…well, still December 28th SOME places… 😉
Sorry. Been a busy week and stuff. Well, this is the closing page for 2017 and for Chapter 11… I would like to say it’s the 400th page as well, but actually… it’s the 403rd. Close enough… Holy shit. More than 400 pages? That’s… sort of… staggering. People that have read the whole thing up to this page… wow, you’re amazing :p
Going to keep it brief cause I just spent a few hours scribbling out this page and got some stuff to wrap up before sleeping.
I think naturally this page leaves some questions regarding the nature of the Eidos Card open, but I should note that Mium does not appear to need one to function on a system, but will also point to some of his rules we know, such as not being able to run on systems that entirely isolated from each other – the implication of which may spell out the primary vulnerability he might be concerned with on a mobile system without an Eidos Card. It’s a troublesome rule, but also a very important one (for presumably somewhat obvious reasons 😉 ).
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Q: When Mium talks about containing damage from overloading the Eidos card, does he mean that the Eidos card in this body has been destroyed or at least damaged to the point of being non-functional? Aren’t those cards super rare and hard to obtain? Isn’t this the same device that Peter pulled out of that Kor’s World robot before it self destructed?
I’m just wondering if the damaged Eidos card severely limits what this body can do now. It’s probably not like he can go into a local computer store and purchase another. Perhaps Peter or himself can repair it? Nanite self-repair, maybe?
You know, she did fire a HVW, and it did hit rather perfectly.
Other than, well, it hit her career rather than the intended target of a not-insignificant office of a foreign power in what doesn’t exactly look like a “small city”….
In Panel 4, I love the way Ila pokes F5’s cheek just like F8 poked her cheek the times when she was disabled. ^^
Cheeks clearly contain power buttons.
Everyone’s talking about peter’s plans, but here’s the real question. Where did Peter/Mium even get the first two Eidos Cards? Sure, the IDS may have some after driving Kors World back, but they should be locked up with as much security as nukes have.
They’re probably one of the (apparently many) things he’s stolen along the way.
Could have been from Avon, or it could been from another entity belonging to PACT or IDS Corporate Affairs. Maybe even IDS Headquarters Branch.
Peter’s gotten loads of people mad at him, but I doubt it’s solely due to having talked to him. He’s probably stolen from anyone/anything with tech (or information) that he considers worth stealing.
Considering that Peter’s known to be a mad genius, and was working for IDS, if they had enough Eidos cards from the Kor’s world invasion, it’s entirely plausible that he was just *handed* a few cards to study, the same as any mad genius working for IDS but not in the right department. (Of course, the ones in the right department got boatloads of them.)
It’s all a matter of exactly how rare those cards were, and how many people understood Peter to be a mad genius. Sorry, not how many. Which.
How has no one asked what the deal with the military guy’s eye is yet? Like, Mir is obviously somehow artificial, but this looks like an old guy, but there something clearly wrong with his left eye.
Two options off the top of my head – heterochromia (fairly rare mutation that results in the iris’s being different color), or it’s a cybernetic eye (either augmentation or replacement).
Given the grey, I’d go with the second. We know that Peter’s dad has a cybernetic eye, so it’s not that far fetched.
I’ve reread this comic 4 times and I still don’t know what Peter wants. And that’s the real question here.
Oh, I can talk about Biana’s career. She’s in trouble, but her people will fight to cover her and the worst is she’ll have some legit defenses. Oh, she will get reprimanded, but the IFS will also quickly see Peter’s hand in this. She knows where it was supposed to be fired and I’ll be there are records somewhere of that. So they’ll know it was altered and thus they’ll know Peter was completely aware of this. If Arron doesn’t reveal that Kally didn’t hit the weapon, they’ll think Peter was planning to kill the consul of Malasa. If Arron does, then they know Peter can destroy the HVW.
Yet why? I can see a few reasons for Peter to do all of this, but none are good enough. Oh, there is the very good reason for this one; if Biana does X, do Y to maximize my position on the board and possibly remove her. Big picture though, how does he profit by having the pieces of the IFS go to civil war? How does he profit from his Uncle in charge? While he thought this might happen, it was early; almost everything apparently is early. So what is he missing?
I see at least 2 options that might be going on.
It appears Peter was maneuvering to get them completely out of Malsa and force them to reveal their dirty tactics to the world. He got them to openly admit that they had tech that could detect and therefore police/prevent intrusions and they were not (which is their supposed primary job for countries that are apart of the treaty) but also that they are declaring war/murdering innocent people in officially independent countries out of spite. This does more than just look bad on her career. It clearly shows that these people are evil to the world. It will take a lot of spin to try to get evil murdering people complicit in turning a blind eye to the “monsters” invading the world to be anything else in the eyes of everyone.
Alternatively, it could be a very significant push to get Arron back in charge. She seemed to be the primary one pushing him out for being outdated and part of the “old guard” but now all her allies are going to look extremely bad and she has now been embarrassed publicly twice (criminally embarrassed one would assume). Kicking her out and those allies of hers that will probably fall during the cleansing Arron does will give Peter a much better standing/negotiating position in the future. It also prevents the IFS from going to civil war because no one in good conscience can support someone trying to assassinate an official working to protect his country.
Also, it could be that he isn’t trying to profit. He just sees them for being evil and corrupt and wants that gotten rid of. He may be seeing/predicting something incoming and knows that the IFS has repeatedly been ignoring things to strengthen their position or fully negligent their duties and that may be the problem he is trying to resolve. Everything happening earlier than he expected may also mean what he is trying to stop from happening/coming through is getting closer than his predictions would have led him to believe.
Or, he’s just bored and likes pushing people’s buttons to see what happens (this option is never off the table with him).
As a fellow theorist who has reread the comic, er, a few times, I also do not know, but I have a lot of theories based on the hints and clues so far.
My theory is that Peter’s long term plan has something to do with either Kor’s World or what happened to Central’s world. The only times we have seem him actually care about something is when Miko/Kally is danger or when Kor’s World shows up.
One of my guesses (I have a lot) is that Peter is trying to kick start Palindra into a world that can withstand an Incursion better than Central could. He knows that the IDS suppress technological and dimensional progress that could oppose them in order to keep their mostly useless and corrupt position, so he has to break their hold.
Some points of why this is one of my guesses:
-We know that Kor’s World has HVW strikes. He is now forcing Malsa to consider how to defend against them.
-He pretty freely gives out technology like the dimension detector.
-He has told Naomi something that has convinced her that helping him is the best way to save the world, even if they have fairly different philosophies.
-It is quite possible that all the high tech he is giving them is “infected” with Mium; a side effect of this would be that if Mium were operating at full power without restrictions, this tech would probably be immune to Kor’s World’s SMAIs (which we know they have).
-He is a long way from being ready, which would explain why he is annoyed the IDS is forcing his hand, especially when it comes to using Mium.
I could go into a lot more depth on this theory (and others) but that contains a lot of analysis. Plus, I have at least six other competing or contradictory guesses, so…
-He pretty freely gives out technology like the dimension detector.
Important point here, but it’s more that he gave them a detector without telling them how it actually works. In all likelyhood it’s just a program that connects to Mium to do the real work. So, he “gave” them a webpage hooked up to his detector.
It still proves the IDS wasn’t holding up the treaty, but doesn’t actually give them any tech.
Peter pretty much said what his reasons were: Skyhammer would shoot soon no matter what he did, so he merely made sure the strike happened where he could defend against it.
the most recent bit of minus years had Kally ask him point blank. he said that the IDS did good work, when they could be bothered to work at all, taking interdimensional criminals off the streets. but he sees no real need to chase them himself, when he can go after deeper, more malignant threats. the ones no one else sees, the ones that can pretend to be heroes, while leeching off of those they “protect”.
it sounds like Peter knew *then* that the IDS was corrupt, and has been working this whole time toward subtly lighting the fire under the corruption and trying to burn it clean. preferably in time to present the united front it claims to represent in case Kor’s World attacks again. which it *did* not too long ago.
Otte, you were mentioning something about burning? I smell smoke, don’t you? If you’re lucky, very, very lucky, it’s only Biana’s career that’s going up in flames right now. If you continue to try and cover for her, as you’ve obviously been doing, you’re just going to burn along with her. For the record, I don’t think there’s many on either side of the fourth wall that would be terribly upset by that prospect.
And step 3… or is this just a continuation of step 2? Either way Biana’s plan to remove Peter from the field just backfired about one small grade less than the worst case scenario.
Also panel 8: ‘willing “to” mediate’
Fixed, thanks 🙂
Panel 5: “were temporary shut down” -> “were temporarily shut down”?
Fixed, thanks 🙂
It makes sense that Mium does not really understand the concept of dying as it would apply himself. Even if a huge amount of his processes were destroyed, it would just mean he would be free to start new ones as he wouldn’t be operating at capacity anymore.
To actually kill him, you would have to destroy every system he’s infected, which is probably the majority of the digital infrastructure of the world given his tendency for being thorough.
How do you kill a self-aware virus?
How do you kill a self-aware virus? This was the plot of a movie (which I forgot the name of). There was this guy who was terminally ill and he was offered a chance to upload his brain in an effort to create the world’s first self-aware AI, assuming it worked. It did, but as an AI he started doing some things that really scared the government, having a borg-like connection with a community of humans that he offered nanites to. They have a computer scientist (who used to be the guy’s friend when he was human) write a virus (or anti-virus?) designed to disable or cripple the AI. But, in the end, they shut down the Internet and any sort of networking, permanently. The movie ends with a shop owner propping his door open with a keyboard, implying that computers are nothing but junk or paperweights now.
So, yeah: Shutting down the Internet for good sounds about the only way. That, or have a self-aware anti-virus fight the virus.
What’s that sound?
Oh, it’s Biana’s career being flushed down the toilet.
The worst part is she admitted everything on a call. Of course the call was recorded. Plenty of people do that as a day to day thing today, much less master manipulator Peter.
Panel 10:
Maybe fixed? 🙂 I added as missing “is”.
yeah, it’s fixed.