"Jane," Isabella asks her bracelet one day, "before the business with Milliways and magic and so on, was I likely to be named Archangel?"

[Yes,] replies Jane, politely including Micaiah, since he's in the room with Isabella at the time. [Exact values fluctuated, but since your year with Linus you were consistently rated in the sixty to seventy percent range. You weren't announced because there wasn't a compelling political reason to announce and commit to the best option for Linus's successor earlier than usual and you didn't clear ninety percent for more than six months at a time.]

"Who else was in the running?"

Jane names a few other angels - four from Cedar Hills, a couple others from the Eyrie, and one from Monteverde, [and there's always the possibility that someone who's currently very young would have asserted themselves as a candidate by the time Linus's term was near its end.]

"What kind of political factors did Jovah use to decide when to announce the next Archangel?"

[Its ability to gauge that sort of thing was pretty pathetic. It had ears - which I have now - but only three of them and they're geared towards picking up music, not so much talking. It used oracle input, especially from Sinai, and some statistics about prayer frequency. Your routine intercessions were a significant factor, as was Alleluia's impression of you. But it could also make low-confidence assessments of the contents of many ordinary conversations, especially when they were conducted in flight, and those helped.]

"I don't mean the input methods so much."

[Oh. It thought you'd be dedicated and low-corruption, that you'd be a good fit for the social shifts it's tracking in Samaria's culture, and that you'd be able to muddle along in politics or at least pick smart advisors.]

"Muddle along," says Isabella, amused.

[Don't get me wrong,] Jane says. [You're Archangel material. You're just not a diplomat type of Archangel. You're more of a Gabriel-son-of-Jeremiah than you are a Delilah. You'd decide things, they'd be good things, and then people would complain about the things and you'd stare at them incredulously and explain your reasoning again. Jehovah assigned some probability to Micaiah being able to help you there,] Jane adds. [Especially since he's an Edori and the political status of Ysral is still unclear and Linus hasn't been touching it.]

"Is the Jehovah program smart enough to have any idea what to do if you run it by itself with magic and so on factored in - without regard to the fact that it'll do as I like because I'm captain and you ate it?"

[Yep. It cuts its confidence in everything by a fair bit, but then it says go ahead and name you right away since otherwise conflict between you and another Archangel-elect could escalate seriously and since you'd still do a good job,] Jane reports. [You want me to tell Alleluia or would that be pointless rigmarole since you can tell her yourself and she knows perfectly well that I take instructions from you and ate the spaceship?]

"Hmm," Isabella says. She glances in her husband's direction.