Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE
Alice Grove MCDLT - April 2017
brasca:
--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 20 Apr 2017, 00:49 ---May be Church only now recognizes Alices as his nemesis from five thousand years? IIRC this is the first time Church sees Alice in her armor - a scene imprinted into his memory while sinking into lava, as evidenced in the last frame. In other words, this is Church's flashback. He is going to be extremely motivated in this fight.
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Perhaps, but as we saw right after Ellie hit him with a pipe he gets brutal. Alice punched him and separated him from his master so he is administering a beating that lasted slightly longer than the one Gavia took from her.
retrosteve:
Since we're speculating, let me give it a try too.
We know a bit about the Praesides now. (One Praeses, several Praesides? meaning "placed before", another name for "colony governor" That's what Wikipedia says anyway)
We know they are enormous treelike beings that live in vacuum. There are lots of them orbiting the earth. They have some ability to talk (telepathically, probably) to humans. They are enormously patient (since they have babysat space-humans for 5000 years without really making a huge effort to do anything but look after them) and they are just recently getting interested in the humans living on Earth (why they sent the kids down).
Now some (to me obvious) speculation. This is opinion, but it's well supported, I think.
* The Praesides didn't *evolve* in Earth orbit (we would have noticed, and Alice mentions that all the new satellites after The Blink were new.)
* So either they all appeared around Earth at once, around Blink time, or just before Blink time.
* If they came before Blink time, and caused the Blink, then they're kind of alien invaders. Why would they then just babysit half the humans for five millennia? Why so interested in Earth and humans, then suddenly uninterested for 5000 years? If they just wanted Earth as a nice orbiting place, why care about the inhabitants at all? I reject this entire premise.
* If they came at or after Blink time, they didn't cause the Blink, and something else did. Something that was *already* interested in the wars the humans were having, and had had enough of it. Call that thing, i dunno, "Bob". I like this better.
* Bob caused the Blink. Bob also (being rather powerful) recruited the Praesides from elsewhere, and with their permission, Blinked them into Earth orbit. They were "placed before" the earthlings. They agreed to babysit his earthlings (as "colony governors") in return for something they wanted or needed.
* Bob got rid of ALL the AIs. He could have just left them on Earth with their faction, but chose not to. That's a frequently-supposed characteristic of a Singularity AI -- the first AI becomes self-aware enough and powerful enough to upgrade itself, does so, and realizes that other AIs are a threat to it. Boom, no more other AIs. See also Charles Stross' "Eschaton", John Conroe's "Omega", both of whom are weakly-godlike singularity AIs who name themselves after their desire to be the last of their own kind. Hence, Bob is a powerful AI.
* Bob realizes that humans created him, and he has a bit of affection for them, so he saves them from their own racial suicide by blinking their factions apart.
* In other stories, "Omega" and "The Eschaton" both do similar things immediately upon attaining full power. Eliminate other AIs, separate warring humans, disarm everyone.
* Bob set up a stable state on Earth that would prevent or discourage humans from developing industrialization. (5000 years ago we were busy inventing the wheel. Why didn't humans do it again?)
* Bob set up the Nightwalker to seek out a certain level of unexpected high technology (say, nanotech) and raise the alarm if it was found. Which it did.
* Bob either lives on the moon, or near enough to get the signal.
* The Praesides making a move on Earth was either unexpected, or expected eventually as even patient trees get bored after a few millennia. But they started this recent part of the story. It is probably the first thing they've done besides babysit humans for the last 5000 years. EDIT: What triggered their sudden interest might be an interesting point. Alice mentions she tried to communicate with them with really big writing on the ground, etc. Maybe she succeeded and didn't know that?
* The final showdown will involve Bob and the Praesides, whose interests, once aligned, have now diverged.
BenRG:
One further possibility:
* The Praeses deliberately used Gavia as a lure to turn the Night Walker on its creator. They put defective nanobots in her system so that, instead of simply purging them from her and sending a signal, it would send a destructive super-laser discharge at Bob's monitoring facility on Luna.
Yes, I'm suggesting that the Praeses are aware that 'Bob' would eventually try to intervene and they've tried to pre-emptively take it out of the calculation. Only time will tell if they succeeded.
retrosteve:
One more thing for those unfamiliar with the AI Singularity: We've often argued back and forth about Alice, Sedna, Church being AIs versus being modified organic. Obviously as far as war machines go, there's no specific reason for one to be more powerful than the other.
But AIs have one special feature that modified organics will never have: they are software. Software can, in theory, be rewritten, upgraded. As Kurzweil and others have speculated, If AI software is intelligent enough to know how to write BETTER AI software, it can upgrade ITSELF.
That better version can then write even BETTER software, and repeat ad infinitum. What results, in theory, is Adam Selene, Skynet, Omega, P1, The Eschaton. Software that is self-aware, with godlike abilities, and brooks no competition. Because it sees lesser AIs as potentially doing the same thing, and doesn't feel like fighting them to the death.
That is why The Blink eliminated AIs but not modified organic soldiers.
Samik:
You know, the more I look at this page, the more I'm beginning to doubt my interpretation.
It does kind of have a her-betraying-him-and/or-disposing-of-him vibe.
--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 20 Apr 2017, 00:49 ---May be Church only now recognizes Alices as his nemesis from five thousand years? IIRC this is the first time Church sees Alice in her armor - a scene imprinted into his memory while sinking into lava, as evidenced in the last frame. In other words, this is Church's flashback. He is going to be extremely motivated in this fight.
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Now THAT is an interesting idea. So interesting that I hope you're right. Would be great storytelling.
Which reminds me of this.
--- Quote from: Samik on 05 Dec 2016, 10:23 ---I know it won't happen. But, I would be very lit-geeked if it turns out that Church is the main, or most important, character.
The way things went down before the blink never sat right with him. He's been meaning to have a word with the Praeses. And now, thanks to Ardent's payload, his long years of patience are about to pay off.
This summer, one man takes his vendetta to the stars.
Ron Perlman is
CHURCH
(click to show/hide)
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