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Post by sebastian on May 26, 2021 6:59:31 GMT
There are a lot of big capital M mysteries in Gunnerkrigg Court these days. I wanted to bring up a couple of the small ones that I haven't seen discussed so much. I decided to stick to ones having to do with Robots, just because I'm fascinated by the robots. Also, I wanted to resist making this yet another "big question" thread. Maybe bounding it a little will help? Anyway:
1. Who runs the robot jail? Probably the Seraphs but I don't think it's been stated explicitly? I mean someone must have given the doorman and the information booth guy their jobs, right? Not to mention the awesome guards!
2. Who decides who gets put in robot jail? We know the Seraphs had S-13 paper-clipped and I think we can safely assume that they were also responsible for getting his chip put in the chip repository, but there were a lot of chips there. I remember mention of robots trying to leave the court in the past and being punished thusly, but who actually controls all that? Is there a court? Do the robots police themselves or what? Based on what rules?
3. Is the robot king actually king of anything? Like, does he have a position of authority? I thought I remembered Tom saying he just welded a piece of yellow metal to his head and that was it, but then in the The Torn Sea he seemed to have a throne and be in charge, and Annie actually called him the Robot King when she told Renard to go to him for help saving their Angel. Follow-up: If he does have a position of authority, how did it get it? Appointed by the court? Voted in? Those first three questions are partially based on the concept that the court does not seem to have a huge amount of control over the minds of the robots day-to-day. They got the override hack in there that let them do the shield thing, but when they want to change the behavior of an individual robot they pretty much lobotomize it with one of those scary green chips that Kat hates. They wouldn't have to do that if they could just give orders and be sure they would be followed, would they?
4. Is Robot a prophet? Like the kind with a gift of prophecy, or maybe visions? He apparently was talking about the Creator and other things that have since actually happened long before Kat came on the scene. Remember, he was disassembled and hidden sometime before Year 7, and the Seraphs said that was the reason for it. There have been other signs of prophecy, like the robots just knowing that the tic-tocs were created by the Creator long before Kat was born. 5. What are the newly embodied robots doing with their days? It's not hard to envision Arthur hanging out in the basement of Kat's lab, but it seems like they are getting processed and em-bodied at a pretty good clip. I would think that they would stand out, if seen on the street or in the halls. There really aren't that many people in the court, and while not all look baseline human, we never saw any with seams and such like Arthur until Arthur. 6. Are the robots alive? They certainly seem sentient and to have something very close to free will. 7. Are all of the newly embodied robots linked to Annie? Or, more likely, Kat? If Kat used the arrow to move Arthur's consciousness, and it was only possible because she modified it using Annie's link with Renard, does that imply that they are all her familiars now? Or at least linked in some way? Best guess is that the new contract given to her by Arbiter Saslamel works just like the Annie/Renard Familiar Contract. With Annie and Renard, it gave them a much closer relationship AND attached Renard's soul to Annie instead of the body of the stuffed animal, so I've always wondered what the equivalent operation is when applied to Kat and a golem. I mean, either it's the same as Annie has with Renard and they are all linked to her, or it's the equivalent with them all linked to RoboGoddessKat. You know how we always see Kat's Goddess form with a bunch of crazy wires and stuff linked to things off in the distance? I'm suggesting that the robots are what she's linked to.
Anyway, I know people are more concerned with Omega and Jones thinking Annie may be crazy and Loup and the forest and all the other big picture stuff, but thought there might be some interest in the poor neglected bots and their... religion? first, thank for starting this thread. these questions keep bothering me, too and I always wanted to have a discussion about it. to try to answer 1,2 my impression is that robots are mostly self managed. It was mentioned somewhere in the comic that they repair themselves and build new ones and that is why moved to simpler models than the one used by Diego. It is even possible that the Court itself have no real idea how the robots really works, the mod they used to regain contol from the robots on 'shield duty' seems to be very rough and unrefined. Heck, Unless I forgot some page they seems to have no idea why the robots started making the shield. 3 no idea, maybe Diego made it? maybe it was a simple coordinating figure that evolved with time? Maybe it is just because it is funny? Who knows. 4 Don't know, but at this point I can't exclude some time travel shenanigans. also related, tik tok birds and how they entered robot mithology. 5 no ideas 6 after 5000 years we are still not sure if humans have free wills, so I'll pass on this. 7 I don't think we have enough elements to work with (even if that never stopped a forum before). The only thing that I am sure about is that using that arrow will come back to bite Kat in the ass eventually. With all its flaws one thing I agree with the Court on is to not trust 'technology' that you don't fully understand and the truth is that Kat have no idea what the arrow actually does (or etter, she know 'what' it does, she don't know 'how' she using it as a Black Box essentially. And the foreshadowing is just too much for it to not be important. (but then agains it could just be Tom pulling a Siddell on us).
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Post by atteSmythe on May 27, 2021 18:11:42 GMT
3. Is the robot king actually king of anything? Like, does he have a position of authority? I thought I remembered Tom saying he just welded a piece of yellow metal to his head and that was it, but then in the The Torn Sea he seemed to have a throne and be in charge, and Annie actually called him the Robot King when she told Renard to go to him for help saving their Angel. Follow-up: If he does have a position of authority, how did it get it? Appointed by the court? Voted in?
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Post by todd on May 28, 2021 13:28:49 GMT
One other robot-related thought that I set down here; it's not fully about robots, but I didn't feel comfortable about starting a new thread on that subject.
The robot horse in Chapter Fifteen is reciting from "Paradise Lost" (Book Six, to be precise). I recently wondered whether "Paradise Lost" might actually be an uncomfortable work of literature for the Court; the great act of "man's first disobedience" in it is eating forbidden fruit of knowledge - which could describe the Court's big pursuit. Furthermore, in Book Eight, when Adam questions the archangel Raphael about astronomical matters, Raphael, after a few evasive answers, advises Adam not to ponder such matters but focus on the rights and wrongs of human life - which could also be interpreted as "leave the ether alone; stop trying to figure it out and understand it". Which raises the question of who at the Court would have encouraged the robot horse to learn a poem that could be so much at odds with the Court.
(Of course, the Court leadership might be among those people who came away from the poem with the wrong perspective and see Satan as a heroic rebel worthy of emulation....)
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Post by drmemory on Aug 9, 2021 0:33:30 GMT
A couple of new robot things:
There are a bunch of much more human-like robots out there embodied by Kat, unless someone made her stop. Still wondering where they are hiding and what they are doing!
Coyote has never met Kat. He does not appear to be omniscient. So... does this imply that the robots and their evolution aren't taken into account in his plans? That may not matter, or it may end up mattering a lot!
Aata also doesn't SEEM to be omniscient, though he clearly has spies. Now that we know he is sort of a human supremacist, I'm thinking more than ever that what's going on with the robots isn't know to him. What will happen when he finds out?
I feel like big things are quietly brewing in the background. Mechanical things (to a degree).
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Post by blahzor on Aug 9, 2021 4:59:40 GMT
A couple of new robot things: There are a bunch of much more human-like robots out there embodied by Kat, unless someone made her stop. Still wondering where they are hiding and what they are doing! Coyote has never met Kat. He does not appear to be omniscient. So... does this imply that the robots and their evolution aren't taken into account in his plans? That may not matter, or it may end up mattering a lot! Aata also doesn't SEEM to be omniscient, though he clearly has spies. Now that we know he is sort of a human supremacist, I'm thinking more than ever that what's going on with the robots isn't know to him. What will happen when he finds out? I feel like big things are quietly brewing in the background. Mechanical things (to a degree). i'm sure they aren't out and about and b/c of the destruction and panic about what Loup might do the Court probably isn't noticing their robots missing and never coming back that are now bio-robots
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Post by drmemory on Aug 9, 2021 22:58:43 GMT
A couple of new robot things: There are a bunch of much more human-like robots out there embodied by Kat, unless someone made her stop. Still wondering where they are hiding and what they are doing! Coyote has never met Kat. He does not appear to be omniscient. So... does this imply that the robots and their evolution aren't taken into account in his plans? That may not matter, or it may end up mattering a lot! Aata also doesn't SEEM to be omniscient, though he clearly has spies. Now that we know he is sort of a human supremacist, I'm thinking more than ever that what's going on with the robots isn't know to him. What will happen when he finds out? I feel like big things are quietly brewing in the background. Mechanical things (to a degree). i'm sure they aren't out and about and b/c of the destruction and panic about what Loup might do the Court probably isn't noticing their robots missing and never coming back that are now bio-robots You know, the court may not even realize the robots are missing. If I remember correctly, Kat was given a briefcase full of brains (CPUs) by Juliette at the start of her current android-ifaction process. I'm thinking that most of the robots are still in place, only with much lower-end CPUs provided by the court, either acting as part of the shield or as guard drones. Juliette did not actually state where those CPUs came from, actually, so maybe they are just the ones with the green replacements.
Alternatively, she may have swapped replacements in for the ones making the barrier. Or maybe they are from robot jail!
I'm sort of thinking of as those overridden guard robots as potential Daleks, of course. Because doing that sort of thing never turns out well.
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Post by warrl on Aug 10, 2021 0:16:04 GMT
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Post by drmemory on Aug 10, 2021 3:36:59 GMT
You are correct, sir. That's what I've been thinking of as "robot jail" actually. Wasn't there something about CPUs being extracted and sent there if they exhibited behavioral anomalies? I could be making that up, but not intentionally if so.
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Post by warrl on Aug 10, 2021 6:33:28 GMT
Well, that's why Robot's CPU had to be rescued from there.
We don't know why so many other CPUs were there.
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Post by madjack on Aug 10, 2021 7:04:18 GMT
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Post by DonDueed on Aug 10, 2021 18:23:46 GMT
Speaking of other robot mysteries...
Who made the green goo that was used to modify some of the robots? That stuff implies that there's at least one other robotics expert (besides Kat) in the Court. Who is it? What are they up to? Why have we not met them (as far as we know)? Do the green things date all the way back to Diego, or are they a recent development?
Did... did Kat create the green stuff?
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Post by maxptc on Aug 26, 2021 1:53:19 GMT
I've been rereading the comic for reasons besides making bad jokes, and I actually came across something.
Was the weird physical ship body Kat made alive? Like alive enough that it should have an afterlife guide? If it doesn't count as alive no big deal. But if that ship was alive that seems like a mystery, one that could result in a ghost robot cruise ship trying to find love in all the wrong places, if we all wish hard enough.
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Post by pyradonis on Aug 26, 2021 10:11:24 GMT
Speaking of other robot mysteries...
Who made the green goo that was used to modify some of the robots? That stuff implies that there's at least one other robotics expert (besides Kat) in the Court. Who is it? What are they up to? Why have we not met them (as far as we know)? Do the green things date all the way back to Diego, or are they a recent development?
Did... did Kat create the green stuff?
What goo?
I've been rereading the comic for reasons besides making bad jokes, and I actually came across something. Was the weird physical ship body Kat made alive? Like alive enough that it should have an afterlife guide? If it doesn't count as alive no big deal. But if that ship was alive that seems like a mystery, one that could result in a ghost robot cruise ship trying to find love in all the wrong places, if we all wish hard enough. The chapter "New Contract" heavily implied that a robot is not alive as long as its brain is still a CPU. Arbiter Saslamel only turned up because Arthur (with his new brain) would count as a living being after the transfer was complete. So, I don't think the ship ever counted as being alive.
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Post by maxptc on Aug 26, 2021 13:02:10 GMT
The chapter "New Contract" heavily implied that a robot is not alive as long as its brain is still a CPU. Arbiter Saslamel only turned up because Arthur (with his new brain) would count as a living being after the transfer was complete. So, I don't think the ship ever counted as being alive. Yeah, that sounds logical. No ghost boat I guess.
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Post by warrl on Aug 26, 2021 19:59:35 GMT
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Post by Gemminie on Aug 26, 2021 20:56:20 GMT
Speaking of other robot mysteries... Who made the green goo that was used to modify some of the robots? That stuff implies that there's at least one other robotics expert (besides Kat) in the Court. Who is it? What are they up to? Why have we not met them (as far as we know)? Do the green things date all the way back to Diego, or are they a recent development? Did... did Kat create the green stuff?
What goo? My guess is that DonDueed meant the huge green circuits grafted onto robots' heads, first seen here, with other examples here and here. They do sort of look like they could be a blob of goo with electrical leads attached, but I had been interpreting them as basically big microchips (macrochips?) that seem to have several wires that probably have to be soldered into different points of the robot's head circuitry, after its CPU is removed. According to Kat's description, they contain a rudimentary AI. But the question is valid: who made these things? There must currently be someone capable of creating such a thing in the Court, unless Diego made them long ago, somehow foreseeing this eventuality. But I doubt that; it seems more likely that someone made them recently. I seriously doubt Kat made them, because she seems to hate them, and because when she talks about how robots are converted, she talks about how "they" do it, implying that she's not involved. I don't think Kat has a rival, because whoever made these override boxes can only make robots obey basic orders/instructions (I don't think we know whether they respond to vocal commands; it may require programming) and not speak. Though I guess Kat hasn't actually created any robots from scratch; she's just made new bodies for existing ones. I've been rereading the comic for reasons besides making bad jokes, and I actually came across something. Was the weird physical ship body Kat made alive? Like alive enough that it should have an afterlife guide? If it doesn't count as alive no big deal. But if that ship was alive that seems like a mystery, one that could result in a ghost robot cruise ship trying to find love in all the wrong places, if we all wish hard enough. The chapter "New Contract" heavily implied that a robot is not alive as long as its brain is still a CPU. Arbiter Saslamel only turned up because Arthur (with his new brain) would count as a living being after the transfer was complete. So, I don't think the ship ever counted as being alive. Yeah, that sounds logical. No ghost boat I guess. Not unless you count this one. Though I guess that's more a boat for ghosts than a boat that is a ghost.
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Post by drmemory on Aug 27, 2021 0:31:13 GMT
I like "macrochips". Not sure what those green things are though. They always looked like an extra, solid piece, like maybe a supplemental memory storage device? Or a co-processor? Whatever it may be, it only seems to show up on the more free-willed robots. But now Annie is making living beings out of robots, sans CPUs. So THAT'S different! Are the ones with the macrochips alive in some different way? You know, they almost seem to be of one mind, except for S13. You always see clumps (herds?) of Seraph robots together and they generally seem to agree on things. Maybe it's a networking add-on, as they seem more like they communicate a lot and reach consensus fast rather than share a mind. So what happens when S13 gets his (her?) new body from Kat? No more CPU, and alive, but I wonder what the ramifications will be if that is done to a Seraph? Is it possible that S13 knows what will happen, and that is why he hasn't accepted a new body yet? He's been around from the start, and has been the main beta-tester, yet he still has that chip with its green add-on when so many others have been given life. Why is that? I started this thread because there seemed to be so many unanswered questions surrounding the robots. I swear the list just keeps getting longer! Maybe when Tom circles back to them we'll learn more. He's pretty busy with trees and gods and avatars of death and such at the moment though.
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Post by najmniejszy on Aug 27, 2021 15:24:35 GMT
I've been rereading the comic for reasons besides making bad jokes, and I actually came across something. Was the weird physical ship body Kat made alive? Like alive enough that it should have an afterlife guide? If it doesn't count as alive no big deal. But if that ship was alive that seems like a mystery, one that could result in a ghost robot cruise ship trying to find love in all the wrong places, if we all wish hard enough. The chapter "New Contract" heavily implied that a robot is not alive as long as its brain is still a CPU. Arbiter Saslamel only turned up because Arthur (with his new brain) would count as a living being after the transfer was complete. So, I don't think the ship ever counted as being alive. Not exactly, he turned up because the contract of ownership was about to be messed with, who knows what would happen if Kat was to make Arthur his body without messing with the arrow and/or Renard's contract before. Or if she made the cruise ship a body, for that matter... EDIT: It is actually said that normally it would be fine, and it was the arrow's use that made Saslamel appear to give Kat a stern talk www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2154
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Post by drmemory on Aug 27, 2021 20:14:33 GMT
The chapter "New Contract" heavily implied that a robot is not alive as long as its brain is still a CPU. Arbiter Saslamel only turned up because Arthur (with his new brain) would count as a living being after the transfer was complete. So, I don't think the ship ever counted as being alive.
Not exactly, he turned up because the contract of ownership was about to be messed with, who knows what would happen if Kat was to make Arthur his body without messing with the arrow and/or Renard's contract before. Or if she made the cruise ship a body, for that matter... EDIT: It is actually said that normally it would be fine, and it was the arrow's use that made Saslamel appear to give Kat a stern talk www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2154Hmmm. Good points. It also says, though, that the transfer would not have worked if not for the arrow being used, and that Arthur was already a living mind! If he meant to say it would be living afterwards but wasn't now, he wasn't clear about that at all.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, the contract being abused was actually the contract between Annie and Renard, right? Annies, whatever. So there were two issues:
1. Using a single-use contract (which I believe was the contract that had Annie owning the wolf doll) to transfer Arthur's living mind from one inanimate form to another. 2. The arrow was needed to enable that to happen, and they have had so much trouble with the arrow in the past they did not want to allow it to be used again.
Clearly, the arrow can cause a lot of problems if abused!
I've never quite understood what the Annie/wolf doll contract had to do with the Arthur mind transfer, nor why it needed to be changed to a different contract type to allow the Arthur operation. I also never understood why Renard had to be involved in the changes! Consider this: Surma made the wolf doll and gave it to Annie. So there is a contract of ownership there. Renard jumped into the doll rather than die. This effectively made Annie his boss (owner?) because she owned the doll. I remember Renard saying "The mind is the plaything of the body" - I'm pretty sure that was a lot more weighty statement than it appeared at the time - it is actually the explanation for why Annie controls Renard!
I remember posting about how I thought that this would result in all the robots with new bodies bound to Annie somehow but people didn't seem to like that theory. I still think it's plausible, though it may actually turn out that they are more bound to Kat because she controls the arrow. She also created the new bodies, so owns them, so should have a contract of ownership with each. Which means she controls all of them if she wants to!
Looking at it this way, it's easy to see why Arbiter Saslamel didn't want it to happen! Taken literally, each time she transfers a robot mind into a new body that she made, she basically enslaves them. Given this, that whole "dark fate" comment makes a lot of sense. Without her friendship with Annie, she would be the owner of a robot army who MUST obey her. Truly, I still think that is the current situation BUT that Kat won't use them that way, and will free them if she finds a way.
I also fear (and always have) that the court knew this and arranged for it to happen.
In summary, if I'm right, Kat has a contract of ownership with each robot body she makes, and thus owns all of the robots that transfer into one. I'm sure that isn't her intent but here we are.
Still, I don't quite understand why she needed Annie's contract and the arrow to do it. Something to do with her scanning them when she gave Renard's ownership back to Annie, I'd wager. After she decrypted the information in the transfer, she reverse engineered it and figured out how to substitute "old robot body" for "Annie" and "new robot body" for "wolf doll". Cool, eh? Eh?
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Post by najmniejszy on Aug 27, 2021 21:07:11 GMT
Well, I think the thing you are missing is that a new contract was formed - all the things you listed, (former, now artificial-humans)robots being owned by Kat, her having some degree of control over them, etc., would exist if the contract was a variation on the contract between Annie(s) and Renard - but the whole point of the chapter was the fact that the Annie(s)-Renar contract was changed, and a whole new Kat-(former)robots contract was formed. We don't really know anything about Kat's new contrat, and it may not be related to ownership at all - think a bespoke tailor, that creates a suit - they are the creator, but the creation is at no point theirs, and ownership belongs to the client (I purposely chose that example, as something made to be sold would be in possession of the maker until sold, so the comparison to something made for a specific person from the getgo seemed most unambigous).
As to the thing you have trouble understanding, i.e. what Annie(s)-Renard contract had to do with transferring Arthur's mind into a body, I believe it's a separate matter entirely (or, should I say, the root of the former issue, but the roots of those roots are irrelevantgoing further), and it just stems from this "celestial beureaocracy" not keeping up with the times and analyzing/transferring contracts via computers created confusion that would not arise if Saslames was a 21st century office worker instead of a weird ancient rock face
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Post by drmemory on Aug 30, 2021 4:55:39 GMT
I'm not sure I'm the one having trouble understanding things here, sir or madam. I just went back through the chapter yet again. Two separate things were done. One - Renard's status was changed from "owned object" to "familiar", and made permanent. This is a huge change and I don't think the teenage girls nor the fox caught that this meant he was now owned by Annie permanently. Actually, Renard may have realized this and been fine with it - there is nowhere he'd rather be, right? So there was a new contract introduced - the familiar contract. Instead of Annie owning the doll, and Renard's mind while he is in the doll, she now is the dominant part of a familiar pair, and Renard is permanently bound to her. This could last a really long time if psychopomps are immortal. Two - The contract of ownership that Kat was using as part of the robot thing was changed to multi-use. The translator says that, specifically. Same contract, a basic contract of ownership, with one change - it is now multi-use. It was not made into some other kind of contract.
Thinking it through: Kat created and owns the new robot body. Her computer, which includes technology created by Juliette, is used to transfer robot minds from one body to another. The arrow, which seems to allow some rules to be violated, is needed for the process, as well as the original contract of ownership. I think that what we're seeing here is Kat breaking the laws of reality to move a robot mind from a robot body to a different kind of body, that she owns. This got the attention of the Arbiter due to the use of the arrow and the abuse of the ownership contract. It really seems to be that she was using the arrow and her computer to change a free robot (the robots were created by other robots) to a non-free robot by putting it's mind into a body that SHE OWNED. A slave, in other words. After this careful re-read, I agree that there are two contracts now, but the only one that matters for the robots is the contract of ownership. Oddly, I think the arrow also replaced the contract of ownership she would have had over the new body with the Annie/doll contract of ownership - else there wouldn't have been a conflict.
Given what we've been shown, I honestly believe that any robot she gives an ocean, she also owns.
I still find this the most interesting chapter in the saga and I don't think we've seen all the repercussions of what was done yet.
Here is the heart of one of the big mysteries about robots. This page. It is stated that transferring the essence of one object to another is not against the rules, but by doing what she is doing, Kat is using the contract "on a living mind", which is made possible only by the arrow. So it would be ok to copy the contents of a chip into a new chip in a new body, but she is doing more than that. She is bringing a golem to life with an existing mind, and it is a problem because she is using an existing single-use ownership contract on a new owner/object pair. The Arbiter, through the translator, states she is bringing the new, mindless body to life, which (unless I am deeply confused) is what makes the mind of Arthur into a living mind, and thus not cool to re-use a single-use contract of ownership on. Kat understands this, I think - she says (on the next page) that Arthur is not an object any more but a new living creature. It is also stated that this would not be possible without the arrow. Which implies that the arrow has to be involved every time she brings a new one of these to life. But what worries me, still, is that each of them will be bound by the modified contract of ownership. I feel like maybe this could have been done differently, in such a way that the contract of ownership wasn't involved, but maybe not.
The arbiter doesn't really care one way or the other - he just wanted to get rid of the conflict and would have been just as happy to toss Kat into jail and bind her mind as well.
Maybe it will turn out that Kat can just turn her robots free by saying so, but I suspect it won't be that simple - more likely she'll be able to give ownership to someone else but not change their nature. This is a very different situation from one where she made a new body and moved the brain chip into it, as she's done with S13.
Too bad they didn't ask for a copy of the contract while they had the Arbiter and translator there! You know Kat is going to violate the terms and conditions at some point, simply because she doesn't know what they are.
Anyway, if you see a flaw in my argument, by all means please explain it to me.
I am very much expecting that either Kat will need to enter the ether again with her little glowing green arrow-derived toy, and get quite a surprise, OR will accidentally give an order to one of the new beings and find that it must obey (to the surprise of both). Honestly, the more I think about it, I think the reason Tom hasn't answered any of the questions about robots is that he's planning on a major plot involving them and Kat. But we'll see. More Loup drama first.
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Post by drmemory on Aug 30, 2021 5:08:10 GMT
TL&DR version:
Annie/Renard got a new contract. He is now her familiar. Permanently, not just while he is in the doll.
Kat is using the arrow to transfer robot (golem) minds into new forms, without their old chips, using the arrow and the old Annie/doll contract of ownership (modified to be multi-use).
I maintain that this brings them to life but also makes them her slaves. She is the creator of their new forms and also the reason they are now living and not just intelligent. She really is their creator, just as her prophet S13 says.
Kat is nice and never orders them around and thus has not yet noticed this.
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Post by Gemminie on Aug 30, 2021 14:09:05 GMT
I like "macrochips". Not sure what those green things are though. They always looked like an extra, solid piece, like maybe a supplemental memory storage device? Or a co-processor? Whatever it may be, it only seems to show up on the more free-willed robots. But now Annie is making living beings out of robots, sans CPUs. So THAT'S different! Are the ones with the macrochips alive in some different way? You know, they almost seem to be of one mind, except for S13. You always see clumps (herds?) of Seraph robots together and they generally seem to agree on things. Maybe it's a networking add-on, as they seem more like they communicate a lot and reach consensus fast rather than share a mind. So what happens when S13 gets his (her?) new body from Kat? No more CPU, and alive, but I wonder what the ramifications will be if that is done to a Seraph? Is it possible that S13 knows what will happen, and that is why he hasn't accepted a new body yet? He's been around from the start, and has been the main beta-tester, yet he still has that chip with its green add-on when so many others have been given life. Why is that? I started this thread because there seemed to be so many unanswered questions surrounding the robots. I swear the list just keeps getting longer! Maybe when Tom circles back to them we'll learn more. He's pretty busy with trees and gods and avatars of death and such at the moment though. I was reading incorrectly, I think. The green things I thought people were talking about were the big green things that the Court has been replacing the robots' CPUs with since Loup's attack, to stop them doing their collective shield-making. If we're talking about the small blue bits added onto the seraph robots' CPUs, that's obviously a different matter.
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Post by Gemminie on Aug 30, 2021 14:53:10 GMT
My understanding of things is similar, but not exactly the same. I'm not sure I'm the one having trouble understanding things here, sir or madam. I just went back through the chapter yet again. Two separate things were done. One - Renard's status was changed from "owned object" to "familiar", and made permanent. More than that – the contract of ownership Annie had over Renard's body was dissolved and replaced by a new one of a new type. I believe that Renard fully understood this and agreed to it. I wouldn't say that Annie owns Renard; I'd say it's more on the order of a contract of service – they are each subject to certain benefits and restrictions for as long as the contract holds. Renard gets the ability to use some of Annie's powers when she agrees he should, Annie has the ability to command Renard, and they both have the ability to communicate via the Ether. There may be ways for either of them to break the contract if they so choose. But yes, if it isn't broken, it could last a very long time. The Arbiter probably considers Renard to be a living mind, though, so I don't think he'd sanction a contract that meant that Annie actually owned Renard. The fact that she previously owned the "body" he was inhabiting may well have been stretching that rule nearly to the breaking point. Or, perhaps the Arbiter doesn't consider Renard a living mind because he's not technically alive, not being a natural creature of flesh and blood. Is the arrow needed, though? I can argue pretty strongly that the arrow is an artifact capable of bending the Ether to its will, including smashing contracts and breaking all kinds of rules. Kat could have gone ahead and done what the Arbiter didn't want her to do, though she would have gone to "jail" for it. But it would still have happened, and I don't think the Arbiter could have done anything about that, any more than the psychopomps could free Jeanne or the RoTD could access Jeanne's records until the arrow was deactivated. The Arbiter really, really doesn't like that arrow and doesn't want it used. But now Kat has a new contract (she specifically asks for a new contract) saying she can do what she needs to do here. I don't think she needs the arrow, because I think the Arbiter is willing to go to some trouble to ensure that it isn't necessary. Anyway, the other way in which I disagree is that I don't think Kat owns the new robot body once the robot's consciousness has been transferred into it. The Arbiter seems to be pretty strongly against slavery. Kat owned the new robot body, and I could argue that Juliette owned the brain, but I believe the new android owns itself. "Terms and conditions do apply." My argument is that that could easily be among those terms and conditions, which Kat didn't read and which we don't get to see. The conflict was twofold: she was trying to use a single-use contract (Annie's contract owning Renard's body) for multiple ownerships (her ownership of one robot body, and probably more), and she was trying to own a living mind. These were both due to the fact that she'd made a copy of the Annie-plushiewolf contract and was unknowingly trying to use that, rather than making up one of her own. Now Annie and Renard have a new master-familiar contract, and Kat has a new contract that allows her a limited ability to create sentient life. I disagree about the ownership part, for reasons I've stated. Allowing that seems inconsistent with the Arbiter's stated rules.I absolutely agree with you that we haven't seen all the repercussions yet. I agree that before Kat's new contract, the arrow was the only way in which she could attempt this. But after it, I argue that she doesn't need it anymore. It's a problem both because of that and because she's creating life and therefore setting herself up as the owner of a living sentient being. Either would be a problem by itself. The fact that owning a sentient being is a problem is something that Kat sees as confirmation that she's making Arthur into a new kind of life form. So I agree with all of your points except that I don't think Kat owns the new androids, and that I don't think she needs the arrow to make robots into androids anymore. And I think the Annie-Renard contract is completely new, as it's a master-familiar contract rather than an owner-object one. And Kat has a new contract that lets her turn robots into sentient androids.
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Post by najmniejszy on Aug 31, 2021 14:03:37 GMT
I'm not sure I'm the one having trouble understanding things here, sir or madam. I did not mean it as a slight, but as a literal response to the words you used "I've never quite understood what the Annie/wolf doll contract had to do[...]"
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Post by maxptc on Aug 31, 2021 20:57:23 GMT
I've become a little lost with the magical contract talk, but the important takeaway for me is that we can't outright confirm or deny that a robotic ghost boat was the result of the Torn Sea chapter.
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Post by drmemory on Sept 1, 2021 2:33:12 GMT
I'm not sure I'm the one having trouble understanding things here, sir or madam. I did not mean it as a slight, but as a literal response to the words you used "I've never quite understood what the Annie/wolf doll contract had to do[...]" No worries. I figured it out later, though, and posted about it some more. If that comment, posted a couple of messages back, is the source of your comment about my not understanding things, fine. It felt personal but now I understand. I think I also understand what the Annie/wolf doll contract had to do with things now - it's pretty clear what Kat was trying to do and why it was a problem and why the Arbiter showed up, but I hadn't grokked it in fullness at that time. We were actually told, but it took me a while to wrap my head around it.
I'll try to be careful to not show weakness of understanding in the future.
I think I'm going to stop posting about this until we get more info. Obviously not everyone agrees with my interpretation of what we were told and shown, and I don't think I can convince them to reconsider. Nor do I care all that much.
Besides, I have a hunch that the part of this that will turn around and bite Kat in the butt will be the EULA she signed without reading, not the living robot army (regardless of the nature of their bonds to her) nor the schemes of S13.
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Post by drmemory on Oct 5, 2021 17:27:01 GMT
Well. It appears the robots are about to blow their cover, whatever that cover was. In panel 3 here, we see Kat waving for others to follow her. The two in the background sure look like Shadow and Robot to me (Shadow 2 and Seraph S13). The antique robots she revived, that have been helping her, are almost certainly also there, and I have to guess that is who she is waving to.
Mysteries abound!
Where have the newly embodied second-gen robots been hiding all this time? Surely they weren't just hiding in her lab? Are we about to see them exposed to the court?
Does the court know about the ancient robots? I have to think they knew at one point. Back when Diego died and his children made the new generation of robots, then killed themselves, surely they must have noticed this. The current robots are pretty well integrated into the court, and some work for the court directly. But I have to think that the fact that Kat revived the old ones and has them working for her will be quite a surprise!
I'm also a bit surprised that nobody has noticed the disappearance of so many CPUs. Maybe they were indeed taken from Robot Jail, which the court probably doesn't pay much attention to. At least we've never seen a human in the Robots Only area other than our friends and heroes.
I hope Juliette and Arthur aren't going to be in terrible trouble when all this comes to light. They've clearly been doing good, moral, ethical things, but the court may not share that point of view.
Maybe I'm overestimating how secret the whole robot thing has been. A fair number of people know about it, or could. I'm specifically worried about Tony, Donald, and Anja, who actually work for the court directly and knew about some of the earlier stuff. I don't remember seeing any of them down there since Kat started giving robots new bodies though. I'm sure someone will correct me if I just missed it.
Not directly robot-related, but I wonder where Kat, Shadow and Robot are right now, anyway? If they were in her underground lair, I would think it was currently covered in trees and dirt, and possibly further underground. Wouldn't it be funny if that's where Annie led all the forest critters?
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Post by warrl on Oct 5, 2021 18:06:44 GMT
Well, we are pretty sure that Tony is aware of what Kat has been up to - otherwise I'd really like to know how she persuaded him to let her use his genitalia as a model...
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Post by drmemory on Oct 7, 2021 5:09:27 GMT
Well, we are pretty sure that Tony is aware of what Kat has been up to - otherwise I'd really like to know how she persuaded him to let her use his genitalia as a model... Ooh, that is a good point. Thanks, I lost lock on how much Tony knew.
Still wracking my brain to try and remember how much Anja and Donald know about the newly embodied robots. Anja, at least, knows all about the birb(s), but I can't remember seeing her in Kat's lab since she taught Annie how to use her stone. That's quite a long time ago. Even if one of them helped Kat with her computer, that doesn't necessarily imply she told them about her robot scheme. Also, Anja certainly knows about the ancient robots being there, but I don't know why she'd have been told about them being revived and about the recent events! Maybe?
It's her parents, and I suppose it's possible she may have kept one or both of them up to date, or that Tony told Donald more than we know about, but overall it seems like the few in the inner circle have kept good operational security.
Except for my nemesis, Paz, of course.
The best evidence for nobody like Donald (who is known to be in deep with the court) knowing about the robots is simply that the court hasn't stepped in to put an end to it. Hard to be sure though - we really don't know much about what the heck the court is up to!
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