Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Return fire from the Moon levels Sedna's cabin - she is not happy as she now has no clothes!

Gavia the mortal

A terrible invasion by War Machines from space

Pissed off, Alice and Sedna declare war on the Praeses - which is what they were aiming for

Ardent is angry - Don't make Ardent angry, you wouldn't like him when he's angry

Hijinks as Gavia has learn to cope without her Nanotech

The Praeses finally put in an appearance

Alice has terrible flashbacks to the war

The arrival of the flying restaraunt serving Spathe Pizza, Ham and Waffles with Coffee

Purple Space Monkey Dishwasher

Whaterver happens, you can bet it won't be in this Poll

[brasca]

Her reaction isn't helpful or fair to Ardent, but it's also hard to blame her for lashing out. She's terrified, bereft of what are to her basic functions.  People do insane things when they're scared.

It's preferable too.  At worst Ardent will have a bloody nose from this which he can quickly recover from, but words hurt a whole lot more.  It's not over yet since she passed out so she may have a lot more to say to him, but suppose instead of hitting him she said things that can never be taken back like how she wishes she didn't have a brother or she will never again be his sister even if they make it back to the space habitat.  That would wound him more than any punch to the face.   

If I was partially responsible for my sister's traumatic experience I'd take a beating over disowning any day. 

There's a lot we don't know about this technology.  Perhaps it can be replaced and this is just a temporary inconvenience, but maybe those implants cannot be installed again if removed and her situation is permanent.  There's also what happened while she was merged with the Night Walker.  Perhaps she learned about its purpose and if the Praeses are involved and now knows that she and Ardent will never make it back home because of whatever scheme they have designed. 

[JimC]

She might not even KNOW she's lost her nanotech yet...

I suspect that finding herself lying on a blanket rather than floating in mid air would have been a pretty solid clue.

Now if you want a bizarre mental picture, consider: had she still been floating in mid air, how would they have brought her along with the cart?

[USS Martenclaire]

"I think I'm in love" - Punchbot

[Zebediah]

She might not even KNOW she's lost her nanotech yet...

I suspect that finding herself lying on a blanket rather than floating in mid air would have been a pretty solid clue.

Now if you want a bizarre mental picture, consider: had she still been floating in mid air, how would they have brought her along with the cart?

Simple - tie a rope to her ankle and tow her.

[jheartney]

I should think the nanotech has a backup up in orbit, and that Gavia could be dosed with blank nanites which would be flashed with the old backup memory. Or maybe the nanotech is impregnated into her old smock, so all she needs to do is get a replacement and put it on.

But all that can only happen if she gets back home. If she and Ardent are stuck planetside for the foreseeable future, she'll be without this essential part of herself for a long time. Kind of like one of us losing one of our senses.

Perhaps the Nightwalker is just a tech "guard dog" meant to snuff out any un-allowed tech on the planet's surface. if expunging Gavia's nanotech has made it vanish, then Ardent and Gavia are a one-two punch meant to upset the pre-existing low-tech order on Earth:  Gavia neutralizes the guard dog, and Ardent spreads the virus of new tech. It would explain why they were both allowed to come down, and why their calls for return were ignored.

[Kugai]

COMIC

And she knows!!

And in a sense, Gavia is kinda right.  After all, if Ardent had'nt come down Planetside and if Gavia hadn't been talked into coming after him, then it wouldn't have happened.

When one looks at it that way, one can understand Gavias violent reaction to what has happened to her.

[Verteiron]

There's a lot we don't know about this technology.  Perhaps it can be replaced and this is just a temporary inconvenience, but maybe those implants cannot be installed again if removed and her situation is permanent.  There's also what happened while she was merged with the Night Walker.  Perhaps she learned about its purpose and if the Praeses are involved and now knows that she and Ardent will never make it back home because of whatever scheme they have designed.

To speculate wildly, I'm going to guess that Gavia's "Nanotech" is Utility Fog/Smartdust that the user customizes heavily over the course of years. So even if the physical 'bots can be replaced on earth (or regrown, if even a single one survived), she may still have retrain them to respond to her commands and deliver the feedback she's grown used to expecting. Presumably she has backups in orbit, but that's not much help at the moment...

[Method of Madness]

COMIC

Is it the punchy one? Because I'm not seeing a new one.

[Kugai]

Yeah, it's the one where Gavia is punching the crap outta Ardent.

[Method of Madness]

Oh ok. You got my hopes up that there was a newer one.

[ThePerilsOfDan]

zomg, is Gavia going to beat Ardent to death?

[BenRG]

zomg, is Gavia going to beat Ardent to death?

More likely, she'll hit him a few times, suddenly get enormous cramps in her atrophied arm muscles (because she's too used to her nanobots doing the work) and be nearly knocked unconscious by the pain. That won't stop her but I suspect that she'll end up being hog-tied by Alice and/or Sedna and told that they're not letting her go until she stops being stupid because she's injuring herself more than she is Ardent.

[Verteiron]

More likely, she'll hit him a few times, suddenly get enormous cramps in her atrophied arm muscles (because she's too used to her nanobots doing the work) and be nearly knocked unconscious by the pain.

That's a good point. Even Ardent, a nanotech minimalist, uses it to block pain out to the point that he didn't notice a severed limb until it was pointed out to him. There's a real chance that she's not felt any actual pain in years, maybe decades.

[FunkyTuba]

fwiw:
[tweet]734829761722089474[/tweet]

[Channelore HellicottAtham]

More likely, she'll hit him a few times, suddenly get enormous cramps in her atrophied arm muscles (because she's too used to her nanobots doing the work) and be nearly knocked unconscious by the pain.

That's a good point. Even Ardent, a nanotech minimalist, uses it to block pain out to the point that he didn't notice a severed limb until it was pointed out to him. There's a real chance that she's not felt any actual pain in years, maybe decades.

She looked pretty sore when Alice duffed her up at their first meeting! Still, she didn't stay that way for long..

[brasca]

More likely, she'll hit him a few times, suddenly get enormous cramps in her atrophied arm muscles (because she's too used to her nanobots doing the work) and be nearly knocked unconscious by the pain.

That's a good point. Even Ardent, a nanotech minimalist, uses it to block pain out to the point that he didn't notice a severed limb until it was pointed out to him. There's a real chance that she's not felt any actual pain in years, maybe decades.

She looked pretty sore when Alice duffed her up at their first meeting! Still, she didn't stay that way for long..

Hopefully, she has some of the genetic modifications Ardent has that are independent of nanotechnology so she can physically recover from this quicker than a baseline human in the same situation.  Otherwise she'll be immobile for the next few strips as well as vulnerable to disease although if she survived the previous ordeal I doubt the author would kill her with an illness. 

[JimC]

...Ardent [blocked] pain out to the point that he didn't notice a severed limb until it was pointed out to him.

Maybe, but we could also speculate about limitations of the bio-engineered tail... Where are the nerves going to end up at for instance? If the bio engineering merely extends the nerves in the coccyx then they might be pretty sparse over the whole length... I wonder if Alice went back to find Ardent's tail for him and sewed it on, or whether he grew a whole new one, and if the latter whether anyone picked up the old one and what they did with it (preserved, stuffed, and used as draught excluder?).

[brasca]

Comic is up!

If Gavia could sleep for 3 weeks then she's definitely genetically altered.  As such she might recover physically at a faster rate, but could struggle with some PTSD.

[Zebediah]

Sedna seems to be an extraordinarily cheerful person when she isn't shooting at Alice.

[Kugai]

Opposites attract??

So now we know the length of time of the Timeskip.  At least Ardent is taking some responsibility for the mess that he and his sister are in.

[BenRG]

Sedna seems to be an extraordinarily cheerful person when she isn't shooting at Alice.

Sedna was grinning all while fighting Alice too. I just thing she's one of those people who finds joy in the oddest of places!

So... was Gavia in a healing trance; practically a state of suspended animation whilst her body put itself back together somehow? Does that imply that there is a second level to her augmentation that the Night Walker couldn't touch?

[FunkyTuba]

...Where are the nerves going to end up at for instance?...

for that matter, why even have nerves in something that's just an ornament and is going to be banging into stuff all the time anyway

[JimC]

...a second level to her augmentation that the Night Walker couldn't touch?

Or didn't need to touch perhaps?
But in http://www.alicegrove.com/post/115986771824/kids-these-days Ardent at least implies that the space population is not "baseline human" and that they are all long lived. I suggest that implies the space population are all augmented above baseline human, whatever that is, as well as having a variety of choices beyond that, where Gavia had the nano machines and Ardent apparently some kind of biological engineering.

[JimC]

for that matter, why even have nerves in something that's just an ornament and is going to be banging into stuff all the time anyway

'cos you need to know if you've shut your tail in the door [grin]

[FunkyTuba]

for that matter, why even have nerves in something that's just an ornament and is going to be banging into stuff all the time anyway

'cos you need to know if you've shut your tail in the door [grin]

unless you've designed it with autotomy... then it wouldn't matter if you just caught the tail end of it

[TheCollector]

I vote the last panel for best panel ever.

[brasca]

...a second level to her augmentation that the Night Walker couldn't touch?

Or didn't need to touch perhaps?
But in http://www.alicegrove.com/post/115986771824/kids-these-days Ardent at least implies that the space population is not "baseline human" and that they are all long lived. I suggest that implies the space population are all augmented above baseline human, whatever that is, as well as having a variety of choices beyond that, where Gavia had the nano machines and Ardent apparently some kind of biological engineering.

Perhaps they are both the product of biological engineering.  It seems like something that would have to be done in the embryonic stage, but then again this is technology thousands of years more advances so I suppose Ardent could have opted for genetic mutation when he was older.  However, if Gavia were just a baseline human melded with nanotechnology she could never survive being unconscious that long so it's likely that she, Ardent, and other space dwellers are genetically enhanced to a certain extent and then free to make choices as to how much further they want to go in evolution.  Gavia favored technological augmentation as a philosophical choice so I can see yet another reason for Gavia to resent Ardent.  This chain of events has inadvertently forced his own philosophical beliefs on her.

At least she might not have to struggle to long to adapt.  It's quite possible her muscles have already regained strength, but she might have to learn how to walk because it's been so long since she did.   

[Skewbrow]

I'm relatively ignorant about physiology, but I would guess that there are nerves (to muscles) in Ardent's tail. Could he otherwise wag it delightfully?

[freeman]

This amount of lampshade hanging about "metabolic stasis" in today's page is a proof that Jeph still reads this forum and also he's trolling us pretty hard.

[Is it cold in here?]

He hasn't logged in in almost two months.

[Undrneath]

Doesn't mean he hasn't read the forums as a "guest".

[hedgie]

This may only be the *nix guy in me talking, but I also do primarily use a non-privileged account for daily use and only log in as root when I need to do root stuff.[1]  Perhaps Jeph does something similar her.




[1]okay, that's a lie.  I never actually login as root, I just su over.  sudo is for *buntu and Mac users.

[JimC]

Doesn't mean he hasn't read the forums as a "guest".

Or perhaps he has a sock puppet? Can you spot a user who's maybe directing or stirring threads in a way you might think our author would want to?

But, just possibly, its simply that our speculations are in rather obvious directions...

[cesium133]

Only on occasion do I direct threads toward butts...

...uh, I mean, I know absolutely nothing about any sock puppets directing conversation toward butts. Nothing whatsoever.

[brasca]

This amount of lampshade hanging about "metabolic stasis" in today's page is a proof that Jeph still reads this forum and also he's trolling us pretty hard.

I don't know about that.  This is a webcomic that involves a lot of science fiction and it's highly plausible since it's about 5000 years into the future.  Moreover, it's a convenient way to allow for the passage of time as well as bypass what was likely to be a long recovery process.  If Gavia's body has healed from the physical trauma of having so much of the technology that was a part of her removed then we'll be spared weeks of strips involving physical therapy. 

[pwhodges]

Doesn't mean he hasn't read the forums as a "guest".

Or perhaps he has a sock puppet? Can you spot a user who's maybe directing or stirring threads in a way you might think our author would want to?

We can see IP addresses, for instance.  And we also know what he has in the past told us behind the scenes about how he views the Questionable Content forum.  But note also (as this is the Alice Grove subforum) that he has not acknowledged this as an Alice Grove forum at all - there's no link from the comic to here.

[Timemaster]

Hmm, three weeks unconcious and they haven´t even changed her clothing?
I hope they have washed it (and her) regularly all this time. Otherwise Gavia will have gotten some nasty skin problems.

TM

[JimC]

Doesn't mean he hasn't read the forums as a "guest".

Or perhaps he has a sock puppet? Can you spot a user who's maybe directing or stirring threads in a way you might think our author would want to?

We can see IP addresses, for instance. 

I assumed Mods would know - and also that standard moderatorial ethics would prevent you from confirming or denying... It was a speculation for us plebs...

[brasca]

Hmm, three weeks unconcious and they haven´t even changed her clothing?
I hope they have washed it (and her) regularly all this time. Otherwise Gavia will have gotten some nasty skin problems.

TM

Difficult to say since I don't see how she could drink or eat while she was in metabolic stasis and yet she is not skin and bones.  As such I don't think she'd sweat or expel any other waste.  At least I hope not because the poor girl has gone through enough.  Knowing that Alice or worse yet Ardent was giving her sponge baths while comatose would just be another grievance to add to the pile. 

[brasca]

Strip is up!

It would seem that in addition to her being able to physically heal Gavia has miraculously coped with her loss quickly enough.  The wonders of genetic engineering.

Good for her.  I wasn't really looking forward to a whole bunch of strips with her mopey and depressed.  She's determined to get back home and get what she lost. 

[hedgie]

Or she may be bottling it up. 

[Welu]

I'm impressed by Gavia. I assume she is still hurt and upset about get nanotech, but also feels it's a waste of time to spend time worrying about what currently cannot be remedied. Considering how she came down to get Ardent, it seems like she is the type to want to do something instead of thinking about it.

[BenRG]

It clearly is still something that hurts her but it's possible that she's strongly a 'no point crying over spilt milk' person. I also think that she's smart enough to realise that, in all probability, she has bigger problems than her apparently-destroyed enhancements. Such as precisely what the Night Walker may have set in motion.

Less positively, she may have an attitude of 'I am the tough, powerful and rational one' that's leading to her trying to suppress her emotions. That might mean that she's just storing the stress up for a later break-down.

[jwhouk]

It's also possible that a lot more time expired between Alice's "It seems so" and her query, "What have I missed?"

[Kugai]

I think she just wants to know everything that's happened before she goes to pieces - get it all in one hit and get it over with.

But yes, she seems to have either taken the loss of her Nanotech in stride or she's in a kind of denial about it at this stage.

[TheCollector]

Nuuuuuuu, Gavia is so precious in those bottom three panels I need to hug her. Since when was she so adorable?

[brasca]

It's also possible that a lot more time expired between Alice's "It seems so" and her query, "What have I missed?"

Perhaps, but the sky is the same color in both panels so either she wept 24 hours straight or just a few hours which considering her ordeal is still remarkably quick. 

[Storel]

Incredibly white skin, pink eyes -- if her hair was white instead of black, I'd say Gavia was probably an albino.

I suppose it's possible that she has no skin pigment or iris pigment, yet for some reason still has hair pigment, for Super Science Reasons having to do with enhanced biochemistry + nanos. Come to think of it, though, if she had no skin pigment then her skin should have a kind of pinkish glow, due to blood in her capillaries actually showing through the skin.

So I'm not sure what the bone-white skin coloration is supposed to indicate about her. Any ideas?

[brasca]

Incredibly white skin, pink eyes -- if her hair was white instead of black, I'd say Gavia was probably an albino.

I suppose it's possible that she has no skin pigment or iris pigment, yet for some reason still has hair pigment, for Super Science Reasons having to do with enhanced biochemistry + nanos. Come to think of it, though, if she had no skin pigment then her skin should have a kind of pinkish glow, due to blood in her capillaries actually showing through the skin.

So I'm not sure what the bone-white skin coloration is supposed to indicate about her. Any ideas?

None, but if Ardent can be blue then I don't see why Gavia can't be pale white. 

[hedgie]

Gavia has pigment in her skin.  In her case, however, it is titanium dioxide.