Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE

Alice Grove MCDT - January 2015

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ReindeerFlotilla:

--- Quote from: ysth on 12 Jan 2015, 22:35 ---No, all loons are Gavia.

--- End quote ---

Multiple personality disorder?

If the Praeses is involved in something fundamentally incomprehensible to humans it would be a really dull story--"Just as it is impossible to conceive of intelligent live totally different from our own, so we find our Earth trained minds unable to comprehend the weird phenomenon that may exist on this strange new planet."

I have no idea where the quote comes from, but it makes the point well enough. We can't have real stories about the incomprehensible because the author can't comprehend it. As such, the audience couldn't understand either. Certainly a story could be told. Ultimately we tell stories about people, so having the inconceivable in the background works just fine. But...

It's an X-Files problem. At a certain point your learn that the author has no intention of ever answering the questions, or ever moving closer to resolution. The threat ceases to have power because you know that the sword cannot fall. It's possible Jeph is going to do that, but I'd be let down if he did. The single reason I am a fan of QC is that he set up his story based on one of those questions that authors of consumer fiction often pose with no intention of answering, "Will they or won't they?" Authors don't like answering those questions because they often build all of the tension around them. Answer the question, and you lose the tension.

But Jeph answered the question.

Writing alien intelligence--even if it's just artificial--is hard. It's hard because it's impossible. It's always humans in funny make up. But people can write stories about humans in funny make up well enough that they seem alien (Asimov's Robots make a good, if jarringly anachronistic, example).  Whatever motive the Praeses has, it will be explicable if it's important to the story. Otherwise it's a cheat (unless, of course, the whole point of the story is that the Praeses is inexplicable. But I still think that's an X-Files problem).

BenRG:
Asimov's Second Foundation provides a good idea for where this may go. The 2F was originally founded by Harri Seldon to monitor and protect his grand plan for the salvation of human civilisation of the galaxy, his so-called 'prime radiant'. However, with time, his plan was 'refined' by later leaders of the 2F (much in the same way as later clerics 'refined' the teachings of their prophets and turned them into divine mandates for imperialism, misogyny and a clerical dictatorship). Ultimately, the direction of the Foundation became increasingly perverted and more and more about the ego of the leadership of the Second Foundation.

I'm wondering whether this is what we are seeing to a certain extent here. The Praeses (those who preside) are responsible for maintaining and overseeing the successful conclusion of The Experiment, of which the Town and the Vicissitudes' home environment are both part. However, the Praeses are flexible enough (with self-modifying code) that they are able to refine their instructions to improve the efficiency of The Experiment and fidelity of the results. Based on this, they may have been subtly and sometimes overtly altering the conditions of The Experiment because they have concluded that the original researchers' were too imperfect to fine-tune it properly. There may have been lots of modifications over the years (Alice's introduction may have been one). Ardent and Gavia are just a more overt modification.

I wonder if this story will be Alice's voyage to discover the truth behind The Experiment and to see if the Praeses' modifications are benign or the result of a dangerous malfunction ("I'm bored, lets start a war between two Environments because we can!").

pwhodges:
Have we had a discussion recently of the nature of Alice herself?  I mean, is she another outsider with a special role in maintaining the "primitives", or is she a "primitive" who has gained some (externally provided) extra skills and knowledge?  The first seems more likely, but at one point Gavia implied the second.

BenRG:

--- Quote from: pwhodges on 13 Jan 2015, 03:19 ---Have we had a discussion recently of the nature of Alice herself?  I mean, is she another outsider with a special role in maintaining the "primitives", or is she a "primitive" who has gained some (externally provided) extra skills and knowledge?  The first seems more likely, but at one point Gavia implied the second.
--- End quote ---

Gavia has no special knowledge; she's just assuming that, because Alice lives amongst the primitives and basically looks like one, she is one. My call remains is that Alice is a Caretaker, one of the Praeses' human agents within the Environments that keep things in good repair and occasionally enact upgrades or deal with... security issues.

Neko_Ali:
Well, the Viccistudes have said they are on vacation... I think that may be a literal truth. The town and surrounding areas are essentially a zoo. One of those 'Views into the ways our ancestors lived' except instead of actors in period outfits, they don't know about the outside world. Alice is there as Caretaker and janitor. She fixes things that the residents/zoo animals don't understand and she deals with interpersonal issues that could disrupt the town to much. I'm guessing she's from Outside, and modified to look like the locals, but with a few hidden tricks she might need. She seems isolated from the Outside though. When Ardent showed up she didn't try to contact the upper management or Parses, and she didn't grab him and send him right back. It seems her choices are trying to minimize the social damage a blue alien boy might cause in her bubble, or make him disappear permanently.

Ardent seems like a  bored kid who decided he wanted a closer look at the zoo animals. Especially the laaaaadies. So he tricked/bribed/whatever one of the volunteer workers to try and teleport down to the surface. Something he was surprised actually worked. I suspect that when it was found he was gone and where, Gavia was sent down with the Prases' permission to get him back as quickly as possible and minimize the disruption. They/it probably figured that Gavia looked sufficiently like the zoo animals (or was changed quickly to look like them) so she could get in and remove him quietly when she found Ardent. They didn't know she was going to get all explosion happy as soon as she arrived.

Alice seems the odd one out. Apparently the outside world can send agents down to the surface, but didn't tell them to find Alice. Or couldn't contact her. Or tried to but she wasn't home/near her communicator so they sent Gavia. That or the Prases doesn't know Alice is there for some reason. Maybe she is a native who found a bit of outer world tech and figured it out, and decided to become a caretaker on her own. There are still so many questions, but we're starting to get some answers.

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