[2754] Okay, hold still

[csj]

vooop

[jda]

DAMMIT Kat, you were supposed to kill Zimmy, not copy her powers to create your own Katirmingham and trap nearby people there!

[madjack]

The faint white grid drawn over the city at the bottom of the page looks kinda like transparent floor. Perspective tricks for moving them around quickly or separate pocket dimension within the Court space?

[arf]

At least Doningham doesn't have spiders.
... which means it may have bugs.

[bicarbonat]

There's an interesting comparison to some of Annie's capers, esp the Jeanne arc (npi) – the idea of drawing others into your initiative is there, but without the group premeditation and the outside cause.

The closest body-hacking/personal interest analogue I can think of for Annie was her cutting off her elemental, and that was a deliberately isolated move.

Kat and Annie share that "I'll go ahead and do what I want because I'm prodigious and I know what must be done" trait, but express it differently.
And "et al" folks like Paz and Red may have things to say about that.

[basser]

Being "just like telnet" feels like a weird comparison unless we're meant to infer that this is some sort of remote link situation and also that security protocols are comically nonexistent.

Heck, reading way too far into a joke page tag might even lead to a guess that all this "oops I done goofed better remote in to my computer" business is intentionally set up to create a scenario where Kat's setup looks super vulnerable to interception-based attacks and she's really just using it as a honeypot to scoop up Omega credentials. Which honestly would make the first part of the chapter track a lot better if we assume Annie and Paz have some vague idea that they're helping Kat set up a trap.

[csj]

Mar 6, 2023 8:09:11 GMT jda said:

DAMMIT Kat, you were supposed to kill Zimmy, not copy her powers to create your own Katirmingham and trap nearby people there!

worse

katsglow

[jda]

The WORST conversation would be
Annie: "Kat, how the XXX were you able to trap us here?"
Kat: Well... you know, I miiiiiiight have been injecting both of you with nanotrackers and biohackers thruout the lasr year without telling you, bc I thought it could be useful..."
Paz: "What?? how... I dont remember..."
Kat: "weeeeeellll, when Annie told me about Coyote and the memory spheres thing, I thought..."
(seething rage ensues)

[mochakimono]

For a second I worried that Kat had teleported them into midair over the city. Actually, I'm still a little worried about that. She might have missed the target coordinates juuust a smidgen.

[hnau]

A bit of a stretch, maybe due to dramatisation.

[Storel]

I'm pretty sure telnet doesn't drop you from hundreds of feet above the ground. That would have gotten it lots of negative reviews...

[najmniejszy]

They got legs for days

[wlerin]

I wonder if this is yet another instance of Kat perceiving the wonders of the ether as dreadfully mundane. Too bad both Annie and Paz are etherically sensitive.

[TBeholder]

That’s where we remember that Kat did visit Zimmingham once…

Mar 6, 2023 8:12:08 GMT arf said:

At least Doningham doesn't have spiders.

It’s a very premature statement.
And if it does… from what we have seen, those might well be spiders from DooM. Then again, spiders from Thief would be more spooky.

Mar 6, 2023 8:20:29 GMT basser said:

Being "just like telnet" feels like a weird comparison unless we're meant to infer that this is some sort of remote link situation and also that security protocols are comically nonexistent.

Security is the job for tunnels anyway.
Then again, Kat probably does not subscribe to “one purpose per tool” philosophy.

Mar 6, 2023 11:46:17 GMT wlerin said:

I wonder if this is yet another instance of Kat perceiving the wonders of the ether as dreadfully mundane. Too bad both Annie and Paz are etherically sensitive.

This could cause the reverse arrow lock situation, yes.

[gpvos]

More like anonymous ftp.

[philman]

Mar 6, 2023 9:33:29 GMT Storel said:

I'm pretty sure telnet doesn't drop you from hundreds of feet above the ground. That would have gotten it lots of negative reviews...

From who? Their customers would no longer be in a state to complain, at least not for very long.

[Per]

After some additional comic escalation of computer weirdness, Kat wakes up and comments she went too far with the Welsh rarebit.

[ctso74]

They better have NordVPN, if they're going to be slicing that hard.

[fia]

Starting to wonder if maybe there are so many empty buildings in the Court because, as in Kat's computer, they're metaphors for computer programs. Maybe the Court is all an elaborate computer simulation.

My colleague David Chalmers has this new book called Reality+ which is sort of about this being true in our actual reality... I think that's all nuts, but I respect the philosophy hustle.

[pyradonis]

Well, now this is awkaaaa-

Mar 6, 2023 8:38:50 GMT jda said:

The WORST conversation would be
Annie: "Kat, how the XXX were you able to trap us here?"
Kat: Well... you know, I miiiiiiight have been injecting both of you with nanotrackers and biohackers thruout the lasr year without telling you, bc I thought it could be useful..."

Unnecessary when they're already full of the trackers the Court uses, just tap into that system.

[sosleepy]

Mar 6, 2023 8:59:53 GMT mochakimono said:

For a second I worried that Kat had teleported them into midair over the city. Actually, I'm still a little worried about that. She might have missed the target coordinates juuust a smidgen.

Don't worry that's simply an "icarian flight" spell. Have to be careful though because flying does not prevent falling. 

 

[Gemminie]

Annie has apparently picked up a wireless smart-speaker device and is holding it as Kat's voice emanates from it; both Annie and Paz are looking at it as Kat talks. Kat is saying something about opening a "guest user entrance portal," and as she and Paz look at each other, Annie is about to ask what that is, but then something happens.

What is that something? Well, Annie and Paz are drawn exactly in the third frame as they are in the previous frame, and it may in fact just be a copy/paste of the line art, but it's distorted, stretched as if some sort of space warp is affecting them starting with their feet. Beneath them we see some sort of misty cityscape seen from high in the air – did Kat teleport them to a mile above the Court (perhaps her computer floats in the sky and its entry vestibule has a transparent floor), or is that just what it looks like? Maybe we're seeing some kind of Tron-style visualization of computational resources and data flows and they're being sent inside the computer, or maybe Kat's new computer is physically the size of a city but stored in a pocket dimension, or maybe she's got a transparent floor in her server room and it's made of a bunch of crystals, or who knows? But it appears that Kat is matter-transporting Annie and Paz somewhere where they can help her.

[Gemminie]

Mar 6, 2023 14:13:41 GMT Per said:

After some additional comic escalation of computer weirdness, Kat wakes up and comments she went too far with the Welsh rarebit.

*Enthusiastic applause for Winsor McCay reference!!*

[maxptc]

Huh Annie and/or Kat being Zimmy looks more plausible then ever, but maybe I need to adjust my wild spec to Paz being Gamma....

[liminal]

Looks like Kat took "cloud computing" a bit too seriously.

[rabbit]

Mar 6, 2023 12:36:04 GMT gpvos said:

More like anonymous ftp.

=Friend Transfer Protocol

[maxptc]

Mar 6, 2023 15:14:18 GMT fia said:

Starting to wonder if maybe there are so many empty buildings in the Court because, as in Kat's computer, they're metaphors for computer programs. Maybe the Court is all an elaborate computer simulation.

My colleague David Chalmers has this new book called Reality+ which is sort of about this being true in our actual reality... I think that's all nuts, but I respect the philosophy hustle.

I dunno. I'll accept that theory is as nuts as other creation theories, but if it's ever possible for humans to create a near perfect simulation of reality, then the chances of our reality being the first to do so instead of a simulation itself seems pretty slim.

[manabi]

Instead of that being a cityscape below them, perhaps it's Kat's computer, with the faint lines being part of a transparent floor system. (Similar in a way to the raised floors datacenters use.)

[bedinsis]

This is shaping up to be one of the more fun chapters in a while.

I'm currently imagining Kat speaking with a Rick from Rick and Morty voice, since that character is a mad scientist that is unfazed by extraordinarily circumstances that leave his supporting cast mortified. I get the same vibe from Kat treating her lack of access to her physical body as a minor hindrance, unlike Annie and Paz.

[imaginaryfriend]

Any prognostications for what specific challenges the girls will face as they gain access to Kat's new computer? Going with the base assumption that Kat has prearranged access to her computer for for guests with gaming in a Dr. Disaster sort of way, I'm thinking they'll have to complete some sort of scavenger hunt for eclectic objects which will then be used in a series of less-than-intuitive ways to either trigger a restart or open a backdoor which they will use to manually reset the system. I think the instant reset would be more dramatic so I'm going to guess that. Overall it will be a reference to a video game that came out in the late 1980s-early 1990s. The following is just an example of what I'm expecting, not the specific items or actions: Search Alleyway, find item Dime. Give Dime to Green Grocer, receive item Banana. Use Banana in Open Windowsill. Close Open Windowsill. Open Closed Windowsill, find item Bent Banana. Give Bent Banana to Organ Grinder's Monkey. [Organ Grinder's Monkey pelts the girls with garbage and debris.] Search Alleyway, find item Rusty Key. Use Rusty Key with Bus Terminal Locker, find item Debit Card. Give Debit Card to Bus Station Attendant, receive items Bus Ticket to Birmingham and Debit Card. Give Bus ticket to Birmingham to Bus Driver.  Enter Bus.  [Travel to Birmingham.]  Exit Bus.  Search Parking Lot, find item Empty Crisp Packet.  Give Empty Crisp Packet to Fashion-Victim Fairy, receive item Pixie Dust.  [Go] North.  North.  North.  East.  Search Woods, find item Golf Ball.  [Go] East.  Use Pixie Dust with Golf Ball, receive item Magical Golf Ball.  Give Magical Golf Ball to Frustrated Golfer, receive item Limousine Key. ...and so forth until the girls are ready to murder Kat.