Comic for Monday, March 4th, 2024
Mar05
Comic.
Not even late. It’s still Monday on like… a large chunk of the world, really.
Sorry if text layout is a bit odd on this one. Was in a bit of a hurry and there was a lot of words (which is definitely, somehow, not my fault).
We will get back to the punchy bits… soon.
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No comic this week. Ended up a little too busy with stuff. Will be back next week.
Please admit it. You are there on the carrier with Peter and crew and are too busy with stuff except for a brief text to the comic page. You are forgiven. Just keep your head down.
Forgiven?!? Bastard can’t even send a couple photos of the carrier and you want to forgive him?
Where’s those pitchforks? Light up some torches!
I’m imagining the song from Aladdin, at the beginning, where Aladdin is running from the palace guards.
Seriously people, it chilled off again this week, can we get some touches lit, please.
If you somehow set the carrier on fire, Peter, Mium, Kally Naomi, etc, are going to be more than a bit upset. Well, except for Mium. He will just make your life “interesting”. If Fluffy gets “upset”, he may eat you.
Fine. No fires. We’ll wait. I don’t have to be happy about it though. No comic AND no barbecue. Dude, life is rough!
In panel 5 (?) Peter says “Well, would you look at that. It seems the bastard wasn’t all talk.”
What is he looking at that is obscured by the speech bubble? Is it a destroyed armored Kor’s soldier?
I don’t think what he’s looking at is relevant to the words that he’s stating.
Rather, he’s indicating that he didn’t expect that the individual he’s currently talking to would be able to figure out that his real location was somewhere so close at hand.
This reminds me of the first video conferencing demonstration I saw. They tried to get something like 18 of us into a cubicle that would normally fit about 3 people if two of them were just standing there rather than working. We really, really didn’t fit. I could see the demo despite being way outside the cubicle because I’m tall. But I also heard a bit of an odd echo. So I went to investigate. The person we were communicating with turned out to not actually be in another university as was claimed, but rather was in another cubicle in the same room with some noise dampening put around his cubicle so that hopefully we wouldn’t notice.
The reason they were rigging the demo was this was something they were finally able to get working since they’d upgraded the LAN to 300Mbps using bonded 100Mbps network cards. Gigabit wasn’t out yet and getting a WAN connection faster than a T1 was infeasibly expensive to the other school, and a T3 was not fast enough anyway, as the 100Mbps network they had before doing the bonded card trick wasn’t fast enough, nor was the first bonded network attempt they’d made just bonding two cards together unless they just had the two computers doing the video conference simulation connected directly to each other rather than through the network. But that would have left visible cables because the two people working on this project were on opposite sides of the cubicle aisle.
Why did they not simply have one of them swap cubicles with one of the two people who shared a cubicle wall with the other video conferencing developer? Honestly, I have no clue. That’s what I would have done. Instead, they sold the school on the idea of a faster network and had the whole building rewired. lol.
Second to last panel, slight transparency; implies hologram, not transparent on prior pages, isn’t at Peter yet and might won’t.
I really didn’t expect it to be Peter who was on the ship. He doesn’t usually put himself in that much direct danger. Usually when he is in a “bad” position it is either because he is surprised or he really isn’t in as dangerous a position as it seems (hologram/circumstances aren’t what they seem/etc.) This brings up the relevant question of why? I understand not risking Miko or trusting the job to most of the others, but a second MIUM might work and he has enough robotics experience to make a drone; especially if all he needed to do was plug in the correct hardware and push a few buttons. So why go there personally?
Peter knows the Kor language and can apparently tap into their communications. Maybe Peter knew that the Kor’s carrier was almost without a crew. So far, we have only seen the two Kor soldiers plus the “control” guy and his hologram. There should be hundreds or thousands crewing such a large craft.
Peter does take some risks. Remember when he bluffed his way into the building where he met the “shitty” demon and defeated it with a holo and some Fluffy fire. Maybe he couldn’t hack the carrier network and had to be there in person.
I wonder if Mium is going to end up adding this android as well into his little collective, somehow…
Having witnessed the negotiation where the last F model was brought into the fold, it seems that there are directives / requirements for this:
1. their priorities need to largely align,
2. conflicts have to be minimal or absent,
3. consent of both (all, really, as members of the gestalt seem to retain some distinctness) parties must be given,
4. some expectation of better results for all parties are expected from the union
Given the current make up of the gestalt that is Mium, and the history and likely goals of a Kor’s World AI, it seems unlikely that they could satisfy these requirements.
Also to steal logic from Elan of ‘Order of the Stick’, it doesn’t really fit. We’ve had that plot twist once before, it would have to really be an important plot point to go down that road again.
The requirements are “don’t take over other AI systems” and “get permission first”.
If “Control” is deleted and Peter gives permision then there is no conflict.
on one of the speech bubbles, “when you aren’t lying.”
so, red one-arm was wasting his time while the real work was being handled, i just foolishly assumed that Peter was anywhere nearby. silly me
Eh, depends on whether interaction with hologram helped the other entity (control?) track down the real Peter. We don’t know how close together any of these locations are.
Whoo, this is a juicy one, good to see Peter going full Peter. Feels like it’s been a while since we’ve seen him in his element.
Woot woot! Comic!
I don’t time it’s quite that simple.
What Peter can do is a mystery, and the other guy may not have even been lying. Just doing the typical saying true things that aren’t relevant. Like the regulation about minimizing contact doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
Mind you, there’s a non-zero chance Peter actually does end up getting punched. I assume this guy is “Control”, and we don’t really know what he’s capable of.
I expect ‘this guy’ is either a projection or otherwise not particularly combat capable. That doesn’t necessarily mean the conversation is _just_ buying time, however.
I am reminded that one of Peter’s projections was attached to a very real explosive device…
I think “this guy” is both a projection and not particularly combat capable. But I agree with you, this is Kor’s World, aka the big leagues, and they clearly have things going for them besides their reputation. But we’ll have to wait to see how this unfolds.
He’s transparent in that second last panel like projections are, implying an inability to punch Peter.
I haven’t checked if that was the case in previous pages, so the actual body might be coming along soon.
I see that now. However, I still expect some shenanigans with Miko also sneaking aboard. Even if it ends up being her getting attacked by the one armed soldier.
Also, even the soldier can’t tell Peter’s holograms aren’t real until interacting with it. I wonder if Peter is guessing or his experience in this field let him tell that Control is a hologram.
Peter tends to talk a lot of shit when confronting his enemies (Biana, shitty demon, here). It’s a pretty consistent trait with him. He is trying to rile them up and make them act in predictable ways, because his plans always rely on predicting what they’ll do.
Basically, I don’t think we should take anything Peter says here at face value, he’s just trying to provoke them.