Comic for Monday, April 29th, 2019
Welp, not the best start to the week timing wise but hey could be worse.
I debated how hard to make Miko’s text to read. This is something I’ve toyed with a few times. In this case – as the text indicates – Miko is just talking way too fast. As Mium noted, running Ila (and likely consequently VIMium) on his system drastically slowed it down. We’ll get more into why that is at some point – it’s not necessarily a lack of processing power, more of a… buffering issue.
VIMium’s problem is that it cannot run on a ‘normal’ environment. It was keeping the AA System active to continue existing, but keeping the AA System active was causing major problems in the entire MYM, as operating the AA System… hmmm… is under severe restrictions. But, just for the sake of example, VIMium could have kept running on the F10 without the AA System engaged, he just chose to give that prototype back to Ila, and Ila can’t run on MYM’s system without the AA System active, so he’d have had to delete one of them to shut back down the AA System and resume normal operation.
How exactly Miko bypassed this is probably becoming clear, but VIMium would still be unable to exist on just the Lab 5 hardware – Miko’s body is still linked to the system – it wasn’t a transfer, and more as our cyan-shaded-…secretary… says, a sync. MYM can control bodies and computers at the same time, but MYM is sort of in a different league in terms of multitasking.
I don’t know if i will have time to fix spelling errors until tomorrow evening, so… apologies in advance 🙂
When we next meet I should have some updates on the future…
Next comic is probably Friday.
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I’m wondering if at one point there wasn’t a Dr Miranda Martin
Just as a reminder for those wondering where the comic is we’ll be doing Monday/Friday this week, and for the near future instead of Monday/Thursday.
Thank goodness!
I was starting to become concerned that the rampant speculation, which is overloading my brain and making me think, had broken you and we were never going to see you again!
Honestly, I read the comic three times and still didn’t pick up on Dr Martin until others explained it. Obviously he’s able to choose who, of those with implants, he can appear to.
Party on!
I was just eating pie and suddenly realized a disquieting potential issue with VIMium and Miko/Taki being synced up (though his restrictions should prevent what I’m fearing, ie: full synchronization). I hope Mium got around to determining what constitutes being “different a different person.” Last we heard he was putting it in backlog after Naomi caused a bit of confusion with his understanding of it.
Soooo…. What kind of pie?
It was Marie Callender Pecan Pie. Since I was thinking on plot elements enough that I made the connection several days after originally reading the update just goes to show how much I like this comic I guess.
That risk and MYM’s inability to take it is what forced him to deny Miko access. She had to shut down Lab 5, killing the MYM processes in it, before she could link up. There’s no risk of subsumption/merging because MYM isn’t connected to the system.
In fact, I actually suspct it was the rest of MYM that cut off the internet, so MYM has no access and thus minimizes risk of merging.
I was more concerned with the same general thing that happened with F…5? I think it was? Ie: requesting full syncing. Miko has expressed preferences in the past that indicate she might want a Mium-like existence. Mium not understanding the concept of merging consciousnesses equating a different person being formed could prevent his “”protect Miko” priority from being triggered and preventing such actions. I’m presuming VIMium has the same general priorities, but being a more Illa-like existence might give an unknown or unpredictable perspective on this.
One thing that didn’t trigger with me until my latest reread: The secretary recognized “Miko”.
Once more I wonder if there was a Japan on Central, and now also how the secretary came to be aware of it …
She dealt with Miko and her alias on Miko’s previous trip to Avon to help with the ‘Virus’ problem
Thanks; I’d forgotten Saria was there for the impromptu conference with Tyler, Rovak, and the avatars.
But that still doesn’t explain the quote marks around “Miko” here, now does it?
M.I.R.
M.I.U.M.
??M.I.K.O.??
That’s how I read cyan shaded secretary’s remark. Not saying she’s right, not saying she’s wrong. Just that it’s a valid suspicion for her, since Miko instantly ‘impossibly’ synced with Lab 5.
Ryn, you liar, there’s no way in hell you expected that. 😛
In other news, is that a wild Martin appearing?! (He’s got to be using one of those remote hologram things and only showing up at very specific times…)
I can’t keep up with who is an AI, who is a person, and who is technically MYM. *flips table*
In this scene…
Ryn: Almost certainly not an AI. Just a confused marketing guy.
Saria (Cyan Shaded Secretary’s real name): Probably not an AI. Suspicious though. Probably a designer child or member of the Families. Probably not actually a secretary.
MIR: Probably not entirely an AI, but possible an AI that thinks it used to be a person. The relationship between Miranda and Mir is uncertain.
Martin: Toss up right now.
Miko: Miko is currently Miko + VIMium, so yes and no. Miko is a human was integrated somewhat into an AI (Query) and now is much more deeply integrated with an AI (VI Mium).
MYM: Mium is MYM, it’s just how you say it out loud if you don’t say it as an acronym. Mium, Query, VIMium, and MYM are all the same entity to an extent, but VIMium is an imperfect copy use to run the F10 and is currently integrated into Miko.
As for people not in this scene…
Peter, Naomi, Tyler, Arron, Kally, Arkady = Not AI (probably).
Ila = AI (…probably)
Other people not in this scene.
Amy, Mione, Marc, Nathan, Ashian, Camilla, Lisa, Acalia, Maia, Tom, Elizabeth, Ashley, biana, Sophie, Varkim, Holmgren, Taby, Tokiwa, Toshe, Eliana, Kyle, Jairin, Mari, Sparrow, Marilyn, Kaori, Min, Oriah, Smar, Kyles, Rick, Vicksberg, Del, Rubin, Volkov: probably not AIs.
The Consul, Rovak, Nick, Yace, Kurun, Gate, Iki, Nelson, Karov, Rici, Dendrin, Antar, Kyston, Atsu, Don, Mika, Reina, Ann, David, Kon, Gelon, Joid, Yoav, Evan, Vinstin: tough to say.
Kor’s World Tank, Kor’s World Minion, Kor’s World Soldier, Magnolia, ArponTank, Min, Malk, Vera… I apologize, I let myself get distracted, what am I talking about? Whatever. That’s sure a lot of characters to keep track of.
Whatever happened to Korbin, anyway? I can’t even remember the last time I saw them.
Where Korbin and the rest of the monster hunters are is actually a sort of important background event. Due to Karov abdicating his authority after the Skyhammer was fired to Ricci, Ricci has prevented anyone from deploying the Monster Hunters against IDS targets. While Colonel Ricci hasn’t taken any action, he is friends with Arron Kepler.
While the Monster Hunters are deployed by Sophie, they are more properly a military asset, so Ricci is able to tie them up until he’s replaced (as he is only an interim commander, as he was supposed to be an observer and not actively commanding).
But it seems that forces – likely Kyle – have conspired to make deploying a new commander or moving Ricci somewhere else take quite awhile.
This is one of the background events that has lead to the current conflict, as without the Monster Hunter’s Sophie’s military forces are much more limited, and Biana doesn’t technically have military forces, though they both have quite a few heavily armed agent, and seem to have partnered with PACT to provide local forces.
Arron on the other hand brought in actual military forces, so while he doesn’t have that many people, his soldiers are more on par with the Monster Hunters, which are currently not deployed (that we’ve seen, anyway).
This was likely what Karov intended to happen when he abdicated command to Ricci, though he seemed to think balancing the scales would make neither make an aggressive move, but at that point was not aware how closely Biana was working with Orin, and likely did not anticipate she would be willing to move foreign soldiers through a Dimension gate (that’s sort of a no-no for obvious reasons).
It’s unlikely the Monster Hunters would be particularly eager to be deployed against Kally anyway, as she was one of the more powerful monster hunters once, most of them are pretty wary of her.
That said, they are still around, and there’s a chance we’ll see them…….
Ryn admitted that his secretary was smarter than him, but how does she know that it’s ‘impossible to sync a human to a foreign system in seconds without an interface’? That’s some pretty high level knowledge there.
Just how smart is this cyan shaded secretary?
Well let’s consider that for a moment, Cyan is wrong about something…Miko’s not syncing to a foreign system. Miko, MYM, F5(Mium), and presumably F8(Ila) are linked together by those instant communication modules Peter has been harvesting from the Kor’s World robots. That communication link is what enables MYM to loosely control F5, and communicate with and act through other nodes on his system where instantaneous communication is required. I seem to remember Peter indicating that there was one of those modules in this lab.
Miko is using her AI Mium modified interface to sync with Lab5. which she is accessing through her implant of Kor’s World technology, which explains the magic sparkles. She is needing to do this may be to Install AI Mium’s technology process on the Lab5 system and then to Join it back to MYM as its own entity. AI Mium would then be able to function in this environment, freeing up the AA system for other uses. This is risky and would explain why MYM’s friends and family rule came into play.
the lack of the internet prevents that synchronization and is the result Martin showing up. MYM could have possibly determined Martin was in the building, but was unable to communicate that because there were unauthorized people in the room.
As a complete aside, if it isn’t discussed in comic, I really would like to see an epilogue of Peter’s meeting and conversation with Naomi where he convinced her to protect him. I think of it now because of all of the stuff with Martin and Rovak.
One thing to note, both F5 and F8 are Mium, F10 is our dear Ila.
Also Miko, unbeknownst to Cyan, does have hardware to enable synching. This is just someone realizing how out of date all their knowledge is.
I just realized I used the wrong F numbers. They should be F8 and F11. I am not sure if anyone commented on this before but all 3 of those (5,8, and 11) are all windows interrupt keys used during startup.
I’m going to take a wild guess that ‘secretary’ was not her first job at Avon.
Remember how Ryn mentioned he’s a marketing guy who’s life goals included a hot secretary, and basically being able to make money while lazing about. Also, how he’s an idea guy.
Yeah, Ryn has talent, but does not have the technical expertise. He knows he doesn’t have the technical expertise. So he promoted someone who does to his “secretary.” Which, despite the title is a major promotion.
Ryn has ideas. She either tells him its impossible or makes them happen. In many ways his “secretary” is the power behind the curtain. Same as happens in real life all the time.
So, who turned off internet? Martin?
Selective ellipses sounds like it could be right, but either way, I wonder if Martin’s “ghost” and Peter’s mirror images are related. It seems they did work together. And as a long shot in light of Miko’s actions, I’m wondering if Martin might at this point be just a computer system with an Eidos card – but which?
I guess “MYM’s system” is Lab 5 (“It ran most of Martin’s lab. It build half the systems we are using now.”) And I wonder if Ila also ran there – “whatever you actually are, you’re running on my framework,” probably refers to MYM’s system, right? Although it appears Ila shut down for other reasons, and depending on synchronization of the story lines, before lab five rebooted.
I still don’t know what the AA system is. The first time we saw him wake up in Martin’s lab (Lab 5, presumably), he used the AA system. I thought the implication was that those were one and the same. Later implications have pointed elsewhere, and if I’m reading this commentary right, those systems are different but connected.
I’m going to need to graph out these confirmed and assumed connections to follow this …
There’s no head, so it must be Dr. Martin.
Curious that Miko counts two people and MIR, but doesn’t count Martin. She didn’t even say something like “Oh, a new person” before saying don’t turn off the internet. (Assuming Martin was the one who turned off the internet.)
Does that mean Martin is not flesh or cybernetics?
I do not think Martin turned off the internet. I do not think Miko would be so agreeable in that case. It is probably VIMium configuring the system. Like when Ila first loaded onto Mium’s system things were a bit loopy until he had it properly configured.
Lab 5 is probably the point of origin of MYM, which is my take on why Miko was so regretful for nuking it. It probably did not do all that much damage to MYM given how far he has distributed at this point, but it would be of sentimental value to Miko (though not necessarily MYM).
Ila was shut down by a something that Martin provided Rovak with, which was specifically designed to shut down a prototype. That it was so specifically good at doing that seems to be what clued MYM in that Martin is still around.
The AA System has generally be speculated to be the “Artificial Autocaster” or “Autonomous Autocaster” system, and is likely yet another AI project that is tied into MYM, and appears to be what he uses to “run as a human”. It may or may not like actually edit Eidos like a mage. This is not confirmed yet though, just a theory.
If Miko knows who turned off the internet, I agree it must have been VIMium, but I’m not sure she knows. Her “you” is not clear. Nor am I clear on why VIMium would want to. Martin, now …
As to MYM’s distributed nature: If MYM could run on the consul’s computer, he could probably run on other nodes as well, but without his “framework” up and connected, how could he do that while complying with the restriction of not running autonomous instances? Ah, but then, how could he run on the consul’s computer in the first place? He (or Miko) has somehow worked around that …
We’re talking about two different instances of Ila shutting down (keeps happening to her, that) – I had in mind the latest “Yup. Asleep.”: http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-friday-april-12th-2019/
I don’t think the AA system is an AI system. Mium’s usually not using it – he’s restricted from using it, so when he once did use it, Miko asked him “how did it work”, and he replied “its Eidos simulation capacity is now eighteen times greater than mine, but is it [sic!] still unable to translate Eidos data” – so “autocaster” seems right: http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-friday-august-7th/
The author comment on the current page also tells us Mium needed to activate the AA system in order to permit Ila’s primary process to run on his server (we already knew he had activated the AA system before Miko placed that phone call to his system, but whe didn’t know when exactly). I went back to when the teleporter tried to shoot Miko, and he activated the AA system then as well. For its simulation capacity, I thought then, which he needed for bullet dispersal – but now I wonder if this isn’t just as necessary for permitting Miko’s main process on MYM’s system as it was for Ila’s … it isn’t explicitly stated, but it seems heavily implied.
I think it was VIMium that turned of the internet to try to keep Dr Martin out and failing that to keep him in. As a consequence Martin is going to have to answer some questions after Miko finishes stabilizing enough to notice him and Ryn is notified as to his presence. Since Dr Martins face is still considered a spoiler it will be interesting as to how Past U draws that.
So…does this mean that “Mium” – the personality and loves and hates and more powerfully muted emotions he totally claimed not to have – is gone, possibly forever (until a pseudo-reincarnation where MYM rebuilds him, but never is quite the same), or is MYM sufficiently Mium even without the lab 5 system that Mium can be reconstituted/is still active?
I do not think so. I think that a piece of MYM was destroyed here, but Mium generally seems to be the personality he created to interact with people he likes.
Moreover he tends to act more like “Mium” when acting through the prototypes, so I would suspect the Mium personality is primarily rooted in the prototype processing, as they probably have special hardware for better simulating humans. When he got his second prototype was the first time we say him smile.
My take is “Mium” is probably the repuprosed “Query”. Query was actually more social than MYM seems to be, and Query was a mobile interface already, so “Query” probably became what we now call “Mium” when “Query” merged into “MYM”.
Of course, Mium is just the phonetic pronunciation of MYM, I am just using to refer to the fact that MYM clearly has the ability to act more human like if he wants to.
Mium is probably fine as the prototypes are probably running again. Assuming the prototype that is with Naomi is active again after the reboot, “Mium” is probably there.
It is debatable if the Lab5MYM was even connected to MYM overall right now, as his system is a bit fragmented currently due to the errors introduced by Martin’s shutdown of prototype and his subsequent AWOL due to keeping VIMium active.
I suspect lab 5 only contained backups, and that Mium’s… personality, for lack of a better word, is kept copied in all of his major nodes, and probably backed up in several other locations as well. It’s why losing F8 would be annoying, but is within his parameters: it is a shell running him, but he’s safely backed up in a bunch of places. AI’s tend to consider humans horribly fragile for a reason.
Worst case he lost any drift lab 5 had had since the last sync backup, but given the events here he would have had plenty of time to ship off a copy of that recent data.
So what Mium really lost here was processing power. Which probably annoys the hell out of him, but is not truly damaging.
Okay, Rovak is not the only one who can see Dr. Martin. And apparently, normal people (Assuming Ryn is “normal.”) can’t see or hear him. Interesting. Has he perfected Elipses? or is this something else?
I am interested to discover who can, and cannot, see, and hear, him: VIMium, Miko, you know, the Cyan-Shaded Secretary… It is entirely possible only Ryn cannot see and hear, Dr Martin.
Could be ellipses. My guess is more that he is somehow projecting himself.
Maybe only people with an artificial brain/implant can see him?
Quite possibly…
Actually, I started wondering, is this the same day as November 1, 2018? How does Dr. Martin get from the Arpon/Malsan border to AVon labs so quickly?
This, Dr. Martin, may be an instance run by VIMium. Or Dr. Martin knew that however Ila survived, it would require a trip to Lab 5 by somebody he wants to talk to, and M.I.R. is not that person. Which makes me wonder, who else can see him?
VIMium doesn’t say Dr. Martin is “alive.” He says Dr. Martin “exists.” M.I.R says Dr. Martin is alive, but you can’t really trust what she says… In fact, she may think she knows he’s dead.
Panel 2: *breathing
Third-to-last panel: *extraordinary
Extrodinary is spelled wrong. But perhaps he was going for the phonetic pronunciation sometimes used? When people say that word in surprise or awe, most drop that ‘a’.
If it were isolated, I’d find it possible, but without the “r” there either, I suspect not.
I would say these are extro-oddinary.
I mean a guy who walks around without a head all the time…
…maybe Dr. Martin is just trying to get a head.(using ellipsis)