Comic for Thursday, December 27th, 2018
Dec27
Hope ya’ll got what you wanted for Santa Hat day.
Well, this is the end of Chapter 13… we’ll be going into another Interlude 5 on Monday. Of course, Chapter 14 picks up in basically the spot the Chapter 13 ends, so… eh. I never claimed that how I made Chapters made any sense.
Tyler’s story Part III is up for patrons if you missed that from the last comic (since I edited it in late…, and well, Santa Hat day and all).
I’ll need to think what I should poll now.
Anyway…
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It could be that Miko is trying to trick Peter into resolving MYM’s little machine virtual AA system problem that he is stuck in AA mode. MYM has technically passed on the Martin is alive information so that Prevention on the reset and the one about the sentient sub process have been subverted. ‘Talking’ with ILA should allow him to recover most of the missing information without revealing sentient nature of the avatar. resetting would allow him to recreate that instance in the future because he would loose foreknowledge of the result. That delay will allow Miko and Peter to implement a lasting fix.
Personally I can see MYM using Tamara as part of some sort of crazy gambit. What exactly MYM is trying to accomplish here, we can only speculate.
Considering that Miko is clearly integrated with MYM right now, I think there is a good chance that this is some form of misdirection to either keep Peter busy or get him to do something that will have a side effect Miko/MYM wants.
My idea is similar to yours, but I think it has something to do with the version currently integrated to Miko right now. Likely being integrated with Miko will make it immune to a shutdown… especially with Miko out in public, as that probably puts it at a fundamental priority level that even a direct command from Peter will not override.
If the purge mechanism assumes everything got shut down, it might let him escape his currently restriction, letting VI Mium assume control (or at least integrate correctly).
Rampant speculation, but I find this interesting as we are quite possibly watching three way chess between Miko, Mium, and Peter, and that is probably the only fair chess match we have seen in this comic.
I was thinking she was going out to buy VI Mium a server, presumably because she has stuff on the server she loaned Mium before, or she wants one that Mium won’t know to check for rogue Mium virtual interfaces. Though I’m not sure how she expects to accomplish that trick… provably with VI Mium’s assistance, which is why he’s involved with her current excursion.
Ferrus, thank you for the reminder of her need for a barber trip. I’ve been cutting my own hair for so long I forget there are shutins who actually go out and have people do that for them. (I do know other people who go out for hair cuts, but they’re not shutins like me.)
It’s possible that Miko texted Tamera and suggested that trick as an anonymous part of her “cheat” as it it creates two unsynchronized instances of MYM. And it is likely that MYM pushed the info that Dr Martin is alive out to the Councils machine because that was relevant to advising Concil and the war.
Miko also might have set it up as to mislead Peter into believing that the reason MYM is still unresponsive is because MYM is running in the unconnected machine and thus needed to shut down his other processes.
That might imply to Peter that he either needs to go back to the Council to get MYM back or authorize booting another unsyncrized instance.
I almost suggested that Miko wouldn’t be able to text a USB stick to Tamara. However, thinking about it more, the USB stick was probably just to run a Mium boot loader onto a machine that hadn’t been pre-compromised. If that’s the case, then we may have also seen the instance of Mium using a human to connect himself to systems it needed access to that Tamara mentioned chapter 13, page 1, panel 10.
Tamara actually seeing the start code that Miko used would make perfect sense, given the ‘keeping each other honest’ part of Ryn’s contractor agreement. However, given the arrangement of the terminals Saria had put them on, it would seem unlikely that she’d have actually seen that level of detail about what Miko was actually using, so it does seem like your texting hypothesis is accurate.
Well, at least so long as Miko is being honest about where there is an extra instance is running. She could just be hoping that the Consul is hoping her three experts can get the system working again, rather than going to Peter for help so quickly. I see the latter possible as it seems likely that Peter would be more inclined to authorize an exception than to actually take the time while Mium is effectively offline to go all the way back to the Consul’s office and explain why his god virus really needs to have the network card installed at all times and hope that the Consul and her team will agree that it’s best to allow Mium to actually do all of the things he can for them, rather than instead decide to take it as a successful removal of an unknown variable and consider it a job well done.
Does Miko just see code notes attached to people? Because we know she has some sort of implanted direct neural interface.
Those tags look almost exactly like what started appearing when Miko was integrated with Mium during the attempted assassination by Acalia.
I think it is safe to say that Miko is seeing those, and that means that her implant is active, and probably actively synced to Mium. Considering she is not passed out on the floor, this is new territory beyond that.
I totally missed that those were happening. I was reading without my glasses and just assumed what turned out to be the tags was something either rain or other related. I’ll go back to my statement below about MYM making changes to Miko through the implant. On several of the last occasions there’s been little sparkly magic stuff on the ground. There’s been three cases, as I recall…the dematerializing bullets which could have been attributed to that. The time after that event, and then the event now when she noticed that her hair was longer. I think MYM’s goal is to make Miko more self sufficient thus reducing MYM’s protection load.
As an interesting side comment, another comic I read, White Noise, has made me more cognizant of gender issues. As a result I replaced gender pronouns with MYM’s name in this message when the following occurred to me. “I mean afterall that is the point of names and there are other things we could call each other.”
To that end, since there really ist a gender neutral pronoun in English, I’m going to suggest for MYM that we use that other comics’ construction…
Ne is present/infinitive tense
Nir is past tense.
(It was created for/by a Willow tree who several thousand years ago decided Ne might like to go for a walk.)
I think referring to Mium as “he” is fine. Pretty much everyone in the comic refers to MYM as “it” or “he” and Mium usually as “he”. Of course I do not think Mium would bat data-byte if someone referred to him as “she”, or have any problem inhabiting a female prototype. To Mium it is probably just another weird checkbox in that .ini file for “ActLikeHuman.exe”. Of course, it could just be my headcannon that his MYM voice sounds like his Mium voice, but I imagine someone would have commented it in world if it did not.
As far as gender neutral pronouns, I will always stick to “they/them”. It is a perfectly fine singular pronoun, and English uses it as the singular all the time for gender unknown (people almost never use the generic “he” anymore, it is almost always “they” – “Someone broke my window when I was gone!”, “Did they steal anything?” You can see that it reads perfectly normal despite the first statement being singular (someone).
People can use whatever word they want, but I personally do not think we need to try to invent a new word for it when we already have a perfectly fine one, and I cannot ever imagine one of the Nir/Xir/Hir constructions becoming mainstream.
On that note, while we can be pretty certain at this point Miko is a girl, PastUtopia (and for that matter Peter as far as I can tell) have never actually used “she” when referring to her. Combined with Miko’s disdain for “fleshy bits” and generally stunted growth, my currently operating theory is that Miko does not really like being called a girl (or a human, for that matter), but this could just be a coincidence as for a long time it was not clear if Miko was a guy or girl, and PastUtopia may have just been leaving that vague. This may relate to Miko’s tendency to react poorly to her given name (Taki).
I agree. I especially find it awkward just how *many* gender neutral pronouns have been made. I get that the connotation for ‘it’ is considered offensive. ‘one’ But… ey, per, se, ve, xe, ze, and zhe weren’t enough, so now we need ne? Really?
Actually, it is worse than that. The last social gathering I attended suggested everyone put their pronouns on their nametags, and that list was just the ones I remember (alphabetized to remove duplicates).
Have people just stopped using Google for some reason, without switching to duckduckgo, bing, yahoo, webcrawler, ask, dogpile, excite, wolframalpha, yandex, or something? I actually wonder if the issue is more one of authors attempting to differentiate their gender neutrality from their source author. “I don’t want people thinking I’m just copying somebody else’s work.” Meanwhile, they use ‘he’, ‘she’, and many other words that other authors also use. Sigh.
I’ve previously been part of the call people what they want to be called, and I still am, but it’s to the point I’m overwhelmed by it. I try to use language to communicate, and while I have read a dictionary or two back in the day, I find it’s generally more useful to limit ones vocabulary so that other people are more likely to understand what you’re saying, We’ve been working on this problem since the 1970’s, and we have a lot of workable options. I’d say it’s probably time to try to start migrating towards something of a standard, because I really don’t see the mainstream adopting 20 different pronouns. It’s just not going to happen.
I do agree Miko does seem to have a bit of a deadname vibe going on there. I had originally thought that Miko/Taki distinction was separate from the having run away from the people who thought giving their child an autocaster/wireless network card implant without them specifically asking for it was a good idea. But after seeing her interaction with her uncle, it seemed much more like what some of my friends go through with their parents. Um, let’s see… That was yesterday, right? I mean, in comic time? Wow… that was only back in April of this year. It’s certainly felt longer than that.
I normally read this on a phone. I forget just how much detail is missed that way. I’m pretty sure what we’re seeing is Miko. The modifications to the interface for Ila might be helping with Miko as well.
And whether we’re looking at Miko or Mium running on Miko’s chassis (body), we’re definitely seeing MYM enhanced reality here. I cannot imagine that the data tags being displayed on people are sourced from Miko’s personal data store.
So yeah, either way we see Miko’s implant functioning at a level not before demonstrated. Functioning in a manner not previously possible.
-G-
How do you know what was previously possible? I agree we did not see an indication that it was done previously. But we lack a clear explanation of why it was not done previously. My guess is that it’s a difference between Mium and VI Mium in the command seat…
It is definitely possible that VI Mium is a lot better at connecting to a human brain. While VI Mium was created when Mium connected to Ila, Mium said that the reason that whole process that ended up being used to create VI Mium was made for Miko. I find it pretty likely that VI Mium can interface with Miko much better than MYM ever could.
I also think during the last connection something changed (due to how her hair grew out to match her avatar).
“How do you know what was previously possible?”
You disappoint me, Tgape. You’re usually spot on with the logic.
How would I know? How would anyone know! I used the hints Past had been dropping to build my own dimensional transportation system, finally managed to get it dialed in to Malsa, and then went there to ask him myself.
The food here is really better than I expected.
And yes, yes I do suffer from delusions of adequacy.
Cool! I was *hoping* that was the answer, but I dared not suggest it myself.
This might seem an unusual request, but I would like to borrow your dimensional transportation system to transport myself to Moperville. It seems someone there has made a game that makes all players be 18 years old. At some point in the past few years, I woke up and managed to discover I had somehow become old, and it seems like starting a game of Goonmanji and then never finishing it is the perfect workaround to this issue.
From her side it is mostly a telephone. At least her brain isn’t equipped to deal with it beyond that point. MYM has more control but plainly expected her to Initiate contact him otherwise there would have been no reason for him to generate the avatar communication interface that he was in progress of doing.
I also think that MYM has been making small edios changes to Miko through the link which has improved her condition. She may not be aware of it however I can think that a side effect would have been the ‘misbegotten meat puppet flinging itself to the ground’ every time she communicates with MYM. Why else would she have had magic Sparkles around her when she wakes up from these events. This time her hair grew longer to match the avatar created by her as her interpretation of how she interacts with MYM.
Think about it, by putting Miko in a rest state/recovery position AKA the floor, any movements that she would make are more restricted which would allow a fixed relatively stationary target for the edit to work on. We operate on people on beds. We don’t try to operate on people standing up or sitting up in a chair.
I think the real reason most human mages are unable to directly affect eachother is an incomplete understanding of what they are trying to effect. Tyler gets around it by affecting the moisture in everything. The moisture itself is a very simple entity and allows manipulation despite the container that it’s in.
I think the meat puppet flinging itself to the ground has more to do with Miko relaxing her motor control, and not having the self-awareness to position herself such that she’ll be stable the whole time.
Personally, I’d recommend she go to bed if she’s planning on having a full immersion experience with MYM. That said, it’s my impression that she has never planned on having a full immersion experience with MYM.
I do think you’re right about MYM tweaking her when she’s directly connected, but I’m not certain it’s necessarily entirely intended.
I am pretty certain VI MYM did something when she last connected at least. Her hair did not just grow a foot randomly, and it is also not just random growth, it is messier but it matches her Miko avatar.
Also she woke up from that one right away without any real damage, which seems to be unusual. Further more, it sounds like even the time with Acalia was less bad than previous times from her conversation with Peter. This could imply that each time she connects the connection is getting better.
Unintended does not necessarily mean ‘random’. I somehow doubt that VI MYM intended to require Miko to lop off a substantial amount of hair to conceal the level of her interactions with him while he’s wanting to be sneaky.
I could easily see the easier connection being an intended consequence, and the hair being an unintended consequence of the changes to make that happen. (Basically, working magic through Miko’s implant while Miko is imagining herself as her avatar => accidental magic hair growth)
I did not notice those until I read the comments. Cool!
And the resolution on them is legible, if you crank the zoom up. But for those who don’t want to go through the work:
Arpon Jerayes
Threat: low
Federal Inspector
Armed: Pistol
Model unknown