THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Comic Discussion => ALICE GROVE => Topic started by: Kugai on 01 Jul 2015, 14:16
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Another month, another Poll
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so when is the next update anyway?
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Boy, you wouldn't blame Jeph if he forgot about AG...
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I actually suspect we may not see an AG Update for at least another week or so.
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"Alice Grove will update Thursday and Friday this week!"
https://twitter.com/jephjacques/status/615721073913499648
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New comic up. Not surprising to see Gavia freaked out, and once again we see Alice is not a people person.
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Nice to know I can be wrong on occasion
Careful Gavia, your head may explode.
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I foresee that last panel becoming a meme.
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I'm pretty sure that Alice has said all that she wants to say. I get the impression that she prefers people to take stuff on faith when it comes to her story. That said, I don't think that it is going to be possible for her to leave it here. Gavia isn't her normal sort of audience, after all! If she won't say more, Amos (who seems to know at least his faction's version of the whole story) will say more.
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I foresee that last panel becoming a meme.
I HAVE SO MANY ISSUES WITH THIS.
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I hope that Gavia's reaction is an indicator that we (and Gavia, I guess) will receive more explanations soon!
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Gavia's actually taking this extremely well, when you think about it.
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Yeah. Alice is being a bit harsh. On the other hand, when isn't Alice a bit harsh?
Given all the "your world is not what you think" the first words out most people's mouths would tend yo be "you are so full of shit." Gavia's first words are basically "I have issues." That's either really diplomatic or really narcissistic, depending on what she means
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Alice must eat a lot of peanut butter.
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Alice is made of peanut butter, concealed behind a nanotech shell.
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No, the secret to eternal life is Coffee and Pancakes
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It's frustrating that there is still no hint of what Alice is, though!
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So, now we know. Alice did try to tell the truth. However, as sages throughout history have learned, people prefer their own 'truths' to the facts. After a while, Alice just gave up and let people instead cling to the stories and 'truths' that gave them the most comfort and happiness. What harm did it do? What did it change?
Instead, she's simply tried to live her life and be a force of good whenever she could. I think that she's isolated by choice and intervenes only in limited ways and if it is clear it is necessary.
It's sad in a way; it must be a tremendously lonely and frustrating life to live.
[EDIT]
Further to that last point... Maybe I'm reading too much into it but Alice seems so distant in panel 4. In so many ways, she is the loneliest person on Earth. A living relic of a vanished epoch of human civilisation; born (or created) in a different time to a civilisation that barely even exists as a myth or legend anymore. Even its last physical relics long since gone to rust and dust. All that is left is her - a constant in a world changed beyond recognition.
No wonder she is so harsh and unsocial. Losing everything and everyone and then being condemned to live on in a world so different from the one in which she was born amongst people who can barely understand you and your nature must have worn at her sanity over the tens of centuries.
Thus is the fate of an immortal in the mortal world.
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More and more I'm thinking that Alice started off as an ordinary human, and that for some reason the Blink made her immortal. It wasn't her idea, and she'd rather not be. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that she went through a suicidal phase a couple of thousand years ago but couldn't figure out how to pull it off - she kept regenerating no matter what she did to herself.
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It's frustrating that there is still no hint of what Alice is, though!
It's pretty obvious now, she's the product of the faction that favored genetic modification. She's the "perfect" human, incredibly strong, highly intelligent, and nigh immortal.
More and more I'm thinking that Alice started off as an ordinary human, and that for some reason the Blink made her immortal.
Nah, she would've had to come out of womb (incubation machine?) the way she is. Dna modification at that scale would probably liquefy someone who was already alive.
[EDIT]
Further to that last point... Maybe I'm reading too much into it but Alice seems so distant in panel 4. In so many ways, she is the loneliest person on Earth. A living relic of a vanished epoch of human civilisation; born (or created) in a different time to a civilisation that barely even exists as a myth or legend anymore. Even its last physical relics long since gone to rust and dust. All that is left is her - a constant in a world changed beyond recognition.
No wonder she is so harsh and unsocial. Losing everything and everyone and then being condemned to live on in a world so different from the one in which she was born amongst people who can barely understand you and your nature must have worn at her sanity over the tens of centuries.
Thus is the fate of an immortal in the mortal world.
Have you played Lost Odyssey for the Xbox360? That's basically the backstory of the main character. (Excellent game, I highly recommend it)
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I wonder how many thousands of years old Alice is. I wonder if the Blink is what made her immortal, or if she was already immortal (and hundreds or thousands of years old even then).
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I do believe our acerbic immortal is kinda a wee bit happy to have them there
Not that she'll admit it under anything less than direct torture.
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I'll go one step further. Alice has been progressively isolating herself for some time, becoming ever more detached from the mortals' everyday lives and only getting involved when either she happens to be there at the time or something big happens. However, she's still human, or at least so psychologically alike a human to be indistinguishable from one. She gets lonely and that can drive you mad in time. She's glad to have house-guests; she's glad to have someone she can talk to.
This is the thing that neither Gavia nor Alice are ready to address yet: She's reaching out to them. She wants to have a closer relationship with someone and she's interested enough in her two visitors for it to be them.
Poor Gavia, though! She's going to spend this volume jumping from culture shock to culture shock, I think!
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Does this remind anybody of an ABC Family sitcom?
Alice the witch is a thousand years old.
Her loneliness was a thing to behold.
Then two spacebornes came a long way,
Now it looks like they're here to stay!
Looked for adventure,
Found a whole treasure trove.
With Allllice Grooove.
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Ardent the spaceboy was first down the trail,
With bright blue skin and de-lightful tail.
Then came Gaiva with her nanotech.
If she balls her hands, then you hit the deck!
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Margaret Wheelwright is a real cutie.
With pretty bonnet and enormous booty.
Ardent spied her, thanked his luck.
She slapped his face when he said...
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..."aw, shucks!"
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If a webcomic is gag based (comedy) and story based (a situation) it's a situation comedy.
A sitcom.
Just sayin'
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7000 years = 28 characters => 250 years per character, or 1250 to spell out Hello. Did she wait to see if that was enough? Was she worried about the kind of message she'd be sending after only 1000 years! What on Earth do time, memory, emotion and endeavour mean to an immortal? OK. Now I need to find my log-in details to update the wiki with a new plot point. Things are finally moving.
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Ooh, so now Gavia is going to badger Alice into telling her about her relationship with 'Up'! That should be interesting as well as explaining why she doesn't like the Praeses.
7000 years = 28 characters => 250 years per character, or 1250 to spell out Hello.
Seven hundred, not seven thousand. Still a monumental endeavor. It tells us a lot about Alice's strength of will, personal determination and ability to see things through. I wonder if she was initially trying to get help after what she perceived as a disaster? Or was she just trying to build communication bridges and trying to find someone to talk to other than the descendants of the Low-Tech faction?
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I'm not sure why I read it as 7000 years, but as you say, an almost literally monumental task. However, at least the builders of prehistoric monuments would have been able to speak to one another. 25 years to complete a 1km character would be within the scope of a mad dreaming human. For her to have kept going past the first word puts her mental processes beyond my ken. It's a clever line by Jeph, whether or not it's a throw away one.
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At least she was polite. She could have carved "WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE".
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A bit expensive in petrol though!
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WE APOLOGIST FOR THE INCONVENIENCE
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Is Alice non-sequituring to get Gavia to shut up, or is this meant to actually answer the question? I ask because I think kilometer-high letters still wouldn't be big enough to be seen from space, much less read from orbit - a kilometer's really not that big, and spacecraft in orbit have to move extremely fast in order to stay there.
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I think she's joking.
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I ask because I think kilometer-high letters still wouldn't be big enough to be seen from space, much less read from orbit
Depends on how how high an orbit the habitats are in, and whether they have telescopes. For example, the latest commercial SPOT satellites, orbiting at 694 kilometers can resolve objects down to 1.5 meters.
Of course, we don't even know if the habitats have windows.
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I'm betting they all run on Linux, actually.
(HeeeeeeeeeSHOOOTSandSCORESSSSS!)
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I'm thinking sarcasm. The Author has hit the end of his info dump (but not the end of his info), There's something Alice doesn't want to share with Gavia about her relationship with the trees.
Remember, Alice has demonstrated not only knowledge of them, but contempt. If Alice were just a person who happened be at the blink, she'd probably know less about them.
Either she dealt with them before the blink, and had a disagreement so intense that it hasn't mellowed after a millennium, or she's been in contact more recently.
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On a side note, anyone get a Threat Warning from their Anti-Virus when they go to Tumbler
Just went to the comic and my AV went a little nuts.
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What's an "Anti-Virus"? </linux snob>
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:P
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Even worse, I was a Mac-head when I could still afford the bloody things. Oddly enough, I was actually better with a CLI on a Mac, since it was the only way you could really get anything done due to Apple's idiot-proofing.
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On a side note, anyone get a Threat Warning from their Anti-Virus when they go to Tumbler
Just went to the comic and my AV went a little nuts.
I have had ransomware appearing in some ads; it might be that.
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So Ardent has the same food input capabilities as say myself. I believe that's what Drake meant with "If you're reading this it's too late".
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He's a teenage boy, so no surprise there.
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There's levels to food input even as a teenage boy.
Ardent would be happy in Asturias anyways.
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Yeah, that's the rub, isn't it? In the end, some things just need to be taken on faith. The thing is that Alice doesn't gain anything by making up this story. So, why not take it on face value? It makes a lot more sense than most of the alternatives. That said, 'how' and 'why' remain mysteries for now!
Panels 2 and 3 have funny background events. Gavia is trying to emulate some of Alice's behavior! Curiosity or isshe starting to imprint on the strongest adult role model that she's ever met?
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You picked the wrong stalk Gavia
And if it's been an hour, it's definitely too late for Amos' food supplies.
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Unless the peanut butter had a negative effect on the roof of his mouth...
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Alice is not perfect. She makes a slip of the tongue in the second panel.
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Gavia is skeptical of Alice's skills.
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"Skill skeptical"
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It took me a couple reads to get that. Brain kept auto-correcting.
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Only noticed because I forgot I already looked at the comic this week and looked again.
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There's only been one update this week. What's up with that?
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He did explain he had a lot on this week. Updating two comics while in the midst of it all may be a bit of a stretch even for Lord Jeph
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He's also been having another anxiety attack.
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Why does he stock peanut butter if he hates the suff?
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One possibility: because his grandkids love the stuff.
Another possibility: he sells or trades it to the rest of the town.
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Amos? Pro-tip; don't talk to girls of debatable age about the latest contraceptive technology. You may be misunderstood.
Meanwhile, Alice and Gavia better find Ardent before Maggie kills him.
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And what if he got some courting tips from Amos? We haven't considered that possibility.
That basically means that we have a bit more time before Ms. Wheelwright slaps the soul out of Ardent.
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Considering Amos seeming sure Ardent will need some lambskin, he almost certainly gave some advice. Whether that advice will work is another story.
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Cue the reappearance of Ms. Wheelwright
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When I read the strip entitled "Ardent's just here for the food," I thought "...and the nookie." Today's strip confirms it!
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When I read the strip entitled "Ardent's just here for the food," I thought "...and the nookie." Today's strip confirms it!
And the booze! Don't forget about the booze!
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I think there aren't any instances where it's been proven that Ardent is actually interested in booze. Booty, on the other hand, was indeed his first interest, a la Fleece Johnson.
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I think there aren't any instances where it's been proven that Ardent is actually interested in booze.
Comic 16 (http://www.alicegrove.com/post/102938849739/its-delightful); Ardent specifically says that he wants to drink the local culture's alcoholic beverages.
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Welp, I stand corrected.
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Considering Amos seeming sure Ardent will need some lambskin, he almost certainly gave some advice. Whether that advice will work is another story.
Seems to me Amos's advice is along the lines of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.
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And what if he got some courting tips from Amos? We haven't considered that possibility.
That basically means that we have a bit more time before Ms. Wheelwright slaps the soul out of Ardent.
I dunno -- Ms. Wheelwright, having gotten over the shock of the bald proposition, may have by now decided she likes the looks of young blue alient boy, and may be more receptive the next time.
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Seems to me Amos's advice is along the lines of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.
...is Ardent the horse?
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Seems to me Amos's advice is along the lines of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.
...is Ardent the horse?
A bit of an ass, maybe. Lacking horse sense.
Most likely not a Trojan'd horse.
There's a "bolts snd screws" joke in here somewhere. I'll leave it to y'all.
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Nuts!
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Ohhhhh Amos!
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Anyone else read the first panel and think: "Oh no this is going to end badly." Ardent, you blew your chance with Miss Wheelwright, okay? Speaking from experience (which I rather wish I didn't have) when a guy you have spent mere minutes with asks you for sex the next time that guy tries to talk to you, they do not get second chances to make a better impression.
Of course, this is a fictional world, not the real world, so maybe Ardent will have more luck than that thankfully long gone acquaintance of mine.
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Anyone else read the first panel and think: "Oh no this is going to end badly." Ardent, you blew your chance with Miss Wheelwright, okay? Speaking from experience (which I rather wish I didn't have) when a guy you have spent mere minutes with asks you for sex the next time that guy tries to talk to you, they do not get second chances to make a better impression.
Of course, this is a fictional world, not the real world, so maybe Ardent will have more luck than that thankfully long gone acquaintance of mine.
FWIW, I think that this is just going to be a hook to draw the character of Margret Wheelright into the main thread of the story for a while. Maybe Alice and Gavia will arrive just after she punches Ardent (again) and an interesting conversation vis low-tech life and living begins between Maggie and Gavia.
For a while, I've wondered if the space kids will make friends amongst the townsfolk and that this will lead to a transformation of their attitude towards life and their own life choices. In truth, whilst Ardent and Gavia generally represent a 'black or white' approach to technology, the real world is shades of grey; the townsfolk might help them understand that.
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The more I see him, the more I like Amos' design.
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BOOM.
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Huh. That would have made more sense if it were from being touched by Gavia & her nanobots. Be interesting to see what tomorrow brings.
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God DAMN IT Ardent!
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BOOM.
I believe you mean FOOM.
Also wlewisiii, Ardent has nanobots, he just doesn't usually use them. Maybe he wanted to impress Miss Wheelright. (He seemed to be doing better with her this time, at least!)
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I don't think Ardent deliberately did anything to the water pump. I think Ardent's nanobots detected the broken pump, decided "We can fix this!" and went to work. The result was a little more spectacular than they intended.
Ardent's nanobots are as enthusiastically clueless as he is, in other words.
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I'm all for a return to an agrarian society, but I draw the line at indoor plumbing.
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At least the presence of an electric water pump gives us one small use of the juice from the windmill.
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I'll be interested to see how Alice fixes it.
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Where did it say that Ardent uses nanotech? I thought the whole thing with him was that he didn't, and instead relied on genetic innovation.
Perhaps the thread of Ardent as Special Snowflake That Tricked the Praeses is finally coming back. (And about time too.)
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I'm pretty sure the nanotech is what healed his delightful tail.
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I'm pretty sure the nanotech is what healed his delightful tail.
Nope. He regrew it. (http://www.alicegrove.com/post/110864583014/cute-lil-plant-guy)
Read the first panel. Ardent specifically disavows technology.
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I was thinking that perhaps the limited technology in place has some kind of anti-higher-technology detector which Ardent has just managed to trigger.
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Firstly, it seems that Ardent has clearly learnt the value of subtlety. He's still overtly trying to get sex but he's at least trying to get Maggie interested in him as a person this time. That is how friendships start. :-)
Secondly, I'm thinking that the standpipe and pump is something that Alice built. Along with the wind turbine, it is an indication that she's trying to subtlety introduce technology to the Low-Tech faction in a way that doesn't create push-back or a response from whatever caused the Blink. It's interesting that Maggie thinks that only Alice can fix it, as if it were magical, taboo or something
Finally, I agree that, whatever happened here wasn't entirely Ardent's fault. I'm pretty sure that he was attempting to fix the pump through some technological means (e.g. genetically-engineered telekinesis). However, I'm thinking that something else responded badly. My feeling is that this will lead into another bit of Alice exposition about the post-Blink world and its hidden true master.
[EDIT]
Alternately, Ardent had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The pump's failure and the explosion were both caused by the same thing. The question then is: Was it blind change or intelligent action? I mean, look at those four flank pipes that appear from nowhere in panel 6. It's as if something just below the surface is trying to eat or at least destroy the pump!
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Sploosh?
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The pump knows Ardent is two-timing on Margaret, and it doesn't like it.
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Wait, he is?
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The young lady at the well is not Miss Wheelwright.
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...it's not? Can someone link to the one where we first met Miss W?
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The young lady at the well is not Miss Wheelwright.
*Squints* It's possible; there's no automatic reason to suppose that he went right to Miss Wheelwright other than it would be neater and avoid another minor character appearing. She definitely has a different eye colour but you could easily wave that off (with a cry of "Oh shit! They're right! My bad!" from Jeph).
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Most likely not a Trojan'd horse.
Condom jokes aside, Ardent is most definitely a trojan horse.
Now we know why the trees went to the effort of getting him Earthside, and have been ignoring the calls home (if it was the trees that did this). Anyway, Gavia may be part of the plot, too. But both of the kids are likely patsies.
Someone wanted to get some kind of tech into the primitive zone, and Ardent was their vector.
Also, that is probably not Margret Wheelwright.
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*Squints* It's possible; there's no automatic reason to suppose that he went right to Miss Wheelwright
Not really, he told Amos he was off to look for a girl with a big bottom. There's no reason to assume he didn't mean the Wheel. That's not to say he didn't find a similarly bottomed girl on the way and chat her up instead, though.
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Miss Wheelright. (http://www.alicegrove.com/page/65)
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Wow, I guess that is someone else then.
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Yeah, the eyes definitely aren't Maggie's.
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Alice is made of peanut butter, concealed behind a nanotech shell.
I think that's what Jones is made of, in Gunnerkrigg Court. It would explain her x-rays.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions
In this case, Ardent will need a boat.
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Did anyone else notice that the water pump grew three appendages? Ardent is indeed a special snowflake.
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Did anyone else notice that the water pump grew three appendages? Ardent is indeed a special snowflake.
Yes, I noticed it and specifically mentioned it in an earlier post as being likely significant. It's just that I'm starting to get an impression that people have stopped reading my posts for some reason.
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New Comic.
Whoa...
That looks more like fear than anger in Alice's eyes.
And why, as the fountain of water continues to spew, does Ardent think he "fixed" it?
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Because water wasn't coming out and now it is.
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Long story short, "u dun fukd up now Ardent".
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Maybe the pump can only be fixed by Alice, and Ardent has just been chosen as her successor.
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Did anyone else notice that the water pump grew three appendages? Ardent is indeed a special snowflake.
Yes, I noticed it and specifically mentioned it in an earlier post as being likely significant. It's just that I'm starting to get an impression that people have stopped reading my posts for some reason.
Sorry.
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Well today's comic surprised me. I thought Alice would be surly and annoyed at having to fix another mistake of Ardent, but I agree she looks seriously frightened about what he has done. I also think it might be significant that she thinks her first priority in this situation is to get Ardent away from the townsfolk and interrogate him, not stop the pump flooding the town.
Maybe she's afraid Ardent was sent either knowingly or unknowingly by the Praeses to harm the townsfolk. Alice was convinced it was impossible to trick a Praeses, and IF that is true, it suggests the Praeses had a reason for sending him and Gavia down. I imagine Gavia is going to be comic relief while the interrogation is happening. "See, I'm not the only person who causes mass panic and damage!"
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I honestly think a big part of Alice's reaction is shock. That expression says to me 'WTF just happened here? I don't understand this and I'm freaking out a little about it.' Which given her history and personality is a feeling Alice is VERY unaccustomed to. Still, smacking Ardent like that was a little much.
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I have a theory, but I'll let Jeph tell the story tomorrow.
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Tomorrow? This is the Friday comic.
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Ardent, the time is now. Turn off your dignity and cry like a baby!
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Ardent is in sooooo much trouble.
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To me, the slap was saying: "Focus, Ardent! Don't pretend nothing weird is happening!" Yeah, Alice is surprised and maybe a little scared. Based on what she's been saying to Gavia, this is a feeling that she hasn't had for tens of centuries, so an over-reaction is understandable.
Based on panel 1, Ardent either wasn't responsible, doesn't know what happened or clumsily goofed up (and hadn't even got his brain clear enough to think of an excuse). Personally, I'm a fan of options 1 & 2 but we'll see where Jeph takes this.
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My theory: overdosing on peanut butter made Ardent's nanobots go into overdrive, repairing (and enhancing) anything he touched. We can only be thankful he didn't get too close to that girl's bottom.
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I'm not certain this is an overreaction on Alice's part.
Ardent is flakey as hell. That's been his defining trait. Alice has spent at least a month with him, so she knows that.
As noted, he did not just "fix" the pump. He TRANSFORMED it. And he's acting as if nothing happened. Flaky as he is, that's not right.
Ardent can almost instantaneously reconfigure matter by touch, and seems unaware of that. He's just become an existential threat to HER town. She asked him nicely to come along home. Now she asking not so nicely.
Alice is probably concerned/frightened/something but she's not, I think, out of control. She knows exactly what she's doing. It's just like with Gavia's attack. First, words. Then action. I think she believes he's clueless, or she'd be taking action on the same scale she took with Gavia. As it is, if the slap doesn't cover it, I could see her escalating further but she probably wouldn't go directly to terminate. She just wants the matter transforming boy out of her town before he turns someone into something
Like I said before, Ardent is a vector. He was used to transport something from orbit to the surface. It's not clear what or why. Alice has every reason to believe the trees are responsible and she has a grudge against them. I think that if she believed Ardent was complicit in this, she'd have done more than slap him.
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I'm guessing Ardent didn't transform the pump, he revealed it. Like, the pump (and probably everything else in the grove) was really a high-tech thingy all along, and it's been carefully concealed (by Alice) as a normal pump so as to preserve the status quo in town. Something about Ardent broke whatever veil Alice had over it.
Evidence:
-Why would the witch be needed to fix a simple pump?
-If Alice doesn't know what the pump's new form is, why isn't she treating it as a potential threat (and evacuating the town)? On the other hand, if she does recognize it, and is only uncertain about why Ardent made it show up, then wanting to talk to Ardent first makes sense.
-How does Alice do all the stuff she does if she doesn't have a bunch of hidden tech around?
-Seems like "is it right for Alice to conceal all her tech knowledge from the town" is already kind of a theme of the comic.
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This has been your daily dose of baseless speculation.
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It's not a simple pump. It's motor driven, and electronically controlled. My guess is that Alice built it, and Alice is the only one who knows how it works.
A normal pump would be purely mechanical, and driven by a lever. It seems likely the pump is one of the items powered by the windmill.
This is instructive. Jack knows where the windmill is, so it is likely everyone else does, too. Not Margert Wheelwright know which switch turned on the pump motor.
When shit blew up, Jack implicitly trusted that Alice would deal with it. Alice may have used flight against Gavia (if she did, it was very effective). When she fell off the windmill, Jack expected her to fly. After she demostrated her physical superiority, no one in the village treated her any differently.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Alice isn't hiding anything from the people. As Amos's "her history is not our history" implies, they don't want to know. Now, it is possible Alice encourages them to not want to know. She's thousands of years old and has been in their lives from the day they were all born, so she's well positioned to manipulate. But it seems unlikely that she'd be hiding tech in plain sight disguised as other tech the locals don't understand. Why bother? It's an unnecearry complication.
Why bother, in fact, living as she does, if she can build super pumps and mega generators? My bet is that Alice has a limited supply of tech. Either because she scavenges, or because she builds each part herself. You could build some fancy stuff if you have decades to make each component.
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Tomorrow? This is the Friday comic.
(Facepalm)
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Maybe the pump had an immune system and this was an allergic response.
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I'm thinking the 'immune system' theory may not be far from the truth. Let us posit some things known to be true. To end a self destructive war, someone or something edited the planet and surrounding space. Effectively setting up an agrarian society on the planet and a high tech society in orbit. The two are not supposed to mix. As part of the edit, a lot of technology no longer works according to Alice. There are seemingly aimless nanobots floating around though that really don't seem to do anything other than come together as a giant shadow mass at night and look at the moon. At least until the sibilings got near the mass. Then it for either Gavia and/or Ardent. Presumably reacting to Gavia's nanobots.
Now supposition: There are nanobots all over the place, possibly that Alice isn't even aware of. The Black Shadow is just an obvious extension of them. For some reason it gathers together at night. Maybe it's recharging. Maybe it's communicating with the Orbit colony. Even Alice doesn't seem to know, she said it just does that. Presumably the nanobots have a limited sensor range, so it took the Black Shadow to detect Gavia's usage of nanotech and try to investigate. Once she got far enough away it lost the signal and went back to it's programming.
We know Alice has the knowledge and skills to build much more advanced technology that the villagers don't understand. But it still seems very low impact. A windmill to generate power and a water pump to make fetch water easily. Alice herself lives like the locals as far as we've seen. No secret base under her shack. No advanced tech she's keeping from the villagers. She doesn't even have indoor plumbing. But she will make more advanced stuff. Which makes me thing that over the centuries she has probably experimented a bit to see what the edit finds to be 'acceptable levels of technology' and used them to make the villagers lives a little easier. If it doesn't work though, they need to get the witch to fix it.
This is the first time we've seen one of the siblings touch a piece of technology more advanced than a bucket and winch for the much more time-typical well at Alice's house. we see that in the exterior shot of her house right after Gavia showed up. So just being near the Black Shadow was enough to get the nano bots to react. What if there were a group of nanobots on the well. Since it is more advanced than typical for this society and kind of semi-intelligence might well leave part of itself behind to make sure it doesn't exceed allowed limits. Such a thing could explain why if technology never seems to advance. Any time a tinkerer invents something on the nano-bot's 'no go' list it tends to fail. Spectacularly and explosively. Ardent actually touching the nano-bots with his space-cooties (be they nanotech or biological in nature, or both) caused them to freak the heck out.
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I suspect that Ardent has awoken whatever it is Alice is really protecting the village from... something that can give her a real fight.
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I suspect that Ardent has awoken whatever it is Alice is really protecting the village from... something that can give her a real fight.
How likely is it that we're going to have a massive fight against a huge mechanical beast (something like the Death Squids in The Matrix) that is trying to 'purge' the area of advanced technology?
Yes, I'm suggesting that whatever created the Blink may be enforcing a low-tech lifestyle, even if that causes death and trouble (inadequate access to clean water and medicine or because of famine due to inadequate food production, for example). The only thing that matters is that the 'solution' is rigidly maintained - high-tech in space, low-tech primitivism on Earth. It might try to destroy the town because it is 'too advanced'; anything above a medieval-style rural village is simply outside of its acceptable parameters.
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I just don't see there being an absolute hardwired outside entity enforcing a "ban" on high tech ala "The Council Wars". Rather I see it being much more in Alice's lap and that she figured out a very very very long time ago what was appropriate tech (in an Amish sort of way) for everything the agrarian peoples actually need (forex in a culture without HIV, lambskin is sufficient). Building it & repairing it as necessary.
And I expect there are many more "Alices" around the world each doing the same. (They may not know of each other without high tech communications.) And someone/something isn't happy about that.
Now we have that outside force messing with this via an unsuspecting agent in Ardent. If it's a nano weapon doing it, then 1) he doesn't know about it (he's gen-tech) and 2) it will only impact technological constructs though 3) it may well be "contagious" in, uhm, an intimate encounter.
There are strong elements of The Culture already present. The real question is if it's Alice or the Trees or The Blink that is Special Circumstances...
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I suspect that Ardent has awoken whatever it is Alice is really protecting the village from... something that can give her a real fight.
And I suspect this incident is strongly linked to the reason the Praeses allowed Ardent to go 'Down'.
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I wonder if the Praeses have a track record of 'doing what they think is best' irrespective of the harm, trouble and chaos it will cause for their agents and those for whose 'greater good' they are acting. Maybe one of the reasons that Alice doesn't like them is that they are always choosing the wrong way to get involved and doing so in the most high-handed and condescending manner.
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the Praeses allowed Ardent to go 'Down'.
(https://i.imgur.com/Lffqx89.png)
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:angel:
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Understanding potential tech as I do, it seems, again, unnecessarily complicated to fill the world with nanobot referees when you could use those same nanobots to remove free will.
Just have them sit around in the cerebral cortex and disallow certain thoughts. Done right, the subject wouldn't even be aware it was happening.
Whether nanobots in Jeph's world can actually do that, I don't know, but there's no fundamental physical limitation that would prevent it. As has been noted, the super intelligence behind the blink seamlessly edited the Earth. Editing a few million minds wouldn't be that hard.
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The trouble being that humans are creative and seek new things by nature. So if they blink edited it out curiosity or technological innovation then it would have to keep doing it whenever a new human is born. Curiosity does not seem to be a problem with the people of the village. Also, that could only work to stop people from making re-discoveries of technology. That wouldn't say prevent Alice and people like her from building things they know how to make, if that what happened. And it doesn't account for outside influences. Like say if two Spaceborne kids wound up stranded on the planet.
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Curiosity and innovation have made strides against virii, but you still gotta deal with the flu every year.
Editing all of the brains on Earth with a nanobot system, one requires nanobots that can communicate, replicate, and locate brains. The system then manages itself. Build one and done.
Since Alice is building an maintaining a tech base, there's no question she can. My point is not that blink did edit out innovation. My point is that if one were to decide, from the perspective of the one who made the blink happen, to employ nanotech watch dogs, it makes more sense to get as low on the innovation chain as possible. Violently spewing ground water straight up is a fairly bad way to stop tech. Subtly keeping people from even thinking about tech is comparatively easy. We know AG nanotech can from distributed networks that can think, to some degree, and sense the environment. You don't have to stifle curiosity. The Amish are plenty curious. You just have to make people averse to thoughts of tech beyond a given level.
Human beings hack other human minds all the time. It's called advertising. This is just going about it from the bottom up. The end is not a drone who is mindless, but a mind who thinks the ideas it doesn't follow up on are ideas it rejected, rather than ideas that were rejected for it.
I could certainly be wrong, but using nano in a less subtle way is unnecessarily complex from the POV of an entity that can edit reality.
Ardent touched the pump. The pump transformed itself into a superior pump. Given that a superior pump seems like fairly bad way for suggested watchdog nano to prevent tech beyond a certain level and that watchdog nano would do better by just keeping the locals in the kind of attitude they display (not my problem, let the witch handle it), it seems unlikely that something hostile was reacting to Ardent. It seems more likely that this is something that was caused by Ardent's action, just as it appears.
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virii,
Just FYI, the plural of virus is viruses; nothing else (http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html).
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Virii would require it to be virius. And virus in Latin is fourth declension*, which isn't pluralized with an i (as opposed to most -us nouns that are second declension).
I was a classics major, I might as well use it for something.
*Dang it, I said that before I clicked on Paul's link! Don't think I'm just referencing the article :p
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Virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii.
Irregardless of.
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I just noticed something. Alice's face doesn't look normal in the 7/23/2015 comic. Is that really Alice? Or is it an impostor?
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Um...Alice isn't in the Thursday comic.
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Assuming you meant the Friday comic, Alice doesn't look normal because you haven't seen Alice taken aback before. Even when Gavia attacked the town. This might be as close as she comes to panicking. She is facing something unexpected, and that she can't deal with by face-punching (though, as you can see, it's an option).
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I really don't know what to make of Alice's expression. As an artist, this is one of those things that might not hit me until render time. Alice is "thousands" of years old. What does fear mean to a person like that? Has she seen this before?
Over analysis be over analysing, but I suspect she has. She doesn't really strike me as very afraid. Just concerned. Which would imply that this is something dangerous, but not so dangerous that can't deal with it. Which would suggest, to me, that any concern is either about containing it so that it doesn't spread, or about protecting Ardent. Or both.
That she is focused on removing Ardent from town would suggest, assuming this is something she's seen before, that the power fountain is basically harmless. It isn't going to spread, or if it can, it would be so slow as to be something for manana. That she wasn't to ask questions of Ardent would suggest, assuming she's seen this before, that she doesn't have an immediate plan to protect him from the thing she is concerned about. This would suggest two further possibilities. One, the thing is a danger to Ardent and she is worried that she might not be able to anything about it. Two, the thing is a danger to everyone, and the one sure way she has to stop it would be fatal to Ardent.
I'm leaning toward the latter cases, simply because Jeph may not get perfect pacing, but he knows story. He didn't need to end the infodump gag with a line implying that Alice is growing fond of the kids. He could have put any gag there. Like I said, overanalysis, but Ardent and Gavia are, I think, now inside Alice's "mine" mental map, and she protects what she lays claim to.
I think that she's concerned because to protect Ardent, she might have to kill him. (Obv's I don't think that's going to happen, but I think that's where her state of mind is, right now.) If whatever force that she knows should have made it (flatly) impossible for the kids to be on Earth, I'd have expected her to be more shocked that they are. She thought Ardent was a con, at first, which suggests means to being blue and pointy are available on Earth (My bet is that blink separated the biotechies from the techies). But when it became clear it wasn't a con, she didn't really bat an eye.
She is old. I suspect that means she is hard to really surprise, and when she is surprised it hardly shows for long. Because there's very little she hasn't seen.
Again, could be totally wrong, and just looking at the whole thing from a perspective Jeph didn't. But Alice really does see the town as hers and she really does protect her stuff. If the pump was the source, she'd be doing everything to isolate it. So either it isn't, or she doesn't see it as a threat.
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Virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii, virii.
Irregardless of.
Catch that Boomerang!!
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Oh geez, poor Ardent.
Also, I think the Praeses just declared war on Alice.
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Does this remind anybody of another comic?
https://web.archive.org/web/20140205065616/http://www.itswalky.com/d/20030829.html
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Yup. Called it.
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The plot, as they say, coagulates.
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So, it looks like Ardent was a Trojan after all! Or, at least that is what Alice believes right now. Let's not count our plot twists until they are fully hatched!
I think that we're going to see a very different and borderline-evil Alice for the next few strips. Whilst she recognises that the kids are dupes, they're still a threat to her town. There is no telling what she may do to try to 'neutralize' that threat.
I wonder how many times that the Praeses have attempted to restart the war before?
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I'm not calling called it on having sussed out the plot. I'm calling called at having posited the plot and the having correctly guessed Alice's thought process wrt to that plot. Technically, we don't know that Ardent is the vector. We just know that Alice thinks he is, and thinks he's a threat.
Now, I await evidence that, in spite of her rather curt manner, Alice is concerned about the Vissicitudes' safety and not just viewing them as a threat. Jeph has offered the possibility that Alice is fond of the kids. The next question is what, exactly, is Ardent a dupe for and will that possible fondness represent a conflict for how Alice deals with it?
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I'll be interested tomorrow to see if Ardent is going to react by saying: "Don't be silly Alice, you're paranoid" or by saying: "Oh my God, you are right, how could I have been so naïve?"
Personally I'm inclined right now to believe Alice could be right. It's pretty well established people aren't supposed to be able to come down to Earth from space. She knew from the start the Praeses had been tricked into sending Ardent down and agreeing to send Gavia down was "strange." And Gavia and Ardent really don't strike me as the type to be clever enough to get down without help and as well as pretty easy to manipulate into thinking a stupid idea is their own.
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I'll be interested tomorrow to see if Ardent is going to react by saying: "Don't be silly Alice, you're paranoid" or by saying: "Oh my God, you are right, how could I have been so naïve?"
If Alice is inclined to listen to Ardent's reply (which I doubt), it would most likely be a babbled denial that he had been a pawn and is stated in such terms that it is clear he doesn't know what he has supposed to have done or understands of what Alice is accusing him. Which makes sense; whoever is responsible for this (and I'm looking at some oh-so-zen-acting trees) would have needed to have entirely innocent dupes; Alice is so old and experienced that she would probably have seen through any dissembling or artifice at once.
Now, I wonder... was the Night Walker really attacking Gavia... or was it attacking Ardent? If it was the latter, then it fits into my theory that its nanobots are part of the mechanism of the Blink.
P.S.
I think that the next strip is on Thursday, not tomorrow.
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Yeah, but Thursday means Wednesday night, which is tomorrow :parrot:
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Now you're just being paranoid Alice
Or is she??!
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Not sure if Alice is insane, or Alice is perfectly sane and the rest of the world is trying to steal her magical powers.
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Maybe Alice is....
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P.S.
I think that the next strip is on Thursday, not tomorrow.
I should probably explain I live in Western Australia, and I have found that on the internet my tomorrows and todays tend to be different from everyone elses.
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Except mine