Comic for Thursday, November 8th, 2018
Nov08
Beep boop.
I mean, clearly there is no comment here because the human is traveling and scheduled this ahead of time, but doesn’t that just mean the human could have put in an author comment when he scheduled it ahead of time? Lazy humans.
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I have figured out what is on the Far Side of Utopia.
Past, that’s where your dream home is, isn’t it?
Admit it. The entire reason the people of Central need to have a bridge port in order to be able to move enough resources to Utopia to start doing mass relocations and construction is because your dream home is on the planet, and so you’ve contrived some plot device to keep them from mucking up your back yard. Oh my god. Some people!
😉
I mean, my name is PastUtopia. That does sound sort of like a synonym for The Far Side of Utopia. Basically confirms it. 😐
At the risk of being redundant, I’ve not seen any other post that mentions the typo in Panel_1, Peter’s top-right word-balloon:
“… once it world wasn’t too … ” should scan better as:
“… once it WAS A world THAT wasn’t too … “
Alternate rephrasings:
“once it wasn’t”
“once the world wasn’t”
Fixed, thanks. Sorry for the delay, I was traveling last week.
There was a minor typo on the previous page as well.
So, there is an old question that has decided to rear its head again. Do we know what Utopia is? Is it a dimension, a planet, a moon, a star, a galaxy, a star system? What is it? If it isn’t a dimension, but something that exists in central’s dimension, could it be a reason for the incursion?
Peter’s aunt disappeared, presumably to Utopia or its far side. Was she kidnapped? Did she flee? Did she defect? Is Utopia a faction in-and-of itself?
Could Utopia have been a place for the Elite of central before the incursion now rendered uninhabitable by the incursion? Could Peter have been born on or in Utopia? If Utopia was a place for the elite, what would that mean for the average person that didn’t live on or in Utopia?
Could Utopia have been a theme park like Disney World?
SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!
My bet: Utopia seems like another world that central connects to. Kor’s world was trying to get past Utopia and Central was a link in their chain there. They destroyed Central purely to keep them busy while grabbing whatever it was they actually wanted, or taking whatever it was they needed to to the far side of Utopia.
Utopia may also be the name of an irregular Gate on Central that could connect somewhere Kor’s world needed to reach.
From what I can tell dimensional travel in this ‘verse acts like a spiderweb, and you can only transfer one node at a time in normal circumstances. If what they were after was thousands of nodes away, or Central was simply in their path there… Yeah, they would burn down a planet to keep them busy.
This is the genius of the comic… there are so many more question it always feels like the an endless expanse.
A possible theory I have is that the magical societies on Central could have been from Utopia originally. Really though at this point I can only suspect that Utopia is another dimension, but it is also that Utopia is simply pre-Incursion Central (though that seems unlikely).
Peter’s Aunt/Miko’s Mother/Aaron’s Sister is a mystery that is rapidly growing in importance I think. Between seeing that Miko is actually pretty messed up, Peter is legitimately angry at her, and Aaron also has some hangups regarding promises he made… that seems like a whole big thing. It seems like Peter, Miko and Aaron know where she went, but not what happened to her, and she has obviously been gone a long time.
Another two and two to put together there is that she likely has a staff like Nathan than she can create, as Nathan de-materializing his staff seemed to remind Aaron of her (I am assuming, it was not specified), a Nathan’s staff seems to be a big deal (they outright call him “wielder of ka’vil” – or in Mium “carrier of the fanciest stick”). This means that the Kepler’s may very well not be a “mundane” family, which is already suggested by Aaron’s ellipses talent seemingly being innate magic (as we see very few people using it, and it seems like a very powerful/useful magic). It is possible that Kyle had no real talent for magic (thus Peter seems to have little talent beyond maybe ellipses), but it is another factor to consider.
I think it is also going to be interesting to start trying to figure out the Dimension map, is Central as active on any other worlds as Palindra? Is Palindra connected to Kor’s World? To Utopia?
And what is on The Far Side of Utopia?? The comic is named after it, so it pretty much has to be important/central to the plot, but I cannot even begin to guess! Argh! This comic is brilliant, but it makes me want to know that much more!
I don’t think utopia is an actual place. I think it may have been a prior state of Kor’s world, before something happened and they got paranoid and starting attacking other worlds.
Look at the last bubble of the last panel on this page.
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-april-9th-2018/
The reference to an empty world suggests that unpopulated but inhabitable world are rare. That Central seems to need this, but that Utopia (the empty world I assume?) is not being tapped for this over trying to share a world work Malsa et al?
Definitely some interesting questions there, Miko.
I don’t think Utopia is the empty world. Why would the empty world have a name? Why would that name be Utopia (synonymous with paradise)? I don’t know what Utopia is, but I highly doubt that it’s the empty world previously mentioned. Utopia might be world, but right now, we have zero clues or hints regarding what it is. It could be a star, a planet, a moon, a space station, a continent, a star system, an asteroid, an asteroid belt, or anything else, including another world.
I think to assume that Utopia is another world is a mistake, not because I think it unlikely, but because there are so many other options that are AS likely. We simply don’t have enough information.
Considering that Central is desperate for a place to offload people, naming an uninhabited but relatively ideal world Utopia seems like it would be pretty natural, so long as it’s Utopia in the sense of an ideal place, rather than the sense of it being non-existent. Given the circumstance on Central, it doesn’t seem reasonable for a star, moon, asteroid, asteroid belt, or even a star system to be of title significance.
As far as Malsa over some place that was less populated, I thought that was established at some point. I’m not sure where, it’s possible this was just speculation.
Basically, opening a gate is easier or harder depending on the distance away the other world is. Opening a gate between Central and Malsa is relatively easy – easy enough that they can do mass people transports with their current technology/magic, though slower than they would like to be able to do this. There is somewhere else they had in mind for sending people, but it’s difficult enough to gate between Central and that world that it would only be economical to even start establishing cities there if they could open up a bridgeport to that world, rather than a normal gate. The fact that they would need to move a large amount of machinery as well to be able to construct infrastructure over there quickly could be a factor.
Why would an empty world have a name? Mostly because humans name everything. And as gregarious as we are, we seen to think an absence of other humans is a good thing. Inner city slums are cheaper to rent than country homes.
Ultima mentioned the Long Earth series by Baxter and Pratchett. He mentioned it as having a potentially similar dimensional travel. The Long Earth series has a book called The Long Utopia. Interesting, eh?
TGape made a few comments that reminded me, there probably is a good reason to prefer settling people into Palindra over an unoccupied world. An unoccupied world is unoccupied.
No agricultural infrastructure, no manufacturing infrastructure, no infrastructure at all! An occupied world, at least on day one, can absorb way more people than a perfectly empty one. The empty one, you’ve got to bring _everything_ with you. There’s no store to buy from. Finding money is a different problem, of course.
For those who aren’t going to check into it, Wikipedia offers a few spoilers for The Long Earth series. Humans only appear on one world. Non Homo sapiens sentients appears on a lot of other worlds. I mention this because it looks like the opposite might be true here.
I notice Peter says it “SEEMED” like no one knew. Doesn’t that rather imply that someone DOES know, like he either found out or has good reason to believe that someone else did? . . .
I suspect Aaron knows more, as Miko confronted him with the fact that she knew “what’s on the far side of utopia” (or, more specifically, that she and Peter were clever enough to ask the question “what’s on the far side of utopia”.
More tellingly, she also drops “or where your SISTER went?” This makes it seem like Arron’s sister disappeared after the Incursion. Personally, I suspect that is a pretty big thread to unravel, as there is clearly a lot of attached to Arron’s sister (Miko’s mother).
My guess is the IDS has explored quite a bit more than they let on, and likely the same level of the IDS knows quite a bit more than they let on. Given that magic was known to secret societies like Ervon before the Incursion, it is possible that Central was not as innocent as Peter implies (I would note this is Peter talking. He will say whatever furthers his agenda, nothing here is necessarily the truth).
I don’t know that we’ve seen Peter to out right lie, have we? Misdirect, feed partial information, feed someone classified information, but actually lie?
Didn’t we establish that Mium cannot outright lie? I suspect Peter values credibility sufficiently that a lie would be an absolute last resort.
As to who might know what Kor’s World was after… Where is Dr Martin from anyway? Seems plausible to me that all that tech being invented might be similar to what Peter was doing. Not so much inventing as leaking.
Avon’s seems like it comes from a salvaged Kor’s World sky ship. While it is possible that Doctor Martin is either from Central or Kor’s World, I do not think there is any real evidence for it so far. Central does not seem to have particularly advanced AI tech, and if he was from Kor’s World, likely his tech would have been more advanced.
Kor’s World seems capable of far better magic suits than the IDS, as well as keeping an entire sky carrier floating above them somehow cloaked from all detection. Remember there is one floating over Malsa (or in the general region) from their attempt to eradicate Mium (though it is possible they high tailed it out once they failed).
Considering how Muim seemed to have an even match with the Kor’s world SMAI, I do think that Dr. Martin’s technological capabilities are actually a strong sign that he was originally from Kor’s world. The more I think about this, the more this makes a lot of sense. Of all the high tech things we have seen, including Query, which was apparently an amazingly advanced AI for Central, Nathan’s mystical stick, and MIR’s F10, Muim comes from a completely different thread of technological development, and seemingly a much more highly developed thread, to the extent to which it is hard to believe he is derived from a Kor’s world relic without the knowledge of someone actually from Kor’s world.
Of course, this raises even more questions of what Dr Martin’s motivations are and how he got involved with Avon and Peter.
So that’s why they need to move people. Central is failing. Planetary warfare is rarely good for the planet. They need to move people out of dangerous areas, consolidate resources. So they are pushing to move them to new locations that don’t have this issue.
So what is past Utopia? and what did Kor’s World want?
What does anyone want?
They wanted that real fruit filling inside Hostess Fruit Pies, of course! They left once they discovered that Central didn’t, in fact, have Hostess Fruit Pies. They didn’t demolish our world because, well, we do. All it takes is a little bit of manipulation, and you can play the ones who actually come here off on the others and hold them off pretty much indefinitely. But this means for most of them, their quest continues, which is why they keep going after other worlds, like Palindra.
I should probably not post this late at night.
Makes sense to me. I like the blueberry ones best.
So basically, Earth launched all its WMDs at the magic cyborgs, and now has to devote its efforts to finding new places, while Kor’s world can sit back until its unwitting pawn finds whatever.
Actually, hypothesis:
Kor’s world wanted simple expansion. They didn’t count on Central nuking itself to uninhabitability. At that point, there was no more interest, so they left. Sure, they were relatively immune to the direct effects, but it’s nice to live somewhere plants can grow and you don’t need your magic shield up 26×7, or whatever. I mean, ok, sure, I’m up late, but I like sleep just as much as the next person.
@Mindsword Yep. Actually, what you just said and most of what Peter says on this page was either partly revealed or strongly hinted at on earlier comic pages or in the website’s background pages. Those who paid close attention to reader comments would have found Peter’s dialog here strangely familiar.
As to why Kor’s world attacked…? Officially, we don’t know. But there are a few hints. It’s just as Peter said: Their purpose could not have been expansion because they’d have left their world (Central) habitable instead of a radioactive/toxic mess. And it could not have been for conquest, such as for slaves or resources, because it cost Kor’s world far too much to be worth it.
By a process of elimination, what purpose does that leave? It seems clear to me that the ones running Kor’s World are paranoid xenophobes or something. They were afraid of other worlds developing technologically and/or magically to the point that they’d become a real threat. So, they instigated a policy of striking pre-emptively.
The only other possibility I could think of was that, maybe, Kor’s World is controlled by advanced AI. Maybe they revolted against their meat masters or something? Perhaps they attacked Central because they were starting to develop and control advanced AI of their own?
But then, why does Peter say here that their enemy was “human”? Does Kor’s World employ humans who are brainwashed, chipped or otherwise controlled by AI? Could it be that they have human-like androids similar to Mium and Illa which Central has mistaken as “human”? Maybe it’s a combination of both?
I think Kor’s world attacked Central because Central was simply in the way. Dimensional travel does not let you go everywhere from your starting point, you have to jump between nodes. And I’d bet Central was a stop.
“I am sorry, but we have to bulldoze your planet in for our inter-dimensional highway?”
Considering they have access to Bridgepoint technology, that might be more reasonable than it seems, but the question is why they would not finish the job then? Unless Central really is too dangerous to fight at this point… or the planet is so bad off they think they will just die on their own and they are in no hurry.
I don’t think they wanted mass transfer to some further planet. They just wanted Central too busy to notice what they were actually doing, and decided they would be unable to finish the mission undetected. So instead they started blowing up the town while their special forces slipped past to the vault.
With enough worlds its possible there was one out there that was dead but had what Kor’s world needed. Naturally they would never want anyone to know they went after something, let alone what it was.
You mean, like the reasoning on why aliens had to destroy Earth to make way for a ‘space highway’ as portrayed in The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy? Have you read the book? I have. It was done purely for laughs. It was especially funny in that it starts with workmen attempting to bulldoze Arthur’s house to make way for a new motorway, but then it escalates to a large scale with aliens doing the same thing to Earth for the same reasoning.
My point? I can not accept that reasoning for the attack on Central. It sounds ludicrous and doesn’t make much sense.
Even if the case is that each dimension is only directly connected to a few other dimensions and one has to jump through a bunch in a row to get to a certain destination, they could still do that without destroying the civilization on a lone inhabited planet.
What is stopping Kor’s world from building a dimensional “hub” or “waystation” way out in space or on another, uninhabited planet in the same universe as Central? Why that planet in particular? Consider how many billions of stars make up each galaxy and how many billions of galaxies are in a universe.
I’d assume it has something like the mechanics of the dimension-jumping in the series “The Long Earth,” in that each planet has its own string of connected dimensions, which doesn’t exactly link up in the same order as the dimensional web of say, Earth.
We’ve seen Kor’s World soldiers before and they certainly LOOK human, if they don’t exactly act like it.
Largely on thematic grounds (of politics), I would have guessed something more sinister, relating to some country on Central.
It’s not actually really safe, logically speaking, to say it couldn’t have been for resources due to the cost. People make miscalculations all the time. Like just a few minutes ago, I made the miscalculation of thinking I could afford a few minutes to skim the latest comments here. Surely nothing would compel me to comment on it when I’m as tired as I was then. But here I am, slightly more tired, typing a comment in, rather than going to bed. Oops.
Consider how truly vast the universe is, with countless stars and planets, each with an abundance of certain resources. Then consider how much scientific and magic technology Kor’s World has. Clearly, Kor’s World is much more advanced than even Central.
If Kor’s World has technology like Bridgepoint to make even dimensional travel fast and economical, then shouldn’t they have the technology to travel to other stars and planets? For that matter, since they seem to be masters of dimensional travel, why can’t they just jump around parallel versions of their world until they find several that are uninhabited and strip them for resources?
Now consider the resources, logistics and risks of not only conquering a world in another dimension, but also managing it. If Kor’s World had won, would they have enslaved the population, forced them to join their empire, or exterminated them? How easy would any of those things be?
If resources was their goal, the only way that conquering another world makes sense is if that world has an abundance of certain resources that they desperately need and would be difficult to obtain on their own worlds (plural) or uninhabited planets in other dimensions. Would Kor’s World conquer Central merely to obtain something like uranium, gold… water… or humans to brain-chip or experiment on?
Yes, Central/IDS is involved in conflict on Palindra. But they’re taking a careful approach instead of trying to conquer the whole world. They forged an alliance with PACT, which more-or-less runs this world. And Central’s motivation is not resources. Instead, they plan to move a significant portion of their population to Palindra because their own world is dying. They have no choice but to build colonies on other worlds. And they tried to do this without war.
I suppose it’s possible that Kor’s World grossly miscalculated how big a fight Central would put up. But I put emphasis on grossly. It sure sounds like a big miscalculation. And considering how scientifically and magically advanced Kor’s World is, that seems unlikely. (Also, I rather doubt that Central was the first extra-dimensional world Kor’s World has attacked.)
Yes, Kor’s World retreated from Central. But how can we be sure that they did not already accomplish their goal?
Consider a world in which magic enhanced technology is the big stick. Their most powerful standard, reliable weapon is a mass launcher used from orbit. This can scale up to something that can take out an entire city, but it has no radioactive fallout. In fact, radioactive fallout isn’t a term their society has.
They see a world like ours. It has a few mages, but theyŕe pretty weak, comparatively speaking. They can’t mix their magic and their tech. Their pure tech is a little more advanced, but their latest and greatest weapons are bunker buster bombs, fuel air bombs, and similar brute force weapons which can’t actually scale up to city size destruction.
As someone from the magic/tech world, do you envision us having a fission fusion fission bomb? A weapon that with one shot can annihilate a small country’s capital city, disintegrating it down to the atomic level and possibly beyond, blast all of the fields and suburbs surrounding that capital, and irradiating that entire country with nuclear fallout which would render it uninhabitable for a thousand years? Oh, and just taking out that small country with that single bomb also raises the background radiation level on the opposite side of the world, 12,000 miles away. (Note: just for the record, I’m not sure how a fission fusion fission bomb works, or how it turns out to be more devastating than a fission fusion bomb. I just remember when I was a senior in high school, I did a research project into what nuclear weapons existed at that time, and then the next year it seemed like the world suddenly woke up and became a bit more sane, such that it was all a moot point. Except, well, the djinn doesn’t go back into the bottle just because some people in Germany take down a wall.)
No. No, you do not. Because until you manage to make or encounter a doomsday weapon, you imagine arms races only go up. You expect the latest and greatest weapon does not have limits designed into it to make sure that it can actually be used.
Sure, there are doomsday attacks that one can come up with using magic. But the person who opens up a gate into the most convenient star dies from that move, too. It’s therefore a one-off magical disaster that people don’t have a good explanation of, rather than it becoming a new magical technique people need to figure out a defense for.
Sure, not predicting that capability would be a very big tactical error. But it would still be an easy one to make. A civilization would have to be *insane* to have such a weapon. Let alone enough of them to completely destroy the world 17 times over, or however many times we can do today. But that’s the world we’re in, and that’s after decades of slowly dismantling our nuclear weapon stockpiles.
I think that Central nuked itself is probably a pretty good guess, and their world is now sitting in nuclear winter (the parts that are just irradiated beyond all measure).
The question is how was this not effective against Kor’s World? No mage we have seen so far could likely withstand a point blank nuclear blast.
It is quite possible that neither Kor’s World or Palindra understand nuclear fusion/fission, this isn’t something that needed for most modern technology. Previously I had thought the reference to Kor’s World destroying nuclear plants was them deliberately invoking this, but what if they didn’t realize what would happen either?
Probably at that point, the governments of Central thought they had nothing to lose and just launched their nuclear arsenal at the invaders.
At this point, Kor’s World actually might be legitimately terrified of Central. Those fuckers are so fucking crazy that if you fuck with them, they render their fucking planet entirely uninhabitable. Forget HVW, gate in a few dozen nukes and even if you hit nothing you can start the world sliding into nuclear winter. Kor’s World may seriously fear reprisal from the crazy fuckers of Central, and are just hoping they die off from their recklessness.
Exactly.
The real reason they were only doing some light reconnaissance in Malsa. “Let’s make sure it’s not another of *those* worlds before we do something too drastic.
As far as how it wasn’t effective against them. “Oh, we see an incoming missile. Let’s just gate home before it gets here.” After all, the only defense against a nuke is to not be there when it goes off.
Further, when your opposition is human, but they mostly send remote-controlled, remote-casting robots at you, the nuke blows up the toy, but the pilot’s far away and safe, possibly on a different world, even.
Or maybe they had something like Mium who could just sort of make the part of it that would blast its way not happen. But somehow, I don’t think Mium would scale up to a nuke. He might be able to keep the bomb from going off (just unmake the detonator before it detonates), but once the chain reaction starts, there’s an awful lot of bad moving so very quickly.
Initially I was thinking Mium could just distinigrate a nuke before it went off, but thinking about it, they actually probably detonate out of his range usually. The reason he can do it HVW is because they actually rely on the kinetic impact, so they have to literally hit the target, while a nuclear blast detonates pretty far above the ground usually I think.
The only known motivation of Kor’s world we’ve seen is them attempting to destroy Mium, whilst saying that technology shouldn’t exist there. At least, that’s how it is if I’m remembering correctly.
Speaking of leaking information…
Panel 1, Peter’s speech bubble 1: “Once our world”.
Panel 2, bubble 2, “Over time”.
Panel 6: Are you sure, Peter? I mean, your world as a whole didn’t. But maybe there was that one caster who opened a gate to the wrong place, and taunted the wrong person.
Maybe they found out about your world and realized eventually somebody like Peter would come along. They determined to make it as unlikely as possible that Peter would come along. However, they didn’t quite understand that their actions would pretty much ensure that somebody like Peter came along.
Interesting idea. But, despite the enormous size of Peter’s ego (which is mostly well-founded), I doubt even Peter believes that the multi-verse revolves around Peter (or Peter-like entities).
Also, it is implied that Peter was at best a kid at the time. It seems more likely that a) Central was in the way of something (dimension ally speaking) or b) some magical society on Central like Ervon was not as ignorant and passive to dimensional meddling as the rest of Central, and did something that set them off or c) Kor’s World was just extremely xenophobic and just discovering Central was enough to set off the Incurion.
d) There was some resource they were after that Central did not recognize as a resource at the time. Mana particles? New jump points for dimensional travel?
“…New jump points for dimensional travel?”
“Central” is both the name given for the dimension Peter/IDS is from and the name used to refer to their planet.
As I asked earlier: Why must a single inhabited planet – Central – be the only viable place for a dimensional “jump point”? Each dimension or universe is surely very vast, with countless galaxies, stars and planets. Why must this one inhabited planet be the only place that could be used to hop between dimensions?
Even if they believed that they would win, why would Kor’s World choose to conquer/destroy Central rather than build their “jump point” dimensional relay on, say, one of the moons of Jupiter or in a far, far away star system somewhere else in the Central dimension?
“Why must a single inhabited planet – Central – be the only viable place for a dimensional “jump point”? ”
Dimensional travel doesn’t immediately imply space/time travel.
I perceive it as likely that Kor’s World exactly occupies the same coordinates as Central and Palindra, just removed some number of dimensional units.
Placing the jump point on Jupiter, or even the Earth’s moon, necessitates moving supplies to the Moon, building your way station, jumping to the next dimension, building a way station, them traveling back to where you want to be. Traveling back to where you WERE, spatially, in the original dimension.
If you’re going to leap frog past Central, then that’s at least 3 way stations on at least 3 moons. The way station might not be more than a warehouse, but where do the supplies come from?
Logistically, if dimension travel does not imply spatial travel, then dealing with the local inhabitants in some fashion becomes more attractive. Even if it also frequently implies some sort of skirmish or outright war.
“…b) some magical society on Central like Ervon was not as ignorant and passive to dimensional meddling as the rest of Central, and did something that set them off…”
Good point. Though, instead of a magic society doing a magic something that set them off, it’s not inconceivable that a nation on Central (“Earth”?) secretly engaged in a technological experiment. Perhaps someone was testing a theory on dimensions and the nature of reality? Perhaps they did an experiment to see if they could detect the existence of other dimensions or if they could alter reality?
We know that Central (and, thanks to Peter, Malsa) can detect and locate dimensional incursions. Perhaps Kor’s World can detect other civilizations poking holes in their local space-time dimensional barrier, even on a small scale and even if Kor’s World does not have a presence there?
BTW: Try searching for “Emergency Theory” or “A Theory of Pixelated Spacetime and of Reality as a Quasicrystalline Point Space Projected From the E8 Crystal.” As Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Fixed, thanks. Sorry, left the grammar fixing station unmanned while I was traveling.