Who Created the Power Station?

[shouqi]

As topic. So far, in the Court, we've seen the students, the teachers, the administrative staff over the teacher/student body, and robots. We've also seen Jones and Eglamore, who don't fit neatly into a given subset of people. Precisely none of the people that we've seen so far in the comic have the wherewithal to create the station or its substations, outside of perhaps the Donlans.

So assuming the Donlans did not in fact create the power stations, who did?

[Necropaxx]

I'll bet Boxbot created it, as the power plant gives me a terrible feeling.


Alright, I'll just go back in my hole, then.

[Mezzaphor]

The Station was probably constructed by robots.

As for who arranged to have it constructed: Someone who wanted to extract quantities of ether for some reason (no idea why any of the currently-known characters would want that). Someone with influence in the Court (which would exclude most of the students): The Court does have a lot of resources to throw around -- they were able to just give a warehouse-sized laboratory to Anja and a lathe to Kat -- but the Station is something truly extravagant.

[todd]

Most likely the Court's administration had the station built. Coyote described the Court earlier as "Man's attempt to become God", and playing about with the Ether (which we now know to be the power station's function) certainly fits that description.

[tyler]

I was pretty sure that this guy did it.

[Casey]

Apr 21, 2010 11:59:59 GMT tyler said:

I was pretty sure that this guy did it.

[the bandit]

The Court is not just a school.

[shouqi]

Apr 22, 2010 15:27:30 GMT the bandit said:

The Court is not just a school.

Of course not. But I ask you this: if it's not just a school, where are the personnel that it would take to run it? Again, we've only seen teachers so far.

[Per]

Peter Cushing did it.

[Refugee]

Apr 22, 2010 16:54:43 GMT shouqi said:

... if [the Court is] not just a school, where are the personnel that it would take to run it? Again, we've only seen teachers so far.

Yes. A city the apparent size of the Court should be bustling. Constant traffic. Constant noise. Bright lights. Stores, theatres. Construction cranes and jack hammers. Police departments, hospitals, fire houses. Schools, for crying out loud, schools for all the non-etheric folk actually running and living in the city.

GC is a Potemkin city. And note, from the Wiki link, the story behind why the original Potemkin Villages were allegedly built: to fool Empress Catherine into thinking the region was more valuable than it really was. Other, better documented examples were meant to convey the impression of economic and military strength to daunt enemies.

Denizens of the Forest would be fooled. They see what they expect to see a technological settlement look like.

And it's not like the Court can't mount fake environments.

Then, too, there's the stuff that seems oh so carefully aimed at the students, like the convenient [secret] train to the large animal holding cells. As Annie herself said:

As the train sped silently along the tracks, I was struck as to how deserted the court seemed.

I realized for the first time that I'd barely seen anyone other than the people in my class.

And although I'm here revealing a personal obsession, I am also reminded of the Walled City of Glie (a.k.a. Guri) in the beautiful anime Haibane Renmei.

[todd]

Perhaps the advanced technology of Gunnerkrigg means that they don't need a large human population to run the place; the Court could be run mainly by machinery, with just a few technicians to direct it. (Though that raises the question of how the Court is so efficiently run if the robots are doing nearly all the manual work, given how inept most of them are. Either the Court robots aren't as incompetent as they appear or something else is going on in secret.)

[Refugee]

Apr 22, 2010 22:28:28 GMT todd said:

Perhaps the advanced technology of Gunnerkrigg means that they don't need a large human population to run the place; the Court could be run mainly by machinery

But if almost nobody lives there, what's it for? What does the Court do that requires so much architecture, so much machinery?

Why does anyone need an empty city -- other than to mark out the territory?

[strangethoughts]

Apr 22, 2010 23:29:24 GMT Refugee said:

Apr 22, 2010 22:28:28 GMT todd said:

Perhaps the advanced technology of Gunnerkrigg means that they don't need a large human population to run the place; the Court could be run mainly by machinery

But if almost nobody lives there, what's it for? What does the Court do that requires so much architecture, so much machinery?

Cause they're scientists, so they need labratory space, they need their own workshops, they need testing areas, they need disposal areas for things that go wrong. They need isolation areas for experiments that cannot interact.

Furthermore since gunnerkrigg court is surrounded by the forest outlying space isn't used for farm land so all the food production takes place in the city which means tracts of interior farm space. And we know the court uses interior spaces for growing trees from the forest some of the building could be huge high tech green houses.

They're also a refuge for certain mythical creatures like basil. They have holding areas for hostile creatures as large as a rogat orjak. That needs a lot of space.

Also we've seen a HUGE population of robots so they need storage space and, by the way some are designed, are also the ones who do all the maintenance, construction and the little jobs a society of odd scientists are far overqualified for.

[Casey]

I look at the whole argument in a completely different way.

I think that the Court is a ghost town, that sprung up on its own from runaway technology of the same "growing" variety that is found inside the Tic Tocs. I think it took root, expanded exponentially, created many square miles of buildings and machines that people have never even touched, and I think that Coyote created the Annan Divide to keep it from overtaking Gillitie Wood as well. (either that or he split the Court and the Wood, and some time after that, the aforementioned overgrowth happened on the Court side.)

In either case, I think there's nothing even going on in by far most of the buildings you see. I think they found some throughout that were useful (the Power Station could be one) and then started using them, but everything else just sort of sits there, unoccupied and unused.

Zimmy or Jack would be good ones to ask this question, since they're both out all the time and could tell you if there were any actual signs of occupancy or habitation in most of the buildings.

[Deleted]

I have to agree with Casey here. The Court is a case of rampant technological overgrowth (literally), which makes it all the more ironic that the Court staff goes to such lengths to quarantine and control anything related to Gillitie Wood.

It's also a clever subversion, as most (read: nearly all) fiction is about nature overgrowing and retaking the land under technological control.

It may also be the case that the Court's past leadership expected far more people to be living there. The empty court seems like a city waiting for people who are never going to arrive.

We know that Gillitie denizens can become "human", and that the opposite is true as well. Expanding upon Casey's theory, maybe whoever is responsible for the Court's almost-organic growth believed there would be defections from the forest en-masse, and thus contrived a way to create enough infrastructure to deal with an exploding population ahead of time? Thing is, the defections never amounted to what they'd expected.

What we call "Tic Tocs" are remnants of that "organic" technology.

[Casey]

Good points. In my theory, the overgrowth was accidental. However I'll be the first to say that mine is a wild theory, and is quite possible to be completely wrong. The question of why GC is so big and empty is after all one of the central mysteries of the comic... and also one of the more fun mysteries to speculate about.

[warrl]

Apr 22, 2010 22:28:28 GMT todd said:

(Though that raises the question of how the Court is so efficiently run if the robots are doing nearly all the manual work, given how inept most of them are. Either the Court robots aren't as incompetent as they appear or something else is going on in secret.)

We haven't seen the robots being inept at anything other than dealing with humans as people, have we?

[the bandit]

Apr 23, 2010 19:09:40 GMT warrl said:

We haven't seen the robots being inept at anything other than dealing with humans as people, have we?

Heh. I was tempted to make this point myself.

The one exception I can think of is Hornbot. But then again... there's a human factor in the equation...

[lurker]

Apr 23, 2010 5:02:37 GMT Casey said:

[...]I think that the Court is a ghost town, that sprung up on its own from runaway technology of the same "growing" variety that is found inside the Tic Tocs. I think it took root, expanded exponentially, created many square miles of buildings and machines that people have never even touched, [...]

Actually, I have this somewhat wild theory that the Court used to be a bustling, fully-inhabited place. But Something Bad(tm) happened, related to the way they were trying to manipulate etheric energy (such as in the Power Station), which caused an etheric catastrophe that left it in its current state. In other words, Zimmingham is Gunnerkrigg Court! Or rather, the imprint of the Court on the ether. The aforementioned etheric catastrophe is what created all those Nobodies -- shadows of the previous inhabitants of the Court. Their facelessness is testimony to the catastrophic event that disintegrated their personalities (faces) into etheric static. The reason the Power Station triggered Zimmy's blip into Zimmingham, is precisely because it is directly related to the existence of Zimmingham in the first place.

[Casey]

I like where you're going with that theory. The Court does look like a dead, grey space when seen through ether-eyes, after all.

I will point out however that Zimmy routinely found herself in her nightmare world long before she was brought to the Court though. So I'm with you on the possibility of something having happened to all the people, but I don't think it's related to Zimmy's talent/curse.