<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>Summary 5</strong></span><br/><br/>These things happen after the fight with Min-joon.<br/><br/>William assesses the likelihood that Dr. Balthazar would give him unofficial permission to wear this gear to class as long as he doesn't get caught. On the one hand, Dr. B has appearances to maintain. On the other, he’s been consistently friendly to the Nine for as long as William’s been at H?. He’s a cool cucumber but William is a keen judge of character…William figures it at 50/50. However, William is 100% certain that Dr. B would not respond to attempted bribery (donations to the school's endowment, sponsoring renovations, etc.) in any way William would like.<br/><br/>William has not had enough contact with Dr. Balthazar to be able to get beyond the surface of his motivations. He does seem to care genuinely about the students and the school. He is a man of faith, but in UU that is not a straitjacket on one’s rationality. At a guess, if William cracked his cover a little, Balthazar would be friendlier—particularly if William agreed to take AdSpir next year.<br/><br/>If he goes ahead and does it without getting permission, and gets caught, William's 90% certain that Dr. Balthazar would simply tell him “Don’t do it again, I will be watching you.”<br/><br/>William also knows this: Dr. Balthazar is a scary goddamn powerful sorcerer. There may not be anyone on Earth who matches his knowledge of magic.<br/><br/>He will compose an encrypted email asking Balthazar that if he can pass every test in class ahead of schedule can he use this gear to actually pursue his own coursework while supposedly attending class, hinting that these studies would likely (almost certainly) lead to him attending AdSpir.<br/><br/>Dr. Balthazar sends back an email, also encrypted, saying “I know you’ve been pacing yourself, and I sympathize. Just don’t get caught. Let me know if there’s anything I can do—the Angel speaks well of you. —Nicholas”<br/><br/>Now that is frightening and awe-inspiring. He doesnt know what Martin is…but he knows he isn't God or an angel. He's pretty sure hes a 'whatever the hell William is' and the others are, which is definitely not human. The fact that they are willing to pose as angels is…interesting.<br/><br/>William assesses the current state of the Monster War, using his tactical savvy and access to publicly-available news and data collated and correlated by his minions.<br/><br/>First of all, the developed nations are winning every battle and losing the war. There will be another Terre Haute (or for that matter Hordial) inside the next year, he’s guessing, and it will be uglier. The body snatchers were the rarest type of monster (next to Bugs) at the start of the war; now they’re the most common by far. Reading between the lines, Admiral Raskey knows this and is pretty much fighting a delaying action, hoping to keep the US a functioning and cohesive nation as long as he can.<br/><br/>The less-developed nations…write them off. They’re done.<br/><br/>The “angels” aren’t directly intervening. At all. Anywhere. The Bugs are. If there’s a reason humanity still exists it has to do with Bug logistical limits, and since the Bugs appear from nowhere and disappear when killed (or when they suicide upon their rare capture), there is no real way to estimate those limits. Whatever Martin and any other hypothetical angels are doing, they're not fighting the war William can see.<br/><br/>It's clear, btw, that the Bugs do not come from another planet. They come from another dimension, or something of the sort. There are no secret Bug bases. They just pop into existence, fuck shit up and disappear.<br/><br/>Suppose nine angels existed, each as competent as William, each devoting 10% of their time and effort to guiding humanity to victory in the Monster War. William estimates that humanity would effectively defeat the monsters within five years from now, with mopping-up actions going on for a long time. This suggests to William that Martin and any other angels do not have the survival of humanity as a primary concern.<br/><br/>He meets with Penn late in the afternoon. They discuss sending a secret message to Admiral Raskey, secret even from Penn. She gives William an encryption program and tells him to encrypt his message, send half the encryption key disguised as junk mail to one of Raskey's neighbors and hide the other half steganographically in one of the letters William sends him. Penn will find a way to deliver the encrypted message and instructions for decrypting it to Raskey covertly over the Internet. This risks Raskey not getting the message, but is as secure and untraceable as they can figure out how to be.