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Alice - Trying to create an agrican utopia

2 (6.3%)

Praeses - Trying to breach the peace agreement and threatening everyting

12 (37.5%)

Ardent and Gavia - Only pretending to be clueless

0 (0%)

Night Walker - Being made up of bits that are normally EVERYWHERE gives you influence

2 (6.3%)

Giant Birds - It's always the one you expect the least!

4 (12.5%)

The Unknown Shadowy Hand - Because there is always someone hiding behind the curtain

12 (37.5%)

Total Members Voted: 31

[mikmaxs]

I'd actually expect she can't be easily killed, if she's not paranoid. That would imply the space trees have been trying to kill her for thousands of years.

That's why I said "hurt." Remember. If you can't kill them, cripple them.

Or go with the old standby and toss them into the void of space.

Barring that, she's only one witch thing person. Run her in circles. Easy peasy.

[BenRG]

A way out there possibility: The Praeses have to beat Alice one-on-one and she has to do the same (although the current stalemate suits her fine). Anything else would be a breach of the Rules and there is a far, far bigger player out there who is enforcing them.

I'm thinking something similar to the Babylon 5 deep back story. The two sides - the low-techs and the high-techs - are still fighting it out as to who has the right prescription for sustainable human happiness. Because letting this happen in an uncontrolled way would just lead to the Great War starting all over again, the power behind the Blink has set aside a tiny patch of the Earth where the two sides can play chess with each other. Going outside that contact area and using extreme methods like orbital bombardment would forfeit the game. Given the power level required to carry out the Blink, the umpires (the AIs, perhaps?) very likely have the capability to inflict catastrophic sanctions on those who break the Rules.

In this game of human destiny, the Town and its surrounding Habitat is the board. Ardent and Gavia are the latest in possibly a long string of pawns sent onto the game board by the Praeses and it is possible that the townsfolk are the pawns of the low-tech side.

Alice is the other side's queen. Like the queen, she is far and away the most powerful piece on their side of the board and, naturally, the Praeses are doing everything to keep her in check and away from other moves that they may or may not be planning.

What does that mean? White queen takes black pawn. Goodbye Ardent. At least that is probably what Alice is thinking right now.

I wonder if, as in Babylon 5, the real story will be the pieces deciding that they don't want to play anymore...? Which is, of course, the outcome that the AIs were waiting for all along.

"Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? Where are you going? Do you have anything worth living for?"
-- Lorien
-- Babylon 5 - The Hour of the Wolf

[Wildroses]

Bad move Alice. If you are going to kill someone, you don't tell them of your intentions prior to killing them while their sister is present. That just gives them time to react and get away.

Do you think this is the result the Praeses had in mind? Maybe they wanted Ardent dead for whatever reason but for some reason are unable to do so themselves (I wonder if they are AIs which have been heavily programmed to protect the spaceborne, myself), so they put some really obvious nanomachines on him, manipulated him into going to Earth and Alice and they are now sitting back waiting for Alice to get her hands bloody. Certainly if they were trying to subtly reclaim Earth like Alice thinks people in and out of the comic have suggested better ways of going about it.

[osaka]

It would be nice if that hit Gavia right now. Like, on next comic, Gavia recalls all the shenanigans Ardent has caused on the Grove and in orbit and she goes all "WAIT, something's much fishier than you thought".

[Zebediah]

That's why I said "hurt." Remember. If you can't kill them, cripple them.

And if you can't cripple them, emotionally cripple them.

Alice has admitted she's become fond of the kids. Now one of them appears to be a danger. The logical part of her mind says Ardent has to die. But she really doesn't want to do it. That's why she's talking about it out loud - not to psych herself up into doing it, but because she's hoping that Gavia gives her a reason not to do it.

And that's the enemy's goal - get Alice's emotions engaged, and muck her head up to the point where she can't or won't do what must be done. This works whether she decides to kill Ardent or not. If she kills him, she winds up hating herself and decides to quit the game. If she doesn't kill him, she starts to believe she doesn't have what it takes to protect her town and decides to quit the game.

[Neko_Ali]

As far as why Ardent was sent down to Alice's town, if that is what is what is happening here... If Alice is the only source of technology more advanced than an animal drawn plow, then the upgrade nanobots would have to be sent down to where she is. Since the nanos can't augment simple, human powered machinery it seems... No ultra quantum brooms. We really don't know if this is happening anywhere else. Or if other places have guardians like Alice. It seems in her long life she's traveled a fair bit on foot, and doesn't seem to have met anyone else like her. It seems likely that is something she would mention when she was expositioning to Gavia. So the plan as Alice has outlined would only work in her town... Which has two pieces of advanced tech we've seen so far. Really this 'plan' has so many holes and flaws in it that I can only think it's something else, and all of this is just Alice's paranoid ramblings.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

I'm not sure Alice actually intends to kill anyone.

I think it is a test.

Remember, when Gavia demanded clarity, Alice's first concern was that the kids were bugged. She thinks she's being surveilled.

She's either trying to provoke a reaction from the spacetrees, the nanotech, or the kids.

[Neko_Ali]

Entirely possible, even likely. Alice has shown so far that she just acts and expects to be obeyed. Talking out the situation with Gavia is out of character for her, unless she has some alternative reason for doing so.

[Kugai]

Now she's starting to piss me off

FFS Alice, take a Chill Pill and calm down.

[improvnerd]

It seems to me that if the Praesides are trying to take over the surface, their approach is a subtle one.

1. Throw the system out of balance.
2. Cause a crisis, and
3. Take over under the pretext of rescuing the surface folk from the crisis.

That would be how to undermine Alice's authority without any overt violence.

_Why_ they need to be so subtle has yet to be explained. The suggestion of more powerful others that the Praesides are also beholden to seems most obvious.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

You left out a couple of steps.

4. ???
5. Profit.

[improvnerd]

(Or at least, why they want to take over the surface in the first place, and why _now_ especially.)

[jheartney]

I'd agree that Alice's threat to Ardent isn't genuine, and that she's trying to provoke a reaction. Turning the strip's only Hero into a psycho killer doesn't really make sense; remember that Alice has already conceded that Ardent isn't malevolent, and her reason for attacking him is this far-fetched conspiracy theory. For her to sincerely attack Ardent now basically destroys the comic.

Leaving aside the unconvincing plotting, Alice Grove the comic has another problem: the severely constrained cast size. The local bumpkins have never been more than cyphers, so the only characters that have received any attention have been Alice and the two kids. Alice is a grumpy Madame Exposition, and Ardent is a somewhat less interesting Pintsize. This leaves Gavia as audience POV character, but beyond skeptically listening to Alice, she doesn't do much. The course of the comic has been SLOOOOOOWWW revelation of its own mythology (which mythology doesn't happen to make much sense). Without an interesting cast, I'm not sure where this is supposed to be going. Maybe it'll try doing some world building, but at this pace we'll be very old and gray before we get anything much.

[mikmaxs]

I'd agree that Alice's threat to Ardent isn't genuine, and that she's trying to provoke a reaction. Turning the strip's only Hero into a psycho killer doesn't really make sense; remember that Alice has already conceded that Ardent isn't malevolent, and her reason for attacking him is this far-fetched conspiracy theory. For her to sincerely attack Ardent now basically destroys the comic.

Unless this ends like literally all of my D&D games, where eventually one of the player characters just up and murders the other for whatever reason and the GM just throws his hands in the air in frustration until they figure out a segue for the dead person to introduce their new Level one clone of their last guy. (Henry Evans is dead, but here's his... Uh... Twin brother, Harvy A'arons. What, he's dead too? They're triplets!)

I'd agree with your opinion about the problems. The mythology might be really good and internally consistent and logical and fully thought out, but we've got so little information that it's impossible to tell one way or another. And since our characters and their motivations lie completely within this strange and alien universe, it's really hard to relate to their goals, fears, or aspirations.

[mikmaxs]

Another question I just now considered: Why couldn't the nanobots come down on their own and be flown around via remote control? It's possible to kill an Ardent and take out his minimachines, but seeing as they're apparently invisible and totally undetectable without seeing their effects, wouldn't an invisible swarm of technological bootstrapping work just as well? You can't punch an invisible cloud. We know that microrobots can live without a host, since there's that giant shadow monster thing, and even without AI it would be possible for a remote pilot to operate them. Or, y'know, non-AI programming.

[Deadcoder]

Just thought of something. What if the Praeses aren't unified? We have no reason to believe that they have a unified motive. What if there's internal conflict of some kind among the Praeses, and Alice is partially right?

[plusorminus]

Just thought of something. What if the Praeses aren't unified? We have no reason to believe that they have a unified motive. What if there's internal conflict of some kind among the Praeses, and Alice is partially right?

I think this was posited by someone back during the "special snowflake" comic. It was suggested that either the Praeses wanted Ardent as a scout to the surface for some reason and then thought better of it and sent down Gavia, or that there was a set of Praeses interested in the "other world" and allowed Ardent to go and that another faction of Praeses was appalled by this and sent Gavia after him. That they were not able to be brought back suggests that there might have been a battle between the Praeses and they are all incapacitated or dead.

My suspicion is that Alice is deadly serious in her intent to kill Ardent. She is telling Gavia because what else can Gavia do? Alice nearly beat her to death. She has said openly that if the Praeses had attempted to launch an invasion she herself would have inflicted massive casualties. She is in effect telling Gavia that her brother has to die and that if she interferes, she will die, too.

I am wondering if this is being set up for Gavia and Ardent escaping Alice and going on the run, possibly finding other "groves." My thought now is that Alice's little area isn't the most advanced in the world, but rather the least. She may have set herself up to be a Kurz-like character a la Heart of Darkness ruling over "the savages." Other areas might have indoor plumbing, electricity, technology, and Alice might be keeping this area back against the Praeses' wishes and Ardent was sent to get the party started.

[Is it cold in here?]

Killing children is not her style? She was going to beat Gavia to death shortly after they first met, for what is actually a lesser danger in her mind. Gavia was only threatening to burn down the town and had already been pretty much neutralized by Alice's anti-nanotech-tech.

It's not that she wouldn't kill someone who is attacking her or her charges (child or no), but I find it hard to believe she'd kill an innocent. She didn't kill either of them, even though their existence posed a massive risk to balance and tranquility. She was pounding Gavia's face in because Gavia was attacking first her town, then her. Ardent is dangerous, but he's not belligerent.

Welcome!

In support of your position, we've seen Alice show forbearance around children no matter how much she chooses to scare them.

On the other hand, we don't know much about her, and the glee with which she beat up Gavia shows some disquieting things in her psychology.

[BenRG]

Another question I just now considered: Why couldn't the nanobots come down on their own and be flown around via remote control?

Because [[arbitrary plot device]].

If you want a suggestion, here's one off-the-cuff: Alice has already explained that modern nanomachines are different from the sort that make up the Night Walker. It is possible that they don't have that capability due to their lack of collective computing power or it is possible that their construction is too fragile to handle the environment outside of a human body.

[FunkyTuba]

Something I've been confused about since the Gavia=nanomachines Ardent=pure human but with "helping" evolution comic...

How else would Ardent be able to repair his tail but with nanomachines? I interpreted that comic as "Ardent doesn't use nanotech for daily stuff but he does carry it with him and uses it to rebuild his tail and make his skin blue or other gross body modifications and he'd use it to get out of a jam if necessary". Noone else here seemed to take it that way. But the revelation that he's carrying a nanotech trojan payload seems to make it more likely that he's got some of his own for them to hide in

Also chalk me up in the Alice-is-trying-to-force-the-Praeses'-hand category.

[BenRG]

How else would Ardent be able to repair his tail but with nanomachines?

Terrifyingly fast (we're not talking Wolverine-fast but orders of magnitude faster than normal humans) cellular regeneration. I bet that, during the weeks after he lost his tail, he was eating a lot of carbohydrates as well as vitamin- and mineral-rich foods to supply his metabolism and regeneration.

[Method of Madness]

I interpreted that comic as "Ardent doesn't use nanotech for daily stuff but he does carry it with him and uses it to rebuild his tail and make his skin blue or other delightful body modifications and he'd use it to get out of a jam if necessary".

Yeah, I think this as well. I don't think there are any spaceborne without nanotech, just the extent they use it differs.

That being said, I still don't think Alice has any, I think she just has superpowers.

[BenRG]

That being said, I still don't think Alice has any, I think she just has superpowers.

Or was built/grown/both with significant augmentations. I'm sticking with my theory of her being the 'third way prototype', a merger of both genetically engineered optimisation and cybernetic augmentation.

[A Duck]

Alice is assuming they can be heard by the Praeses. She probably wants them to think she'll kill Ardent.

[Kugai]

Hmmm

So she might be trying to provoke a response from the Praeses huh?

It's a possibility

[ReindeerFlotilla]

Actually swarms of Nano probably don't get bombed down for the same reason the night walker swarm swarms at night.

UV. Same reason most contemporary nanomachines (Virus) don't do too well when exposed to direct sunlight.

A nanomachine bomb would certainly work, but it wouldn't last long. We can assume that whatever makes is so unlikely that Ardent and Gavia would be on the surface to begin with makes orbital bombardment a no no, or at least not very effective.

Sending the nanite down with their own mobile anti-UV casing that doubles as fuel source and raw materials processing plant is probably not a bad plan. Shaping that weapons platform as a cheeky, irresponsible, but reasonably okay guy who isn't totally unlikeable once you get to know him probably isn't a bad idea either.

If Cyberdyne wanted to build the perfect Terminator, it would be a machine that didn't know it was a Terminator.

But that movie didn't do as well as hoped, so...

[Is it cold in here?]

Alice has now given Gavia a reason to come up with a way to kill Alice. They're living under the same roof and Gavia has access to Alice's food.

Gavia could also do pointless retaliation. If she decides she has nothing to lose, she could incinerate a lot of the villagers out of spite before Alice could react. Alice's reaction would make it a kamikaze move on Gavia's part, of course.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

I suspect it takes more power than Alice has to kill Alice.

Jeph usually thinks things through, and I'm betting "tired of life" factors into Alice's thousands of years of life on Earth. I suspect she's tried to kill herself.

And Failed. The spacetrees might have the power to do it (not without catastrophic losses), but Gavia probably isn't up to it.

[dexeron]

I just realized it, and I'm not sure why it took me this long.

Ardent is voiced by Greg Cipes.

[Method of Madness]

Don't be silly. Ardent is voiced by me

[FunkyTuba]

I was thinking something more along the lines of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiWg7L0NJYU

...Nicholas Bird, the director's son.

Guess it's not that far from Greg Cipes

[improvnerd]

Ardent, we hardly knew ye.

[Zebediah]

I have a feeling that hurt Alice way more than it hurt Ardent.

[jheartney]

I'll be very surprised if Ardent is not alive in the next comic. And I expect Alice knew he would be. I think Alice is the one being Skruked.

[Method of Madness]

What J said. I don't buy it.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

That was unexpected.

I thought she was bluffing.

I also expected less from Ardent.  Note that Ardent has done the first unambiguously heroic thing in the story.

I also suspect that Alice's knife hand is in the wall. (Unless she really was bluffing, and she had to go that far before whatever she was trying to bluff reacted.)

[Method of Madness]

Either Jeph was bluffing or he wanted us to think he was, either way kind of a dick move to do a cliffhanger of this magnitude. Oh well, we'll find out soon enough.

[Is it cold in here?]

If I sent a Trojan Horse full of nanotech malware to a defended area, I'd put defense mechanism into it or make absolutely sure its work would be done before anyone knew to attack it.

Alice may just have done the equivalent of throwing a punch at Momo.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

Well, unless Alice's knife hand technique is the quivering palm method, I have to wonder why her hand was shaking before the blackout panel.

[Method of Madness]

She was probably moving it incredibly fast to make it seem like she was about to kill Ardent.

[Loki]

Or you know, she was in emotional distress.

Next strip, Ardent's body is dead, but he is now in Alice's body. Because nano magic. They are quite an odd couple.

Caught in one body.
She is a cynical being of unprecedented power.
He is a wacky hormone-driven teenage boy.
Together, they fight crime.

[cesium133]

Or you know, she was in emotional distress.

Next strip, Ardent's body is dead, but he is now in Alice's body. Because nano magic. They are quite an odd couple.

Caught in one body.
She is a cynical being of unprecedented power.
He is a wacky hormone-driven teenage boy.
Together, they fight crime.

...while they confuse the hell out of poor Margaret Wheelwright.

[jheartney]

OTOH Jeph might do a Talia Winters with Ardent, having him die and be replaced by a more aware Praeses agent. Face-Heel Turn. That would be harsh. Not to mention the first violent death in the Jeph Jaques oeuvre.

[Method of Madness]

Well thanks for possibly sort of spoiling a plot point of Babylon 5, a show I was probably gonna watch eventually!

[Is it cold in here?]

Go ahead and dive into it. It's a classic. Slow start, don't give up when the first season seems too Trek-like.

I wonder why Ardent didn't run away.

Having him die seems too simple to be likely.

[amykathleen]

The way I read today is that she's going to hit him, but is hesitating - see how she's posed to hit him and his eyes are closed, then she starts shaking and he cracks his eyes open (looking for the blow that hasn't come) - and then while she's hesitating, the Mystery Skruk occurs.

[Method of Madness]

I wonder why Ardent didn't run away.

He was actually quite clear on why he didn't run away. He is many things, but whether or not he died, a coward is certainly not one of them.

[Channelore HellicottAtham]

Expecting that Ardent's payload makes him as unwittingly (and unwillingly) immortal as Alice herself seems to be. Kinda hoping that the crunch nailed her, just to shake things up a bit, or at least a big ol' mutual KO.

Otherwise, if Ardent is gone, well...

I'm blue
Doobeydoo
Doobeydoo..

:verysadface:

[hedgie]

Things have turned a deeper shade of blue
And images that might be real
May be illusion

[Loki]

Is this the real life, is this just fantasy
Caught on the planet, no escape from reality
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see

Alice just killed a boy
Put a hand against his chest
Pushed some more and now he's mess'd
Alice, life had just begun
But now you've gone and thrown it all away