[2531] They're just useless machines

[philman]

Annie didn't like that...

[madjack]

Still calling that Annie is about to put her foot square in it and say something she really shouldn't about now.

[imaginaryfriend]

I didn't like that my wildspec that Donald was the one who installed the shield protocol wasn't correct.

[edit] This may be more than just the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, it may mean that the Shadow Men are running their own ops off the books. That's always a danger when you've got a secret police thing going. [/edit]

[aline]

"old technology" = tech you stole from Anja without her knowledge or permission
"useless machines" = sentient creatures* who do all the hard and dirty work for you and whose personality you overrode without a second thought.

* I mean come on, there are rules about robots falling in love with humans. They know robots are not like photocopiers with legs.

[arf]

Coming from a re-run of Bladerunner 2049, I'm with Annie on this one.

[flowsthead]

I don't think it really matters whether the robots have consciousness or not. It's more annoying that it's a statement that lacks personal responsibility. If you were the ones that thought of it, then it's not the robots who failed but you.

[aline]

Oct 11, 2021 7:37:28 GMT flowsthead said:

I don't think it really matters whether the robots have consciousness or not. It's more annoying that it's a statement that lacks personal responsibility. If you were the ones that thought of it, then it's not the robots who failed but you.

Yes, that's part of what annoys me.
He is so dismissive of the technology he used or stole even though evidently that was the best his team of people in suits could come up with.
He's utterly disgusted by the etheric powers he ended up using, even though he admits its usefulness.
And no reflection whatsoever on his own bad decisions. Although maybe he despises himself as much as he despises everything else, who knows.

Coyote was right. He is one sad, bitter little man.

[theonethatgotaway]

We tried one thing and it failed, clearly this is all YOUR fault, medium!

[saardvark]

is Aata trying to provoke Annie here (frame 7), a gambit to get her to reveal something she shouldn't in an angry response? 
(you can almost see the steam coming out of Annie's ears in frame 8!)

[Jelly Jellybean]

If perfection is your goal, then everything, including yourself, will fall short.

[ohthatone]

Oct 11, 2021 8:03:58 GMT aline said:

Oct 11, 2021 7:37:28 GMT flowsthead said:

I don't think it really matters whether the robots have consciousness or not. It's more annoying that it's a statement that lacks personal responsibility. If you were the ones that thought of it, then it's not the robots who failed but you.

Yes, that's part of what annoys me.
He is so dismissive of the technology he used or stole even though evidently that was the best his team of people in suits could come up with.

Can you imagine if they actually worked with Anja instead of just stealing from her? They probably could have come up with something great. But no, gotta be all secretive and untrusting.

[ctso74]

Wow, Aata. You just flat-out stink. "Failed", indeed. Though, I would add impedingly short-sighted.
He seems to be opening up his shirt. If he displays a divine six-pack in the next comic, I'll have to find some coffee to spit up.

[Gemminie]

Following on directly from Aata's remark at the end of the previous page, Annie asks how Aata could possibly have known that the robots' shield could fail. She does not ask who "we" are, as in "we always knew."

Then, BOOM, truth (probably) bomb. The Court has installed the shield capability in the robots. So, no, Diego didn't do it, Kat didn't do it via time travel, Anja didn't either (at least, not via time travel). There's still the question of why it looks just like Anja's shield, but that could just be form-follows-function, or perhaps they reverse-engineered her shield after observing it. Or it could be that Anja participated in it and feigned being angry that the Court had "stolen" her shield. Or the Court deliberately made it look like Anja's shield to piss her off.

This is clearly top-secret information – adding to the likelihood that it's true – because Shell isn't sure Aata should be divulging it to a student. But Aata uses her question to segue onto another track, probably on purpose, though I'm not sure what his tactic is here. He clearly knows the robots aren't useless machines; the robots have done a lot of essential infrastructure maintenance work for the Court. So he's probably doing this intentionally, perhaps to upset Annie so she divulges information.

Alternatively, I could be wrong. He may truly see the robots as useless machines – useless in the sense that other machines could be built to do the work they do and that their sentience is the unnecessary part. Their sentience comes from weird unknown tech that probably uses the Ether anyway, and the Court and Aata have (or so I theorize) always been uneasy about making use of irreproducible and unexplainable phenomena. They've made use of the robots because they were already there, just as they made use of Diego's arrow, but those aren't technologies the Court seems to be pursuing. So maybe they really are "useless" in Aata's philosophy, and he's just feeling depressed and hopeless, because his career is over.

So, is Annie going to let slip something about Robot, or about Kat and her android project? Or is Aata going to launch into a bout of self-pity that explains why his career is over? Or both? Or ... something else?

[zbeeblebrox]

Aata's managing to piss her off going both ways, impressive

Oct 11, 2021 9:26:21 GMT theonethatgotaway said:

We tried one thing and it failed, clearly this is all YOUR fault, medium!

Heh, reminds me:

[quinnr]

The way that Aata said the comment about Robots being useless machines almost makes me think that he's being set up as a foil to Kat in some way. Interested as always to see where this goes (in 2-5 years?)

Or the Court deliberately made it look like Anja's shield to piss her off.

Have we seen Anja with a pissed off expression yet? I'm just picturing her looking up at the purple sky and shaking her fist now.

[Per]

Forum: Aata is a member of some secret service doing SECRET things in SECRET! He's clearly EVIL!

(a little later)

Forum: Huh, Aata seemed to make a personal sacrifice to save an underling. Maybe this isn't the type of comic where things are black and white and snap judgements are warranted...

(a little later again)

Forum: Aata did something with robots! He's clearly EVIL! And SHORT!

[imaginaryfriend]

Oct 11, 2021 7:14:00 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

I didn't like that my wildspec that Donald was the one who installed the shield protocol wasn't correct.

[edit] This may be more than just the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, it may mean that the Shadow Men are running their own ops off the books. That's always a danger when you've got a secret police thing going. [/edit]

Link I didn't bother looking up this morning where it's said that "none of the Court staff" knew who uploaded the shield protocol. Note that the Shadow Men didn't come clean even after it saved the Court, apparently.

[aline]

Oct 11, 2021 12:17:40 GMT saardvark said:

is Aata trying to provoke Annie here (frame 7), a gambit to get her to reveal something she shouldn't in an angry response? 
(you can almost see the steam coming out of Annie's ears in frame 8!)

I doubt he has any notion that one could be angry at what he just said. To him, despite their personalities and feelings, robots are objects. That's how he thinks of them and how he treats them. I bet most of us have more affection for our coffee machine than this dude has for the Court robots.

If Annie yells at him about the robots next page I expect a condescending discourse about how they're piles of metals and she's being ridiculous.

[jasmijn]

Get. His. Ass.

[novia]

Oct 11, 2021 15:53:59 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Link I didn't bother looking up this morning where it's said that "none of the Court staff" knew who uploaded the shield protocol. Note that the Shadow Men didn't come clean even after it saved the Court, apparently.

Note that Juliette is a member of the shadow men, and so is Arthur.

[rimwolf]

Oct 11, 2021 16:10:11 GMT aline said:

If Annie yells at him about the robots next page I expect a condescending discourse about how they're piles of metals and she's being ridiculous.

I hope she doesn't get too distracted defending the robots, but gets back to schooling Aata.

[imaginaryfriend]

Oct 11, 2021 16:54:12 GMT novia said:

Oct 11, 2021 15:53:59 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Link I didn't bother looking up this morning where it's said that "none of the Court staff" knew who uploaded the shield protocol. Note that the Shadow Men didn't come clean even after it saved the Court, apparently.

Note that Juliette is a member of the shadow men, and so is Arthur.

Good point. Seems like the shield project was compartmentalized or silo'd even within the Shadow Men and that secrecy was worth more than the political gains they could have made by taking the credit for arguably saving the Court.

Given what Aata's saying I think that they knew (on the organizational level) that the shield didn't really save the Court and thought that there was no way to negotiate the gains into lasting benefits, which I think indicates that they knew their follow-up plan of draining "Loup" was likely to fail. If they had confidence in the syphoning they would've, if not publicly but at least to key individuals, proudly proclaimed "it was me that done that, but it ain't enough so here's this" as they put their wolf-sucking plan into motion. Keeping it secret means that if it worked they could take credit afterwards but the gains wouldn't be as big because key people don't like getting left out of the loop (heh).

[machiavelli33]

If Aata is who some people think he is, then this sort of tracks.

He didn't become a bodhitsavva for a reason, after all.

[mochakimono]

Aata takes no time at all after declaring he's out of a job to get his work tie off and his shirt undone. Relatable to anyone who's had to wear a suit or uniform, haha.

[bicarbonat]

That's rich, coming from a FLOP

[DonDueed]

Does anybody else read Aata in a Truman Capote voice?  Or is it just me?

[rabbit]

Aata: "They're just useless machines."
Annie: *stares daggers*
Aata: "I'm sorry, I only meant Boxbot."
Annie: "Ah, OK."

[fia]

There may be some people reading this comic who might think, "What, who even talks in this cartoonishly evil way?"
but I have heard real humans speak this way about other real humans and other sentient creatures and I totally believe it is possible, so. I'm 50/50 on whether Aata actually believes the thing he just said.

I'm holding off on deciding what sort of person Aata is because he could be deliberately provoking Annie, but I very much hate him now for even going to this strategy. What a prick.

[maxptc]

I agree with Shell, why say any of this? "What's the harm" is such a dumb question, and from a secret organization leader more so.

Immediately, the risk is pissing off the fire elemental that has a crowd of scared and probably angry Forrest folk behind her. That alone could cause a situation. The long term risk is Annie exposing that you messed with the robots and shield technology to other people, which adds to the exposure and reputation of the Shadow men if nothing else, which seems dumb for a secretive organization.

Kinda a weird play by Atta, unless he just doesn't care anymore and is willing to tell Annie the truth because he is about to become a flower. Which would explain the potentially alarming situation of Atta undressing.

[drmemory]

Panel 2 is pretty interesting.

You can see Aata in his usual pose, with Shell standing by but a bit behind him, also as usual. I'm not 100% sure that's Shell but it would be consistent.

Then we have a little clump of red-shirts (the usual faceless shadow men) working with the machines.

Is that little machine in the middle the same one that they tried to use to store Coyote's energy in? It seems plausible - if not the same machine then another of the same. After all, we know there is an ethereal component to Anja's shield, and they had to be storing the energy from the power stations somewhere!  Or, it could be some sort of interface to the computer.  Nice big-screen BTW.

We've never seen Anja's computer, have we?  I can't remember seeing it, so no idea how this compares.

I don't really interpret this as Aata baiting Annie, though it may have that effect. I hope she doesn't blurt out something about the robots! He really looks more like a man who has given up. I think the tie is coming off, for the first time we've ever seen, because he has lost and knows it - meaning, his best plan to eliminate Coyote failed, and he is exposed as having his own powers. He is almost certainly about to be out of a job as a result.


BTW, why do we assume Shell is young? She sorta looks it but doesn't act it, normally.  We know nothing at all about her other than she seems to hang with Aata and be part of the inner circle.