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Post by drmemory on Jul 21, 2022 4:35:40 GMT
If there is another, better thread for this stuff, please let me know and I'll move. 
All along, we've seen Robot do things that are very OOC for robots. Cult leader, plotting and scheming, volunteering to be a test subject for Kat experiments, etc.
By volunteering for this stuff and staying close to Kat, he's also learned an awful lot about what's going on - far more than most humans or other inhumans in the court and certainly far more than any other robots!
I like the theories people have posted about him maybe being Diego. This seems... possible? But I'm not sure it's consistent with things like his angelic form in the "Ocean" chapter, and some of his other behavior. Maybe though? He's also downright paternal with the NP, his new race. Diego never struck me as being like that, but he did think of them as his children towards the end, so it really can't be ruled out.
The other odd things about Robot are that he has not taken a NP form for some reason, and that his CPU has something extra on it - a green mezzanine card or something, with a Bismuth symbol on it if I remember right. Have we ever seen any evidence that any other robots have such a thing? Maybe the other Seraphs? AFAIK none of them have been given NP bodies, thanks to the ship incident... which Robot orchestrated. Hmmm.
Anyway, I'm wondering if that green thing on his CPU is important. Maybe it has extra programming? Maybe that programming only woke up when triggered, either by timey wimey events, by Kat passing some milestone in her development, or maybe just when Annie first gave him a choice.
I don't know what that programming is, specifically, but I think a case could be made for Robot undergoing a major personality change after he returned from the forest. Before, he was pretty robotic, and very grateful to Annie, even showing her affection and calling her Mommy. Not too long after, he started setting up his cult, and manipulating Annie pretty strongly. A case could also be made for it being a more gradual change - first he picked up some emotions, and made good friends with Shadow 2, even forming a relationship and setting up house eventually. Then, more recently, Shadow vanished from the scene (or Tom just hasn't shown us what Shadow is up to lately, who knows). Regardless, they were inseparable for quite some time, to the point where I feel sure Shadow would have met all the NP also, just by virtue of hanging out with Robot all the time. Which would enable him to be another one who could finger Jerrek/Loup.
So... a snapshot of Diego's mind? Programming left by Diego? Or something done to him by Coyote while he was in the forest, looking for a new arm? He certainly has new programming now, but it isn't clear whether he got it via an evolutionary process or by divine intervention or from a chip add-on. For that matter, maybe his little sojourn in S1's body has something to do with this - he retained some skills and memory from that, right?
I almost put this in my old "Questions about Robots" thread, but honestly I think it's pretty different - much more specific to Robot S13, whatever the heck he really is. |
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Post by maxptc on Jul 21, 2022 4:47:04 GMT
Kat having time travel makes me very suspicious of that unknown chip that protected Robot as well. He and the other Seraphs being a part of a long term plan of Orginal Kat makes as much sense as any theory. I feel like his lack of a new body has something to do with MechaKat, but I don't see the path to that connection yet.
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Post by pyradonis on Jul 21, 2022 12:52:38 GMT
I have three possible theories about why S13 keeps a robot body. Pragmatism: He wants to keep the advantages of a robot body (immortality, not feeling pain, greater physical abilites), at least until he has succeeded in all his goals. Justice: He's a Seraph and doesn't want to get a new body as long as his fellow Seraphs don't get one as well, especially as he's responsible for them being excluded. Triteness: He simply hasn't decided yet how he wants it to look like. Personally I think it's the first one. It's just so much relaxed to work on your goals if you don't age. The other odd things about Robot are that he has not taken a NP form for some reason, and that his CPU has something extra on it - a green mezzanine card or something, with a Bismuth symbol on it if I remember right. Have we ever seen any evidence that any other robots have such a thing? Maybe the other Seraphs? AFAIK none of them have been given NP bodies, thanks to the ship incident... which Robot orchestrated. Hmmm. Anyway, I'm wondering if that green thing on his CPU is important. Maybe it has extra programming? Maybe that programming only woke up when triggered, either by timey wimey events, by Kat passing some milestone in her development, or maybe just when Annie first gave him a choice. That has been partially answered - it seems all the Seraphs have those special CPUs, and at the least it protected them from being repurposed for the shield. Though I think we don't know yet how this subroutine even was installed, so maybe the Court didn't even try to give it to the Seraphs? I would go more with the gradual change. S13 seemed quite childish (like most other robots, to be honest) both before he went to the Forest, and immediately after he returned. But you're right in that he changed a lot - could anyone picture today's S13 say things like "Nice birdie!" or "Poor mommy! [...] What did I do?" In his next appearance, in chapter 18, he sounds a bit less childish, but still young. Also of note is that in this chapter, he starts calling Annie "Mu..." but then corrects himself to call her by her name, the same as he does Kat. For a moment he seems to have forgotten he saw Kat as an angel, before getting put into the S1 body seems to fully reawaken his prophetic zeal. When we see him next time, in chapter 25, he is already wearing clothes, doing parkour, and untiringly recruiting robots to see the shrine, and the angel. And again his way of speaking sounds more mature than before. It's fascinating, I never before noticed how much S13 did "grow up" during the story. One thing, you say he manipulated Annie. I can't recall such an occasion, what exactly are you referring to? |
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Post by alevice on Jul 21, 2022 14:28:14 GMT
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Post by drmemory on Jul 21, 2022 15:30:26 GMT
One thing, you say he manipulated Annie. I can't recall such an occasion, what exactly are you referring to? I misspoke. I meant to say I thought he manipulated Kat. Many subtle ways, but one of the more blatant was setting up that massive scenario with the ship-who-wanted-to-be-a-homebreaking-whale robot, for which he used the Seraphs.
That event was a good example of his change from normal robot into manipulative schemer too. He put a lot of people at risk just to put Kat in a situation where she'd either directly expand her powers (by giving the dude a new body) or at least get inspired to work on robots again. This also is a good example of my claim that he is gathering information - he knew all about Zimmy, and either provided wards to the normal Seraphs to neutralize powers OR had a contact to enable those to be gotten. This is also one of the reasons I suspect he has contacts or a relationship with the court. Or maybe just Omega?
Part of this, meaning where my possible paranoid theories are coming from, is I just don't see how his evolution could have happened naturally. If all Seraphs were capable of the same thing, why are the rest of them so static? S13 is clearly different. Truthfully, he was even before we met him according to the other Seraphs, but it's really gone into overdrive.
Could you imagine one of the golems, such as S1, the prototype for his line, or the nerd squad Seraphs doing the things he's done? We never got to talk to S1 directly, but from what we saw he was Diego's version of Errol Flynn - perhaps a wish fulfillment avatar? Another possible clue pointing at Diego being involved in current events somehow... S13's sojourn in S1's body, and the way he retained skills and information after that, still seems a little off, and is one of the possible triggers for Robot's severe evolution. While we're following that thread, isn't it weird that S1 had no CPU and had power, when the others were dead and had to have their hearts patched in order to become operable again? To see the puppet show, Kat had to plug a compatible CPU into an empty slot in the one robot that had one. What a coincidence, if it was one!
This is sort of feeling like a very long term plan, with either precognition or prediction involved. Diego's fingerprints are all over this, and we know Omega is predictive... Since I'm already off into wildspec, I may as well say the rest - I wish Kat hadn't aborted Diego's death recording playback because he may have been about to say something important. Like... Jeanne died and I did nothing, but at least I'll look after my children in the future! Also, I hope someone thinks to ask the golem robots about things soon, as we know they knew about the puppet show, which may be a lot more important than previously thought. |
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Post by drmemory on Jul 21, 2022 15:41:22 GMT
Agreed, but this is also more evidence for S13 having known something about future events all along.
So I guess there are two parts to this:
1. Robot S13 knew all along that he would eventually would meet the Angel, and would be needed to help steer her into the role. This makes a lot of sense, and seems to fit I think. He knew that minor things like getting disassembled or paper clipped or captured by the other Seraphs would pass if he knew the big events that hadn't happened yet.
2. Something happened that caused Robot to change or evolve or maybe just activate a bunch of dormant programming. Not clear what the event was that caused this, yet. It's possible that he was as we see now all along, but is showing more of it now that the expected events are coming to pass. The whole helpless kid robot thing may have been an act. I sort of hope not - I liked that version of him - but who can say? So this could be more of a revealed personality than an overwritten one. I think I'd almost prefer the second - I liked the Robot who had a Shadow as a best friend.
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Post by drmemory on Jul 21, 2022 15:52:37 GMT
Continuing the Grand Conspiracy Theory of Robot (GCTOR), let's say for the sake of discussion that Robot did indeed know all along that the Angel would appear and that he'd have to be instrumental in steering events so that his people could evolve and be free. I think that HOW he knew this is important. Was he sent back in time at some point? Or did Diego have a way to see or predict the future? If Diego made Omega and Omega is involved here (which would make sense), we have reason to believe that Omega can't deal with events involving the ether causally. So Loup couldn't have been predicted. This might explain Robot's current actions - Loup is a possible disaster for his grand plan, so he needed to get him out of the way, or at least stall him. If you accept my fragile web of theories at all, it does explain the sorta-truce. Throwing everyone else under the bus also fits...
I find it easier to believe that there were time travel shenanigans than that Omega was so powerful when first created though. In my opinion it's more likely that Diego was informed of the high points of current events than that Omega is so much more powerful than currently thought. If he was able to predict events hundreds of years into the future, when newly created, he's got to be quite god-like by now, which doesn't seem right somehow. Especially with all the ether-related stuff that had to happen to get us where we are.
Unless, of course, this is a joint plan of Coyote and Omega we're seeing play out. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 21, 2022 17:51:19 GMT
Additional reason for Robot to keep the body he has now: It's a mark of distinction. He's visibly different from the other NPCs. It's a constant reminder that he was the pioneer for this body type and by extension that he was right all along about eventually meeting an angel and ushering in a new age for Court robots. That's probably pretty sweet for someone who was dismantled for sake of that belief but there's also a practical advantage. It brings him leverage now and in the future as a leader figure.
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Post by mglvna on Jul 21, 2022 22:59:50 GMT
Is it possible that something about the green chip prevents the transfer? Since it's only on the seraphs, and none of them have new bodies, there's nothing to contradict it. Green is the same color as the arrow Kat's using...
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Post by Sky Schemer on Jul 22, 2022 5:45:52 GMT
Additional reason for Robot to keep the body he has now: It's a mark of distinction. He's visibly different from the other NPCs. I am going with this answer. This is all about Robot's ego. It is also useful for Tom to have Robot's appearance be truly unique. He is an important, since-chapter-one character, and some of the impact would be lost if he got a human body like all the others. |
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Post by drmemory on Jul 22, 2022 15:19:07 GMT
Is it possible that something about the green chip prevents the transfer? Since it's only on the seraphs, and none of them have new bodies, there's nothing to contradict it. Green is the same color as the arrow Kat's using... Very possible! If that green chip contains Diego's mind, then it could be something like "no transfer because actual human consciousness" or "no transfer because too big" or even "no transfer because two separate minds present".
Or my personal favorite, "no transfer because it's already a transfer, from Diego's dying body to what we now know as Robot". If you think of Robot's evolution over the past couple of years, with his excitement about running around and natural proclivity for wearing clothes, it takes on a whole new meaning if you think of an aging, near-death, old man adapting to a new, younger body!
We know that the existing robots that got new bodies got much larger minds in the bargain (from the "Ocean" chapter). If Robot's case is different, because that green thing has high-density technology in it, perhaps the explanation is simply that Kat's techniques can't accommodate the contents yet.
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Post by Runningflame on Jul 23, 2022 5:11:51 GMT
The other odd things about Robot are that he has not taken a NP form for some reason, and that his CPU has something extra on it - a green mezzanine card or something, with a Bismuth symbol on it if I remember right. We get a good look at it when Kat first examines it in Mainly Involves Robots. The Bismuth symbol is on the CPU itself; also, I'd say the CPU is green while the extra part is blue, but I suppose maybe the extra part is blue-green. It's bluer than the CPU, anyway. He wants to keep the advantages of a robot body (immortality, not feeling pain, greater physical abilites), at least until he has succeeded in all his goals. Don't forget the convenience of having a communications port... which we see him using to interface with robots who are about to become New People. (Though I suppose it's possible the NP bodies could also have comms ports. We know they have replaceable parts, so they're not entirely like biological bodies.) |
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Post by blahzor on Jul 23, 2022 13:49:51 GMT
Robot not taking a body because he knows he can die once he does and not taking that risk on accidentally getting killed messing around with Annie
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Post by drmemory on Jul 26, 2022 5:43:45 GMT
Not sure how important it is, but I just re-read "The Torn Sea" looking for clues about the ocean thing, and was reminded of what the other Seraphs looked like inside Zimmy's distortion. Honestly, they were quite creepy - not angelic at all. Could that be what Robot is like inside? Also, most beings aren't distorted inside Zimmyland, but for some reason they were. The only other robots we saw in there were the boat (clearly affected) and his fingers (affected but not quite as dramatically). So we don't know if this sort of thing is normal for robots or if it only happens with "special" robots like the Seraphs. I think it's relevant that all the robots that were inside the distortion zone when it started were affected, while none of those that entered after were (like S13 and the Robot King and his army). I bet it would be educational to see what happens if Robot gets caught in one of Zimmy's events! Would he be unchanged? Would he look like the insectile Seraphs?
Would he look like the Angelic form he took in "She Gave Us An Ocean"?
Would he look like Diego? |
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Post by blahzor on Jul 26, 2022 10:02:50 GMT
Not sure how important it is, but I just re-read "The Torn Sea" looking for clues about the ocean thing, and was reminded of what the other Seraphs looked like inside Zimmy's distortion. Honestly, they were quite creepy - not angelic at all. Could that be what Robot is like inside? Also, most beings aren't distorted inside Zimmyland, but for some reason they were. The only other robots we saw in there were the boat (clearly affected) and his fingers (affected but not quite as dramatically). So we don't know if this sort of thing is normal for robots or if it only happens with "special" robots like the Seraphs. I think it's relevant that all the robots that were inside the distortion zone when it started were affected, while none of those that entered after were (like S13 and the Robot King and his army). I bet it would be educational to see what happens if Robot gets caught in one of Zimmy's events! Would he be unchanged? Would he look like the insectile Seraphs? Would he look like the Angelic form he took in "She Gave Us An Ocean"? Would he look like Diego? Worse case scenario is Robot is Diego but extremely limited in what he can do in his current form. He's delaying leaving the body for some odd reason as that would be a loophole for this restriction if true. Unless he's wait for a form where he can skip all the hassle and download as much knowledge he can while at it or just trying to see the upper limits of Kat that he could never reach |
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Post by abbomeister on Aug 9, 2022 5:47:20 GMT
I dunno if this has been suggested already somewhere else, but it seems to me that the Seraphs could be the consciousnesses of the original inhabitants of the Court, living immortally through undying bodies. The mysterious extra chips (ALL the Seraphs have them, right?) could have been created by known Ether-user Diego way back in the day. Golem S1 has a memory slot designed to take a 'modern robot' style chip, which has always been mysterious to me as the 'modern robots' are supposed to have been designed by the leaderless Golems. Why build something new if it's just going to take the same personality chip in the end?
To me, it would make sense for someone obsessed with the death of Jeanne to try and create beings that are functionally the same as humans except for the whole 'dying' bit, y'know (seeing as robots and golems don't have physical sensations and the like and would be awful to live in for millenia)? Sort of the 'scientific' way of avoiding death.
On the other side of the coin, 'twould also make sense for the Old Court people to stick around and try to influence the Etheric Sciences to find a more metaphysical way of avoiding death. Keep the same old human bodies, but magically cheat your way to immortality.
I'm mostly just spitballing here, but I figured it was a somewhat relevant thought to share, seeing as it's about the Seraphs and their weirdness.
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heranje
Full Member
Oh super wow!
Posts: 175
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Post by heranje on Aug 9, 2022 13:34:54 GMT
Is it possible that something about the green chip prevents the transfer? Since it's only on the seraphs, and none of them have new bodies, there's nothing to contradict it. Green is the same color as the arrow Kat's using... The blue extra chip, but yes. Come to think of it, isn't Lana the only source we have for the idea that the reason the Seraphs haven't been offered new bodies is because they 'angered the Angel'? The Seraph itself doesn't respond, and I don't believe any of the other characters have mentioned it. Could well be a question of technological incompatibility rather than a grudge from Kat's side, which either filtered down through the NP jungle telegraph to become a punishment - or was spun as such by Robot. |
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Post by speedwell on Aug 10, 2022 23:56:15 GMT
It's really rather simple. He identifies as a Bodhisattva, an enlightened being who indefinitely sacrifices the completion/reward of his own path of enlightenment in order to practice compassion towards others still on the path. |
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Post by mordekai on Aug 14, 2022 20:42:13 GMT
I used to think that Robot would choose a body that would be a male version of Annie, because she is his "Mom...". Or maybe a mix of Annie and Kat, his "Mom" and his spiritual liege...
But now I am not so sure... He seems to have discarded all affection for Annie... his talk with Loup implied that he only cares for his fellow robots and for Kat now (and Shadow, I guess)... he didn't care what happened to Annie... So now I think his new body will be something purposely and carefully designed to influence Kat... something like a mix of features from Paz and Alistair...
As for why it still hasn't been revealed... the in-universe is that Robot is waiting for the right moment to cause the greatest effect on Kat. The out of universe reason is that Tom Siddell is waiting for the right moment to cause the greatest effect on the readers...
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Post by alevice on Aug 15, 2022 14:56:19 GMT
I used to think that Robot would choose a body that would be a male version of Annie, because she is his "Mom...". Or maybe a mix of Annie and Kat, his "Mom" and his spiritual liege... But now I am not so sure... He seems to have discarded all affection for Annie... his talk with Loup implied that he only cares for his fellow robots and for Kat now (and Shadow, I guess)... he didn't care what happened to Annie... So now I think his new body will be something purposely and carefully designed to influence Kat... something like a mix of features from Paz and Alistair... As for why it still hasn't been revealed... the in-universe is that Robot is waiting for the right moment to cause the greatest effect on Kat. The out of universe reason is that Tom Siddell is waiting for the right moment to cause the greatest effect on the readers... fwiw, robot has gone through crisis about people he neglected being hurt. Like when shadow got an extra dimension due to coyotes blade, he had a crisis about shadow rather than himself. He might be cold atm but end up regretting his close ones being hurt |
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Post by TBeholder on Nov 23, 2022 17:32:49 GMT
an enlightened being who indefinitely sacrifices the completion/reward of his own path of enlightenment in order to practice compassion towards others still on the path. This case may be more of “last to leave the ship”. Considering the rest were swayed to The Way of S13. Huh, S13 had pseudo-flesh upgrade ahead of everyone else, so gets to be both the first on the early stage and the last. Or may be responsibility in the sense “someone stable and capable must look after all those confused adolescents”. Or maybe there’s a plan: wait until Kat asks directly and ask her to forgive the Seraphs. |
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Post by drmemory on Nov 23, 2022 19:04:52 GMT
Something struck me, re-reading this thread. What if Robot's intent with the ship-whale thing was to prevent the Seraphs from being given NP forms? He said at the time that it was intended to get Kat more focused on helping the robots, but there is no reason he might not have more than one reason. Why would he do that? Well, maybe there is something about those little green mezzanine chips? Or maybe, just maybe, this is related to why he himself hasn't taken a robot form. Consider this. What if the little green thing is an interface chip linking all the Seraphs? What if everything we've seen the Seraphs do has been under the direction of S13, or perhaps even his direct control? I have a feeling that if any Seraph takes an NP form it is going to reveal something that S13 really doesn't want to be revealed - at least not yet. Extra-wacky theory time! My Thanksgiving gift to you all. Theory 1 - Diego's mind is distributed across all the Seraphs. Theory 2 - Diego's mind is in the cloud (or at least a hidden computer) and is controlling all of the Seraphs. S13 is becoming more of an avatar over time. Theory 3 - All of the Seraphs are shifted (except one). They aren't identical, but have instead each been evolving since the point where they were shifted, just like the Annies did. When Robot does finally take a NP form, I'm thinking the other Seraphs will merge with him and/or he'll take a form like Diego. Or more likely, a wish-fulfillment version of Diego - taller and with muscles and such.
Maybe not though - if Diego's mind is inside the hidden computer rather than inside the Seraphs, maybe he'll take that angelic form instead. Still, I think there is something about the other Seraphs... I think in my original "Questions about Robots" threads I talked about product lines of robots, and we still haven't seen another line of robots that are as similar to each other as the Seraphs. Shifted servants of Diego that they are!
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Post by pyradonis on Nov 24, 2022 0:56:03 GMT
Theory 3 - All of the Seraphs are shifted (except one). They aren't identical, but have instead each been evolving since the point where they were shifted, just like the Annies did. Now that's interesting. But who do you think would have shifted them, and why? |
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Post by blahzor on Nov 24, 2022 2:49:24 GMT
I'm starting to think Robot hasn't gotten the full transfer over because he wants to be a martyr then transferred. Since time has come in to play (and really before that too) he's always been seemingly out of time. Actively knowing his part of a time that already happened but slight different or not
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Post by drmemory on Nov 25, 2022 18:49:23 GMT
Theory 3 - All of the Seraphs are shifted (except one). They aren't identical, but have instead each been evolving since the point where they were shifted, just like the Annies did. Now that's interesting. But who do you think would have shifted them, and why? Coyote, as part of his long-term plans. Who else can spin off realities and shift people like that? Also, and this is a bit thin, but maybe worth considering - Loup has very little imagination. Yet, one of the very first things he did to Annie was to shift her. How could he know how to do that if he didn't know about Coyote doing it?
I'm still not quite getting the overall shape of his plan, but suspect it includes an agreement with Robot (or maybe with Diego), time travel, the Seraphs, and the NP.
We never saw any Seraphs around when we saw Diego, right? Are we sure he created them? Maybe he only created one...
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Post by drmemory on Nov 25, 2022 19:12:29 GMT
A couple thoughts about shifting: We've only seen Loup shift anyone. Ysengrin really doesn't seem the type to know how to do things like that, so Loup almost certainly inherited that capability from Coyote. Several noticed that Annie had been shifted and didn't seem surprised by that being a thing. The Norns mentioned Coyote being able to mess with time. Everyone says Coyote can do anything he wants. So if we see anyone shifted, the only one we KNOW can do that is Coyote, perhaps as a part of Loup. I don't think it is possible to un-shift someone that has been shifted. That was hinted at a couple of times. For example, Zimmy asked Annie which one would stay and which one would go! She only got merged thanks to Zimmy's powers over reality. This is consistent with what we saw happen. The new merged Annie had memories from both Cannie and Fannie, and her flame powers were much stronger in merged form. I maintain that shifting someone means plucking them from another reality so there are now two, or plucking two of them from two different realities if the original has died... like Annie.
By the way, this also means Zimmy can affect things in such a way that the effects persist in reality, not just in Zimmyland! No wonder Renard was so freaked out by her!
IF the Seraph robots are shifted, as I've theorized, then they are individuals at this point. Yet, there is something special about them - the green mezzanine chip on their brain chips. I feel like I'm on the track of something here but do not know for sure it isn't a snipe I'm hunting. Consider this: Do we really know that Diego created the Seraphs? It also could have been the golem robots. Or Coyote. Or a time-shifted Kat. Or Omega. Until we know more about the Seraphs and Robot, we won't know whether many were created or only one. They do have numbers, like S13, but like... I'm sure the court has paint. |
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Post by arf on Nov 28, 2022 3:11:01 GMT
Robot's role in bringing the NP into being is a bit like a spirit guide.
He can't complete the full journey himself while he has others to help make it.
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Post by mturtle7 on Nov 28, 2022 4:19:21 GMT
A couple thoughts about shifting: We've only seen Loup shift anyone. Ysengrin really doesn't seem the type to know how to do things like that, so Loup almost certainly inherited that capability from Coyote. Several noticed that Annie had been shifted and didn't seem surprised by that being a thing. The Norns mentioned Coyote being able to mess with time. Everyone says Coyote can do anything he wants. So if we see anyone shifted, the only one we KNOW can do that is Coyote, perhaps as a part of Loup. I don't think it is possible to un-shift someone that has been shifted. That was hinted at a couple of times. For example, Zimmy asked Annie which one would stay and which one would go! She only got merged thanks to Zimmy's powers over reality. This is consistent with what we saw happen. The new merged Annie had memories from both Cannie and Fannie, and her flame powers were much stronger in merged form. I maintain that shifting someone means plucking them from another reality so there are now two, or plucking two of them from two different realities if the original has died... like Annie.
By the way, this also means Zimmy can affect things in such a way that the effects persist in reality, not just in Zimmyland! No wonder Renard was so freaked out by her!
IF the Seraph robots are shifted, as I've theorized, then they are individuals at this point. Yet, there is something special about them - the green mezzanine chip on their brain chips. I feel like I'm on the track of something here but do not know for sure it isn't a snipe I'm hunting. Consider this: Do we really know that Diego created the Seraphs? It also could have been the golem robots. Or Coyote. Or a time-shifted Kat. Or Omega. Until we know more about the Seraphs and Robot, we won't know whether many were created or only one. They do have numbers, like S13, but like... I'm sure the court has paint. There's plenty of precedent for Zimmy's powers having real, permanent, effects, like in Spring Heeled and Divine.
And I think the way Zimmy described it here made it pretty clear there isn't really a clear, universal, set of rules for what happens if someone's "shifted" - or, as she put it, "split". What I got from that scene is that given the nature of magic in this world, there are lots of ways for one person to be split into two people who share essentially the same identity somehow, and since Zimmy's seen a lot of weird sh*t (most of which she caused), it's only natural that she's seen some phenomena of that type. But since there are different ways for it to happen (i.e. different sources of magic behind it), there are also different potential rules regarding how it behaves, hence her casual uncertainty about the Annies' particular situation (e.g. "it depends", "is one of you gonna get zapped away or what?"). Off the top of my head, I'd imagine that Zimmy might have seen include some where people get split into alternate future versions of themselves and then fate conspires to kill off those versions until only one remains, or some where people get split into different selves representative of their personality traits and then recombine into one person but loses the memories of all but one of the others, etc., etc.
What's always been frustrating about Annie's situation, of course, is that our little friend the Interpreter seemed to know EXACTLY the method by which she had been split into two people, right down to what kind of person (or rather, god) could do that. But they weren't exactly eager to share a lot of the details. Maybe the way that the Annies got recombined was how it normally works? Would Loup have done it if Zimmy hadn't? Or maybe Loup was lying, and there isn't a way for even him to just 'recombine' the Annies once they'd become two separate people already? Maybe he would have just sent one of the Annies back to the other timeline he created, and declared it fixed? We don't know, and the characters aren't even curious!!!
Of course, when we don't know something and will probably never have a chance to find out, that's where Wildspec has the chance to shine. I'd like to add to your theory by proposing that S13 - or rather the Seraph - has indeed been shifted, in the same way that Annie was shifted, by creating 13 different timelines and plucking a new Seraph out of each of them. S13 is the original, and in the same way that only one Annie remembers interacting with Loup, he's the only one who remembers interacting with the person who shifted him - Kat, the "Angel" from yet another alternate future where Annie died by falling off the bridge. Hence why he was the only one to preach the "heresy" of the Angel, long before he met the Kat we now know.
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Post by crater on Nov 30, 2022 15:57:34 GMT
Robot was given a body, the first. What could be greater than that?
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