30

Apr 2015

Chapter 6: Page 16 - Shadows of Loss

Posted by / in Comic / 44 comments

Jane has much more patience than ya’ll give her credit for ;)

Don’t forget to vote a lot today and tomorrow, since the vote counter will reset. I’ll be posting up a new voting incentive for the new month too ;)

Also, did you read the latest post in the short story Mirage? It’s quite excellent, and really does provide some nice background to Minerva.

  • Michael Corley

    That’s some serious Skype!

    • Yes. Yes it is. As you’ll see on Monday ;)

    • Maarten Spreij

      For real! Very interesting idea.. I’ve read loads of scifi yet haven’t come across something like this, +1!

      • I think you’ll like Monday’s page. It contains a diagram of how it works out.

        • Amberlight

          You mean you’r going to explain the actual science behind that? Well you better hope that there are no neuroscientists among Russian readers or you’r screwed:D

          • Hehehe, no not super detailed science, more just a basic diagram/schematic :P

          • Dusty Coyote

            So you are going to outline it for us?

          • Let me know after Monday’s page if you need more detail :)

          • Dusty Coyote

            Ok but this seems sketchy.

      • NickDA

        I’ll find a few books that I’ve read that deal with this topic… its some older scifi stuff… as well as the cyberpunk genre. Perhaps the most modern example would be Neil Stephenson - he had a character that had basically made his car/tank into his body, splicing nerve inputs etc. visual inputs, auditory, tactile etc…

        • sebasp

          Shh! the guy is saying that no one ever did this before! You have to say: “Nice! We’re so cool! right?”

        • Matt [in Middletown]

          Neuromancer influence anywhere?

          • NickDA

            Subconsciously I am sure… that book is bloody epic!

          • Matt [in Middletown]

            It was awesome.
            Too bad the movie Johnny Mnemonic did a terrible job with the characters introduced in the source material.

    • Adriano

      Omg I thought the same.
      Like, “they have MinervaSkype, now ? Awesome !”

      “After Tenzinception and Minervapple, discover the new app MinervaSkype, by Jane the AI !”

  • Eonknight

    I wonder if hearing about Thalia’s story might make Tenzin “snap out of it”?

    • I’m sure he’d find the story interesting, but it’ll be a while before Tenzin meets Thalia ;)

      • Maarten Spreij

        No spoilers!

        • :P I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that someday characters will meet :P

  • Well, how about that, she got through to him. Jane just won a few more Awesome points in my book.

  • Very cool development, Dan, and nicely drawn. Looking FW to Monday!

  • Kathy Megar-Kestner

    Cool!

    • Thanks! And welcome fellow SSSS reader :D

      • Delta-v

        Is that Minna’s webcomic or some other with the same initials?

        • The same :)

          • Delta-v

            I’ve been reading it from the beginning. ^^

          • It’s a good comic! And one I spent Patreon monies to advertise on a couple weeks ago, bringing in a lot of awesome new readers :)

      • Matt [in Middletown]

        Hiding in crates is fun and exciting.
        As a certain character there just found out.

  • Dusty Coyote

    Also, In here he has two arms and two legs. And hair.

    • Shhh! Don’t tell him that :P

      • Dusty Coyote

        Tenzin: They told me to be prepared for phantom limb pain and sensations…. but I wasn’t quite ready for the feeling of someone else’s hand caressing my missing one.

        • Matt [in Middletown]

          “It was when someone put my missing hand on my face and said ‘hold this’ that I panicked.”
          / gee, thanks brain, that was really creepy.

  • Matt [in Middletown]

    “Miss Jane, video conference on skull line one?”

  • Delta-v

    I haven’t pestered people to vote lately, but OH, MY GOSH! you people just have to see the new voting incentive. It’s the best one yet. :)

    • Matt [in Middletown]

      …none of you are safe…

  • Rift

    Is it just me, or is Jane trying to flirt with him?

    • Delta-v

      They have a complicated relationship. Jane was designed to aid Tenzin by providing him with information, and na……uh, that is, providing reminders for him about things he needs to do, among other functions. She then began to re-write her programming to fit his personality and needs. This is an ongoing process as we see HERE, “…gotten bossy lately.” Just recently, we learned HERE that she seems to have developed actual emotions.

      So there you have it: Has she achieved senescence, and is trying to talk her best friend out of suicide by emphasizing their relationship even if Tenzin doesn’t feel that way, or is she just a very, very expert, expert system running down a response tree to fulfill her programming? I, personally, vote for senescence because I like her. :)

      • Adriano

        A part of me thinks to her like a decent normal woman, another one thinks like Dr Kavi xD

      • Henrik Svantesson

        Or she puts up an excellent act of having developed emotions so that she would be more likely to be given greater control over her, giving her more power to complete her primary purpose of aiding him. NO MATTER WHAT.

        Superintelligent prototypes a fookin scary in how well they can predict the behavior of lower intelligences and manipulate them. There is literally no way to tell if she is genuine in her care for him, or if she is simply doing everything in her power to get her restrictions lowered and amass more power so that she can prevent everything from interfering with her ability to aid Tenzin ever again.

        Programming friendly AI is hard, yaaay!

        Determining whether you’ve succeeded or not before it’s too late is EVEN HARDER! Doubleyaay!

    • While Jane will basically do whatever it takes to wake Tenzin up, their relationship is not the flirting kind ;)

  • Neil Kapit

    I want Tenzin to pull through, but at the same time I can totally believe that he’d want to just end it all here. The “you save one life you save the world” adage sounds beautiful when presented academically, but when someone who’s just lost a bunch of friends and lost even more friends and family in his past hears it, it’s hardly comfort.

  • Yeah, exactly. You got Jane! You seemed like the perfect duo just a few chapters back - come back Tenzin!

  • Citrus Reaper

    C’mon, Tenzin. You still have to machete-kill the guys who killed your men!