On a Godless Planet:Volume3A Chapter 20
Chapter 20: Warrior of Rome[edit]
–It always comes down to you, doesn’t it?
●
Kido viewed the others after asking for their defense.
“Please explain to us why you can say you did not cause this flooding.”
“If we’re going in order on that list, I guess I would be first.”
“That would put me at the end. And I am innocent, so make sure you punish someone before reaching me.”
“Aunt! That’s a villain’s line!”
“Nonsense. I’m a benevolent god. …Okay, Mr. V, hurry up and confess.”
“Don’t make it sound like a foregone conclusion!”
“I’m probably the biggest suspect, so why not start with me?”
“Then I’ll just come out and ask it: Posei-chan, did you cause this flooding?”
“I sure don’t remember doing it.”
Kido nodded at that answer.
“Yes, that is the normal answer here.”
“You aren’t going to get much else by asking the suspects themselves.”
“If they can just lie, won’t they all say they didn’t do it?”
“Even if they can’t lie, they can assert their right to remain silent or say they have ‘nothing to say on the matter’.”
“Then.” Douhai-san raised her hand a bit. “How do we find the god who did it?”
●
“Hearing the suspects’ defenses hit a snag awful fast.”
“How did it work at the meetings of the gods you’ve done previously?”
“It was generally just our own mythology, so we did it by our rules.”
“What rules are those?”
“If it’s discovered you lied, you’re hunted down to the ends of the earth.”
“That’s more barbaric than I expected!”
“Deciding if you could get away with a lie or not must have been intense.”
●
“So the question is how to find the culprit when the suspects can lie or refuse to speak.”
That’s right, I thought.
And then Douhai-san spoke up.
“Oh! Wait a second, Kido-san! The method you’re thinking of needs to be a last resort! And I mean very last!”
“A last resort? What are you talking about?”
All eyes turned toward Douhai-san.
Eventually, she began with an “um”.
“Then let’s hear it, Kido-san: what method were you thinking of?”
“Well,” I said. And…
“What if I slag-ter them all as a form of joint responsibility?”
●
“Okay, everyone! Think carefully! Now that you know what the last resort is, you should know how important it is to to prevent this from reaching that!”
“Since I’m safe from this, I’m finding this kind of amusing. As irresponsible as that is.”
“Hey, stop that! Try to be more cooperative!”
But what were we going to do? While I was pondering that, Sumeragi-kun spoke up.
“You say they can lie, but can’t you use a lie detector?”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know!? You attach these weird things to my head and arms and then if I tell a lie, some kind of signal sees through my lie and I get thrown in jail!”
“That explanation made no sense, but that last part was wonderfully realistic.”
“That’s how urban legends work. They’re absurd, but there’s always one part that’s weirdly realistic.”
“Heyyyyyy! Lie detectors are not an urban legend!”
“Then what are they?”
“Well, um! To detect the subject’s reaction to answering certain questions, you attach sensors to their arms and head and measure their sweat and heart rate. That way you can detect when they’re shaken by having to lie!”
“Why is your informational resolution so much higher when Senpai-san asks?”
Sumeragi-kun turned toward Kuwajiri-san.
“Because I can’t lie or half-ass it with Senpai! See, if I was hooked up to a lie detector and said ‘Kuwajiri has big boobs!’, the machine would explode, but that would never happen because I can’t lie about my faith! Isn’t that great, Kuwajiri!?”
“Your initial description of the lie detector made me think of an electric chair, but now I think you really should be hooked up to one of those. Oh, and don’t worry – that isn’t a lie. I mean it.”
“Kuwajiri-chan! Kuwajiri-chan! Calm down! Doing that would only leave you with more work to do!”
“That might be the worst possible way to dissuade her of that action.”
●
“You do see lie detectors in TV magic shows sometimes, but do they really work?”
“Do they use them in Japan too?”
<Yes. Around 5000 tests are run each year in Japan.>
“That’s quite a lot.”
<Not really. The number is 2.5 million a year in the US. Especially for after-the-fact investigations for police officers, fire fighters, and EMTs. But rather than being about detecting lies, these are confirming the accuracy of their testimony, so think of it more like a drunk driving test.>
“That is the more correct way of using polygraph tests.”
“Polygraph!? What’s that!? Something to do with big boobs!?”
“Now that is some pure idiocy.”
<The short answer is they have nothing to do with each other. The long answer is a polygraph is the thing you yourself were describing, ape. The sensors attached to the arms and head.>
“Oh, if there’s no big boobs connection, my interest drops by like 90%, but what about using that? Did they have tests like that in the age of myth?”
“We did. It was just called a trial by ordeal.”
“For real!? How’d it work!? The people who noticed the big boobs and stared were declared honest and the ones who averted their eyes were dishonest!?”
“No. You would stick your hand in hot water, have it poured in your ear, or walk across fire. The honest were thought to have more willpower than liars, so they could bear it while the liars couldn’t.”
“That’s just plain torture!”
●
I see, I thought, raising my hand. I thought back on an old memory.
“Oh, um, we had that too. A bamboo leaf was sunk to the bottom of some hot water and an honest person could retrieve it without being burned.”
“Shinto myths have a lot of stories where the honest win in the end. Like an honest person being deceived by a lying relative and dying or nearly dying before a god or spirit brings them back to life and gives them a great fortune.”
“For us, we have Hermes causing trouble only for Zeus to see right through his lie.”
“It’s weird that Zeus could do that when he isn’t supposed to be all powerful.”
“While Hermes is the god of lies, he’s also an utter moron, so most anyone can see through his lies and falsehoods. I think he gets away with it a third of the time at most. Since it doesn’t take Zeus to tell he’s lying, he’s been disciplined quite a few times.”
“I don’t like speaking ill of him because he’s my superior, but his lies almost never work and he only gets forgiven afterwards thanks to a liberal use of bribes. …Makes you wonder why he can’t get through that part with lies too.”
“Sounds like he has a terrible intelligence score.”
“Why is someone like that your god of lies?”
“Well, you know. It’s beautiful how he insists on lying no matter how obvious it is.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait.”
“As you can see, there was a time when finding someone you can blame using circumstantial evidence was more important than finding accurate testimony.”
“Sounds like a tough time.”
“Were your people more tolerant?”
“Yes, we did not torture anyone.”
●
“Raise your hand if your first thought was ‘oh, so you did something even worse?’ ”
Most hands went up. And Balancer tilted their screen.
<To be more accurate, I used the phrase “more extreme” rather than “worse”.>
“W-we didn’t exile them either.”
Athena nodded at that.
“Right. Some peoples did exile criminals by giving them a few days’ worth of food and telling them to walk in a random direction for a week, or set them adrift in a boat.”
“I was going to call that relatively peaceful, but in BCE times, that would have been akin to a death sentence.”
“It was. Which is why exiles generally fled to an enemy group and secured a place to live by ‘selling’ intelligence on their former home’s defenses and weaknesses. That could be a problem. You couldn’t just execute someone with a connection to the royal family, so they would be exiled instead, but that could lead to a leak of national secrets.”
“If only they could move them to a nice place and have them become a wandering or drifting god of that place.”
“But did you do anything to keep that from happening?”
“The establishment of criminal law. Instead of exiling people for everything, you classified different crimes and punishments to keep around who you could keep around, reducing the losses and gaps in the community as much as possible.”
Bilgamesh nodded at that.
“Right. It wasn’t just to deal with that problem, but the land we lived in created laws to preserve the state.”
“You mean the Code of Hammurabi, right!?”
“No. The Code of Ur-Nammu was created around 4 centuries earlier.”
A breath.
“That is the oldest extant code of law.”
●
“I’m not sure if ‘oldest extant’ is a bold claim or a cautious one.”
“There is a possibility that the laws created by us or our ancestors will eventually turn up. After all, our protector was the sun god Shamash, who is also the god of law. Since she established my authority as king, she must have given us a law to follow.”
“Now you’re getting bolder,” said Raidou, but Bilgamesh kept speaking.
“Listen. In Mesopotamia, a few dynasties following us led to the establishment of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Its first king, Ur-Nammu, created the Code of Ur-Nammu. That was put into effect during the 22nd century BCE, which puts it around 4 centuries before the Code of Hammurabi in Babylon.”
<This gives the Code of Hammurabi the less impressive-sounding title of the second oldest code of law “to still exist in full”.>
“Wait, second?”
<Yes. Hammurabi’s Babylon fought against other states, but those other states’ codes of law had already been influenced by the Code of Ur-Nammu.
<After the Third Dynasty of Ur where the Code of Ur-Nammu came to be, the First Dynasty of Isin rose to power and its 5th king Lipit-Ishtar created the Code of Lipit-Ishtar.
<While the Dynasty of Isin was waging war, the Eshnunna Kingdom was prospering through diplomacy. Their ‘great expander’ Ipiq-Adad II created the Code of Eshnunna.
<Counting those, the Code of Hammurabi is the 4th oldest extant code of law.>
“There’s a story saying Hammurabi was given his code of law by Shamash, so that would mean those earlier three also came from Shamash. Since they influenced his.”
“I-I’ve never met her, but that sounds like a lot of work for Shamash-san!”
“The main states tend to be replaced quick during times of war, so gods of laws and finances will see all their work go up in smoke, forcing them to redo it all.”
“They have my deepest sympathies.”
“Ah ha ha! It’s not a problem at all! Cause Shamash doesn’t have anything better to do!”
●
“As you can see, our Shamash is kept busy, but does Norse have a god of law too?”
“For us, that would be Tyr. He’s a son of Odin and he’s pretty strong.”
“But he hasn’t been given a real manifestation here.”
“Hm? Why not? Wouldn’t a god of law be convenient?”
“Would he, though? Demeter, what about your god of law?”
“Our god of law is Themis. And she doesn’t have a real manifestation.”
“She doesn’t?”
“Right. Because…while she’d be convenient, wouldn’t she also be annoying?”
Raidou and Demeter exchanged a handshake.
●
“I may regret this, but I can add more to our discussion of codes of law. The Code of Lipit-Ishtar is from around the 20th century BCE and the Code of Eshnunna is from around the 19th century BCE. The Code of Hammurabi is thought to have based its extent, clauses, and non-criminal laws on those codes”
“…”
“It’s hard to be famous for being an old-timer, huh?”
“Not so fast. The Code of Hammurabi’s concept of reciprocal justice worked to eliminate excessive punishments and prevent retaliatory conflicts.”
“This is turning into a whole thing…but what sets the Code of Ur-Nammu apart?”
“It focused on monetary compensation and rejected the idea of reciprocal justice. And serious crimes were punished with execution.”
“It didn’t have reciprocal justice!? Even though the Code of Hammurabi had it?”
“It focused on compensation in order to prevent retaliatory conflicts. And anything that couldn’t be covered by compensation used execution.”
“The combination of criminal punishments with private settlements is more modern than I expected.”
“Yes. Not only did it cut off the cycle of revenge, but it prevented people from pushing responsibility beyond their territory and it allowed the punishment of royalty and those connected to the temples.”
“The biggest flaw is that it only works with people capable of paying. If you couldn’t pay, you received a traditional criminal punishment or even a drop in social status.”
“Oh, so like the fallen nobles you see in fantasy so often?”
“Yeah, or like when you get a cleric on your party early in the game.”
“The boys are talking nonsense again…”
“That aside, monetary compensation had another flaw in ancient times.”
“Productivity, right?”
●
“Correct,” replied Kuwajiri. “When productivity drops due to drought, famine, cold weather damage, or war, the people lose wealth, inequality grows, and compensation-based law fails to function. And Mesopotamia’s decline was due to drought.”
Bilgamesh continued for Kuwajiri.
“The Code of Hammurabi’s reciprocal justice only applied to people of the same social status. With different statuses, the punishment was either lightened or strengthened. That let people be punished even if they had no money. You could say the law was designed based on the assumption that wealth is unevenly distributed.”
<The Code of Hammurabi is most famous for its reciprocal justice, but it also adjusted the compensation and reparations originally seen in the Code of Ur-Nammu. So instead of just ideas perfect for their time, it included ideas that could be later refined, which paved the way to modern law.>
“That is one thing you can credit the Babylonians for.”
“Makes you wonder what Shamash was doing. She made three codes of law and gifted them to the humans, but they didn’t work at all and it took her until the fourth try to get it right? How useless is she!?”
●
“Do you think I should tell Shamash about this?”
“Oh, absolutely! Because that’s bound to be the funnier option!”
“Please stop making your decisions that way.”
●
“Anyway,” said Raidou.
“Whether it’s based on criminal law or just plain execution, all we can do is create a deterrent for lying. But we also can’t force an answer using torture or a trial by ordeal. This still leaves us with no way of telling if something is a lie or not.”
“Oh.”
“Did you think of something, Shinsei?”
“Wellll, one of myyyy folowers had two sons. And the ollllder one was a liar.”
So…
“If you neeeed to know who is a liiiiar, just remember that eeeevery descendant of that older son is a liiiiar.”
●
“That is a lot of liars.”
“At that point, can’t we just say that everyone’s a liar?”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait! That’s about humans! Humans! And we’re gods!”
“Hey, if you do want to measure this, we do have a way.”
“What, so you have something like a lie detector?”
“Yup. A set of scales. Place a feather one one side and the person’s heart on the other side. If their heart is lighter, they’re a good person.”
●
“That might be difficult to pull off in practice.”
“Makes me wonder if anyone here would be fine after having their heart removed.”
“That’s one hell of a question, Tenma-chan. …But do all creator gods do wild stuff like that?”
“Wait, wait, wait. The scales aren’t mine. They belong to Maat, our god of judgment.”
“Okay, Neptune, show us how it’s done.”
“As usual, I see my life is as worthless as can be!”
“What about that thing in Rome? Isn’t there a big statue of a face on some church somewhere and, if you stick your hand in it’s mouth, it cuts off your hand if you’re a liar?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of that. Wasn’t it in a movie?”
●
“You are probably referring to the Mouth of Truth. I believe it became famous after its depiction in the movie Roman Holiday. It is a circular relief of a giant face with holes for the mouth and eyes.”
“If it can detect lies by sticking your hand in it, it sounds like a fairly convenient artifact. Is it the face of some god or another?”
“Yes.” Athena raised her hand. “It is Oceanus, our Titan of the sea. He is one of the Titans, but he is peaceful and did not participate in the War of the Titans. After the war, he is depicted as a god of the outer sea and of water itself rather than having been sealed away.”
“He’s a sea god? Don’t you already have Poseidon?”
“While I am a sea god, I’m the god of the weather and lands of the sea, not of the sea itself.”
“Yes. And in our mythology, the earth is a disc rather than a sphere, so the ‘outer sea’ refers to the sea surrounding Europe. So you could think of Oceanus is the god of the ‘farthest reaches of the world’.”
“I see. And there’s a statue of that god?”
“But,” someone said, raising her hand.
“Why is a sea god a judge of lies?”
“Ah…”
After a lengthy pause, Athena answered.
“To be honest, that part was added later?”
●
Kuwajiri realized everyone was looking her way. And…
“Kuwajiri, I get the feeling this is difficult for the Olympus gods to explain.”
“Yeah, so can you handle it?”
Well, since they had asked. Kuwajiri opened a Revelation Board and displayed an image of the Mouth of Truth.
“The Mouth of Truth is made of marble, it is 175cm in diameter, 19cm thick, and weighs 1.2t. It has a pedestal now, but it was originally a perfect circle. And…”
She said it.
“It was originally a cover for a spring at Rome’s Temple of Hercules Victor. By placing it over the spring, the water would have come from its mouth. It is thought to have had jewels in the eyes.”
“Um, uh, then…?”
“Yes. The lie detection was an invention of the church it was moved to. Oceanus does not have a lie detection authority.”
“Ah! Nooo! Don’t stick your hand in my mouuuuuth! My Oceanus juices will leak ouuuuut!”
“I want to complain, but that isn’t exactly inaccurate.”
“Except it isn’t juices.”
●
“Hmm.” Raidou tilted his head. “Laws and torture are only a deterrent against lies and silence. We hoped we could find an artifact to detect lies, but no one here has one.”
“Myths and their stories are based on the actions of the ancient peoples and the natural phenomena around them, so anything that happens in a myth will be based on the culture, civilization, and natural environment of the day. To find a lie detector, you would need to got a step further and check a fantasy story.”
“You mean like polishing a bronze shield into a mirror to fight Medusa?”
“Exactly.”
“Huh??? What’s this ‘a step further’ stuff?”
●
How to explain this? wondered Raidou.
“Myths record a variety of events and phenomena, but when enough time has passed, people treat them as no more than stories. …With me so far?”
“Yes! I am! Can you explain this using boobs!?”
“Why should he have to if you already understand?”
“Just roll with it. Now, Sumeragi, take Senpai-san, Kido, Kidou, and Shifu for example. They’re all different sizes, right? But you’ve started referring to them all with the single category of ‘big boobs’.”
“That’s not true! They’re all in different categories in my head! That’s why I can come up with unique categories like Busty Olympus!”
“…”
“What do I do now?”
“I say you just ignore him.”
Raidou went with that.
“Wait, we can just…do that?”
“Kuwajiri-chan. If you focus on defeating him, you’ve already let him win.”
“Eh!? What’s this!? What’s with the sidelong glance, Kuwajiri!? What do you want!? What do you want!? Let me say it again: whaaat dooo youuu waaant!?”
“Senpai-san, please take care of him.”
●
“Yahooooo! I got a tap on the shoulder!”
The gods and spirits working at various points in the school saw the idiot race out from the clubroom building before naturally slipping and tripping.
●
“Hi! I’m back! Did you catch the flooder yet!?”
“We haven’t made a lick of progress!”
Raidou ignored everything else going on to keep the conversation going.
“Viewed as stories, myths come from ancient times and use ancient language. The things they’re trying to say might not mesh with another region, or there could be differences in culture, civilization, or natural environment like Tenma mentioned before. What happens then?”
“Oh, I know! They supplement or strengthen them! Like if ‘busty’ already refers to Senpai and someone else has a different size, I can add a word to make ‘Busty Mesopotamian’ or ‘Busty Olympus’!”
“He keeps mentioning me. This must mean I am the most popular goddess in the world.”
“Aunt! You’re at least the best in the world at interpreting things in your favor!”
Raidou glanced at Shifu who shook her hand side to side, so he decided to ignore this.
“So when a myth is being strengthened, the end result won’t be much different if the culture or civilization hasn’t grown much. In that case, the details will gain more depth. But what happens if the culture or civilization does grow?”
“They don’t need the greater depth of detail?”
“Then what else will they add?”
Yes. That was one answer.
“When complementing or strengthening their myths, the ancient people would leave their actions and natural phenomena behind and instead begin ‘creating’.”
Listen.
“They would ‘create’ things disconnected from anything that had actually happened. We mentioned this before, but this is a product of the imagination that humans have far more of than any other living creature.”
●
For example…
“Senpai-san represents humanity’s lifespan, right?”
“Right! Senpai is the beautiful (imagine a lot more adjectives here) and busty goddess who represents humanity’s and Mucho’s lifespans! I know that much!”
“Oh, dear. That (imagine) part is so embarrassing.”
“I’m more concerned about a different part!!”
“Don’t worry, Mucho! Myths are allowed to change! It’s not a problem at all if you get a life span story added to yours in your first update in 5000 years!”
“It’s a big problem for me trying to exist right now!”
“But if you get a new temple built, it’ll probably include a statue of you holding a bag of Karamucho.”
“Oh! That’s fine, then! Build the temple in front of Koikeya’s HQ!”
“It would be a huge nuisance for Koikeya if your temple held a festival each time the shipping trucks departed.”
Raidou kind of agreed. Anyway, it sounded like Sumeragi understood, so he kept speaking.
“Senpai-san was known as ‘ugly’ to represent death and people’s fear related to their lifespans. That means her myth was based on the ancient people’s activities and natural phenomena.”
But…
“The way you started worshiping her for her large breasts was your creation. That obviously has nothing to do with her representing the phenomenon of lifespan.”
“Eh!? But worshiping big boobs makes your lifespan grow!”
He looked to Shifu and she shook her hand side to side, so he ignored the idiot’s comment.
●
“Tooru, you’re looking my way more frequently.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m a big boobs worshiper too, so it’s easy to get sidetracked when he says these things.”
“Wow, was that an indirect compliment?”
●
Raidou sighed as the girls cheered and high-fived Shifu.
“The point is that a lie detection artifact won’t be found in the story structure of the original myths. You’ll only find that as an unexplainable addition as the myths matured or as outside elements were included.”
“Then in my case…?”
“Senpai-san has her original identity, but then an outside element – that’s you – added the large breasts worship. And…”
And…
“We don’t have a convenient lie detection artifact. So we need to find a way to keep people from lying or staying silent.”
●
“I’ve been wondering while listening in. Do they have a lie detector at Tachikawa’s police station?”
“You would need to check the district police station, which in Tokyo is the Metropolitan Police Department. The criminal division of each prefecture’s police headquarters has a forensics laboratory, or ‘crime lab’, and that is where they do polygraph tests.”
“Why do you know all this, Omokane-san?”
“Not because I’ve used it. I can assure you that. Relying on those machines is no fun.”
“That’s worse!”
●
“And the crime lab is located beyond the flooding, so we cannot use their polygraph.”
After Tenma said that…
“Hm, that’s too bad! And I was going to prove the pureness of my heart! But…was there no older way to tell if someone was lying? And I mean something scientific, not that trial by ordeal thing.”
●
<That is a fairly interesting question for the ape. Can anyone here tell us how far back humans attempted to identify lies?>
“May I answer?”
“Oh!? Former MB! Do you have this one!?”
“Don’t call me that! Anyway, the question is about forensic science, right?”
In that case…
“Would it help to look at how Archimedes of Greece used the principle of buoyancy to prove a blacksmith was lying?”
●
“Hm? Isn’t Archimedes that retort pouch yakisoba!?”
“What are you talking about?”
<Archimendes was a brand of cup noodles sold by Otsuka Foods starting in 1985. The flavored noodles were eaten with a mixture of vegetables and red bean paste. It’s name could be interpreted to mean ‘walking noodles’ which fit the ‘go outside’ trend starting with the Sony Walkman, but it was expensive and never really managed to catch on, so it was discontinued fairly quickly.>
“Right, right. The big ‘Archimendes’ on the box gave it a great design. And there was a collab with Gradius on the Famicom where they released a version of Gradius where all the power ups were shaped like Achimendes.”
<And as much as I would like to say this has nothing to do with Archimedes, the ‘go outside’ part does kind of fit. Right, Athena?>
“I know what you mean. The part where he figured out the answer while bathing and was so excited he immediately ran around town.”
“While he was naked!? Then did Archimendes not sell well because people weren’t eating it while naked!?”
“I don’t need a forensic investigation to prove that wrong.”
<For anyone who doesn’t know, Archimedes was attempting to prove the suspicion that the king’s golden crown had an impurity mixed in.>
“How did he prove that?”
<First, he balanced the original amount of gold and the crown with a set of scales. When he submerged that, the difference in volume threw off the balance of the buoyancy. Because the crown floated, he proved it had a metal lighter than gold mixed in.>
“FYI: the blacksmith responsible was immediately executed.”
“Hmm, I guess that is what would happen…”
●
“My point is,” said Athena. “If anything a suspect says seems suspicious, we can check it over with the laws and principles of chemistry and other sciences.”
“I was going to say that sounds odd coming from a god, but that original story happened under your protection.”
“By then, Olympus mythology belonged to Greece as a whole.”
“Olympus mythology was created at around 1600 BCE and Archimedes was alive during the mid-200s BCE, so more than 1300 years had passed and there were temples to many different gods all across Greece.”
“That’s such a long time…”
“Douhai-san? It’s about the same for Shinto now.”
“If we use the composition of the Kojiki in 712 as the starting point, then the current year of 1990 would be just under 1300 years since the mythology began. That is similar to the relation between Archimedes and Olympus mythology.”
<Of course, the sciences and learning have progressed much farther in 1990 Japan, so the gods have far less of a presence here. In Archimedes’s time, the temples were what people relied on for the phenomena they didn’t understand, giving the gods a real presence. In that sense…>
“Yes. We really did live with humanity. In Archimedes’s time, our myths were seen as history-adjacent and they were also well established as stories. It was believed that the gods watched over the humans. So we were ‘present’ at the early stages of learning and science.”
●
“Then,” I said. “If they had developed science and proven what caused different phenomena, why did they go with trials by ordeal instead of using science to identify crimes and lies?”
Everyone turned in a single direction.
They were all looking at…
“Huhhhh? Did IIII do something agaiiiin?”
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