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The Devil And Captain Alistair — 5 Comments

  1. On one hand, a solid story!

    On the other hand, ‘limited’ access doesn’t mean ‘nonexistent’. If I were Alistair, I’d stay up nights about the friends and family of those cruisers getting a visitor, and offering them revenge for a very small predefined favor.

    This might end up with them getting two useless interventions instead of just one, true. But ‘classical devil’ is practically synonymous with ‘disproportionate revenge for slights.’

    And the problem with using logic to run rings around reality-warping beings is it means you live in a logical universe, and there’s nothing stopping them from noticing this, and using logic themselves. And when it comes to a fight between two clever people, one of whom can stop time and remotely explode starships, that one usually wins.

  2. Very cool! It reminded me of a good science fiction story from the 50s or 60s.

    I’d consider not calling it ‘The Devil and…’, however, because that gives away one of the plot points.

    • I see your point. I picked the title to acknowledge one of the best-known invocations of this trope. (The Devil and Daniel Webster). Not to mention the much later “Devil Went Down To Georgia”, which, when I thought of it later on, made me think a better response to the “What do you have to do to earn the gold?” might have been “Well, you know that fiddle on display in the Alliance Academy Music Building?” but I try to resist editing after “publication” except for cleaning up typos. (Such as where Toaster, one of my cats, evidently hit some keys while I was writing. He likes to florp himself over my keyboard as I work.)

  3. Pingback:Character-A-Day Day 28: Prime Directive – Lizard's Gaming and Geekery Site

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