Comic for Monday, December 18th
Sometimes not making a decision in time is making a decision, poor indecisive Karov.
Hopefully I will get my new tablet tomorrow. I wouldn’t expect too much. Mostly it’s just bigger and going to be a little easier to work with. In the olden days, I drew much smaller pages at much lower resolution, so a fairly small tablet was fine. These days I tend to draw a much higher resolution, so I decided to buy myself a Christmas present. Hopefully it’ll be a Christmas present for everyone as I’ll need to amortize the new tablet by drawing more, but I make no promises (I haven’t got it yet).
Anyway, I saw basically everytime in these little babbles that “I’d like to draw more/get better at drawing/etc/etc” so… we’ll see 🙂
If you haven’t voted below yet, make sure you vote (at the bottom of the page!). Voting is the closest it’s ever been, currently a neck and neck race, though the inevitable is slowly winning 😉 The poll will draw to a close soon.
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Re-reading some of the old comics M-Sky was first mentioned way back here: http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-monday-june-1st in 2015!
I wonder what exactly it is.
Missed it. 5th Panel “Even if she does *indeed* to use it.” Should be intend I think.
Am I the only one who sees Peter’s expression as looking a bit surprised and concerned in the last panel?
No. There are multiple people who’ve misunderstood that basic look from me to indicate surprise. It’s called disappointment. He knew she was an idiot. Being a big enough idiot to move in that particular direction… he was prepared for it. You can tell, because he goaded her. He’s generally very abrasive, but he strikes me as being the sort of person to take a very different tone if he can’t handle what might possibly come out of said abrasiveness. But he always hopes for better of people. Just like I always hope the people who make my web browser know enough to not link the unmodified cursor keys to anything but moving the cursor in the text box. But we all have to put up with disappointment.
It’s interesting to me that two people ended their careers in this comic but everybody is only talking about one of them. Otte apparently intervened to make a superior unable to revoke an access in time to stop an ill conceived orbital strike.
I can’t see that going anywhere but extremely badly for him unless Biana comes out on top and is able to protect him later.
I don’t think that protection is going to materialize.
I think the Otte is IDS, not military. Nick Otte from earlier was from IDS Headquarters, so I assume this Otte is related to him, though that may not be indicative they are from the same branch, I vaguely recall that Nick Otte was related to someone important, and had his position through nepotism, so my guess is that this is the person that Nick Otte got his position from, meaning he probably represents IDS Headquarters, not Central Military.
I am not sure though. It would make sense, as Biana has the implicit backing of IDS Headquarters in the sense that they are not interfering, though not particularly helping her. Sort of like the Central Military, honestly it seems that sitting on your thumb is sort of a Central passtime, though I would suspect it is more that they are so divided it is sort of paralyzing their organizational structure as no one wants to work together, so they are willing to let someone like Biana do basically whatever she wants as long as it gets results.
In this particular case, it’s obvious that Biana is not going to get positive results and is merely setting herself, and anyone who obviously aids her like this Otte fellow, for the role of next round’s sacrificial lamb.
At the very least, Mium is guaranteed to survive any strike and he’s just been given elevated permissions to do something to counter Biana. Either Biana and Otte succeed or they are toast. They rise and fall together, but only Biana was being discussed.
For that matter, maybe Biana is the sacrificial lamb for Otte and his allies. If her plan works then they get what they want (probably more power by way of splitting their opponents and a weakening of the Keplers, especially Aaron). But if it doesn’t work then Biana was the one who gave the orders and, while personal responsibility may be attributed to Ottie, professional responsibility will fall squarely on her.
It just occurred to me: wasn’t there a past occasion on which PastUtopia was elusive about the space capabilities of the IDS et al? I think now we know (at least a part of) why…
Peter completely expected this possibility. I think Biana is about to shell her own position. Friendly Fire Isn’t.
On a complete aside, I love the fact that the missile is just basically a big round held by a robotic arm in space…how does it even get reloaded? Oh wait there are 3 more shots on the rack behind it. Still and space wouldn’t it push the orbiting platform out of alignment?
Depends on how it works, but looking at it, it does not look like an actual rail gun or other physics based gun, but an autocaster.
I’m assuming the loops are part of the autocaster device likely operated by someone on the satellite or by an Eidos chip. Accelerating something with magic means no “equal and opposite force” since it is just changing the speed or acceleration data.
Actually, that makes a lot of sense how this works. We know that you can change not just speed, but acceleration. If you set something to a high acceleration in atmosphere, it would accelerate at that speed, but instantly that acceleration would start to decrease as soon as you stopped applying more magic, eventually to zero, from gravity and friction and stuff, then go negative until it stopped unless you keep applying magic.
But in space if you change the acceleration of something (not the speed), it’s going to just keep accelerating. That’s actually sort of brilliant on the part of the IDS, they can get an H.V.W. strike with probably vastly lower starting conditions than Kor’s World or Ila, simply by launching it from a frictionless environment and using a little gravity boost.
First, if they acellerated it from space the only continued acceleration it would get would be from gravity, being in space only means vastly lower friction which means that it would conserve that speed better rather than bleeding it off into the atmosphere. The problem with that, and the reason why kill sats aren’t “all that” in real life, is the same problem you see with asteroids. Specifically eventually the matter DOES come in contact with the atmosphere and, like most space junk, just dropping something from orbit usually results in that thing burning up before it gets anywhere close to the ground.
Acceleration is different than speed: once you stop adding acceleration the acceleration immediately drops to 0 (because nothing is pushing it to move faster anymore) but the new speed remains constant, but once you stop adding speed (the rate at which you are adding it being called acceleration) the speed remains constant.
As for firing a rocket from space, that doesn’t require any magic at all and it bypasses the equil/opposite reaction on the satellite quite easily. Simply put, the satellite never pushes the rocket anywhere. Instead the rocket (by use of the “rocket” part that uses the explosions generated by itself behind itself to move) propells itself. All the satalite has to do is point it in generally the right direction and then get out of the way. The rings are probably stabalizing rings, there so that the mechanical release of the rocket doesn’t create spin or other unaccounted movement; basically a safety measure to keep the thing contained without actually holding onto it. Likely it doesn’t even need magic, magnets would be enough to keep the rocket stabalized till launch ready.
The problem with using magic is that only living beings can use it, and only from their immediate location (though the effects can move out from that location). That would mean that some poor person would have to be sitting in that satalite just in case that magic was necessary when tech could work the problem just as easily. That seems like a waste of manpower and resources (life support is a BIG deal) unless the satalite is more than just a gun platform. I could see an autocaster mage having that job if it were also a spy satalite or some such thing.
Wow….Peter looks more like something finally did not go according to any of the six dozen plans that he’d rather happen. (Other than when Atter showed up, but he seemed more just perturbed at that.)
Oh, I think I might actually be disappointed if he didn’t account for the possibility, but unless he actually wanted it to happen, I doubt he’s got anywhere near as many contingencies in place.
(Unless he can just get Mium to..”cancel” the strike…but that seems like it would be far more telling of capabilities than the HVW strike itself.)
(PS: All that, and the subtle detail that I almost missed that suddenly seems almost as interesting as the rest of the page…..”I want what you retrieved from”? What did Peter snatch, and from where? The Kor’s World remote caster card thing that Mium probably has by now? Or something else?)
Reading this last part here, I think I suddenly understand something. When Biana is about to reveal something, Peter cuts her off loudly and aggravatingly as possible, why? He is not trying to prevent the (just) the readers from knowing what it is… he does not want what she is about to say on the call. Why? Notice that very clearly this call is in Malsan, not in Centralese. Right before this, he says something to Mium in Centeralese, and you can clearly see the other group is talking in Centeralese… but Amy can understand Peter’s side of the call.
He deliberately starts talking to Biana in Malsan, and poor, dumb, outwitted Biana just follows suit. The end result? Peter has a recording of Biana ordering this strike.
And as for Mium “cancelling” an HVW… holy foreshadowing just got real. Remember when Kor’s World used one against Mium sitting on top of the building? Peter said [Mium could stop it if]”Maybe if he could see it launch, but we hadn’t located the platform yet.” But with this one, Mium probably knows the exact firing solution. So the question is probably “can he”, but “will he”. I can see pretty vast benefits from Peter either way. Imagine if can prove to Palindra that the IDS has a weapon like that, while at the same time proving he can stop it.
@Amaranth
Yep. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
And, judging by the text balloons, it looks like even Biana’s order of, “I authorize deployment of…” and “Fire” were spoken in Malsan. It seems pretty likely that Peter’s phone conversation picked that up in the background…
I feel your thinking isn’t convoluted enough.
The facts:
* Peter knows about M-sky and had time to plan how to use it.
* This conversation is in Malsan
* We have Kally running a sweep operation.
* Peter’s goals are to balance IDS and Corp Affairs.
* Peter and Mium have planned this outcome, maneuvering she of the shitty ideas into this corner.
So, the question is, where is that HVW impact going to be?
* Nowhere. Easiest thing to do to a satellite is to have it not work.
* Adjust, just off target. Mium asked for higher permissions to avoid collateral damage from the strike.
* Hit the base that she, of the shitty ideas, minions are now at. Its already heavily damaged anyway.
* Hit somewhere that will be seen as an attack on Malsa’s pride, with few people there.
* Hit a certain abomination squarely in the back.
I hope it is the last one, but that would require a lot of pieces to fall into place at the same time. And would be just an attack of opportunity, not something that was planned months in advance.
I also agree with Amaranth. I think the thing Peter is trying to hide is either the chip he stole from the mechs “lovely abomination of magic” that they are, or something from the downed skycarrier that Avon theoretically has (Peter already stole MIUM from Avon, so why not take more goodies). Though there is the chance that she thinks HE is the one who stole the bridgepoint data and is after that. The only other major thing that Peter seems involved in is the incident with the Whirlpool virus, and there really isn’t anything really to have “retrieved” from that (that I know of).
My guess (and we will see how accurate it is) is that the “target recalebration” from before was MIUM prepared for pushing SKYHAMMER toward a new target. But that big of an impact is likely to still have casualties no matter WHERE it falls. So, in order to reduce casualties, either MIUM stops the impact, or removes the civilians. Removing the civilians traditionally isn’t really an option, or else peter could just run away from his current position to keep from getting hit, so something else must be happening. My guess is the permissions allow MIUM to hack implants from a much larger range, or multiple of them, letting him either remotely destroy the incoming attack, or have the people inside create a shield to block it.
Time will tell, though.
I’m not sure that it is entirely accurate to say that Peter “stole” Mium from Avon, though I do believe Avon sees it that way. We know that Dr. Mir is quite familiar with Peter because Ila said he was in her top 5 of people she most wants dead. There have been a lot of hints that Peter used to be Dr. what’s-his-name, the head of Avon’s research dept. that Dr. Mir took over. I think Peter developed Mium and the F-series. We already know that M.Y.M. is a conglomerate network of AI and that Query is part of this – Query, who is Peter’s creation. (Interestingly, Query is on the Main Characters page instead of on the Secondary or Background Character pages…)
Further, it seemed implied that Peter was responsible for Avon acquiring that downed skycarrier. Is it really stealing to take back what you gave or what you created with your own two hands? And, if asked, I think Mium would say that he is currently his own person and that nobody owns him, Peter’s rules and limitations notwithstanding. (Obviously, Mium and Peter are working together under a certain arrangement.)
According to US contract law, yes, absolutely, it’s stealing to take what you created under contract if that contract says the someone else owns it assuming they follow their end of the contract – and since they wrote the contract, it will, and will also have breach settlement clauses that still have it be theirs – their breach merely means they owe you more money if you can manage to lawyer up enough to take it from them.
For that matter, most of the IT contracts I’ve seen even go so far as to say if you make something they’re interested in during the time period in which you are employed, even if it’s not during hours you’ve billed, and your contract doesn’t explicitly state otherwise for that particular thing, it’s still theirs.
(This is why the only bits of intellectual property I make outside of work are crummy comments my employer wouldn’t want.)
Point. But then we can get into the messy affair of whether or not AI – undeniably sapient and self-aware AI – should have the legal rights of person-hood or whether they can be owned as property, slave-ownership style.
I get the impression that most of what Peter does is to force Central to respect Palindra and to work together amicably. That, and to force the issue of self-aware AI person-hood.
Also, just because lawbooks state things a certain way does not necessarily mean that such positions are morally justified.
PS: Central lawyers would have a field day if they found out that Avon acquired Kor’s world wreckage and military secrets through Peter. We already know from that fiasco over Peter giving them the gate detector technology that this is a serious breach of PACT agreements. Not to mention the fact that the kind of research to create Mium and the F-series is illegal.
Morally justified or no, AI still count as property. The issue with the F-series being illegal is that they are SMAI (Self Modifying Artificial Intelligence). We know the whirlpool virus was one (before it disappeared) and we know that Kor World uses them extensively, so it isn’t surprising that this line of research is illegal. We know that AI still count as property from Querry, as he was GIVEN to someone.
The issue with them getting the gate detector tech was that it was assumed that they somehow engaged in industrial espionage against the IDS in order to get it. At least that was my reading of it, considering that the issue was brought up that the tech was different (during the conversation in Centraleese) rather than them focusing on the “rogue agent” aspect of it as would be true if it were a “contractual intelectual property” issue (such as what Tgape mentioned with why they don’t create anything outside of work).
Though I don’t doubt that they would flip if they found out Avon got Kor World wreckage, Peter being involved or not. Though, to be honest, we don’t know if Avon actually has the downed skycarrier, or if Aaron only thinks they might.
Mium/MYM at least does not view himself as “ownable”. When he talks to Mir he dismisses the fact that he (as F5) belonged to Mir, because he simply followed his directives.
On the other hand, Miko notes at one point that Peter could compel Mium to give back one of her servers that he stole, so Peter at least has some degree of control over Mium.
Query is an interesting question, especially the one that was seen with Kyle.
I think there is more to Query than we have seen, Mium himself notes that he likes the name Query, even if though he does not consider himself the same entity, which is fairly strange.
It seems like Query was created prior to when I assume that Peter got his hands on Avon’s Kor tech, but Query had a lot of personality for “simple” AI. In some ways, Query seems to have the strongest imprint on MYM, and if anything MYM is a less personable version of Query. But he uses the name MYM/Mium to refer to himself.
Of course, there is are some big questions remaining with MYM like “what is the AA system” and what is “ANGL 01010014” and are those the same thing, and why did he smile when he integrated the F5? That is still the single most mysterious thing the webcomic.
I look forward to seeing a flashback where MYM is the original version before Peter hijacked/stole it, assuming he did not make it from scratch as Dr. Martin. I still do not think Peter is Dr. Martin, as I swear I recall a clue to the contrary, but I have not been able to find it for months.
I agree, Mium doesn’t view himself as being “owned”, only as following certain directives. The issue seems to be that Peter gives those directives. If this counts as ownership or now quickly becomes a philosophical issue. Do parents “own” their children? Do employers “own” their employees? Do leaders “own” their followers (especially the really loyal ones)? Hard to say.
My theory, and one that seems to have some evidence, is that Mium is the combination of Querry and the “whirlpool virus”, both AI and theoretically both SMAI of some degree (or at least self-aware AI). This “self aware” condition can explain why they can all (Mium, Querry, F5) argue, disagree, have personal preferances, and even “like” certain things. Again, philosophical questions come up about “what makes human” and how much robotic life would reflect us or how “alien” it would really end up being.
I’m not convinced that Peter was the Avon resercher, though I do see it as a real posibility. Dr. Mir seems to want Peter dead with a vengence but seems to have a real respect for her college who invented the F-series. She even goes so far as to take personal issue with someone suggesting that she was the one who got rid of him in order to take over his research. She may disagree with his idea on autonomous AI, but she still seems to have a real respect for him (as opposed to Peter). That could just be that Peter didn’t reveal his true identity till the inevitable betrayal, so I still leave it up in the air.
My first instinct – to show off without causing immediate casualties – was to shoot the moon.
Might have been a bit of inspiration from Sonic Adventure 2 there…
he said that “bluffing a strike from skyhammer” would be the end of her career. “bluffing” is in bold and italic font. Mium’s gonna stop the thing from firing entirely, but the orders were given in front of a witness. thus, the skyhammer “bluff” will end Biana’s career.
I’m also curious as to whether or not other parties are in on this call besides Peter and Biana. It would hardly be difficult for Mium to broadcast it live to multiple national capitol buildings.
Peter giving Mium the “I told you so” look in the last panel.
Or MIUM giving Peter that look. I’m really not sure. Peter was obviously agrivating her, baiting her in, but MIUM’s the one with the belief that eliminating loose ends is for the best.
Biana… Your idiocy and belligerence never ceases to amaze me. Goodbye, career, goodbye IDS’s public image, goodbye EVERYTHING, just because you want to have a pissing contest.
Assuming that this weapons platform is orbiting Palindra, I forsee Biana’s career-ending misstep to have implications far beyond the obvious. It’s possible, I suppose, for Skyhammer to be in orbit above Central and for them to somehow dimensionally shift the projectile. Possible, but I think unlikely.
If this system is in orbit above Palindra, you know the s***’s gonna hit the fan. Palindra’s governments (or at least most of them) must not have known that this existed. But, after this strike, you know that they will be looking more closely at the sky.
Once they know that it’s there, they will ask: “How in the 9 hells did they smuggle that in and then get that thing up there?” The obvious answer? They smuggled the parts and launch equipment in via secret, illegal (non-sanctioned) gate activity. So, Malsa’s up-until-now weakly-supported claims that IDS was ignoring illegal gate activity go from biased heresay to proven. Instead of stopping illegal gate activity, it should become undeniable that IDS has been connected to most of it.
PS: How much you wanna bet that Peter can (or already has) give them the tech to detect secret satellites in orbit?
PSS: Why didn’t it give Biana pause to hear Peter talk about Skyhammer? If this is an ultra-secret weapon, shouldn’t she ask how Peter knows about it? And if Peter knows about it…
Your answer to the PSS is that Biana is arrogant, self-righteous, short-sighted, and lives in a bubble where only things and people that agree with her position are all she hears. Anyone who dares object gets “silenced.” Even when her orders are obeyed, she has to be reminded that the result and the orders came from her because she can’t believe the outcome of her decisions!
“…arrogant, self-righteous, short-sighted, and lives in a bubble where only things and people that agree with her position are all she hears…”
Well put. This webcomic does seem be something of a statement about the current social climate, at least in a roundabout way. Biana’s character does remind me of certain people with a “modern” mindset.
So which is a worse disaster Bianca? Letting peter live and go on being annoying; or Calling down a strike on him, FAILING, EXPOSING THE ABILITY TO, and PROBABLY CAUSING MASS DAMAGE TO SOMETHING more important. Like your own bases.
Panel 5: Even if she does intend to use it
or: Even if she does, indeed, intend to use it
And merry christmas on your new tablet. May it serve you well.
I chose the one I felt would be the most annoyed by having to wear it. ^^
I’m afraid that wearing the hat would just amuse Rovak.
Why do I think that’s not where Peter is?
And why do I think that either Mium’s going to do something to stop the impactor or redirect the targeting onto Biana’s location? Or maybe someone else’s location, but the result isn’t going to be what Biana wanted.
Probably panel 6 of the last comic, where Mium says “target recalibration is complete.” 😉
Question is (to transfer a discussion from Patreon to here): where was it recalibrated to?
I think it was said in Panel 15… The consuls office…
However, I don’t think that that’s Biana’s original target, because she clearly aimed the Sky Hammer to kill Peter. However she doesn’t see that Mium recalibrated it, but Otte can and he assumed that was Biana’s target…
My understanding was that Peter was at the Consul’s office (b/c that’s where his office is too), and therefore that that’s where the orbital cannon SAYS it was pointed at. However, that’s not where it’s actually pointed.
I assumed that Otte was referring to how it wouldn’t be what he would choose for his purposes, if he wanted to keep up the deception that it was Kor’s world.
I could be wrong, but that’s how I was taking things.
I’m not really sure. The one guy brings up the consul’s office as though it is an unexpected target, but hitting Peter or the nation’s leadership is VERY expected at this point so I wonder if anyone important is at the consul’s office at all.
That said, taking out a major government building like that, especially after the spat she just had with the consul, looks like escalation of war. Especially since Peter just referenced skyhammer in front of Amy Selah, the second in command at the MSB. It would be kinda hard, and against Peter’s purposes, to avoid talking about what “Skyhammer” was now.
And if Biana gets confused about why Skyhammer was pointed at the wrong place, while trying to lie that Skyhammer was Kor World tech, then it only seems ironically fitting that nobody believes her.
And on topic… well. They have a satellite. A death satellite. Did Palindra just not notice that floating up there? Or do they have the ability do an interdimensional launch? Or perhaps it is a lot further away than it might seem?
Lot of questions there I’m hoping we see. I guess the further away makes the most sense. Interesting it seems to be a very different system then what Kor’s World used, much bigger projectile, which probably means lower overall speed, though probably still way over merely hypersonic.
M-Sky that was last mentioned like 200+ pages ago? This stuff never ceases to amaze me.
Mium seems to have developed the “I’m busy altering how the world works” look.
And, what she, of the shitty plans, didn’t realize is that peter has been using M.sky as an off site data storage facility.
Now, the giant laser is going to draw the last gif that was stored.
Hilarity will ensue! Except for a few houses that got in the way, they will be sad.
Now I’m trying to decide what the best meme would be to see carved into the surface of a planet.
It’s important when reading this comic to maintain a sense of perspective. Specifically, Peter’s sense of perspective. He does *not* use SkyHammer as off-site data storage. With the perspective he has, everything on Central and Palindra is pretty much center stage. Orbit around one of those is a rounding error. So it’s on site. He uses Kor’s World computers for his off-site storage. (Not that he would store anything there that he wouldn’t want them to see. Rather, he would only store stuff there that he very much wanted them to see, but be under the mistaken impression he didn’t want them to see it. So encrypted to the limit of the technology they can break, with a lot of work, using a password that’s a cryptographic hash of a password. Because what better password than one you can’t even remember, but can still access? Oh, wait, this is Peter. He accidentally memorized it anyway. He had to type it in that one time, after all…)
Also, SkyHammer’s useful for so much more than just data storage. I mean, think of all of the compute nodes and network access it has. 🙂
Nah, I’ll bet it’s re- aimed at their “allies.” There’s nothing like a massive HVW strike to convince people that they want to work with you.
Of course, Mium could just take over the system completely, and not fire it at all. That alone would end Biana’s career. Because having THE strategic weapons system stolen out from under you by someone working for a country you just declared war against tends to be a career killer.
Okay, poll voters. We need to have a real talk here. Why do you vote for Naomi, when you could vote for Rovak? Rovak, wearing a santa hat. Now I get it. I’m a guy too. But think!
Naomi + Santa Hat = Okay, I guess.
Ila + Santa Hat = Adorable I guess.
Kally + Santa Hat = Funny.
Miko + Santa Hat = Funnier.
Rovak + Santa Hat = Pure win.
This is not a complicated thing. No, I’m not just saying this because I want a new Rovak avatar. Er. Of course not!
But Miko!!!! Her grumpy face would be adorable.
That was the criterion I used as well.
I am wondering why we keep voting for Naomi when she’s already won how many times?
I’m voting for Kally because funny but not bored funny. More of a “I’m pretending to really hate this but it isn’t that bad, but I will NOT admit to that” sort of funny. Besides, it is pretty clear that Naomi will get her way into the shot if there is any way of blackmailing the author (and she WILL try), and Ila is likely to be dragged in as well.
There is also the fact that I expect a 50/50 chance that eventually Rovak will be seen in a ridiculous outfit anyway, in his own words: “because I am undercover, and nobody will recognize me now!”