I was going to say that she figured it out last chapter, but checking back, what she actually said was: “Ira was an agent all along”. An agent, not secretly the boss.
The conversation where Nick and Ira talk specifically about the different boss avatars is close to that in sequence, but Sweetheart doesn’t go into it.
Oddly, she doesn’t seem to have mentioned this important revelation while talking to Dr. Lee. So does Dr. Lee realize that Ira is/was more than he appeared to be? She might have been able to deduce that Ira was Ari Green, had she been told. There are some important communication lapses going on here.
I thought they didn’t have a Jacuzzi, and that’s why Captain Beyond and Mama Foxfire had to train for the confrontation with Tigerlily in the steam bath instead.
Well, I was goint to argue that access to the Jacuzzi is presumably for Skin Horse personnel only, and Chris was not yet actually an employee – the entire point of his going to Annex One was to retrieve the WI-90 gamma irradiator he needed to do his job, because Skin Horse’s budget didn’t allow them to buy a new one, and without it they couldn’t hire him.
So now I’m a bit confused. It might be that Tip is lying about Skin Horse not having a jacuzzi / hot tub, potentially because non-employees aren’t supposed to know about it? (But they can know about the steam bath, I guess?)
Alternatively, he might be telling the truth, and the jacuzzi isn’t actually located at Skin Horse HQ – they might just have been granted “access” to a jacuzzi located somewhere else.
Huh, weird. When I use the chapter title to see all the comics in the chapter, todays-comic-388 is a duplicate of todays-comic-372. As filenames, one is "2010-09-14-off-his1.jpg" and the other is "2010-09-14-off-his.jpg".
iirc, Gavotte is now free of the VR and has all three micro reactors she needs to power her giant robot. Assuming the chapter tile isn’t talking about the race, then…
Wait, what giant robot? I remember the thermonuclear bombs, but no robots others than Hitty and Moustachio (unless someone has built a body to complete Foot).
Maybe Hitty will be part of the giant robot. She’d probably like that. Come to think of it, maybe Hitty and Moustachio will both be part of the giant robot.
Given the current pause in the Anasigma-Lee storyline . . .
I’ve been pondering the way that Dr. Ao seemed to not know about the women on the boardwalk, then changed the subject to coffee. On the face of it, it looks like Dr. Ao is not fully in control of his own systems. And he also seems surprised that Dr. Lee figured out that Walnut Slave Camp is a VR. But I also recently looked back at the part of the “Mixed-Up Files” storyline where Nick wants to try to jack in — and Goldbug easily spots this, shoves Nick back into his old human-self gamer apartment, then into complete sensory deprivation. Goldbug was monitoring the communication lines the whole time, and could hijack them at will.
Given how Mr. Green has been shown to be a past master at role playing and feigning ignorance, it starts to make more sense that Dr. Ao’s surprise and ignorance were faked. We’ve already seen Dr. Ao con someone into believing that she had figured everything out. Why wouldn’t he do the same to Dr. Lee? “Wow, you’re so smart, you figured out this is a VR!”/”There’s an aspect of the VR I know nothing about!” seems, in retrospect, like the first layer of a game easily peeling off, but concealing the lower layers. Dr. Lee was smug about having figured it out, but then doesn’t seem inclined to dig further, especially since she was distracted by trying to figure out the Gavotte-fragments.
I had originally thought that it was at least possible that Dr. Ao was thoroughly pwned by another AI with mind control. If GODOT or some advanced hacker with the Crown was hijacking his mind, Dr. Ao’s lapses might make sense. But we’ve seen no sign of that, at least not yet.
One possible implication, of course, is that Dr. Lee is still in the VR, and is being put into situations to make her panic and not think. But another thought that occurs to me is that she is in reality, and she was in the VR to manipulate her into reintegrating Gavotte, so that when she and Gavotte escaped, she wouldn’t think that Mr. Green had engineered that scenario. So it could be that Gavotte is . . . compromised, hacked. As an idea, maybe some of her bees are Anasigma micro-drones, able to report back everything in Gavotte’s vicinity, and maybe even influence her thinking. The swarm has bugs planted. She’s maybe had beehiveior modification reprogramming. Something something Manchurian something.
Is anyone else suspicious, or does the strange fecklessness of Dr. Ao make sense?
While I love your idea of beehiveior modification and agree that “Dr. Ao” seems uncharacteristically beefuddled, I think it is possible that Gavotte is using Dr. Lee as a honey trap for Dr. Ao.
After all this wouldn’t be the first time a “big man” came to a sticky end as a result of hubris and lust.
Sweetheart needs to calm down. If you start seeing your enemy as everywhere, you can get nothing done for fear of playing right into their/his/its hands/manipulator appendages. I believe it’s called “the wilderness of mirrors”, and only ends up in a bunker in Montana somewhere, peering out the gun slots waiting for the next move, and not helping your cause at all. Which is exactly where They want you.
Darn. We’re not going to find out what happened to Nick right away, are we, now?
What good is a cliffhanger if you only have to hang there for one day?
If Dr. Lee hadn’t stopped to change her hospital gown, we’d know by now.
Or… if she’d just acted to save Nick on her own from the start and not thought to trust another Anasigma agent with her treason plans.
I love Virginia but I feel like she made a really avoidable mistake on that one.
Maybe there wasn’t a good plan that allowed for avoiding suspicion from her co-worker?
I think the new chapter title might be a clue to what’s coming.
Man, those hooks leaving me dangling and jerking like a … a …. freshly caught bass? … really … um.. crap. Sorry folks. My metaphor died.
I need help, I recently clipped my fingernails, and I can’t really hold on to this cliff for very long.
The real tragedy is we won’t get to find out what happened in that jacuzzi.
Well, in Sweetheart’s defense, I really don’t think she realized just how big an enemy Mr. Green was.
After all, it was *Skin Horse* she was told not to trust.
Does she realize yet that Mr. Green is Ira?
I was going to say that she figured it out last chapter, but checking back, what she actually said was: “Ira was an agent all along”. An agent, not secretly the boss.
The conversation where Nick and Ira talk specifically about the different boss avatars is close to that in sequence, but Sweetheart doesn’t go into it.
Oddly, she doesn’t seem to have mentioned this important revelation while talking to Dr. Lee. So does Dr. Lee realize that Ira is/was more than he appeared to be? She might have been able to deduce that Ira was Ari Green, had she been told. There are some important communication lapses going on here.
I thought they didn’t have a Jacuzzi, and that’s why Captain Beyond and Mama Foxfire had to train for the confrontation with Tigerlily in the steam bath instead.
I believe that was in Annex One before Tigerlily renovated. They’re somewhere else now. Aren’t they?
Nah, that was during Purple Waves, after Skin Horse had moved to the new building and Tigerlily had turned Annex One into the Positronic Love Tower.
(I was just re-reading that arc yesterday as a method of procrastinating on my NaNo.)
Well, I was goint to argue that access to the Jacuzzi is presumably for Skin Horse personnel only, and Chris was not yet actually an employee – the entire point of his going to Annex One was to retrieve the WI-90 gamma irradiator he needed to do his job, because Skin Horse’s budget didn’t allow them to buy a new one, and without it they couldn’t hire him.
But then I went back to check the archives…
http://skin-horse.com/comic/them-unfortunately/
So now I’m a bit confused. It might be that Tip is lying about Skin Horse not having a jacuzzi / hot tub, potentially because non-employees aren’t supposed to know about it? (But they can know about the steam bath, I guess?)
Alternatively, he might be telling the truth, and the jacuzzi isn’t actually located at Skin Horse HQ – they might just have been granted “access” to a jacuzzi located somewhere else.
As long as we’re talking about inconsistencies, Sweetheart’s original response to a bath — and what is a Jacuzzi but a fancy bathtub? — was not “Yay!”
http://skin-horse.com/comic/todays-comic-388/
Huh, weird. When I use the chapter title to see all the comics in the chapter,
todays-comic-388is a duplicate oftodays-comic-372. As filenames, one is"2010-09-14-off-his1.jpg"and the other is"2010-09-14-off-his.jpg".iirc, Gavotte is now free of the VR and has all three micro reactors she needs to power her giant robot. Assuming the chapter tile isn’t talking about the race, then…
An astute observation. I was wondering what to make of the title…
Wait, what giant robot? I remember the thermonuclear bombs, but no robots others than Hitty and Moustachio (unless someone has built a body to complete Foot).
Gavotte revealed her plan back in My House Is Me, specifically in this strip:
http://skin-horse.com/comic/fewer-people/
Have we ever seen the whole Annex One complex as one structure? All I remember are little bits and pieces…
Technically, she doesn’t have all three reactors, since one of them is still powering Hitty.
Maybe Hitty will be part of the giant robot. She’d probably like that. Come to think of it, maybe Hitty and Moustachio will both be part of the giant robot.
Sweetheart, Espionage Jacuzzis only work if your girlfriend is on the other team.
Unity is a team unto herself.
Given the current pause in the Anasigma-Lee storyline . . .
I’ve been pondering the way that Dr. Ao seemed to not know about the women on the boardwalk, then changed the subject to coffee. On the face of it, it looks like Dr. Ao is not fully in control of his own systems. And he also seems surprised that Dr. Lee figured out that Walnut Slave Camp is a VR. But I also recently looked back at the part of the “Mixed-Up Files” storyline where Nick wants to try to jack in — and Goldbug easily spots this, shoves Nick back into his old human-self gamer apartment, then into complete sensory deprivation. Goldbug was monitoring the communication lines the whole time, and could hijack them at will.
Given how Mr. Green has been shown to be a past master at role playing and feigning ignorance, it starts to make more sense that Dr. Ao’s surprise and ignorance were faked. We’ve already seen Dr. Ao con someone into believing that she had figured everything out. Why wouldn’t he do the same to Dr. Lee? “Wow, you’re so smart, you figured out this is a VR!”/”There’s an aspect of the VR I know nothing about!” seems, in retrospect, like the first layer of a game easily peeling off, but concealing the lower layers. Dr. Lee was smug about having figured it out, but then doesn’t seem inclined to dig further, especially since she was distracted by trying to figure out the Gavotte-fragments.
I had originally thought that it was at least possible that Dr. Ao was thoroughly pwned by another AI with mind control. If GODOT or some advanced hacker with the Crown was hijacking his mind, Dr. Ao’s lapses might make sense. But we’ve seen no sign of that, at least not yet.
One possible implication, of course, is that Dr. Lee is still in the VR, and is being put into situations to make her panic and not think. But another thought that occurs to me is that she is in reality, and she was in the VR to manipulate her into reintegrating Gavotte, so that when she and Gavotte escaped, she wouldn’t think that Mr. Green had engineered that scenario. So it could be that Gavotte is . . . compromised, hacked. As an idea, maybe some of her bees are Anasigma micro-drones, able to report back everything in Gavotte’s vicinity, and maybe even influence her thinking. The swarm has bugs planted. She’s maybe had beehiveior modification reprogramming. Something something Manchurian something.
Is anyone else suspicious, or does the strange fecklessness of Dr. Ao make sense?
Re: the previous storyline, Dr. Ao / Mr. Green did not know anything about Pavanne, either.
While I love your idea of beehiveior modification and agree that “Dr. Ao” seems uncharacteristically beefuddled, I think it is possible that Gavotte is using Dr. Lee as a honey trap for Dr. Ao.
After all this wouldn’t be the first time a “big man” came to a sticky end as a result of hubris and lust.
I see what you did,
For this and my sins of emission, I prostate myself and beg forgiveness 🙂
“Beehiveior modification”? That’s EEEEVIL! 888888888 😉
Sweetheart needs to calm down. If you start seeing your enemy as everywhere, you can get nothing done for fear of playing right into their/his/its hands/manipulator appendages. I believe it’s called “the wilderness of mirrors”, and only ends up in a bunker in Montana somewhere, peering out the gun slots waiting for the next move, and not helping your cause at all. Which is exactly where They want you.
In addendum, you never get a Jacuzzi that way.
This is a story-line from which I will likely never bee free of. I want to see ‘what’s next’ but don’t want it to end.