Post by Dr. Melisande Stokes
on “All-DODO” ODIN channel
DAY 1812
All,
Mortimer has requested that everyone please stop checking the wiki for updates on Constantinople, it’s slowing the servers down and it is a waste of time until the GLAAMR dissipates. Lieutenant Colonel Lyons and I believe that over the next few days, history will literally rewrite itself, as the oral accounts of that day’s Diachronic Shear make their way into written testimonials and then eventually history books, and finally the Internet.
Rachel bat Avraham almost certainly died in the Shear. Although she died in defiance of our regulations, it is important to be sensitive to the grief of the many DODO workers—especially her fellow MUONs—who had the fortune and pleasure to have worked with her for the better part of three years.
Respectfully submitted,
Melisande Stokes
Exchange of posts by LTG Octavian K. Frink,
Dr. Constantine Rudge, and Dr. Roger Blevins
on private ODIN channel
DAYS 1810–1813 (MID-JULY, YEAR 5)
Post from LTG Octavian K. Frink:
Blev, (cc Rudge):
I’ve been following the traffic on this system as my schedule permits. Relieved to hear LTC Lyons made it back in one piece. Somewhat confused otherwise. He accomplished the mission on all four Strands? So, how do we know whether it worked?
Reply from Dr. Roger Blevins:
Okie, that is the fundamental question of all diachronic operations—how can we know the success or failure of a campaign such as this one, where the objective is to shift national borders a few kilometers, or even a few meters, to one direction or the other?
In the present case, as you know, what we are trying to achieve is to pry Crimea loose from the Russians and get it back into the full and undisputed possession of Ukraine, all without firing a shot or engaging in military operations as that term is normally understood.
If the project succeeds, then our present-day reality changes; we wake up tomorrow and Ukraine owns the Crimea free and clear. Not only that, but history will have changed as well. We’ll have no memory and no records of Russia ever having marched into Crimea in 2014. So how do we know that anything even happened?
The answer is that the alteration of history doesn’t happen in a flash; it takes a little while to propagate through all of the Strands and whatnot, and during that time there is this thing that Dr. Oda terms GLAAMR (Galvanic Liminal Aura Antecedent to Manifold Rift), which even non-magical people can sense if it’s strong enough.
From Dr. Constantine Rudge:
Just jumping in here with a note that DODO’s R&D division has invented ways of measuring GLAAMR. That’s why we had three spy planes in last year’s budget; we mounted the GLAAMR detection systems in their bellies, and even now they are flying routes over Ukraine gathering data.
From LTG Frink:
Yes, I remember the spy planes now, and the ruckus they caused in the budget hearing. Glad to know they are getting some use.
Why can’t we just draw a map or something, and store it, and then compare it to a current map a few days later? I know you’re going to tell me it would change and there would be GLAAMR, but is there no way to just store a document in such a way that it wouldn’t change?
From Dr. Blevins:
That is being worked on too. Apparently if the map were stored in an ODEC, your idea might work. But because space in ODECs is so scarce and expensive we have done very little of this.
From LTG Frink:
Seems to me we could get a hell of a lot of thumb drives into an ATTO. Give me a sitrep on those.
Oh, and I noticed that when Rachel bat Avraham flew the coop, she used mind control on the witch who Homed her. Obviously psy-ops is a common ability among the historical witches.
From Dr. Rudge:
Just a gentle reminder, General Frink, that we try to avoid using loaded terms such as “mind control.”
From LTG Frink:
Connie, you can call it whatever you want, psy-ops has got to be simpler than what we just went through to get Crimea back.
From Dr. Rudge:
Yes, General Frink, Crimea is part of the Ukraine today. You may share with me a vague memory, rapidly fading, of a Russian invasion that never happened. As if we dreamed it, and the memory of the dream is being dispelled by the more concrete realities of the new day.
Without disputing your opinion that the operation was anything but simple, I’ll point out that to achieve the same result through conventional military operations would have been infinitely more complex and risky.
From LTG Frink:
I’ll give you complex. Risky I’m less sure of. Hard to know what the real risks are.
From Dr. Blevins:
To answer a question earlier in this “thread,” the first ATTO is proceeding through its testing routines more or less on schedule, but it is a device of many subsystems and there are endless delays and complications around procuring special parts, debugging “code,” and so on. We are looking at bringing Gráinne forward in mid-September, once we’re certain the device works. In the meantime we could certainly try some experiments with thumb drives or other forms of document storage, as you suggest.
In the meantime, Okie, I would like to draw your attention to a question we were kicking around earlier, namely what to do with the surplus personnel in LTC Lyons’s department—including LTC Lyons himself—now that the big push in the Constantinople Theater is over. Do we wish to throw them into another colossal operation, or sit back and assess?
From LTG Frink:
Will give you a call in five, Blev.
FROM LIEUTENANT GENERAL OCTAVIAN K. FRINK
TO ALL DODO DEPARTMENT HEADS
DAY 1825 (LATE JULY, YEAR 5)
First of all, I would like to congratulate all DODO personnel for the successful conclusion of operations in the Constantinople Theater. That is not to gloss over the tragic story of the late Rachel bat Avraham, however, to the best of our ability to assess these things, it would appear that DODO was able to “undo” a Russian takeover of the Crimea that, on our Strand, never successfully happened. To have achieved a similar result using conventional Trapezoid-style operations would have been immensely costly in both dollars and blood and would have raised the possibility of opening a wider war.