Comic Discussion > ALICE GROVE
Alice Grove MCDLT - THE END...?
SmilingCat:
--- Quote from: Neko_Ali on 20 Jul 2017, 06:20 ---Well, it's possible that they have some low level of regeneration. We know it exists, Ardent regrew his delightful tail after losing it. Alice seems almost fine after having her head partly crushed by Church. Also, for being more than 5000 years the super soldiers all are pretty youthful looking. That speaks to me that they have some level of cellular regeneration to stop the aging process. So I'm guessing that it's not outside the realm of possibility that Sedna could regrow her arm, it just might take a while to happen or require a lot of entropy that she doesn't want to burn. Not when there are alternatives. Besides, cool freaky plant arm.
--- End quote ---
They have the ability to pull entropy out of a system, which is a vaguely defined concept, but suggests that they can force the existing matter of their body into an ordered state. That doesn't extend to creating matter, however. Alice can fix her crushed skull because all the matter stays in the same place. She just has to reorder it back to its proper state. Sedna's arm is gone, and incorporating sufficient mass of the right elements and compounds to regenerate it would presumably take time (and lots of bacon, eggs, and pancakes).
Also, their abilities appear to be tied to their ability to think about them. Sedna was bleeding out very quickly, with all the associated side affects and probably needed direct medical intervention to stop it before she could think clearly enough to even begin forcing it to heal.
Church can't do anything because he had his brain scrambled by arm bone. He's dead. We've seen nothing to indicate that the seat of their intelligence is located anywhere else.
Method of Madness:
--- Quote from: SmilingCat on 20 Jul 2017, 21:18 ---seat of their intelligence
--- End quote ---
In their butts :parrot:
Sorflakne:
--- Quote from: retrosteve on 20 Jul 2017, 16:34 ---
--- Quote from: Sorflakne on 20 Jul 2017, 14:57 ---So we're not going to find out what happened when the nano bird fired the laser at the moon, are we. :/
--- End quote ---
Far as I'm concerned, we never found out who did most of the stuff: the AIs are suggested by process of elimination, not by any actual evidence. And we don't know if it was one clever weakly godlike AI or a faction of them or the whole lot together, and whether their intentions are good or ill. And we don't know if they are responsible for the Nightwalker. Or why it was easier to reawaken Earth using Sims from all the Praeses rather than Earthlings. Or how they hacked the Sims's minds as well as bodies (Ardent still thinks he prevailed upon a friend.)
We also don't know if Alice's reality is more real than the simulations in the Praeses. Or who originally had the technology to link her and the other soldiers to a black hole. Or, if her reality isn't a simulation, how the Blink worked.
Laridia also seems to be claiming that all the Sims on the Praeses are generated, not uploaded from Earth people. And the Praeses don't seem to have any connection to the Blink guys. Am I misinterpreting that? If so, what happened to all the Earthlings at Blink time?
We don't really know how Alice zapped Church originally either. Or why. Or how many other soldier types are still around. Or what she really did to feel responsible for the deaths of billions. Or even if Church is going to regenerate, though that could easily be clear from a last panel.
I think we will be wondering and discussing most of these after tomorrow.
--- End quote ---
My focus on the nano bird is that the strip spent time building up to it, both with the foreshadowing of Alice saying it stares at the moon and a rather detailed visual of it capturing Gavia, absorbing her nanomachines, and then firing a laser (whether it was a signal or attack) at the moon. Other stuff in the comic, such as the laser that made the magma Church was buried in, Alice and Sedna arguing about grudges, weird animal forms, Alice's flashbacks to the carnage and destruction, and the Blink itself (I feel it was sufficiently explained for the story's purposes; even Alice couldn't make heads or tails of it) were incidental enough to build the world up but not affect the story in a way that they needed resolution. Even Sedna shivving Church to death with her own arm was satisfactorily explained. The nano bird though...I feel too much was left unexplained here, and as a result it seemed to serve no purpose in driving the story, especially since Gavia got her nanomachines back anyway (in IMO a borderline deus ex), making their loss meaningless.
I dunno. It was a good story, don't get me wrong, but I think I'm starting to agree with others that the ending was rushed.
Method of Madness:
I don't think Jeph would disagree about the ending being rushed, honestly.
Kugai:
It's been an interesting, fun ride as an aside to Jephs main work and I've really enjoyed it.
Who knows,, maybe he'll pick this up again sometime in the future - but whatever happens, I liked reading Alice Grove.
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