Soo… many… words…. waaah. Just let me know how I’ve abominably murdered the English language and grammar 😐
We have seen before that not everyone takes the thought of Peter going rogue particularly seriously. We’ve seen before that the other analysts don’t take it particularly seriously, that Peter’s sister didn’t really take it seriously, and that Kyle didn’t seem to take it all that seriously for that matter. For different people there are different reasons, with varying ranges of misguided.
As for the relationship between the Analysts and Query (and their knowledge of what it is) that will probably be expanded one somewhat in the future. In the past, we’ve seen a few of them somewhat downplay Query’s capabilities, though the reason for that may not be clear.
So… announcements?
First, topic of the next bonus comic series has been voted on over at Patreon, and it’ll be a continuation of Minus Years and the story of Kally and Peter’s prequel years. I’m not going to to lie that I’m a little surprised by that, but there’s plenty more to tell there, so…
Second, it came to my attention the cast page is sort of in a bad state. While it’s on my horizon to update, this will take some time to compile, if people want to help or expedite, here’s an idea – if you have a character you think should be added to the cast page, let me know, preferably with a link to the last time that character appeared.
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If Query were human, it probably would have responded something along the lines of “Standing right here,y’know!” Or, “You know I can hear you, right?” Query’s much too polite. We need an A.I. programmed with Dr. Mir’s sense of snark.
What does s.m.a.i. stand for? I know the latter half, I presume, but the s.m. has me stumped.
“Self Modifying”
As @Delta-v says, it’s “Self Modifying Artificial Intelligence”; essentially it refers to an AI that can reprogram itself to introduce or modify capabilities.
These are considered dangerous in-comic, as they can be extremely unpredictable in their execution of their starting directives. To counter this, they are usually under certain restrictions – the more restrictions, the less chance they do something very unpredictable, but the less useful they are.
Thats some damn fine coding right their. Though really the big issue would be to prevent the AI from budding off a secondary ‘child’ copy without the restrictions. Or using social manipulation to get others to work around the restrictions… It’d probably be easier to actually code/teach ethics into the A.I.
Well, two of the restrictions we do know of on MYM are that he cannot run two two instances of his primary process asynchronously, and that there is an upper limit on how much processing power he can be using at any given time. That, and some sort of guidance to try to avoid killing everyone just because they represent the potential to interfere with his plans.
We have also seen that there is a certain level of flexibility to even those rules.
Kally is having a flood of revelations and realizations sweep over her, and it’s shaking her badly. Now, she’s about to meet another facet of M.Y.M./Query, and learn a few more pieces of the puzzle. She’s either about to have a great detective epiphany, or an open-eyed nightmare–or possibly both. 🙂
I personally love how Arron had Kally attend school in the first place to contact Peter when all the analysts just dial him up whenever. The fact Query is still running the analysis tools that probably helped find Peter in the first place just shows how much of a puppet master he really is.
Also, it says quite a bit about that family that the entire idea of Peter being a threat to the nation as a whole is utterly incomprehensible to many people. Heck, even Arron recognizes that Peter is probably trying to do good.
I suspect Kally will be fine though. A little freaked out at first, but she’s resilient. She’s familiar with Peter’s go big or go home mentality after all.
The problem has never been getting information out /to/ peter, I suspect they could put a large sign on the roof with the coded information and that would work just as well, the problem has been getting information back from him. Peter has to want the “spy”/”informant” around or else it will do no good and probably just cost them the agent (if not dead, then so far out of the picture that they might as well be).
Its getting meaningful, contextual information back. Peter would probably delight in answering a barrage of questions out of order with fragment, run on sentences and then let you sort it all out.
And Kally literally said the second part. You send an ‘ordinary’ spy after Peter and you get an IOU. Which means Peter probably managed to send them off somewhere, where they will end up getting information that Peter honestly wants you to have. But is too habitually like the Riddler to actually give you.
Interestingly it is using the same logo as MYM, which I had previously assumed was something that came from MYM due to its use in the Avon labs. Either Query always used that logo, or this facet receives patches from MYM. It is quite possibly this one is synced to MYM, really.
And someone voices something I’ve been wondering about. What if Peter going ‘rogue’ is all a plan by someone VERY SMART (and not Peter) to force all the little factions of the IDS to at least reveal some of their hands so that the loyalty can be assessed and the disloyal problematic folk REMOVED?
I think there is a good chance that Kyle is tied into this. While he has seemed laid back, but there are a few things about him that make me suspicious he is more than he has seemed so far. Someone tried to kill him while screaming about him being a tyrant after all.
There’s something awkward about the first thought bubble in panel 5. I can’t quite figure out what, but it doesn’t sound right.
I guess Mium really isn’t in the “hiding” mood.
(Also the answer to your question is: What can’t he do on his own?”
I think it is odd to read because it is a continuation of the “sentence” in panel 4, the whole thought is just one rambling senteance, so the “it” there is referring all the way back to the “s.m.a.i” in panel 4. It’s just a little hard to read it all together, but I think she is supposed be rambling.
It should be “even though” instead of “even that”.
Hm. Interesting. Miss Summers, not Miss Winters. Could imply more Query than Mium, could just be standard covert ops, or could be something else.
My bet is on the second one, that Mium has to maintain cover, in a sense – more precisely, not refer to preexisting contact with Kally since separation, or something. Or not confirm Kally’s fears (even though he already did). Or whatever.
I think that MIUM simply has a really dry sense of humor. The time when he called her “Winters” was just after she denied being concerned about Peter. I think we was just making a joke that she was “cold” despite her name (which actually is summers, and she got into the school with her real name (because why hide it?)).
Here is the link if you want to look it up:
http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-wednesday-july-1st
PS: yes, I’m a bit of a nerd for looking it up. Please forgive me my weakness. 😛
On the contrary, it’s been a persistent nickname, used as recently as http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-monday-june-19th, when they were last together. (I checked that before writing my comment. You’re not the only nerd.)
It’s a persistent nickname, but there are a few times he calls her Miss Summers as well. It is like with Ila where he calls her “Miss Sister” and “Miss Ila” interchangeably, but in this case he usually calls her Miss Winters when he is making fun of her, which seems to be one of his favorite hobbies. That said, I get the feeling he does the same thin to Miko, it is just that we usually only see Miko’s half of those conversations.
True – for instance, http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-thursday-september-8th and http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-monday-september-12th, when Kally gets kidnapped.
Those particular cases were by reference (to Ila, rather than directed at Kally herself) and when he needed to “snap to serious mode.” That is to say, special circumstances, rather than the two being interchangable. That’s why I picked this case as something more than average variation.
I wonder if Kally has spent the last dozen hours trying to get that computer to work when the analysts already knew it all.
And, I finally have a name!
Hi! I’m Taby Yalani ^_^
nice to meet you.
Maybe this means you will be added to the cast page, that is when you know you have made it big time.
Cast page reorganization has started, but that’s going to be a lumbering and slow moving beast for now.
Panel 2: “not that anyone really talked to him BEFORE,” also: “but it’s, well, PETER.” Panel 5: “why would he have left the department if he was?”
I fixed the first and third of these. I left the second one, as though I see what you’re saying, I think it’s intentional, as he’s not really referring to Peter as a person, but more as a force that exists, like gravity.
Thanks 🙂
you’re welcome my friend.