Comic for Tuesday, February 21st, 2023
Comic. Sorry for the slight delay this time around.
When Kally talks about an Eidos fingerprint, some people can sense when an object has a large amount of Eidos data attached to it; since the Bridgepoint data contains Eidos data (rather than simply being a computer file), it would feel like a bright point or high density point in Eidos, sort of like a person would; like how Naomi recognized Nathan’s staff as something rather an unusual immediately. Characters like Magnolia Dai or Mione take this much farther by being able to – to varying extents – read and parse Eidos data in some form. Someone like Naomi struggles to pull any useful data from it, but can sense its presence. Most natural or innate mages would have some degree of sense of that, though usually less than some like Naomi.
This sort of thing would generally be expected to be based on proximity to a fairly large extent; though the Bridgepoint data might be harder to spot than an artifact, Kally both knows its there and is quite close to it, which is why she would expect to be able to sense it, combined with Peter’s confidence that someone will find it wherever he leaves it, combined with his houses generally blowing up when he’s not in them, and her general suspicions of Peter’s abilities is what makes her guess he’s is somehow shrouding it.
Anyway; I’ll be back at the regularly rescheduled time in two weeks. By then the Kickstarter will be over, but I imagine I’ll still have my hands full for awhile here.
Have a good one folks!
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Page should be up at some point this week I think but probably not today. If I think it won’t be till next week I’ll update folks tomorrow.
I apologize, but I think I’m going to miss this week; I had a minor surgery today, and while I’m mostly fine I’m not probably going to be super productive today, and by the time I get to it, my schedule will likely get filled up.
I will aim for next week.
Glad it was minor. Sorry there was an immediate need! May you go from “mostly fine” to very good very soon.
We’ll see you next week! Take care.
Past aka Kibbles Tasty,
Take your time. Real life health is more important than worrying about fictional torches and pitchforks. You deserve a break anyway due to your outstanding Kibbles Kickstarter achievement and putting your D&D creations and accomplishments into Creative Commons. Congratulations and well done!!!
I’m also super excited about the Creative Commons part. Eclipse Phase showed that’s possible while also making money.
Less so about those 50 epic boons… promissed deliverables means more work for Past.
My ex once had a surgery to remove a couple of screws from her ankle and ended up being out for the rest of the day, even though it was something like 5 minutes on the table.
Minor surgery is always a pretty major event, even if it’s the least of 20 or something. I haven’t had minor surgery myself, but my ex is one of the most driven people I know. For it to take her out for the rest of the day, it has to be pretty significant.
I’ll agree that different organizations have different rules. My point was that assuming that Peter and Kally weren’t considered authorized personnel to enter the door isn’t meaningful because the authorized list often contains categories of people. The term “authorized people” doesn’t necessarily mean a list of specifically named people.
The same applies to the chains of dozens of comments about various points of grammar. Unlike France, there is no official standard for grammatical correctness for the English language. Some organizations have style guides for their own use, such as the Chicago Manual of Style and the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage.
You are confusing closed and restricted areas. For a closed area, there is an explicit list of who can enter. Things like access to the roof, machinery rooms, telephone/electrical closets would be restricted areas where the access would be according to a set of categories. This would typically include such things as medical, fire department, police, maintenance personnel, etc. in performance of their duty. (It does not include looking for a place to smoke or have illicit rendezvous.) As head of the MSB, this would seem to include Peter and those accompanying him.
Different organizations may do this differently. Some schemes may be really common across a large area, but it doesn’t mean they’re universal. Even if they were, this is a comic world, which is different in at least a couple of key ways from our world
What you have described was the way the terminology was/is used at a couple of places I’ve worked, but I’ve also worked somewhere that did maintain explicit lists of “restricted areas”. For them, a “closed area” did not mean high security, it meant under construction/reconstruction/repair. This was all within one country.
Just saying, so you know.
Maybe remove the “even” from Kali’s statement about sensing the bridgepoint data? The difference between saying that “From this distance I should be able to sense it” and “From this distance /even/ I should be able to sense it” is in how the second statement portrays either the impact of the Data or Kallisto’s magical senses as being lessor or subpar. And, while she isn’t necessarily a dedicated sensor and the item isn’t exactly designed to put out echoes, I doubt either is anywhere close to whatever low bar “average” might be.
But does Kally consider herself to be as skilled as you do, in a conversation with Peter, no less? I suspect that Kally is deliberately modest here.
This was how I read it.
When talking with more or less anyone besides Peter or maybe Mium, Kally wouldn’t have used ‘even’.
I have seen doors with signs like that on the inside. The idea is to stop people from going on the roof to smoke. It is assumed that doors may be alarmed to prevent people from entering a building, so it isn’t necessary to put a notice on the outside of a door.
It is also assumed that people entering from the outside will have previously exited from the inside.
I wonder if it’ll let me comment now, I tried like four times on the previous page and it gave a 500 error every time…(over the course of multiple days.) If so, yay!
The parking garage was Atter’s fault for…..well, existing.
Sooo much information around here though, and so very interesting….
*January* 21st?
Is time travel involved?
Time travel is always involved, especially the grammar to talk about it. Sometimes time travel is very involved.
No, the Rules still apply to Peter. The sign Clearly says “Authorized Personnel Only”, and I guarantee if you go check your list of authorized personnel you’ll find Peter is on it.
And not dragon-shaped authorization this time, either.
Only if the authorization list is kept on a digital device with access to the internet. Feel free to grumble about people who are so archaic that they still use “paper” to keep their records; I can’t even guess at how many times Peter already has made that complaint.
I think you’ll find that Internet access restrictions are not as much of an obstacle as you might expect. Sometimes things have Internet access that you might not expect to. Also, most people aren’t that easy to crack. Just make a request seem like it’s from an authority and standard and most of them will comply. This is totally legal.
(To be clear, no it isn’t. Most of the time someone says something is totally legal, it totally is not.)
“Please add our IDS contractor Peter Kepler to the roof access list. Note that this is not the same Peter Kepler who is the head of the MSB. Kepler’s just a common name in the IDS.”
If that appears to come from the right people, it happens, even though they’re totally the same Peter Kepler.
I don’t think this building is all that friendly with the IDS at this point. Aren’t they part of PACT, which has mostly kind of stopped being friendly with the IDS?
Well, OK, sure, the nature of organizations such as PACT are such that they start out highly factionalized. Alignment, if it happens, comes later as the trade agreement turns out to be mutually beneficial. That tends to be fairly rare in the real world, with actual results tending to have at least one member of such agreements becoming more and more upset at the other compani(es) involved. The companies earning the ire may or may not have any awareness of the growing resentment. But they generally won’t care about it, because the resentment is over the fact that the other companies are profiting disproportionately from the agreement.
In the case of PACT, it sounds like most of the companies are focused on taking advantage of the customer base, not each other, which generally leads me to think we’re dealing with the companies that exploit other companies involved, rather than the ones that at least feel like they’ve been exploited.
All of that said, this isn’t to say that Team Peter wouldn’t be able to get in and get around those pesky restrictions. Sometimes it would be codeR that makes the actual contact. Other times… I’m sure that Miko, Peter, and Mium all have multiple handles under which they’ve worked, and they probably each have at least one that they haven’t really used yet, just in case.
Naomi can sense which eye on the stove was on.
Magnolia can sense the ramen was under cooked.
Kally is wondering where her ramen went.
Peter ate the ramen but left her some cereal.
The prize at the bottom of the cereal box is the Bridgepoint data.
I love Kally’s implication that Peter is as bad as Nathan for things blowing up around him. Also his confidence that other people couldn’t hide the data well enough to prevent it getting blown up.
To be fair to Peter, companies that experiment on children and summon demons are generally considered to be acceptable targets.
Oh, and I do love the “Alarm Will Sound” warning. Just another little touch of how rules are for other people.
From the previous comics, Peter and Kally were already on the roof. Peter exited the building through the blown out window and it is likely that Fluffy probably set Peter and Kally on the roof. The sign is on the wrong side for them to read before opening the door.
Will the alarm be noticed with all the MSB activity in the building? If MSB notices they will call Peter “Sir” and he will say “Carry on.” LOL
All true, yet the other part of that is that doors with signs like that are often locked. My personal guess is the alarm didn’t sound because “Magic”, or Mium.
That last sentence is exactly what I mean though. Both Peter and Kally see a door alarm as something not important. I mean, the one interaction we’ve seen was Naomi and Kally with an officer. Where Naomi insults him to his face by calling him a glorified meter maid, and Kally just tells him to get lost after he runs her ID.
Peter is head of the MSB and called them in to handle the bad guys. That is why they will call him “Sir.” As the MSB head, Peter is authorized without Miums assistance this time. However, Mium may have opened an automatic door lock for him. Peter is Peter.
Locked? How would Peter know. He has long since asked Querty (Now MIUM) to not tell him when he is “breaking and entering”. More plausible deniability that way.
Faux Peter left via the window, as did the shitty demon. I don’t know why real Peter would have done that, and I think he continued to be in the room for a bit after Kally joined him and they were talking to the victims. As such, I don’t know what path they took to get back to the roof. For all I know, they took the internal elevator to the ground floor, walked around back, and took Kally’s elevator to the roof again.
That HAS been previous experience though. The last time the bridgepoint data was insufficiently protected was
a) when Korr’s world went and took it and
b) when Naomi learned she was “native wildlife”
Past,
First, I want to say that the last several comics have been more excellent than usual, The added dialog between characters is both informative and enjoyable.
Next, congratulations on your continuing Kickstarter success! Latest figure shows the last defined stretch goal is close to being met. Hopefully you do not need to make new stuff for the additional stretch goals. However, if it does take time from the comic,you will hear no complaints from me. Your D&D “Kibbles” put bread on your table unlike the torch and pitchfork crowd.
As somebody who actually does pay him to do this comic, I wholeheartedly approve this message. I do not pay him enough, even though it’s more than I pay any other web artist.
thanks for the heads up man. You needed some time off.