[2273] "You are stalled."

[imaginaryfriend]

The pipes are either fine or destroyed in the attack. No point in worrying.

[Elysium]

WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE WATER PIPES?

[madjack]

Good odds the sector might have been shut down after the attack too, so even less point in worrying.

Another positive is at least it sounds like the robots are going to get a choice about all this.

[wies]

"Checking the water pipes"
Well, considering the chapter title and how much the landscape looks like a dried up sea, I am guessing the robot will have a lot of water to deal with soon.

[jocobo]

I wonder if this "angel" (sorry, not an angel) is going to give the machines each a choice? Perhaps a choice to be upgraded into new bodies or remain as they are in stasis? I wonder what they will choose. Most seem to enjoy their positions. See how our little guy here panics at the idea his job hasn't been done in his absence. But they are also fascinated by the human condition.


I wonder how the robots will respond to such such a choice. I wonder how the Kat, and and Robot and his cult will respond if a significant number reject bodies and choose to remain as they are. Is it even a choice at all? What if Kat (or robot) don't take no for an answer? Will Kat force them to upgrade for their own "good"? Will Robot?

Very excited to see how this plays out.

[migrantworker]

Mar 2, 2020 8:19:49 GMT madjack said:

Another positive is at least it sounds like the robots are going to get a choice about all this.

Hmm. I understood it in the opposite way: that they do not get a choice, only some guidance on how to adjust.

Maybe the robots will get a choice, but only at some later time? Say when Kat decides her important work is complete, or at least complete enough. She does need help in seeing it through, and seems very determined to get that help.

But now that you mentioned it... she did exclude the Creepy Robot, and seems tense here - as if things were no longer in her hands past that point. So maybe there is a more immediate choice coming. In which case, what are the options? How much would the choice matter to the robot if a headcrabbed version of him already tends to the pipes in HL sector in his absence? The chapter title sounds exactly like a phrase you could use to sway somebody's decision.

[imaginaryfriend]

I figure Kat's set on bringing the current-model robots back. Assuming the original robot/golems are helping Kat (and assuming they're not just being puppeted by Kat's system) they may have advised her that there's no need to give the robots a choice about being left inert or given a new body.

That said, there may be a routine for robots who strongly object to a flesh(like) body or being returned to an operational state and there are probably choices that they'll get to make about what sort of body they're getting. Speculating that there's something of Diego in them I'll also speculate that most will want a male body but some will want to be female, androgynous or other (including non-humanoid types) based on their individual experiences.

[wies]

You know, this page made me realize how much the Court depended on the robots' labor. Even with their work, it was already in disrepair. And this shield has been up for several months. How will the Court maintain its infrastructure now, under attack and with the robots offline? Are we going to see effects of the stalling of the robots?

Has someone been checking the water pipes and the other stuff they were working on?

[todd]

Mar 2, 2020 11:47:19 GMT wies said:

You know, this page made me realize how much the Court depended on the robots' labor. Even with their work, it was already in disrepair. And this shield has been up for several months. How will the Court maintain its infrastructure now, under attack and with the robots offline? Are we going to see effects of the stalling of the robots?

Has someone been checking the water pipes and the other stuff they were working on?

That's a good question. I suspect that the Court humans will have to learn to do those things themselves, rather than delegate those tasks to the robots.

[theonethatgotaway]

I wonder, given the choice, which is perhaps what is coming up here, how many Court Robots would choose to transfigure like Arthur and Robot did. They both did that because of their connection to a human, and perhaps partly ... because that was what was wanted of them. But will Pipe-bot be willing to become Pipe-boy, if it doesn't necessarily help him in his main objective, which is checking the pipes? Does he have a deeper desire?

Tom, you always leave me with so many new questions...

[imaginaryfriend]

I'm thinking big areas of the Court have been abandoned and are getting no maintenance and don't have basic services. They would have to do some maintenance in the areas where people are living and working, though, and presumably someone's looking after the power and water, and collecting the household trash. My suspicion is that they don't dare head-crab enough robots to take care of those tasks because it would weaken the shield and they won't import a bunch of new human workers for security reasons. I figure that security personnel are still tasked with security concerns and those with etheric abilities or other talents that can be useful in the crisis are busy with those things. That pretty much leaves the lower- and mid-level administrators and the teachers/researchers who aren't expert in anything useful. The upper crust of the Court is very busy being in charge of everything so I doubt they're learning how to shingle roofs or drive a garbage truck, of course.

[Sky Schemer]

Mar 2, 2020 8:19:49 GMT madjack said:

Another positive is at least it sounds like the robots are going to get a choice about all this.

"Take my hand to accept the EULA."

[pyradonis]

Mar 2, 2020 13:11:46 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

I'm thinking big areas of the Court have been abandoned and are getting no maintenance and don't have basic services. They would have to do some maintenance in the areas where people are living and working, though, and presumably someone's looking after the power and water, and collecting the household trash. My suspicion is that they don't dare head-crab enough robots to take care of those tasks because it would weaken the shield and they won't import a bunch of new human workers for security reasons. I figure that security personnel are still tasked with security concerns and those with etheric abilities or other talents that can be useful in the crisis are busy with those things. That pretty much leaves the lower- and mid-level administrators and the teachers/researchers who aren't expert in anything useful. The upper crust of the Court is very busy being in charge of everything so I doubt they're learning how to shingle roofs or drive a garbage truck, of course.

Maybe it is also possible to give repetitive menial tasks to members of Foley. We have seen how they are able to work on computers while doing something else in the Ether. I see no reason this should not be possible with simple menial tasks like collecting the garbage.

[ctso74]

Well, who ever she is(Kat or a program created by Kat), she actually seems pretty nice.

[ohthatone]

i hereby dub this bot...Danny-Bot.
oh Danny-Bot,
the pipes, the pipes are calling..

[ctso74]

Mar 2, 2020 14:24:22 GMT pyradonis said:

Mar 2, 2020 13:11:46 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

I'm thinking big areas of the Court have been abandoned and are getting no maintenance and don't have basic services. They would have to do some maintenance in the areas where people are living and working, though, and presumably someone's looking after the power and water, and collecting the household trash. My suspicion is that they don't dare head-crab enough robots to take care of those tasks because it would weaken the shield and they won't import a bunch of new human workers for security reasons. I figure that security personnel are still tasked with security concerns and those with etheric abilities or other talents that can be useful in the crisis are busy with those things. That pretty much leaves the lower- and mid-level administrators and the teachers/researchers who aren't expert in anything useful. The upper crust of the Court is very busy being in charge of everything so I doubt they're learning how to shingle roofs or drive a garbage truck, of course.

Maybe it is also possible to give repetitive menial tasks to members of Foley. We have seen how they are able to work on computers while doing something else in the Ether. I see no reason this should not be possible with simple menial tasks like collecting the garbage.

I'm sure, that they have new usable refugees, has been brought up in Court meetings. Unless, the Omega Device means they can leave everything to rot.

[wies]

Hmm, the elves could indeed help with filling the vacuum the stalled robots left behind.

[mturtle7]

Mar 2, 2020 11:47:19 GMT wies said:

You know, this page made me realize how much the Court depended on the robots' labor. Even with their work, it was already in disrepair. And this shield has been up for several months. How will the Court maintain its infrastructure now, under attack and with the robots offline? Are we going to see effects of the stalling of the robots?

Has someone been checking the water pipes and the other stuff they were working on?

Unfortunately, the robots seem to be practically DESIGNED to be taken for granted, so that's probably what's been happening for the last - oh, few centuries, I expect. They don't eat, don't sleep, love their work, are creative enough to make work-related decisions on their own but not enough to consider any other careers, don't accept salaries, AND they not only have their own segregated culture, but their own administration and laws which are enacted independently of humans. And they all work in the most bizarre, convoluted industrial complex on the face of the planet, where almost all the buildings were literally grown from a supernatural entity centuries ago, and which is so big and has such a small population that most of it is completely uninhabited, and has been for ages. By this point, I expect that most of the Court has almost entirely forgotten that normal urban settings require actual paid workers to do physical labor, menial tasks, and monitoring. For instance, it's entirely possible that there are no living humans that are even aware that this poor pipe-bot's job even needed doing, or that HL sector had any essential plumbing systems at all! The admin-bots could have just given it this job, perhaps after the old HL-sector-pipe-maitenance-bot became unable/uwilling to do it anymore for whatever reason, so this guy went ahead into his new life without needing to interact with humans at all. And the entire position of HL-sector-pipe-maitenance-bot could have been created by some long-dead Court administrator many years ago, who decided the newly-inhabited sector needed a robot to take care of the pipes, put in a request to Robot HQ, and that was that. Or, heck...we know that robots do construction work around the Court too, so it's possible that this position was made by robots, for robots, with literally no human involvement ever. "We need a new building here! Oh good, the robots say they can make it for us."  "Is the plumbing ok?" "Of course! Why wouldn't it be?" Just like that. For years, decades, maybe centuries.

    Basically, you're right. The scale of this disaster can't really be overstated. In fact, now that I think about it, I wonder if maybe the "invasion" of Forest animals wasn't nearly as much of a factor in the evacuation of that area, as much as the simple fact that nobody knew how to keep a bunch of areas in the Court habitable by humans anymore. The "headcrabbing" of all those robots also makes way more sense to me now - if your maintenance workers have always been the robots, and then robots go away, Court admin's first priority isn't going to be "how do we get more maintenance workers who can do their jobs well?", it's just going to be "how do we get the robots back, even superficially?" But of course, imaginaryfriend is right about the limitations of head-crabbing: you obviously can't do it too much, or the shield will go down. I HOPE the Court can just bring in workers from the outside, but imaginaryfriend also has a point about outsiders probably being denied for "security reasons" (can't beat good old paranoia!), so...yeah. If that's the case, there might be a lot of very unhappy interns & office workers who are having to learn how to take out the trash.

[Gemini Jim]

Mar 2, 2020 8:04:50 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

The pipes are either fine or destroyed in the attack. No point in worrying.

Well, if the pipes aren't fine, "gave us an ocean" could be much more literal than anyone realizes.

[Gemini Jim]

OK, so the ocean probably isn't literal.


I was thinking... there must be dozens of robots in the Court. Apparently EVERY robot got stalled.

Juliette's padded little chip box couldn't have held very many robot brains. (Equal to the number of archaic robots Kat unfroze?)

So Kat's robotic rescue operation is more of a "Schindler's List;" save the robots you can, and it's just dumb luck they rescued a water pipe robot.

[wies]

Mar 2, 2020 17:25:37 GMT mturtle7 said:

Mar 2, 2020 11:47:19 GMT wies said:

You know, this page made me realize how much the Court depended on the robots' labor. Even with their work, it was already in disrepair. And this shield has been up for several months. How will the Court maintain its infrastructure now, under attack and with the robots offline? Are we going to see effects of the stalling of the robots?

Has someone been checking the water pipes and the other stuff they were working on?

Unfortunately, the robots seem to be practically DESIGNED to be taken for granted, so that's probably what's been happening for the last - oh, few centuries, I expect. They don't eat, don't sleep, love their work, are creative enough to make work-related decisions on their own but not enough to consider any other careers, don't accept salaries, AND they not only have their own segregated culture, but their own administration and laws which are enacted independently of humans. And they all work in the most bizarre, convoluted industrial complex on the face of the planet, where almost all the buildings were literally grown from a supernatural entity centuries ago, and which is so big and has such a small population that most of it is completely uninhabited, and has been for ages. By this point, I expect that most of the Court has almost entirely forgotten that normal urban settings require actual paid workers to do physical labor, menial tasks, and monitoring. For instance, it's entirely possible that there are no living humans that are even aware that this poor pipe-bot's job even needed doing, or that HL sector had any essential plumbing systems at all! The admin-bots could have just given it this job, perhaps after the old HL-sector-pipe-maitenance-bot became unable/uwilling to do it anymore for whatever reason, so this guy went ahead into his new life without needing to interact with humans at all. And the entire position of HL-sector-pipe-maitenance-bot could have been created by some long-dead Court administrator many years ago, who decided the newly-inhabited sector needed a robot to take care of the pipes, put in a request to Robot HQ, and that was that. Or, heck...we know that robots do construction work around the Court too, so it's possible that this position was made by robots, for robots, with literally no human involvement ever. "We need a new building here! Oh good, the robots say they can make it for us."  "Is the plumbing ok?" "Of course! Why wouldn't it be?" Just like that. For years, decades, maybe centuries.

    Basically, you're right. The scale of this disaster can't really be overstated. In fact, now that I think about it, I wonder if maybe the "invasion" of Forest animals wasn't nearly as much of a factor in the evacuation of that area, as much as the simple fact that nobody knew how to keep a bunch of areas in the Court habitable by humans anymore. The "headcrabbing" of all those robots also makes way more sense to me now - if your maintenance workers have always been the robots, and then robots go away, Court admin's first priority isn't going to be "how do we get more maintenance workers who can do their jobs well?", it's just going to be "how do we get the robots back, even superficially?" But of course, imaginaryfriend is right about the limitations of head-crabbing: you obviously can't do it too much, or the shield will go down. I HOPE the Court can just bring in workers from the outside, but imaginaryfriend also has a point about outsiders probably being denied for "security reasons" (can't beat good old paranoia!), so...yeah. If that's the case, there might be a lot of very unhappy interns & office workers who are having to learn how to take out the trash.

Add to that the human turned faeries and animals the Court is using for processing data.


Also, to your last sentence, I would love to see a bonus page of that, ha.

[ophidiophile]

Mar 2, 2020 14:36:12 GMT ohthatone said:

i hereby dub this bot...Danny-Bot.
oh Danny-Bot,
the pipes, the pipes are calling..

Nobody comment; you'll only encourage him.

[ophidiophile]

Gasp! He's in Silicon Heaven!

[csj]

be careful with that robo-brainjacking, kat

[Gemini Jim]

Mar 2, 2020 8:19:49 GMT madjack said:

Good odds the sector might have been shut down after the attack too, so even less point in worrying.

Another positive is at least it sounds like the robots are going to get a choice about all this.

"Take the blue pill, and you'll go back to the shield. You'll forget everything. All of this was just a robot dream....

Take the red pill, and ... for robot god's sake, take the red pill. Are you crazy? We could only steal so many CPUs without the Court noticing."

[saardvark]

Mar 2, 2020 20:09:01 GMT ophidiophile said:

Mar 2, 2020 14:36:12 GMT ohthatone said:

i hereby dub this bot...Danny-Bot.
oh Danny-Bot,
the pipes, the pipes are calling..

Nobody comment; you'll only encourage him.

welcome to the forum, ophidiophile!  So, you have a pet snake?

[philman]

Mar 2, 2020 20:10:21 GMT ophidiophile said:

Gasp! He's in Silicon Heaven!

Kryten was right!

[pyradonis]

Mar 2, 2020 18:08:17 GMT Gemini Jim said:

OK, so the ocean probably isn't literal.


I was thinking... there must be dozens of robots in the Court. Apparently EVERY robot got stalled.

Juliette's padded little chip box couldn't have held very many robot brains. (Equal to the number of archaic robots Kat unfroze?)

So Kat's robotic rescue operation is more of a "Schindler's List;" save the robots you can, and it's just dumb luck they rescued a water pipe robot.

I understood it as the CPUs being put into the box belonged specifically to the robots the Court security deactivated to open a gap in the shield to let the elves in.

[imaginaryfriend]

'stallation wizard (beta test version)

[saardvark]

Mar 3, 2020 11:43:08 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

'stallation wizard (beta test version)

dark humor for a sunny morn...