or anything."

"Damien, your grades are relatively irrevelant to the task ...

Just then, a strong ripple of disturbance coursed through the Symphony.

[Perception check Michnelion: 5, 3, +29 CD4]
[Perception check Jezreel: 6, 6, +29 CD3]

[OOGM: Surprise, you both succeed! Sorry, Damien, you don't]

The disturbance is large, approximately the total force of a Superior arriving on earth in Celestial Form! By the sound of it, its a mixture of Songs rapidly layered upon each other, most likely the disturbance of the later songs pushing the earlier sung ones.

[OOGM: Just so you know, if you've got a map handy, the Police Station is at the Corner of Cambie St. and 6th Avenue (2120 Cambie St), just south of False Creek.]

The disturbance appears to be coming from due Northeast, from the direction of the Main St. Station.

[OOGM: Yes, I realize that if you check a map, there's no way this could be because of the distance - 1 kilometer. It's virtually impossible to hear a disturbance from a kilometer away.]

[OOGM: I take that back, I did my math wrong. That's *certainly* easily heard at 1 kilometer, even at 2 kilometers!]

OOC: When I was creating my own Disturbance rules for my FUDGE In Nomine conversion (http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/fudge/in_nomine.html), I created a little tool (in Perl) that plots the detection probability of a Disturbance of a given size, as a function of distance. I should probably rewrite it as a Java applet and put it on the web :)

I just plugged in the probability of detect for a 3 Cel Force, 6 Perception celestial, for a Disturbance of 20. They detect it basically automatically trouble out to 1000 yards, with the disturbance falling off to undetectable at about 1500 yards. (Assuming my program doesn't have a bug!)

(The two methods I came up for dealing with disturbance for my FUDGE conversion have the disturbance possibly detectable out to greater range, but automatic to shorter range. It's a smoother curve, rather than the "automatic followed by sharp dropoff" that characterizes the standard In Nomine rules.)

OOGM: I would *love* to see it. :)

OK, now look at you went and made me do:

http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/Omar/fudge/in_dist.html

(Warning: a browser supporting Java 1.1 is required. Netscape 4.06 or greater should suffice.)

Oooh! Neat! I've got THIS page bookmarked!!

...

[IC]
Jezreel's eyes widen at the overwhelming clatter in the Symphony. "Good God," she says involuntarily...

. . . at hand," finishes Michnelion. "Damien, I'd love to continue with you, but there's been a grave Disturbance in the Symphony that I really must check on."

Jezreel just nods here; though intellectually she knows it's futile, she cannot help herself from listening to the recurring Echoes to try and figure out what sort of Songs they represent.

Damien looks confused, not really knowing what Michnelion is talking about. He throws a confused glance at Jezreel. He whispers, "I didn't hear anything. Did you hear anything?"

Eyes still as wide as saucers, Jezreel nods. "I think every Angel in all of Montreal must have heard it..." After a brief pause, she corrects herself, "Every Celestial, I mean..."

[OOGM: Montreal? ]

[Chary]
OOC: Ooops... Sorry. Writing mail before coffee again. (which is going to be a common thing since I can't have caffeine until the baby is born...) Umm... Make that Vancouver...

"Jezreel, in antipation of your help the Vancouver Police Department purchased a new computer for you to borrow. It's in the back there, by the tall file cabinet, an advanced model straight from the Halls of Progress. I'd show it to you know, but I really ought to check this out. We haven't had anything like this for a long while now."

Jezreel nods again, forcing her attention from the Disturbance to focus in on Michnelion's words. "Yes, sir," she says, somewhat lamely. Then, "Do you have *any* idea what that might have been?" Her eyes are still wide with shock and wonder.

[Michnelion]
"Let's find out, shall we?"

"Yes, sir," Jezreel says quickly, her shock fading into excitement as she realizes she's going to get to solve a real live mystery.

"Jezreel, perhaps it would be best for Damien to take the computer and for you to join me? His father *is* anticipating him."

Damien forgets completely about the Disturbance, and can't help but feel excited about finding out about this new computer. He figures that angels probably have access to the best stuff that's out there... maybe they even got their hands on a prototype Intel Merced chip, or something! He doesn't know what this Halls of Progress place they talk about is; he suspects it's slang for Silicon Valley, and *hopes* that it's *not* slang for Microsoft.

[Charybdis]
OOC: What? You don't think that Damien figures, like the rest of us, that Microsoft is a pawn of the Other Side... :)

"Jezreel, perhaps it would be best for Damien to take the computer and for you to join me? His father *is* anticipating him."

[OOC: Ross *has* left the room by this time, but its only been a few minutes since his departure.]

Damien suddenly has a second thought. "Um, there might be problems. I think my Dad is mad at me because I was hacking, never mind that the house got trashed. He's not gonna be very happy if I bring home a new computer. He probably won't let me use it."

Jezreel looks confused, not sure why Damien's father would blame him for being the victim of a crime, but is not quite sure how to put that into words.

"Ooo," says the Eholite as he puts on his jacket, "Good point. Damien, I'll ask Jezreel's mother to take it to her house and set it up there. Then, you can use it over there."

"Is that a good plan?" he asks both children.

"You can let Dodai take it home," Jezreel says, a quirky smile playing across her lips, "But you probably don't want to let her set it up." She shakes her head. "I mean, not unless you want to give me the OS software right off the bat so I can low level format it and start over when she's done..."

She turns to Damien. "I'm sorry you can't have the computer, Damien," Jezreel says, with none of the crocodile tears you would expect from a human your age who had just been told that your misfortune is her windfall. "But having it at my place might not be a bad idea. We might even be able to network it with my laptop so that we can both be on-line at the same time. You know, set up a gateway of some kind..." Her tone is interested and excited as she starts talking shop with someone else who understands.

"Yeah, that'd be cool," Damien says. "We can get a couple of ethernet cards, and a hub, and set up a LAN. What kind of IP access do you have? If we put Linux on one of the machines, I know how to set it up to do IP Masquerading so that we can get them all on the net at once even if we only have one computer!"

Suddenly realizing that he's probably boring everybody else present, Damien adds lamely, "but we can talk about that tomorrow."

Michnelion has his jacket on by this time and says, "Ok, Jezreel, we gotta go. I'll call your mother on the way there, Damien, your father should still be waiting outside."

"Yes, sir," the young Seraph says. Then she turns to Damien. "I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

"'Kay," Damien says dismissively, before adding worriedly, "You are going to know where to find me, aren't you?"

"She'll know," says the Elohite smiling faintly. "Don't worry."

The angel is moving towards the door intently, still talking and opens it to reveal and expectant father.

"Hello, Mr. Morris"

"Hello, I'd like my son back, please,' says Damien's father.

"Ah, yes, well, I need to take Jezreel; I'm afraid I'm in a bit of a rush. I'm needed to do a little footwork I'm afraid."

Mr. Morris joins Detective Neelon's rapid pace towards the main floor.

"I've accepted your offer of the safe house," says Mr. Morris.

"Ah, excellent, I'm afraid it's not the coziest, but it's better than endangering your safety," says Detective Neelon as move through the hallways leading to the front door. The echoes of the Symphony are still loud and long, the painful reprecussions of the disturbance of its peace.

"And they said that Goldie could come, too," says Damein's father, stopping Damien and kneeling down to look his boy straight in the eyes.

"Damien," the police have offered to give us a safe place to sleep tonight, just in case. I think that it would probably be the best thing to do." Damien's father looks into his son's eyes, looking to see his son's reaction.

"Yeah, OK. I think I would like that better than going back home. Have you called your work? I think the de... uh, the bad guys who trashed our house took one of the pencils with your work address."

Forcing herself to remember Dodai's lessons on manners, Jezreel greets Mr. Morris even though Damien's the only one she really wants to talk to. "Good evening, Mr. Morris," she says, politely. "I'm sorry about all the trouble."

Then, putting two and two together from the comments about the safehouse, she turns to Damien, "On second thought, maybe you'd better call me tomorrow."

"'Kay," Damien says, then adds in a questioning tone, "Where?"

Michnelion kneels for a moment, his knees cracking loudly under his weight, "Umph. Look, kids, most likely you two are going to see each other tomorrow, I can arrange it if nothing else. Damien, you need to stay close to your father, to make sure both of you are okay. Jezreel," he says as he puts a firm hand on her slender shoulder and looks her deep in the eyes, "We need to get a move on."

The echoes in the Symphony, though still distinct, are beginning to fade slightly as the Symphony starts to right itself.

"Come on, Damien," Mr. Morris says to his son, "let's get some sleep, okay?"

"Come, Jezreel, we must hurry," says Detective Neelon. He keeps moving towards the exit with a sense of urgency, motioning for her to follow suit.

Grinning with an obvious look of excitement, Jezreel follows the detective through the doorway. She turns back to wave to Damien, then follows without any further delay. "This is *so* cool," she says, more to herself than to Michnelion... It's a real live mystery to solve, after all...

Realizing that the echoes are fading, Jezreel listens intently to try and fix a distance in her mind while she can still hear them. She follows hurriedly behind the detective, making sure that he seems to be going in the right direction.