|
|
Post by ctso74 on Aug 29, 2022 14:14:41 GMT
I wonder if in the Annie-less timeline, a semi-divine Kat and Coyote were associates. Coyote's plan may have not originated with him.
|
|
|
|
Post by csj on Aug 29, 2022 14:56:30 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by bedinsis on Aug 29, 2022 15:55:06 GMT
Seems this chapter is in complete montage mode. It starts with a scene of Annie interviewing Kat, before bluntly cutting to their interview with Aata and Shell, and now bluntly cutting to a conversation with Jerrek. Also since when is Jerrek someone Annie just vents to? It might be a subconscious recognition of Ysengrin, someone she has vented to in the past. It could also be a matter of Kat not being as reciprocal to Annie's emotive state. Aata just said as a matter of fact that her surviving the fall messed up their predictions, a statement that I do not think he intended as an insult but as merely acknowledgement of reality, and Kat, ever scientific minded would probably not see any problem with, so she turned to the next person to talk to. Kinda feelin like if Tony was involved in Omega before Annie was born, then perhaps the magic spreadsheet tossing a nice fat "Anthony Carver's kid gonna die" in the output field provided ample incentive for him and his wife to peace the heck out that weird little dimension hole. Also might explain why he didn't want anything to do with the kid once predicted events progressed to the point where it seemed like her death was inevitable. Imagine it might be pretty jarring to get a call like "ey Tony, your kid didn't die, come back and fix the stupid machine so it'll be right next time it predicts tragedy for you". Reckon someone in that position might not be super interested in fixing any spreadsheets. Might be more interested in doing unpredictable stuff like helping a teenage girl ascend to robot godhood. Tony is the person that when he found out his wife was dying to forces beyond human control chose to dedicate his research and his life to save her. I don't think he'd send his daughter to a place where he knew the Omega device had predicted that she'd die. |
|
|
|
Post by Gemminie on Aug 29, 2022 16:00:08 GMT
Well, whatever caused Janet not to be invited, we're moving right along, because Aata knows what's thrown off the Omega Device's predictions. It's the Ether, right? That's why the Court is moving to another freakin' planet and making sure the Ether can't touch them there.
No! Turns out it's actually Annie. Calling her "my girl," Aata says that she was supposed to die when she fell off that bridge. Ever since, she's been throwing all the predictions off. He doesn't seem unhappy about it. But does this mean that the Court is really going to another planet to get away from ... Annie? And they're just telling everyone that it's the Ether?
Of course, we know (and Annie and Kat both know) that Annie's only alive in this timeline because Kat went back in time and saved her. The Omega Device apparently counted on the Annie Dies timeline, and it was unable to adapt when one event happened differently. You'd think they'd have been able to adjust for that. I suppose it's to the Court's credit that they didn't just say, "Well, we'd better fix this. Have her shot."
And then we pop the stack again. This chapter should be called "Stack." So Annie's been telling Jerrek about the conversation with Aata about the conversation with Kat about the meeting. What's next? Some Shadow Men watching Annie and Jerrek talking on their surveillance monitor and talking about that conversation? Then the Norns looking in their time pool and talking with Kat about whatever those Shadow Men were saying?
Anyway, Jerrek looks like his mind is blown. Does this mean Loup's mind is blown, or is that just his Jerrek persona's reaction? Loup now knows about all of this – the Court's new home, the star ocean, the fact that they've been in a side-dimension this entire time (wouldn't he have known that already, though?), the fact that Annie's survival of the fall threw off the whole plan (wouldn't Loup know about the time travel thing from Coyote?), and what am I leaving out?
Hey, do you remember that the Court needed a godly amount of Ether for something? Did they already get that, or ...? Where did they get it from? Or if they haven't gotten to the point where they'll need it yet, where are they going to get it from? What are they going to need it for? (I'm still thinking about that mass mind wipe they'll have to do.)
|
|
heranje
Full Member
Oh super wow!
Posts: 176
|
Post by heranje on Aug 29, 2022 16:27:38 GMT
In relation to the discussions about changes the tic tocs brought other than saving Annie, I just realised that a third pretty significant consequence of Kat finding the warehouse was her starting to lose her faith in the Court. After the Robot King shows Kat and Annie the recording of what happened to Jeanne (a thing that happens because she has become the 'guardian' of Jeanne's 'tomb' and has started down the path of becoming the Angel), Kat is very upset at finding out the place where she grew up was founded on something so horrible, and expresses to Paz that she extends that judgement to the present-day Court. I wonder if that's a realization that came to Original Kat (pre-time shenanigans Kat? Alphaverse Kat?) much later in life after she was more deeply involved in the Court's machinations. |
|
|
|
Post by todd on Aug 29, 2022 17:47:06 GMT
Annie falling off the bridge was where the first set of chapters ended (the very next page was the first Treatise Page - of course, the first physical volume going up to Chapter Fourteen and the second treatise page makes this easier to overlook). Today's revelation gives a new meaning to that.
|
|
|
|
Post by Gemini Jim on Aug 29, 2022 21:34:33 GMT
If I predict that the Rams will win their next game and they don't, that's on me, not on them. "My prediction failed," not "you made my prediction fail."
HOWEVER If I predict that my pencil will fall when I drop it, and it fails to fall to the floor, then there is in fact something strange going on. Because years of pencil dropping precedent, gravity, and the laws of physics say that it should drop.
If the Omega Device is more than just flipping a proverbial coin for every predictable instance; if you can check the readings and prove mathematically that Annie has broken something, then yeah, it probably is her fault somehow. Or indirectly Kat's fault, for inventing the method for her escape.
And yet Kat was still invited to the TED Talk for the Magical Mystery Tour of the Star Ocean. Interesting.
|
|
manabi
Junior Member
Posts: 82 
|
Post by manabi on Aug 29, 2022 22:27:12 GMT
So now we know why the Court wanted to get rid of Annie. And it would probably have been a wasted effort even if they had succeeded. It's probably Kat who interfered with the Omega Device by, with the Norns' help, affecting past events. It would not be surprising for such an interference with causality to have disrupted the workings of a machine designed to analyze causality. We still don't know how the Omega Device dealt with quantum effects on causality or with its need to be bigger than the Universe or at least bigger than the part of the Universe centered on the machine and of a radius equal to the distance light could have travelled since the machine's creation. The reason for this distance is that the speed of light is the speed of causality. It says a lot about the Court's thinking that Annie's death is where the predictions started failing and they think she's the problem, not Kat who saved her from the gorge. Sure, they don't know Kat created the TicTocs, but they do know she invented an anti-gravity bike to go down and rescue Annie. Instead of blaming the rescuer, they blamed Annie. My guess is due to their innate distrust of etheric beings. They know she's half fire elemental after all. |
|
|
|
Post by lurkerbot on Aug 29, 2022 23:29:53 GMT
It says a lot about the Court's thinking that Annie's death is where the predictions started failing and they think she's the problem, not Kat who saved her from the gorge. Sure, they don't know Kat created the TicTocs, but they do know she invented an anti-gravity bike to go down and rescue Annie. Following that line of thinking a little more, we have no indication that the Court tried to investigate the source of the Tic-Tocs that showed up to prevent Antimony's death. If some unexpected entities suddenly appeared that spoiled their up-until-then infallible forecasts, wouldn't it have been reasonable for the Court to try to figure out why the Tic-Tocs acted as they did to prevent the Omega Device's prediction from taking place? |
|
|
|
Post by shaihulud on Aug 29, 2022 23:34:50 GMT
It says a lot about the Court's thinking that Annie's death is where the predictions started failing and they think she's the problem, not Kat who saved her from the gorge. Sure, they don't know Kat created the TicTocs, but they do know she invented an anti-gravity bike to go down and rescue Annie. Following that line of thinking a little more, we have no indication that the Court tried to investigate the source of the Tic-Tocs that showed up to prevent Antimony's death. If some unexpected entities suddenly appeared that spoiled their up-until-then infallible forecasts, wouldn't it have been reasonable for the Court to try to figure out why the Tic-Tocs acted as they did to prevent the Omega Device's prediction from taking place? Nah, just blame the freak. |
|
|
|
Post by todd on Aug 30, 2022 0:52:16 GMT
Of course, we know (and Annie and Kat both know) that Annie's only alive in this timeline because Kat went back in time and saved her. The Omega Device apparently counted on the Annie Dies timeline, and it was unable to adapt when one event happened differently. You'd think they'd have been able to adjust for that. I suppose it's to the Court's credit that they didn't just say, "Well, we'd better fix this. Have her shot." Knowing the court, they didn't take that route, not out of moral considerations, but because they feared the consequences - killing a young girl would make them look bad and probably turn almost all the "non-inner-circle-population" against them, they probably couldn't figure out how to cover it up the way their predecessors did with Jeanne, and they might even have feared, by the time that they figured out it was Annie's survival that was causing all the problems with the Omega Device, that it was too late, that Annie had already made too many changes sine her survival, and that - short of isolating the Omega Device from the ether entirely on another planet - the old future timeline was past saving. |
|
|
|
Post by warrl on Aug 30, 2022 1:04:35 GMT
The court did not know much about Tic Tocs. Even though the artificial birds allegedly predate the robots. I doubt that anyone realized they were important or special until they saved Antimony from falling to her death. And a Tic-Toc died (if that's the right word) in that process... and there was really only one Tic-Toc, in a time loop, so that means there were no more Tic-Tocs for the court to study. Then later Kat made one, but it didn't stay around long before being sent into the time loop. The Court probably never knew of its existence. Between how important Antimony turned out to be, and rescuing her helping steer Kat onto her technomage path... that's a pretty big hole in the Court's data. |
|
|
|
Post by sleepcircle on Aug 30, 2022 2:53:26 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by blahzor on Aug 30, 2022 6:35:35 GMT
I wonder if in the Annie-less timeline, a semi-divine Kat and Coyote were associates. Coyote's plan may have not originated with him. I would think that Kat would seek Coyotes help and he would do it just to mess with the court |
|
|
|
Post by pyradonis on Aug 30, 2022 10:18:22 GMT
Letting Annie die could also be a way to permanently neutralize Renard, assuming he wouldn't be freed from the toy by her death. With green arrow shenanigans and transitive ownership rules, he might even have ended up under Court control. I've wondered about that; Annie's death would have allowed Reynardine to escape the stuffed toy and possess/kill other people in the Court, which the Court obviously wouldn't have wanted. Could have. There are laws about who a deceased person's possessions pass to. Chances are good Renard would have just found himself under the control of someone else, like Hetty did.
Does the court know about this: www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=2321 ? And where do the robots fit into their new society? Do they want to bring them to the new world as a slave class, the way they currently exist? Or are they planning to abandon them as compromised? I have a hard time imagining these court people using their hands to build houses when they're used to living in mind-labor only society. We have already seen the Court is able to produce non-sentient rudimentary AIs that are able to interface with and control the unused robot chassis. I assume they either plan to take those with them or to manufacture new, non-sentient robots directly on their new planet.
It says a lot about the Court's thinking that Annie's death is where the predictions started failing and they think she's the problem, not Kat who saved her from the gorge. Sure, they don't know Kat created the TicTocs, but they do know she invented an anti-gravity bike to go down and rescue Annie. Following that line of thinking a little more, we have no indication that the Court tried to investigate the source of the Tic-Tocs that showed up to prevent Antimony's death. If some unexpected entities suddenly appeared that spoiled their up-until-then infallible forecasts, wouldn't it have been reasonable for the Court to try to figure out why the Tic-Tocs acted as they did to prevent the Omega Device's prediction from taking place? Well, they had wanted to capture one of them for a long time, but I guess it's kind of hard when they literally do not exist except during specific short periods of time. |
|
|
|
Post by pylgrimm on Aug 30, 2022 11:38:26 GMT
A reason why the Court did not try to prevent Annie's death may be that her being killed by a Forest envoy could have given the Court a justification for war, which I get the feeling is something that some sort of Ether-enforcing pact had prevented until then.
|
|
|
|
Post by todd on Aug 30, 2022 12:52:00 GMT
A reason why the Court did not try to prevent Annie's death may be that her being killed by a Forest envoy could have given the Court a justification for war, which I get the feeling is something that some sort of Ether-enforcing pact had prevented until then. I'm not certain that the Court would have wanted that; the war could have resulted in enough damage to the Court (even if it succeeded in defeating Gillitie Wood) to make it a far too costly victory. |
|
|
|
Post by bedinsis on Aug 30, 2022 15:56:03 GMT
You know, thinking about it, I wonder if Aata's description is not really telling the whole truth. First of all: in a chain of events I don't really think it's possible pinpoint one event as the trigger that caused a change; not without acknowledging that that change occurred due to earlier influences at which point we are back at square zero. I bring this up to get to my main point: while Aata is pointing to Annie surviving as the cause of the incorrect predictions, I think it is an earlier event that made the Omega device inaccurate, Annie surviving is merely a consequence of this earlier event. That is the arrival of the Tic-Toc. It has been said that the ether can change the past, and the ether makes the Omega Device inaccurate, so it stands to reason that a time travelling mechanical bird would cause the Omega Device to be inaccurate. It is also something I don't think any member of the Shadow Men knows about. What's more, Ysengrin claimed that had Annie and the shadow men merely died, they would not initiate contact, but they did do it because the Tic-Toc had started growing on the other side of the Annan River. Increasing contacts with creatures of the forest, creatures that bathe in the Ether, must've thrown in a major wrench in the Omega Device. In particular since Annie's involvement with the forest was "pissing them off". I am now starting to wonder if the creatures that offered Tony a way to bring his wife back actually were not being as deceiving as they originally came across. If Annie was dead at that point, and the creatures thought so then maybe the operation would have brought her dead spirit back, so Surma could live again without any sacrifices of daughters. I also think we'll soon see some alternate timelines; if for no other reason that we know that Annie's influence brought Kat in the right direction and because there is a timeline where no Annie exists. Maybe that Kat will turn out to be a major antagonist in this comic? |
|
|
|
Post by shaihulud on Aug 30, 2022 16:02:48 GMT
A reason why the Court did not try to prevent Annie's death may be that her being killed by a Forest envoy could have given the Court a justification for war, which I get the feeling is something that some sort of Ether-enforcing pact had prevented until then. Alternatively, since her dad didn't want to see her again, it could have given them an excuse to recall him, while also making him (and Kat) hate forest people. (While also killing off an undesirable half breed in a way that would give plausible deniability.) Maybe that Kat will turn out to be a major antagonist in this comic? I've thought she might still be around for a while now. |
|
|
|
Post by saardvark on Aug 30, 2022 19:15:23 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by drmemory on Aug 30, 2022 20:06:15 GMT
The court expected Annie to die, because Omega had predicted it. They allowed her to return to school, and even to get some training for possibly becoming a medium. The court even tried to prevent Kat from looking for her body! Which turned out to be her retrieving her, still alive. Later on, the loop closed and Kat and the Norns actually saved her from the fall, using Kat's robot birds. If I remember right, Kat didn't believe she was dead, and thought she was saving Annie, but I got the sense at the time that Donald didn't want her to see her friend's corpse. Recent events lead us to suspect that there was more to it than Donald's desire to avoid trauma for his child. When it came time to select a medium, they rejected Jones' recommendation. At the same time, they tried to stop Annie from being involved with the forest. Why, exactly, isn't clear, other than pettiness and annoyance with her failure to die. Perhaps they thought she was still causing new problems? Some truth to that really - as Annie once said, everything that has happened was triggered by her one action- putting Robot back together and asking him to return Shadow 2 to the forest. Everything we've seen follows from that, one way or another. Ever since then, they've tried to control her, and keep her out of the forest. Pretty sure blaming her for everything ether-related that went wrong was part of this too. Coyote and Ysengrin were both involved in this incident, even though we hadn't met them yet. Ysengrin set up the takeover of Robot by a shadow man, and most likely had it push her off the bridge. Coyote took out the birds as soon as they did their critical job and saved Annie. Jean and her lover were also involved! Remember, the boyfriend hung onto dead Annie's hairclip all that time! We even saw what could have been dead Annie's hair wafting around in the water when she dove during the Jean thing. So she both died and did not die in our timeline. I blame the ether for this (somehow). And of course Jean marked her - never been clear to me why she marked Annie with a small scratch rather than, say, chopping her in half. Maybe because she wasn't actually trying to cross, but then why did Jean cross the river to do that?
It was pretty obvious that it was Annie's death/not death that caused the timeline to diverge and messed up Omega. I believe I even said that in a previous thread. It isn't as obvious why Omega hasn't been able to adapt. If nothing else, it ought be possible to build a new model based on current data... unless there is ongoing interference with determinism, which does indeed appear to be the case. I envision a VERY frustrated AI or team of programmers sitting in a dark room somewhere, unable to understand why resetting or updating the model hasn't worked. Or possibly just frustrated at being unable to get permission to take out Annie.
|
|
|
|
Post by drmemory on Aug 30, 2022 20:14:26 GMT
Oh yes, I wonder if Jerrek/Ysengrin feels guilty for trying to kill Annie now? He's never apologized... and certainly should remember after getting his stolen memories back from Coyote.
|
|
|
|
Post by warrl on Aug 30, 2022 22:26:50 GMT
It just occurred to me... we know that according to the omega device Annie was supposed to die... but we don't know when. Maybe she was expected to cut herself on that broken glass in the hospital and bleed out, long before she came to the Court.
|
|
|
|
Post by lurkerbot on Aug 30, 2022 22:32:21 GMT
The court even tried to prevent Kat from looking for her body! Which turned out to be her retrieving her, still alive. Later on, the loop closed and Kat and the Norns actually saved her from the fall, using Kat's robot birds. If I remember right, Kat didn't believe she was dead, and thought she was saving Annie, but I got the sense at the time that Tony didn't want her to see her friend's corpse. Recent events lead us to suspect that there was more to it than Tony's desire to avoid trauma for his child. Unless I've completely misunderstood your meaning here, I think you've inadvertently confused Donald (Katerina's father) with Tony (Antimony's father), who wasn't even at the Court at that time. |
|
|
|
Post by lurkerbot on Aug 30, 2022 22:36:28 GMT
It just occurred to me... we know that according to the omega device Annie was supposed to die... but we don't know when. Maybe she was expected to cut herself on that broken glass in the hospital and bleed out, long before she came to the Court. I had similar thoughts too, but upon re-reading panel 3, Aata does say specifically that "ever since you survived the fall into the Annan Waters, the future is harder to predict." So he, at least, seems to believe that that specific event was the trigger. |
|
|
|
Post by drmemory on Aug 30, 2022 23:41:00 GMT
The court even tried to prevent Kat from looking for her body! Which turned out to be her retrieving her, still alive. Later on, the loop closed and Kat and the Norns actually saved her from the fall, using Kat's robot birds. If I remember right, Kat didn't believe she was dead, and thought she was saving Annie, but I got the sense at the time that Tony didn't want her to see her friend's corpse. Recent events lead us to suspect that there was more to it than Tony's desire to avoid trauma for his child. Unless I've completely misunderstood your meaning here, I think you've inadvertently confused Donald (Katerina's father) with Tony (Antimony's father), who wasn't even at the Court at that time. You are correct. I meant Donald. Sorry about that - senior moment.  |
|
|
|
Post by drmemory on Aug 30, 2022 23:52:19 GMT
Yes, that was well after she was supposed to have died. At that point, though, the headmaster was fairly nice to her. Later on - not so much.
I have to wonder how much the court knows, even now. Do they know about Kat, the Norns, and the time loop, for example? Or do they only know that Annie survived... somehow?
|
|
|
|
Post by todd on Aug 31, 2022 0:21:14 GMT
I have to wonder how much the court knows, even now. Do they know about Kat, the Norns, and the time loop, for example? Or do they only know that Annie survived... somehow? Probably only that Annie somehow survived; that would explain why they blame her and not Kat. We've no evidence so far that the Court knows about Kat's activities, that the TicTocs rescued Annie, etc. The Court's actions make a lot more sense if they're ignorant, in fact, of a lot of what Annie, Kat, and the rest have been doing - it would have saved itself a lot of trouble, if at the expense of the story, if it had stepped in and given them the ultimate grounding after their actions started causing trouble for it. (I wonder, for that matter, whether the Court became too dependent on the Omega Device's predictions before the incident at the bridge - and now that it's no longer able to predict the future accurately, are out of practice at how to handle the situations - a tone of "We let the Omega Device make all our decisions, determine all our strategies for us.") |
|
|
|
Post by Storel on Aug 31, 2022 1:28:48 GMT
It does seem as if the Court is unaware that the Tic-tocs saved Annie when she fell off the bridge... but wouldn't they have asked her "How did you survive that fall?" I can't imagine why they wouldn't have asked her that. However, since they didn't know where the Tic-tocs came from and had never even been able to examine one, perhaps they decided that the Tic-tocs saving Annie was just some sort of... fluke? I dunno. If I were a Court higher-up, my thinking would go "The Tic-tocs have been around for a long time, but they've never really done anything before. Why would they suddenly go and save the Carver girl from a fall? Could she be more important than we think she is? Could the Tic-tocs be more important than we think they are?"
Then again, if nobody had ever fallen off the bridge before, maybe they thought the Tic-tocs might be some sort of lifeguards that would have saved anyone who fell off the bridge and it was simply happenstance that she was the first one who fell?
|
|
|
|
Post by shaihulud on Aug 31, 2022 7:11:47 GMT
It does seem as if the Court is unaware that the Tic-tocs saved Annie when she fell off the bridge... but wouldn't they have asked her "How did you survive that fall?" I can't imagine why they wouldn't have asked her that. They didn't need to, she told everyone they did in the "Fangs of Summertime". I dunno. If I were a Court higher-up, my thinking would go "The Tic-tocs have been around for a long time, Excpet they don't know that. We only know it becuase the robots told Annie in "Sky Watcher and the Angel". The general court population has never been shown to have learned this, not even Kat. Then again, if nobody had ever fallen off the bridge before, maybe they thought the Tic-tocs might be some sort of lifeguards that would have saved anyone who fell off the bridge and it was simply happenstance that she was the first one who fell?
Except Omega would have predicted that if that was the case.
Sources:
Edit* Fixed some typos, corrected a mistake, and added sources.
|
|
