It should probably go without saying that it is not literally as switch that reboots Mium. It just activates a lower level protocol that causes Mium to discard his current priority stack and rebuild it, so to speak. While Mium can be authorized to do all sorts of stuff by Peter via voice print, those assume that he is fully functioning, as the voice alone would be fairly easy to recreate – normally it relies on Mium being full aware to analyze the situation to determine the likelihood of a fraudulent command. The ‘reboot’ only really works if it is near a passive Mium system (though that almost certainly includes any terminal Peter would carry), it just passes a command through a channel reserved for very low level commands, and matches the code to a paired system if it detects that it is in state the code applies to.
MYM’s speech bubbles are drawn annoyingly hard to read as he’s speaking from all the computers in the room. Peter would call it a flair for melodramatic behavior on start up, but it’s more that MYM just hasn’t really initialized his human interface personality yet, which tends to make him act more… normal? Not sure normal is the right word.
I will edit a link here[see, edited!] to the next chapter of Tyler’s story when it’s up for patreon folks… that’ll be this month still, just barely though. Bit of slow progress, but been a bit frayed at the edges on getting things done. Should be more stuff next month as I don’t see any travel plans on the horizon. I did type up the next chapter while travelling, but have not quite got to the editing and refining process. I don’t exactly go overboard on that, but I chop and fuss a bit as any one writing something does, especially as it’ll have a new PoV character for a bit.
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Peter: Gotta reboot my computer.
Peter: *Stabs self in arm*
Peter: Done. Ow.
Yet another hint that Peter once lost his arm.
Still pretty vague though. Could be trolling.
My only real question at this point is if it is a “real” arm reattached, or if the entire arm is somewhat cybernetic. I suspect that many of the characters might have less obvious cybernetics.
Definitely trolling, since the poke in question called for an “ow” and a bandaid. Pretty sure that while cybernetics are within their capability, Peter wouldn’t bother with anything that included pain receptors or an artificial blood supply over Mium’s reset switch.
I think Mium was down, Peter wasn’t receiving alerts about gate activity, and learning from Tyler’s system of them caused him to reset Mium to get back in the game.
I think Mari talked to Query, who noticed the gate activity (on Central, so IDS or smuggler surge), so Query realized “Beyer is going to say Peter stole the Bridgepoint data and is assisting Malsa against the IDS, which she’ll use to lock up every Kepler she can (Kyle and Mari) to get them out of her way. So Keplers need alibis… now.” Beyer is going to great lengths on and off the books to make something happen. I just don’t know whose interests she *actually* has at heart. Peter seems firmly set against her plans though.
Tyler’s story, part IV, is now up for patrons. Told you it would be this month (…juuuuust barely…. 😉 ).
These remain a highlight. I know you are busy (given that this is essentially a second job) but I really enjoy these webnovel entries, especially given the lack of Tyler in the main the story right now.
Personally I think Tyler might be one of the few characters that could be considered up to the task of being a foil to Peter. He was already one of my favorite characters before these, so each is a welcome addition.
Agreed!
Most people probably have no way of knowing it, but I really dig Tyler.
-G-
I know it is a weird comment, but I love how weird and pragmatic Peter is. Peter is like the answer to every “but couldn’t you just have…” plot in stories, but still has a degree of “wtf did you just do” to him.
I do wonder why he thought Miko was “wanting” him to reboot Mium.
He’s hoping. Because he ran out of time for Mium to be down. Problem with outsourcing heavy data functions.
Also I guess this proves that the Gate Detector wasn’t something running through Mium’s systems. Huh.
I think the original gate detector was running through Mium’s systems. But it’s generally considered a poor choice to hand over part of your god-AI to your temporary allies, so the big gate detector wasn’t. It would’ve been an especially poor choice, because it was certain that the IDS was going to at least want to take a really good look at the big gate detector, some to make an internal assessment of whether it was really leaked tech, but mostly just to figure out how it was working on a national scale.
I’m sure Mium probably had a finger in them, but that’s more about making the new gate detector look consistent with all of the other computer systems in Malsa. You don’t want people thinking, “OMG, our other systems are clearly hacked, as we can tell by comparing them to this one system provided to us by the guy most likely able to hack *all* of our other systems, because it wasn’t.”
I took it to be that Mium monitored the gate detection system, but didn’t actually participate.
Isn’t the gate detection system, at least the Peter designed one, largely a weather anomaly detection system?
Well, we know that the MSB/Bureua could only really detect it using “weather satellites” if I recall correctly.
Originally I took this at face value, but I think this might be entirely a misdirection now, and a brilliant one at that, because the reader is not the mark here, all of Palindra is.
Since that page, we have learned that the IDS is a much more advanced spaceflight cultural, to the point where they are capable of keeping an HVW in space over Malsa without anyone know about it.
I do not think the “weather satellites” are what the people on Palindra think they are. I think that is just what the IDS told them when they put them up there, and that IDS likely are the only ones that really have advanced space flight capabilities on this world.
tl;dr: I think the “weather satellites” may very well be a euphemism for IDS Spy Satellites that Also Report Weather Data.
We aren’t necessarily sure that the detector isn’t running through MIUM’s systems, despite his shutdown, since there was that thing with a shell of MIUM still running for the Beaureu (theoretically because of something “Mrs Porpita” did). For all we know this may be linked in with that part of the shell program rather than the whole thing.
Well, now we know what Peter’s sister was up to. Hacking all of central’s gates to make it look like an invasion. Proof that the whole family is full of crazy plotters. Because they couldn’t just ask Peter to reboot Mium.
… My first reaction to this was to think, “No, that couldn’t possibly be it.”
But on reflection, that does sound like the most plausible. Mari’s pocket Query noted that Query Senior was non-responsive, so came up with a plan to alert Peter to it in a way that would totally work, since Peter now has a gate detector independent of Mium. Though I doubt she hacked all of them. Just a sufficient number that she could manage while she had a really good alibi.
I would suggest changing the voice bubbles so that there are multiple “tails” for them (the tails being what normally points to the speaker) but instead pointing toward the multiple computers and possibly other places for good measure. This would, I think, get across the idea that the sound is coming from multiple places and give context to the doubled speech via a “show, don’t tell” approach.
Maybe, but I wanted it to be slightly hard to understand/read, given that it is in world slightly hard to understand/hear. Either way, probably not something that’ll come up too often. I think it’s probably clear it has an echo/reverb to it, but I figured most people wouldn’t really understand why it would, which is why I noted it was coming from all the speakers… there are actually a bunch of computers in that room, so the tails might get a little a confusing as you can’t see most of them due to paneling.
Not a bad idea, and probably would make it easier to read though.
Still recommend doing the multiple “tails” that way it works with the echo so we can clearly see what’s going on.
I personally like this method. The multiple Tails implies they’re all speaking at once. But what’s really happening I’m betting is it they’re all speaking nearly at once. And the difference being fuzzy text. All computers do not boot at the same speed. What you’re trying to say is that he hasn’t synchronized himself across all the outfits that he has available. And all of the outputs in the room did not receive the signal from his arm thingy at the same time either.
I think this sounds accurate. Unless physics on Palindra are much different than here, the room they’re in is not big enough to have a significant enough speed of sound difference for people to notice.
However, as far as boot order… there’s multiple questions on multiple stack exchange sites about why things in /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon are not consistently named and/or not consistently ordered, due to the fact that even just within the first CPU on the computer, things don’t boot up in the same order every time. When you are talking things as big as whole computers, the different times are really noticeable.
You could have some of the tails coming from the front bubble, some coming from the back bubble, and some coming from behind as though there were more bubbles back there. It would show the idea of multiple overlapping voices pretty well and even add yet another aspect to the confusion that is the multiple voices.
Keep it challenging to read, but add multiple tails in the future. The idea that it was multiple machines never crossed my mind. It struck me as a basic digitized voice, but not coming from multiple sources at once.
Good homage to the paperclip hole to manually eject a CD tray or all the other devices with the little pin reset. I like it.
Well this isn’t even a CD-ROM eject this is a system reset which many networking equipment have a little tiny hole on the front of the chassis. In fact I have a little piece of wire on my keyring for the reset buttons it just happens to be long enough to use for CDs. However that isn’t a very common use for it anymore because really do we turn computers off? The CD manual eject is only required if the computer is off.
I think the cd eject thing works when the computer is running and the OS has “locked” the drive so the eject button doesn’t work – but it’s been a while since I tried that. or owned a non-usb optical drive, come to think of it.
I can confirm it depends.
If the cd eject thing is actually a lever that will manually eject the disk even if the computer is off, then it at least works in every instance I’ve come across and tested in this fashion. If it’s a caddyless CD drive, the disk will come out spinning, it’ll probably actually come flying out in this case (I believe some of the angular momentum is translated into directional momentum), and if someone isn’t really careful, it may damage the disk and/or damage someone it hits.
If, however, the CD eject thing is just a button which triggers a low level eject, it will *probably* work. But not as dramatically, as the disk will spin down first if it’s caddyless. But I’ve also encountered at least one such system where one would need to power off the computer and power it back on to get the disk to eject.
I’m pretty sure Peter *didn’t* have a hole in his arm right there at the start of this page, and that is the entire mechanism by which this worked to reboot Mium. But on the other hand, he does *now* have such a hole, so I guess it is a bit like that.
Yeah, you can see that Peter is bleeding the panel after he stabs himself. It’s times like this where I think Peter acts more like an AI than a human, just having zero reaction to literally stabbing himself. Like… that had to hurt. That would be like driving a nail into your arm.
So…. He has the stabby tool, but no band aid. Interesting mix of planning.
I think it is sort of classic Peter. He is prepared for everything besides the human element (in this case that he would actually bleed when stabbed).
Now we know why Aaron Kepler can’t get rid of his arm…
It reboots the farside of Utopia.
But wouldn’t that mean that the Far Side of Utopia has demon-ware?