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Alice will tell us everything that happened after the Blink

The Praeses will interrupt Alice's story just when it's getting interesting and finally reveal themselves

Church will interrupt and despite his appearance he's actually an eloquent storyteller

The Praeses will intervene, but it turns out they had nothing to do with the chain of events because it was the AIs all along

Gavia will be so irritated by what she hears she'll form an alliance with Pate and declare herself Queen of the Habitat and Pate can be King of Earth

[pwhodges]

With Gavia she's more concerned with Earth nanomachines within her body.

Gavia came with nanomachines.  This is the first time we've been told there is a significant difference between Earth nanomachines and her original ones.

Maybe there is a link between nanomachines and AI which is handled differently in the two forms.

[JimC]

It was only ever Alice' supposition that Ardent got his upgrade capability from the Praeses. Maybe it is earth originated?

[BenRG]

It was only ever Alice' supposition that Ardent got his upgrade capability from the Praeses. Maybe it is earth originated?

If you want to be technical, everything is Earth-originated as they are all descended from Earth stock and anything that they have must be descended from Earth's pre-Blink tech base.

That said, I'm definitely smelling the intervention of the synthetic AIs or whatever they evolved into over the past 5,000 years.

[sitnspin]

No great surprise: Gavia and Ardent have become 'contaminated' by going to Earth and are exiled for life. All for daring to be something other than what the Praeses have decided for them (ironically, in Gavia's case, to protect them).

In a relatively closed system like a space habitat, unknown foreign elements are a legitimate risk to the entire system. It isn't a matter of prejudice or arbitrary authority, it is a serious security concern.

[brasca]

No great surprise: Gavia and Ardent have become 'contaminated' by going to Earth and are exiled for life. All for daring to be something other than what the Praeses have decided for them (ironically, in Gavia's case, to protect them).

In a relatively closed system like a space habitat, unknown foreign elements are a legitimate risk to the entire system. It isn't a matter of prejudice or arbitrary authority, it is a serious security concern.

Yes too many sci-fi series gloss over quarantines which would be a necessary procedure when traveling to worlds with potentially dangerous microbes, diseases, and viruses.  Hopefully the decontamination process isn't too painful.

[Method of Madness]

Easy fix, one line of dialogue. Thank god they invented the, you know, Whatever Device.

[JimC]

I do like that the only member of the party not listed as a potential danger is Pate.

[JimC]

If you want to be technical, everything is Earth-originated as they are all descended from Earth stock

Yeah, yeah, first prize for pedantry and all that, but back in August 2015 Alice was considering the Praeses responsible for Ardents capability. Laridia is implying they are not. A previously unknown 3rd party, or a splinter group in the giant trees?

[Is it cold in here?]

There may be a classic science fiction theme here. Great power sets up an attempt at an ideal society. The society is stable for thousands or millions of years. Then an outside force, or constructive sabotage by a dissident at the construction phase, jolts it onto a new path.

[sitnspin]

No great surprise: Gavia and Ardent have become 'contaminated' by going to Earth and are exiled for life. All for daring to be something other than what the Praeses have decided for them (ironically, in Gavia's case, to protect them).

In a relatively closed system like a space habitat, unknown foreign elements are a legitimate risk to the entire system. It isn't a matter of prejudice or arbitrary authority, it is a serious security concern.

Yes too many sci-fi series gloss over quarantines which would be a necessary procedure when traveling to worlds with potentially dangerous microbes, diseases, and viruses.  Hopefully the decontamination process isn't too painful.

Everything would have been fine in Alien if the crew had listened to Ripley and just followed quarantine protocol and not let the alien on board.

[Neko_Ali]

I think Kane would have disagreed with that assessment.... And I'm sure Ash would have found a way to get it on board anyway.

[Case]

No great surprise: Gavia and Ardent have become 'contaminated' by going to Earth and are exiled for life. All for daring to be something other than what the Praeses have decided for them (ironically, in Gavia's case, to protect them).

In a relatively closed system like a space habitat, unknown foreign elements are a legitimate risk to the entire system. It isn't a matter of prejudice or arbitrary authority, it is a serious security concern.

Yes too many sci-fi series gloss over quarantines which would be a necessary procedure when traveling to worlds with potentially dangerous microbes, diseases, and viruses.  Hopefully the decontamination process isn't too painful.

There's a nice variation on that idea in one of the The Expanse-novels - though the first actual alien/human 'infection' is a water-based microbe (smth. like an Euglena) discovering its penchant for the glassy body of the human eye, rendering the human in question blind in the process due to refraction off the bodies of the microbes, so it's less an actual infection than merely a physical intrusion (the microbe doesn't do anything to the tissues in the eye, it just multiplies happily & exponentially in an environment sans predators). An alien biosphere is unlikely to run on terrestrial DNA (so it wouldn't know how to use us as replicators), unlikely even to use the same chemistry - but at the same time, if an alien microbe can tolerate the environment in our bodies, from its POV we're large, pristine habitats without any of selection pressures that normally keep it in check.

The idea is that most likely, infecting us would be like trying to eat tar, or a brick of frozen gasoline - but some form of life is certain to discover a use for almost anything. Maybe we'd end up being the fuel for the barbecue rather than the steak.

[retrosteve]

So summing up:
1. The Praesides have security concerns, they know what the humaniforms are and are not stupid
2. They DON'T know (or admit to knowing) how Ardent got his 'upgrade' mojo, or how he got sent to Earth, but they certainly know about it.

I'm going to assume the Praesides are being honest here, and they really don't know. Which means Alice is wrong about them, and I'm right about there being another player who hasn't announced himself yet.  I'm still guessing he's the AI (or group of them) who caused the Blink. Bob. And things won't proceed much further until we know who and why.

[JimC]

Discontinuity is an interesting word to use for Ardent's upgrade capability isn't it? I wonder what's behind that.

[TheEvilDog]

Discontinuity is an interesting word to use for Ardent's upgrade capability isn't it? I wonder what's behind that.

Space magic?

[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]

Discontinuity is an interesting word to use for Ardent's upgrade capability isn't it? I wonder what's behind that.

Since Laridia calls the interior of Cupressaceae a network and they emphasize stasis and sustainability as a lifestyle, the Praeses probably view all threats that throw off the careful tuning of the system in those terms.  Or it could just mean foreign AI programming they can't understand.

I wonder what would happen if Ardent touched Laridia or other integrated Praeses-tech with malicious intent, like if she tries to kick them out.  So far the ability has reflected his intentionality, maybe he could touch Church and imagine him made of marshmallow or something and his super-nanobots could overcome his nanobot resistance, or he could imagine his armor hardening to the point of immobility and trapping him inside it forever.  Too many unanswered questions about how any of this works...

[OldGoat]

Discontinuity is an interesting word to use for Ardent's upgrade capability isn't it? I wonder what's behind that.

Since Laridia calls the interior of Cupressaceae a network and they emphasize stasis and sustainability as a lifestyle, the Praeses probably view all threats that throw off the careful tuning of the system in those terms.  Or it could just mean foreign AI programming they can't understand.

I wonder what would happen if Ardent touched Laridia or other integrated Praeses-tech with malicious intent, like if she tries to kick them out.  So far the ability has reflected his intentionality, maybe he could touch Church and imagine him made of marshmallow or something and his super-nanobots could overcome his nanobot resistance, or he could imagine his armor hardening to the point of immobility and trapping him inside it forever.  Too many unanswered questions about how any of this works...

There are at least eight other Praeses in addition to Cupressaceae, yet that's where the Valkyrie-on-steroids delivers them when Ardent asks it to set a course to the nearest one.  The best odds are one in nine and it goes down from there if there are more Praeses than the ones Gavia named.  Interesting indeed.

Note also that asking someone a question when you already know the answer is a time honored interrogation method.  We shouldn't let the Praeses off the hook eliminate the Praeses as suspects yet.

[pwhodges]

There are at least eight other Praeses in addition to Cupressaceae,

They're listed in the next strip, here.

[OldGoat]

There are at least eight other Praeses in addition to Cupressaceae,

They're listed in the next strip, here.

ACK!!!  That's the one I meant to link to.  Mea culpa.  At any rate, we don't know if that's the entire roster, or if Gavia just gave up after that many non-responses.

It also raises another question - if going to the surface of the Earth is verboten, did she have any reason to believe just speaking aloud to a Praeses would work from there, or did she just expect it to work because it always had before, from inside the habitat?  They may not have responded because they didn't hear her.

[Kugai]

Not the nine?>

[Neko_Ali]

There are only eight Divines, you Nord scum! Talos is a false god!

[TheEvilDog]

There are only eight Divines, you Nord scum! Talos is a false god!

Are the Stormcloaks going to make Skyrim great again? #SecretTalosSupportingImperial

Back to the topic on hand.

We know that there are 9 Praeses that have been named, but that's all. There could be more, we don't know. We also don't know what the Praeses are anymore, 5000 years is plenty of time for change to happen.

[Kugai]

There are only eight Divines, you Nord scum! Talos is a false god!

Zathras thinks you miss Zathras' humorous reference.

[WareWolf]

There may be a classic science fiction theme here. Great power sets up an attempt at an ideal society. The society is stable for thousands or millions of years. Then an outside force, or constructive sabotage by a dissident at the construction phase, jolts it onto a new path.

Dune. Lord of the Rings. Any others?