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Unicorn Valley and Pegasus Cove; Emily must save her Little Ponies from the Corpse Witch!

Pyroland (Because it's Emily's interpretation);

TRON-style neon blue-on-eternal night;

Bizarro Northampton with QC characters as avatars of parts of Bubbles' psyche;

A battlefield and a battle Emily must help Bubbles win;

Animé world with Corpse Witch as the Dark Queen;

RL Halifax (Jeph: "The Matrix has your friends, Emily!");

Adventure Time with Bembo and the Wolf Queen!

"Emily Azuma? My name is Alice Grove; welcome to the year 7016AD. Welcome to the future."

A 'straight' virtual datascape like something from The Lawnmower Man;

Other (Please specify in comments).

[gprimr1]

Very old versions of Snapchat stored the images on the phones drive using the extension filename.jpg.nomedia

The phone's OS ignored the files because of the .nomedia extension, but Snapchat read them. I wonder if perhaps the memories are stored hidden in plain site and the locked partition was a honeypot.

I do think destroying the monster might come back to haunt them.

[MrNumbers]

... what if the monster was the memories?

[Jakk Frost]

Today immediately put me in mind of the Templar in Diablo III.

[blt]

I haven't been a huge fan of the zany whimsy of this bit (I wouldn't say jumping the shark but it's just sort of jarring and not to my taste), but if Jeph uses this to snap back to a serious tone of the memories being ????, the tonal whiplash alone will redeem the whole arc for me.

[Is it cold in here?]

If backups are illegal that could explain why Bubbles doesn't just copy the painful memories from a pre-encryption backup file.

Another explanation is that memories in an AI are stored in a way such that you can't pick and choose. We've got evidence of that.

[jheartney]

I'm leaning toward the idea that the memories were already erased, and the encryption was merely a ruse to hide that fact. Emily didn't destroy Bubbles' memories; they were never there. CW destroyed them, and never expected to need to release them to Bubbles, as the threat of destroying them kept Bubbles in servitude.

CW is now doubly screwed as she has everybody after her - Graycheeks & Co. for unauthorized tampering with an AI, and Bubbles for A. destroying the memories, and B. keeping Bubbles in servitude with a lie.

My guess is the destruction of Cyclops-Doggie has alerted CW to what's happened, and she'll be long gone by the time anybody gets to the skate park. Bubbles can take over and re-hire Faye. And they lived happily ever after.

[Kugai]

Here's a thought, what if Agent Creepy is actually a representative of the PTB's that CW answers to.  Maybe they've decided that CW has become a liability to them and they've decided to move against her because of it and they see Bubbles as a more viable option and have decided to help her in order to get her out from CW's thumb which would leave Bubbles in their debt and clear the way for them to 'Remove' Corpse Witch.

[Gyrre]

I'm leaning toward the idea that the memories were already erased, and the encryption was merely a ruse to hide that fact. Emily didn't destroy Bubbles' memories; they were never there. CW destroyed them, and never expected to need to release them to Bubbles, as the threat of destroying them kept Bubbles in servitude.

CW is now doubly screwed as she has everybody after her - Graycheeks & Co. for unauthorized tampering with an AI, and Bubbles for A. destroying the memories, and B. keeping Bubbles in servitude with a lie.

My guess is the destruction of Cyclops-Doggie has alerted CW to what's happened, and she'll be long gone by the time anybody gets to the skate park. Bubbles can take over and re-hire Faye. And they lived happily ever after.

Unless she stuck some sort of transponder in or an additional program that'd access her wi-fi in Bubbles' mind, I don't see how CW would be notified.

[Shmee]

If someone's already put this theory out there, my apologies, but I didn't see it anywhere in the thread.

Maybe it's far-fetched, but... what if Corpse Witch's actions were a total bluff? Like Dumbo and the magic feather. Bubbles has said she still knows what her memories contain -- they just no longer affect her. What if CW did nothing at all except go through the motions of a procedure, which had the placebo effect of giving Bubbles "permission" not to feel the pain and guilt of her memories, and any lack of detail in her memory of events is just from her distancing herself from them?

[Is it cold in here?]

Dang, that's fascinating. Are QC AIs subject to the placebo effect?

On the other hand, if it were that easy to treat Bubbles's PTSD then some of the earlier treatment attempts would have worked.

[Morituri]

For CW's sake the memories better exist somewhere else; otherwise a very pissed-off Bubbles has no reason to hold back. I'm wondering how much punishment a hard drive with the "core self" can take.

Well, you could remove it from the body (and all sensory input or somatic output) power it up, plug it into some power source that's always on or regularly enough to recharge batteries (like solar cells with a  big ol' battery backup, or just the wall plug in your apartment with suitable transformer) and then just ... leave it there.  For years.  Decades maybe.

[jheartney]

Unless she stuck some sort of transponder in or an additional program that'd access her wi-fi in Bubbles' mind, I don't see how CW would be notified.

It'd be trivial to put wifi into these AIs (these days you can get wifi-enabled light bulbs, after all). Which could then send out a signal to CW when the encryption was compromised. Remember how CW knew all about Bubbles' tea-sniffing? She may have Bubbles bugged already.

[jheartney]

Well, you could remove it from the body (and all sensory input or somatic output) power it up, plug it into some power source that's always on or regularly enough to recharge batteries (like solar cells with a  big ol' battery backup, or just the wall plug in your apartment with suitable transformer) and then just ... leave it there.  For years.  Decades maybe.

I think this is the idea behind "Robot Jail."

[Shmee]

Bubbles said absolutely no one would help, so she was never able to receive any treatment at all until CW approached her. http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3377

Again, I do think it's maybe a bit far fetched, but it was my first thought when the room behind the monster was empty. A visual metaphor for the situation, perhaps?

Dang, that's fascinating. Are QC AIs subject to the placebo effect?

On the other hand, if it were that easy to treat Bubbles's PTSD then some of the earlier treatment attempts would have worked.

[Tova]

I want this theory to be true, just so that I can use the phrase, "The magic was in Bubbles all along."

[Thrudd]

Everyone seems to be fixated on a signal being sent when the door was broken into or the monster defeated.
If I was designing such a system I would make it a barking dog alarm - if the dog goes silent then someone is there and you can hear them trying to sneak in.

[MrNumbers]

Also likely: CW took a copy of the memories, erased the originals and encrypted it to avoid notice, just in anticipation of this exact scenario.

[Is it cold in here?]

Bubbles said absolutely no one would help, so she was never able to receive any treatment at all until CW approached her. http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3377

Again, I do think it's maybe a bit far fetched, but it was my first thought when the room behind the monster was empty. A visual metaphor for the situation, perhaps?

Dang, that's fascinating. Are QC AIs subject to the placebo effect?

On the other hand, if it were that easy to treat Bubbles's PTSD then some of the earlier treatment attempts would have worked.

That's a good catch about 3377, but there's also the scene where Bubbles tells Faye "Better minds than yours have tried" to fix Bubbles's problems.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Well, now I'm confused. If Bubbles has been operating under a delusion all this time, how did she get the delusion in the first place?

Shark jumping? If anything, this is Shark Limbo.

[Is it cold in here?]

The fact that I'm itching to see how it turns out speaks favorably of this arc.

I keep waiting for Emily to do something Emily-like.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Me too.

This is the Game, as I understand it.
Author does something compelling but weird.
So you look for the ground rules that make it make sense.
Author does something else weird. Maybe it confirms your idea. Fine. Maybe it makes sense in a different way. That's fine too.
Author pulls the rug out from under the shark. Wait, what shark? Puppies fall from the sky.
Reader throws marbles into the sewer and looks for a different webcomic.
???

[Is it cold in here?]

4. Profit!

[Storel]

I'm guessing that this was a red herring and the memories are actually locked away somewhere else. Maybe behind a false wall of this very room, or maybe somewhere completely different. If the "monster" that Emily doinked was really the memories in disguise, it just doesn't make sense that Creepybot's supposedly powerful and sophisticated tools would have been fooled that easily... Unless deleting the memories was really what Creepybot was after all along. Hmm.

[Stoutfellow]

Reader throws marbles into the sewer and looks for a different webcomic.

So, you're saying that, at this point, the reader has lost his/her marbles?

[Is it cold in here?]

On any possible interpretation, Corpse Witch has put herself in danger.

[Pilchard123]

4. Profit!

You forgot to sell it as lakefront property first.