Schlock Mercenary VII: A T.A.D. Too Much Dialogue These Days

[Rockphed]

That wouldn't have been a problem if the nannies abandoned Kaff soon enough. He had to carry the missile a long way from where it was stored to where he set it off, so they would have started at a safe distance. They probably would have needed to have a way to transfer their data before the Broken Wind was submerged in the water, though, or they might have risked being washed out of the ship.

There was even one strip where Kaff ordered Bunny to remain in a safe location because he was expecting to need her after the battle was over. That was before we learned of his plans, but perhaps he had already come up with them by then. That could mean that Kaff went out of the way to back himself up quickly before he revealed his plan to anyone. I don't know how he would have done it, but HT could retroactively reveal a way to do it if he wants to bring Kaff back. In any case, I think of Kaff as probably just being temporarily gone.

Simplest way to back himself up: chop off a hand and stick it in a nanny bag somewhere safe. Considering the text of his message, I do not expect Kaff to resurface in that fashion.

[HandofShadows]

Simplest way to back himself up: chop off a hand and stick it in a nanny bag somewhere safe. Considering the text of his message, I do not expect Kaff to resurface in that fashion.

I actually went and checked to see if he had done that. But no, he had both his hands.

[factotum]

Oh, she most certainly did.

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-05-28

OK, point conceded, I guess!

[eschmenk]

Why couldn't the nannies make backups while the person sleeps? That would give daily backups.

Could the nannies have bailed out of Kaff's body once they realized he intended to commit suicide?

The point i was making is that you need to transfer the backup outside of your body.

Yeah, I was assuming that the nannies would take the backup data with them.

Also, Petey somehow had nannies jump from Schlock to not-Vog and make a change to not-Vog's brain, which seems to indicate that Petey has some ability to interact with nannies. It seems possible that the nannies might have been copying the backup data to Petey to to some other system outside Kaff all along somehow. Just as a matter of general policy, Petey would have wanted to make sure he couldn't loose Kaff permanently and, Petey being Petey, he probably would have found a way to ensure that he could bring Kaff back from the dead even if Kaff's body was completely obliterated and all nannies destroyed, I think.

[Windscion]

Topic: Petey making new Pa'anuri DaMEs.

Make a sapient DaME and enslave it: immoral and dangerous.

Make a non-sapient DaME and harness it: First, not clear if it can be done, because if it can be done, surely the ancient races would never have made a sapient one? Secondly, still kinda queasy on the morality front. Third, at best a repeat of old mistakes.

Make a sapient DaME and *do not* enslave it. Raises possibility of diplomacy, peace. Recall that Andromeda's core is 35x size of Petey's. Diplomacy sound good under those circumstances. Still plenty risky of course. But certainly a possibility Petey has considered. After all, a DaME can be contained by a network of T.A.D. fields. And the new world forge might be used to create an evacuation fleet should the PD decide the best plan is to find yet another galaxy to move to.

Which raises the whole question of why have a wormgate to (from?) Andromeda, anyway? (Besides "plot", I mean.) But that's another can of wormholes.

[factotum]

Beginning to wonder if this supposed galactic devastation that the Archive claims is guaranteed to happen is actually due to the creation of Pa'anuri rather than rogue AI?

[HandofShadows]

Only starting to wonder? I've been convinced for awhile now.

[Rockphed]

Only starting to wonder? I've been convinced for awhile now.

Yeah, the idea has been telegraphed pretty hard.

[Windscion]

Well, crud. There goes my hope that Petey has a better plan.

[The Glyphstone]

Someone can tell me again why they cant simply restore a backup?

They HAVE to have backups. You can backup people now!

And apparently they did.

[Rockphed]

And apparently they did.

Though we still do not know that they will use them. I'm not sure if I hope they do or hope they do not.

[Alent]

Though we still do not know that they will use them. I'm not sure if I hope they do or hope they do not.

Well, Kaff said his plan required needing the doctor later, and he intentionally backed himself up before his suicide run, so it would seem reasonable to consider that putting a "DO RESURRECT! DO RESURRECT!!" on file.

[eschmenk]

And apparently they did.

Yeah, I guess that isn't enough of a surprise for spoiler tags. Without any specific explanation, it still seems like a Dues Ex Machina, even though it was expected.

Though we still do not know that they will use them. I'm not sure if I hope they do or hope they do not.

Oh, I'm sure they will.

Well, Kaff said his plan required needing the doctor later, and he intentionally backed himself up before his suicide run, so it would seem reasonable to consider that putting a "DO RESURRECT! DO RESURRECT!!" on file.

Did it really take him 40 minutes to carry out his suicide plan? Seriously, Broken Wind's AI couldn't prepare a missile to fly itself to the target in 40 minutes, so Kaff had to back himself up, make preparations, then pick up the missile then run to the target -- all of which took 40 minutes! How long until after the attack began would Broken Wind finally get missiles ready, just in case they might be needed?

[NEO|Phyte]

How long until after the attack began would Broken Wind finally get missiles ready, just in case they might be needed?

Based on the size of the warhead Kaff had been manhandling and the amount of damage it ended up doing to the ship, the only situation in which those missiles would have been useful in repelling boarders would be to blow themselves up. It is unclear how spacefuture technology changes the ratio, but given how little of modern missiles are actually the payload, it is rather unlikely that the full missile would be able to fit through the hallways anyway, which is why Kaff had taken the warhead out.

Also it only would have taken 9 minutes to warbuck the annie on a propulsion unit to use in transporting the warhead. Not sure we've ever gotten a technical rundown on what exactly warbucking is supposed to be, but I suspect it is along the lines of 'amp up the output so this thing can manage combat-grade shielding and movement'

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, I guess that isn't enough of a surprise for spoiler tags. Without any specific explanation, it still seems like a Dues Ex Machina, even though it was expected.

We could see the gods' chariot hanging up in the rafters over the stage, but it's still a Deus Ex Machina. Till now, only AI's have had stored gestalts, the concept of being able to store a living person's gestalt is out of total left field. There would have been no reason to develop REDHack to begin with if that was available.

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.

[tonberrian]

We could see the gods' chariot hanging up in the rafters over the stage, but it's still a Deus Ex Machina. Till now, only AI's have had stored gestalts, the concept of being able to store a living person's gestalt is out of total left field. There would have been no reason to develop REDHack to begin with if that was available.

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.

Not quite, I mean we did kill off Schlock and backed him up. It's really the logical extension of REDHack, not something else.

[The Glyphstone]

Not quite, I mean we did kill off Schlock and backed him up. It's really the logical extension of REDHack, not something else.

I hadn't counted Schlock because he's basically a data storage system to begin with; a sufficient chunk of him on ice somewhere could store a backup copy of him. But that is a fair point, and it was Petey who debuted that ability in the first place. So I guess it's not as out of left field as I first though.

[Rockphed]

We could see the gods' chariot hanging up in the rafters over the stage, but it's still a Deus Ex Machina. Till now, only AI's have had stored gestalts, the concept of being able to store a living person's gestalt is out of total left field. There would have been no reason to develop REDHack to begin with if that was available.

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.

I agree. This book, while interesting, had severe mood-whiplash and pacing issues. Maybe if I sat down and read it all in one go it would flow better.

I did not, on the other hand, find either of the last 2 books to have those problems. I still think that Massively Parrallel is an order of magnitude better than the books that have followed it.

[Ibrinar]

We could see the gods' chariot hanging up in the rafters over the stage, but it's still a Deus Ex Machina. Till now, only AI's have had stored gestalts, the concept of being able to store a living person's gestalt is out of total left field. There would have been no reason to develop REDHack to begin with if that was available.

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.

The way they became immortal unless completely obliterated was by having nanites in their body that saved the important data about how to reconstruct them, aka a local backup. When he began running with the payload I thought about him just cutting of his hand as backup but the only reason I didn't assume they have separate backups is for story telling reasons, it was never mentioned so I assumed that implication of the tech had been ignored to leave an option for character death. If you ignore meta reasons, inless they are somehow unable to extract and transmit the data from the nanites for some reason it always was a direct consequence of the tech.

[guttering flame]

It does raise the question what (legal) rights temporarily totally dead persons like Kaff have? If the people around them (Kaff's dad) say 'Screw him!' can they keep Kaff dead delete him in long-term-storage edited appropriately? If their children and company deputies want their job and money will Kaff start over as a penniless cadet? Will we have another trial over it with our favorite attorney/judge?

[factotum]

Not going to lie, Howard has really disappointed me here. As much as I figured it was unlikely, I hoped he was willing to be gutsy enough to kill Kaff off permanently since the comic is in its twilight slope.

That might still happen, given that the Commodore appears to be given the choice of whether to bring him back here...we won't find out if he did or not until the next book, though. I agree, though, if they *do* bring him back and thus completely negate the feels Howard has been trying to inject into the end of this book, I'll be disappointed. As for why the backup is forty minutes old, maybe it's a rule that they take one when there's a chance they'll be going into combat? We don't know exactly how long it took from the Esspee teraport cages being discovered to Tagon's self-sacrifice moment.

Question is, since we now know Red-REO has backups which are capable of completely re-creating a person--why do they even have these Laz-X categories? Seems to me that restoring someone perfectly to a state they were in a couple of days ago would be preferable to restoring them as they are *right at the point of death* but losing a couple of percent of them, as they had to do with Murtaugh.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Question is, since we now know Red-REO has backups which are capable of completely re-creating a person--why do they even have these Laz-X categories? Seems to me that restoring someone perfectly to a state they were in a couple of days ago would be preferable to restoring them as they are *right at the point of death* but losing a couple of percent of them, as they had to do with Murtaugh.

My guess? Theseus' Ship paradox. If you restore the original body, like with Murtaugh, it feels like they are still the same person they were, but if you simply flush the body, make one from scratch and give it the external memories, that is a "new" person.

GW

[Gnoman]

It does raise the question what (legal) rights temporarily totally dead persons like Kaff have? If the people around them (Kaff's dad) say 'Screw him!' can they keep Kaff dead delete him in long-term-storage edited appropriately? If their children and company deputies want their job and money will Kaff start over as a penniless cadet? Will we have another trial over it with our favorite attorney/judge?

The dialog in this strip seems pretty clear on it, actually. The Kaff Tagon we knew is dead. They can use backups to create a new individual with the same appearance and memories that might call himself Kaff Tagon, but it will be a new legal entity, just like the Gavclones (all gateclones, for that matter - the only reason that they were able to execute that one guy for DUI was because he committed the crime before being cloned and thus the new one was still guilty) or the Kevyns.

Karl Tagon's decision here seems to be a case of what to do with his son's personal effects rather than the executor of a living will.

[eschmenk]

The dialog in this strip seems pretty clear on it, actually. The Kaff Tagon we knew is dead. They can use backups to create a new individual with the same appearance and memories that might call himself Kaff Tagon, but it will be a new legal entity, just like the Gavclones (all gateclones, for that matter - the only reason that they were able to execute that one guy for DUI was because he committed the crime before being cloned and thus the new one was still guilty) or the Kevyns.

That doesn't mean that there won't be a lot of jabbering about it. We don't know how universal Bunni's viewpoint is.

If it's like the book that just ended, there were be some jabbering about it, then it will be completely forgotten as an issue. Nothing ever came of Murtaugh's worries about what she was missing nor all the ethical issues over not-Vog. We never even learned if Petey preserved not-Vog as a separate personality somehow.

Based on the size of the warhead Kaff had been manhandling and the amount of damage it ended up doing to the ship, the only situation in which those missiles would have been useful in repelling boarders would be to blow themselves up. It is unclear how spacefuture technology changes the ratio, but given how little of modern missiles are actually the payload, it is rather unlikely that the full missile would be able to fit through the hallways anyway, which is why Kaff had taken the warhead out.

Of course you wouldn't send it down the hallways! You would send it around outside Broken Wind and send it in through a hatch. That's what I've been saying all along. If if needed to blow holes to make a path, you would send several. Also, if not having a path would have been a problem, why wouldn't the AI have said so?

Also, another thing I had said earlier was that the main reason to have ship-to-ship missiles ready to fire is that the Toughs couldn't be certain that the Esspies didn't have small ships hidden somewhere. There was no reason to assume that sending boarders through cages would have been the only means of attack.

Also it only would have taken 9 minutes to warbuck the annie on a propulsion unit to use in transporting the warhead.

Which is far too long! You can't wait 9 minutes after it becomes obvious that you need to shoot a missile to be able to use it. Why didn't Broken Wind have missiles on hot standby given that they were in a area that they were expecting to become a war zone? I've raised that issue several times already!

The final issue is why does the most recent page say 40 minutes if what you said is correct? Did Kaff not know he was going on his suicide mission 40 minutes in advance or is what you said wrong?

[Demon 997]

I'm definitely torn between whether this is a huge cop out from killing the central character, or if it's just moving the story to a more philosophical level, where the tension is no longer the question of death in combat, but what to do if you cannot die, Ship of Theseus but with your brain, and all the other attendant bits.

That said, you could do some of both with doing an arc or two without Kaff, and seeing how the story functions without him, before he's brought back, somewhat changed, and with the people around him changed.

His relationship with his father is hugely shifted for one. The father has dealt with his death, and heard what Kaff was able to say as he went to his death. The cloned Kaff knows that happens, can hear the message, but hasn't felt or processed that himself. That's potentially a very weird and interesting dynamic.

[keybounce]

Meta topic: The "50 page per thread" seems to be a misfit for this comic; I think one thread per book would fit better.

Topic: So re-reading the last book, it ended with the revelation that the Schuul were behind the attempt to overthrow the Sol government. Perhaps this next book on immortality will be looking at the question of "What do you do with people that really want you dead, or at least everything that makes "your society" your society dead?".

(Ok, English majors, what's the proper way to punctuate that?)

Hmm. That would be interesting. It's one thing to ask "This person wants to kill me. We have immortality".

It's something else to ask, "This group wants to destroy our way of life, without destroying our life. What do we do in response"?

That might even be relevant to modern real life, as a sci-fi parable for the world we live in. I mean, we come to this story break right as we come to someone in power that could change our way of life for at least a full generation, and now the chance for a story to look at the question. It's almost like it was planned :-) (ref: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0912.html)

[NEO|Phyte]

The final issue is why does the most recent page say 40 minutes if what you said is correct? Did Kaff not know he was going on his suicide mission 40 minutes in advance or is what you said wrong?

All we know regarding the nature of the gestalt backup is that it occurred 40 minutes before Kaff's death. Maybe it's an automated event on a regular timer, maybe Kaff was feeling particularly twitchy that day, but unless the timescale of the boarding action is way the hell off, it was unlikely to have been a 'back myself up before I kill myself'.

:edit: for reference, when Kaff fully committed to his run, there was a stated two minutes of time before the boarders finished whatever that woop wooping was about.

As for using the ship missiles indoors, we don't have enough external information to say for certain if they could or could not have flown a missile to where it needed to get, but given that Kaff has a tendency to like to survive so he can get paid, if it was feasible he probably would have gone for that rather than manhandling a warhead. Similarly, we have no stated information (to my knowledge) on how long it takes for missiles to be made battle ready, the 9 minutes was for warbucking a normally nonmilitary propulsion unit to serve as a warhead delivery system.

:edit the second: poking around a bit in adjacent strips, assuming the strips happen in a linear order chronologically between scene changes, there was at least three minutes of Kaff running with that warhead before the final countdown, based on impactor time to impact comments.

[guttering flame]

The problem was they installed too many safety features. The AI couldn't use weaponized gravies inside the ship or fly missiles inside it. Not harming itself (By aiming missiles at itself) was of course disallowed as well. I miss the explosive-experts (ordnance technicians??) though. This was the perfect opportunity for them to shine.

[factotum]

OK, so any bets on what this is going to turn out to be? Guessing it isn't going to turn out to be the actual afterlife...

[eschmenk]

The problem was they installed too many safety features. The AI couldn't use weaponized gravies inside the ship or fly missiles inside it. Not harming itself (By aiming missiles at itself) was of course disallowed as well. I miss the explosive-experts (ordnance technicians??) though. This was the perfect opportunity for them to shine.

If those were really the problems, why did the AI act as if the only problem was its failure to have any missiles ready to fire in the middle of a space battle? Whether you are correct or not, HT's writing was pretty bad.