[1426] Bloom!

[fwip]

they are heading towards subject zeta.

[Gotolei]

2spooky4me

So with the seraphs gone, can Paz talk with the ship in peace now?

[Chancellor]

I doubt it'll do her any good. He's completely delusional.

[smjjames]

Did anybody else think of the Orz when you read the 'my fingers cannot stop them' bit?

[fwip]

I wonder if the Seraphs will be so easy to get rid of as the Ship's 'fingers'?

[Corvo]

Oct 31, 2014 7:05:13 GMT Gotolei said:

So with the seraphs gone, can Paz talk with the ship in peace now?

We've seem at least thirteen S13s together. Some of then might stay behind to make sure the "creator" does her job.

[quoodle]

So "the students and the robots have banded together". He's not grouping the seraphs in with "the robots". Significant? It certainly sounds odd to me.

[csj]

With the seraphs gone, they can probably ollie outy, if they're careful. Or sabotage its biomechanical engineering. Or talk it over without them butting in.

[smjjames]

Oct 31, 2014 7:25:44 GMT quoodle said:

So "the students and the robots have banded together". He's not grouping the seraphs in with "the robots". Significant? It certainly sounds odd to me.

Probably more of a 'my side' and 'not my side' thing.

Also, not sure if the 'bloom' and dust/debris explosion is due to the siphon being destroyed or if it's just the ship smacking something out of frustration.

[Elysium]

So many shits and so many fans !

[The Anarch]

Take off every Seraph!

For great justice.

[Lightice]

Still kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Things are progressing far too smoothly for comfort...

At least it's plain now that the Ship is completely delusional, and won't listen to reason. Hopefully Lindsey herself can confront him at some point.

[csj]

Oct 31, 2014 7:54:26 GMT The Anarch said:

Take off every Seraph!

For great justice.

KATS: All your ship are belong to us.

[todd]

Oct 31, 2014 7:05:48 GMT Chancellor said:

I doubt it'll do her any good. He's completely delusional.

My fears as well. He's probably too far gone in his desire for that. (John Steinbeck once wrote "In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins.")

And it may be too late anyway; the ship and the Seraphs have already caused enough trouble that they could face an extremely severe sentence from the Court. (Even if the whole thing was secretly orchestated by the higher-ups at the Court, as a few have suggested - especially if it's that scenario, so that the Court can: a) appear to be punishing the malefactors and b) keep them from speaking and implicating it.) How long until their motivation changes from "make me flesh so that Lindsey will love me" to "I can't let them stop me, or I'll be taken back to the Court and turned into paper-clips"?

[imaginaryfriend]

The Love Boat does seem to have a grasp on the reality of the situation so while he may be desperate and gambling on a longshot I can't agree he's deluded.  He'd only be deluded if it was completely impossible that his plan would be a success and while improbable (maybe extremely so) it does rest on one nonhuman being's reaction to all this.  Females have fallen for a Hail Mary play before, even when it fumbled. (shrug) 

Also, cross-linky.

[dliessmgg]

How ironic What an amusing coincidence that the page published on halloween contains flowery sound effects.

[goldenknots]

Oct 31, 2014 7:12:13 GMT Corvo said:

Oct 31, 2014 7:05:13 GMT Gotolei said:

So with the seraphs gone, can Paz talk with the ship in peace now?

We've seem at least thirteen S13s together. Some of then might stay behind to make sure the "creator" does her job.

There is only one "S13", and he's Annie's friend.

[i]

SuBjeCt Zeta may not yEt be perMittEd to be found. The dIstOrtion MUST continue.

[csj]

Oct 31, 2014 12:32:46 GMT i said:

SuBjeCt Zeta may not yEt be perMittEd to be found. The dIstOrtion MUST continue.

needs more zalgo

[ctso74]

Oct 31, 2014 7:08:50 GMT smjjames said:

Did anybody else think of the Orz when you read the 'my fingers cannot stop them' bit?

I've rarely been able to think of them as anything else. I imagine OrzBrain noticed, as well.


Seraph: "Form feet and legs; form arms and body; and I'll form the head! Let's go, Vulturon Force! Defender of the Serapherse!"

[TBeholder]

Oct 31, 2014 7:10:22 GMT fwip said:

I wonder if the Seraphs will be so easy to get rid of as the Ship's 'fingers'?

They got lazor eyes. Of course, given how Zimmyport warped them... chances are, these will squirt bad-smelling paint instead, or something - if they work at all.

Oct 31, 2014 8:16:59 GMT Lightice said:

At least it's plain now that the Ship is completely delusional, and won't listen to reason.

A more detailed discussion of body shape may still derail the plan. Especially the part about size.

[fwip]

Oct 31, 2014 12:31:35 GMT goldenknots said:

Oct 31, 2014 7:12:13 GMT Corvo said:

We've seem at least thirteen S13s together. Some of then might stay behind to make sure the "creator" does her job.

There is only one "S13", and he's Annie's friend.

It was never really made clear about this.  S1 was a totally different model, so that implies that S2-S12 were all different models as well.  However, the kiosk robot knew what Annie was talking about when she asked for S13, and we've never heard any of the other Seraphs referred to as S13.

[sidhekin]

Actually, Annie asked for "number 13". It was the receptionist that called him S13: "S13 is quite sought after, not least for the trouble he causes."

That's an individual "S13", a "he".

Of course, that doesn't mean that S2-S12 were not different models. It may well be only one of each model has been made.

[aaroncampbell]

Oct 31, 2014 7:54:26 GMT The Anarch said:

Take off every Seraph!

For great justice.

You know what you doing.

[chrisjenl]

Oct 31, 2014 7:41:16 GMT smjjames said:

Oct 31, 2014 7:25:44 GMT quoodle said:

So "the students and the robots have banded together". He's not grouping the seraphs in with "the robots". Significant? It certainly sounds odd to me.

Probably more of a 'my side' and 'not my side' thing.

Also, not sure if the 'bloom' and dust/debris explosion is due to the siphon being destroyed or if it's just the ship smacking something out of frustration.

I think that the bloom is that Annie is blowing up the vingers

[aaroncampbell]

Oct 31, 2014 14:19:33 GMT sidhekin said:

Actually, Annie asked for "number 13". It was the receptionist that called him S13: "S13 is quite sought after, not least for the trouble he causes."

That's an individual "S13", a "he".

Of course, that doesn't mean that S2-S12 were not different models. It may well be only one of each model has been made.

It's hard to tell, given that we do see multiples of what appear to be the same model, but I've always thought that the "S" numbers were kind of like generations rather than individuals. The reception bot actually asks Annie for the "Make, model number, serial number, or name" on this page. When she replied, "His name is Robot!" she got nowhere, of course. And even when she offered "Number 13?" the reception bot had to ask for clarifying physical descriptions -- which suggests to me that 13 is the model number (since there are probably several makes which have reached that milestone of development.) The make is of course Seraph, which is where we get S13 from.

As for the whole individual bit and the "he" and all that, at first I thought that was a problem. But now I realize he determined which robot she was looking for among all the S13s out there simply because they just had one come in.

Look at it from his perspective. Here is this weird-looking robot asking for an S13. She seems to think there's only one, doesn't even understand names or serial numbers, and he has to talk simply and slowly to her (even using voice synthesis!) so she's obviously slow or broken. Given that, once he figures out she's looking for an S13 he decides to refer to the recent detainee as the "he" that she's looking for to see if it's a match. (She's the one who started out using gender pronouns for some reason, so he goes with it.) He says he "left the facility grounds" and she confirms that's the bot she's looking for. Sure enough, his educated guess* was right: she did in fact come looking for the S13 that most recently went "off the grid" as far as the general robot population was concerned. Problem solved on his end.

*I'm not using educated guess as a bit of hand-waving here; we use Bayesian probability and heuristics all the time in programming already, not just in complex fields like AI but in everything from antivirus detection to SPAM filtering to autocorrect. It's a great way to handle unknowns.

[bykerhill]

Oct 31, 2014 11:11:40 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

The Love Boat does seem to have a grasp on the reality of the situation so while he may be desperate and gambling on a longshot I can't agree he's deluded.  He'd only be deluded if it was completely impossible that his plan would be a success and while improbable (maybe extremely so) it does rest on one nonhuman being's reaction to all this.  Females have fallen for a Hail Mary play before, even when it fumbled. (shrug) 

Also, cross-linky.

I would say that the odds of his plan succeeding are so low that, even if theoretically possible, it still qualifies as delusion. I mean, if I were convinced that the second I stepped out of my door I'd be hit by a meteorite, I'd count myself delusional, even though such a thing COULD happen.

Also given that Loveboat thinks that he's going to win Lindsey's heart by endangering her students, I would disagree that he has a grasp on the reality of the situation.

[keef]

Oct 31, 2014 15:18:53 GMT aaroncampbell said:

- which suggests to me that 13 is the model number

I understand your reasoning, but why not the simple solution: S1 was a prototype, the other seraphs are "production-models" numbered 2 to whatever. S13 calls them brothers.
They were build by Diego, and modelled after him. (no wonder they're bonkers)
S13 is special, because of his Prophesy Coprocessor®, which got him scrapped by the others before the comic started.
He showed the same obsessiveness as the others, hopefully his relationship with Shadow has made him a bit more sane.

[aaroncampbell]

Oct 31, 2014 19:30:03 GMT keef said:

Oct 31, 2014 15:18:53 GMT aaroncampbell said:

- which suggests to me that 13 is the model number

I understand your reasoning, but why not the simple solution: S1 was a prototype, the other seraphs are "production-models" numbered 2 to whatever. S13 calls them brothers.
They were build by Diego, and modelled after him. (no wonder they're bonkers)
S13 is special, because of his Prophesy Coprocessor®, which got him scrapped by the others before the comic started.
He showed the same obsessiveness as the others, hopefully his relationship with Shadow has made him a bit more sane.

Hmm, I'd assumed that the "extra part" Kat was talking about was just some component that bridged the etheric with the electronic. Basically, the hardware that processed this code here, which was why Kat didn't recognize it way back then. But your idea that it's something unique to S13 rather than a common component of all Court robots -- that's certainly a possibility too! It brings the question down to whether his tendency toward prophesy is hardware or software based. :-)

As for how the model/serial/naming convention works, I think you may be right after all. On this page, Tom tells us that all the laser cows (LC) are called Elsie and we see "Elsie" 15. I checked back, and on an earlier page we see "Elsie" 113. Given such a high number, it's not likely to be a model number or generation or whatnot. I would agree that it's part of the serial number, so for those two cows their serial numbers are LC15 and LC113, respectively, and they both have the same name Elsie.

As for the initial lovely scrollwork-engraved models such as S1, they were definitely made by Diego. But I'm curious; do you think he named them just called them "Seraph" and "Horse" and whatnot? He did call them his children so he probably did have names for them, but then again he's a bit of an engineer too so maybe the model names were sufficient. It would be interesting if the robots decided to name themselves at some point in their self-development...

[todd]

Oct 31, 2014 18:39:28 GMT bykerhill said:

Also given that Loveboat thinks that he's going to win Lindsey's heart by endangering her students, I would disagree that he has a grasp on the reality of the situation.

My thoughts as well - unless the ship was planning to keep the students' fate a secret from her. (Or unless it thought that she was shallow enough to not care what happened to them.)

And (repeating thoughts that I'd voiced in the last page's thread, admittedly), after this, they can hardly go back to the Court (not without the ship facing sentencing for endangering an entire year of students). They'd have to embark on a life on the run, hiding in some remote part of the ocean, always fearing the day when a new Court ship shows up to arrest the fugitives. Hss it even considered that part?