Grrl Power #1013 – The Faketrix
If you can make copies of yourself, there’s a lot of mischief you can get up to. Harem has customized all her dupes with dye jobs, haircuts and tattoos in some cases, but there was a time when she had at least two of herself that still looked identical. Well, that happens each time she gets strong enough to make a new dupe. It appears as a copy of her strawberry blonde self, but usually she figures out some fashion trend to take it down so it doesn’t stay looking like her “original” self for long.
But the pranks that a duplicator can pull really pale in comparison to the ones a teleporter can pull. Unless the duplicator can make disposable dupes which they can pitch headlong into a tree mulcher or any other number of gruesome things.
Really, the teleporter can do the “I invented a disintegrator gun, watch!” or a “Beam me up, Scotty.” with minimal effort, and presumably Harem’s already pulled those on multiple people. The “Log Off” requires a slightly more tech savvy group, but has the potential for hilariouser consequences.
She could also really push the “yeah, this is a video game” prank if she wanted to by talking about DLC and teleporting one of her other selves into the space she just occupied to make it look like she bought a new hairstyle and a fancy dress using “ImmersionQuest Bucks” and then watch a room full of people wave their hands about trying to pull up their UI while she films them acting like mental patients. She’s found the prank usually falls apart well before she gets that far though.
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Yeah. When one of your pranks ends up getting a friend pregnant, maybe you’ve gone just a bit too far.
In the above incident pregnant may be the least thing to be concerned about.
Pinholes are evil. Don’t be evil.
As it was, Harem having to pay for property damage & therapy sessions goes to prove that some practical jokes ain’t all that practical.
Wow, Harem really is evil.
Arc don’t care if you are evil. Arc just cares that you enlisted and follow the rules. Because Arc is military and that is how military works.
Eheheheh….No. People like that tend to actually get weeded out by Basic Training.
You’d think that, but there’s ALWAYS a blue falcon lurking somewhere on base, and not the kind of blue falcon that has a robotic dog.
I agree. The stupid ones get weeded out (nobody wants the trouble). The smart ones? Go check supply, procurement, and NCO’s for the brass very, very carefully…
Of course, I’ve never been in the military and this all could have changed since WWII (betcha it hasn’t).
SPOILER ALERT:
It hasn’t
The other day I was discussing a pseudo-conspiracy theory that even going back to before WWII the military and certain institutions in the US would scout for what could be thought of as a “super villain mindset” and both recruit and compensate such individuals. Both removing potential super villains from resorting to building skull tanks in their garages and unleashing zombie hamsters as distractions while they rob the bank, so instead they are working for the military and connected institutions brainstorming together invisibility methods, saucer cars, fire bat bombs, stink weapons, and other ideas only a super villain could come up with and develop.
Well, people who are willing to believe to have lived in a simulation their whole life at a moment’s notice rather than suspecting some kind of stage magic or similar trickery receive little sympathy from me, no matter how drunk they might be.
I dunno. If someone vanished in front of your eyes, no smoke screen, no nothing…. and you were a bit drunk at the time to not be able to think of stuff like that….
Doubly specially if they are a bunch of techy nerds…
And to be fair, their entire world is in fact, only digital and only exists on the internet. *Clicks ‘Post Comment’ Button*
Nope, sorry, I cannot get that drunk to still register it and not draw the more rational conclusion rather than some media-induced nonsense (and I do consume a lot of nonsensical media). Obviously I would still be wrong, because Harmen actually does teleport (which is at least as much a stretch than the simulation theory), but I still would suspect trickery anyway. Granted, many people are prone to jump to conclusions, but by the same token many are a suspicious bunch.
@Guesticules: Techy nerd as in “genre fans”, perhaps. Actual tech nerds, not so much. Even Elon Musk would not be fooled to take such a blatant showpiece as solid proof to immediately act upon and he does believe in the simulation theory.
And that wasn’t meant as an insult by the way
And even the most intelligent person can make stupid decisions at times
More Chaotic Neutral
This still runs consistently with my thought that, although not at Sydney levels, Harem is pretty impulsive. Even with the additional experience of living through multiple bodies she is still a 19-20 year old. While she is precocious she doesn’t come across as particularly mature. Not that I would have ever been bright enough to come up with a prank without the wisdom to foresee the consequences until about 30 seconds after.
Not evil if you ask me. It actually was a funny prank and it is hardly her fault that her audience was drunk and stupid and decided that the joke gave them license to ignore all bounds of decency.
Agreed.
Also, why would they think the consequences of their actions would suddenly be nullified if they “knew” they were in a simulation? Simply put, it wouldn’t. The simulation would keep simulating exactly as it had before, ergo, if you can’t leave the sim, the sim IS your reality.
It’s the problem stupid people have with nihilism. “The destruction of time is inevitable! Nothing we do matters!” And so they do something stupid because it ‘doesn’t matter,’ only to discover that there are consequences.
and the root of that entire mindset is just weird to me, it is bathed in egotism. Like because humans aren’t cosmically important, the center of the universe, all human actions serving some divine purpose to shape the cosmos, then suddenly life has no meaning, they get depressed or self destructive…like…okay…you shouldn’t feel that your very existence and life hinges on being the center of and the shaper of things at that scale in the first place…its weird. Its like that story (At the Mountains of Madness) where a character has a mental breakdown because the discovery of alien life somehow invalidated all of human history and biology as being important (which was an existential fear at the time)…and really this is centered in a very toxic cultural trait in bringing people up; this idea that humans are a special creation of an Omnipotent being that created the universe and then teach them the scale of the universe and then the realize that humans can’t be relevant at that scale so it falls onto their heads like a great big lie and they lash out.
think being told your whole life you are king of the world only to step outside and discover no one knows or cares who you are.
Which again, they shouldn’t think that way and therefor wouldn’t have this existential dilemma or mental breakdown if they just life and the world for what they are without thinking its a game of king of the mountain the whole time.
Purpose and importance are relative, and not being the sun god doesn’t make you worthless.
Yeah, people respond strangely to being told everything is meaningless in the end. Everything might be meaningless in the end but I am not at the end, I am in my kitchen baking brownies. Are they not reason enough to get up and turn on the oven right now? Brownies! Yay!
Nihilism just means you need to want to do the things you do, that is all.
That’s actually quite brilliant.
Brilliant but really mean.
I did something similar with some friends once. Main difference is instead of disappearing, I just went stone-motionless (a skill I had been practicing for acting classes), including a skill where I breathed so slowly that you couldn’t tell my chest was moving.
Had a similar effect, people were poking me, trying to figure out if I had really ‘stopped’ (I was convincing), started freaking out about the world not being real. Then I couldn’t hold it anymore, and burst up laughing. I got some of the dirtiest looks, and one, “Okay, that was really good.”
Did you want a job as a human statue on Coney Island or a British guard at Buckingham Palace or something? :)
Naw, I just was learning to pretend to be dead. I had a complaint once during a practice that I was breathing too hard when playing dead, and it made it laughably bad.
Also a really good skill if you want to leave a boring Zoom meeting.
(must be preceded by the line “Sorry, I seem to be having connection problems”)
That is brilliant!
I never expected for that skill to have successful “work” applications! Thanks for pointing it out!
So wait, would this be like the human social equivalent of playing opossum?
And so effective with drunk stupid people!
Wait, does this mean there is a sixth Daphne out there?
Her hair colour doesn’t match any of the known Daphne’s (and wasn’t Berry supposed to be the most natural of the group? or did that not apply to the hair?)
There is not *yet* a sixth Daphne out there.
This is just from very long ago. People dye their hair different colours.
As this is a flashback, I’m assuming she got a blonder style for Vogue later, so no, only 5 so far in the present. And yes, Strawberry Daphne is the “original” style.
This was how a version of her looked some time ago (when she pulled this prank).
Not very bright, are you?
Not very civil, are you?
Speaking of not being very bright, clearly can’t tell a joke
People have been speculating about a hidden sixth Daphne ever since it was revealed how she makes a new self
Well, yeah. If you had that power, and were in a career where you could make nasty enemies, wouldn’t YOU keep at least one backup self living a quiet, inconspicuous life in some out of the way hole?
Ideally it would be a self that nobody else is away that it even exists.
That way it’s the most secure life insurance ever.
On the other hand, it would be extremely boring for most people, and they’d blow it’s total isolation and secrecy.
All it takes is one screwup to compromise the secret/security, especially in a supers world.
I disagree. Since Harem has a shared consciousness, her backup body would live what the others live, and she could have some fun of her own (after, being a teleporter and earning quite the salary, she would have no problem providing funds for a leisurely lifestye for a trust-fund socialite in another English-speaking country…
(oh, by the way, the backup clone was used in Invincible for Dupli-Kate, and kind of used/subverted in X-Factor with Jamie Maddox)
Well, in Daphne’s case, she can “unteleport” her bodies, leaving them in a space that presumably nobody else can access.
But unteleporting a body doubles the strength of her remaining ones. If it was me, I’d definitely keep a secret copy living with a fake identity in like northern Norway, with no trail to the others, just to be able to surprise an enemy with the strength of, let’s see, 64 women?
Of course I’m pretty paranoid.
shes stated before that she changes the looks of her copies from time to time
I just think she’s younger in this scene. She’s currently 19 according to the cast page, so a few years could mean significant changes; especially for someone like Daphne who apparently experiments with different looks.
I think it’s safe to assume that Daphne is familiar with hair dyes, hair styling, and how to use them. More likely she just had a different style at the time of the flashback.
The Harem in the above scenario looks like Blonde Harem, just with a different hairstyle from when she was a little younger. Currently, Harem is 19 years old (with her oldest body). Her first duplicate body seems to have been created when she was about 8 years old. Her second when she was 9 years old. Her third when she was 11-12 years old, and her fourth when she was roughly 15. It seems to start taking longer for each additional duplicate, probably because the amount of strength she needs to form a new Harem keeps getting to be a higher number as she gets older (ie, when she’s just 1 person, she’s about 16 times stronger than a normal girl of her age and build, so she’d probably need to be 32 time stronger to make a 6th Harem and 64 times stronger for a 7th)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-491-leading-a-double-er-quintuple-life/comment-page-2/
(see Panel 4)
Looking back at that comic (#491), I just realized that Dave made a mistake. The graph in Panel 4 is missing one mark between the 10 and 20 year mark. So if you count from the beginning, Harem would only be 18 years old. Also, if you count the years between when she gets an additional clone, she should get the 5th clone when she is 18 years old.
8/9/11/14/…18/23/29/…
She gets her 1st clone at 8, 1 year later she gets her 2nd clone, 2 years later she gets her 3rd clone, 3 years later she gets her 4th clone.
But she’s clearly 19 based on that chart. Plus she literally says she’s 19 ‘in normal, boring, linear time.’ :)
But I see what you’re trying to do. Trying to create a pattern between the years in which she gets a double. I like your view of it.
8 to 9, one year difference
9 to 11, two year difference
11 to 14, three year difference
14 to 18, four year difference
18 to 23, five year difference
23 to 29, six year difference
But since she she gets her 4th clone at 15, that doesnt actually work. Plus then, she’d have 6 bodies (original body + 5 more) by now, even if she was 18 and not 19.
I do like your idea of how it could have worked had DaveB done it differently though. It appeals to pattern sensing :).
I imagine DaveB intentionally tried to mess up the pattern, but didn’t have much room to work 5 bodies into 19 years without running into one.
Yeah that’s what I figure too.
Setting aside everything canon, on the bottom of the graph between zero and ten there are 9 marks but between ten and twenty there are only 8 marks. So if you removed the 10 and the 20, she would be 18 according to the graph. So DaveB just needs to fix up the marks a little.
Possibly (I noticed that there’s only 8 notches between 10 and 20 as well, but space-wise, she’s at where 19 would go). But if nothing else, we know she’s 19 because she said she’s 19 on that same page, in that same panel. :)
There’s a mark for 20 that is clearly off the edge of the graph. I’m guessing there was a mark for 19, but it disappeared when DaveB shrunk the resolution for posting.
That’s seriously a genius prank.
Then she swaps a few of her other selves in and out, asking which “skin” they like best.
Or how about she waits outside a few minutes then walks in saying “Sorry I’m late… what are you guys doing?!?” Keeping the gag alive while chilling them out a minute lol
Vorps back in “… What? Someone is using my skin? … Damn it ‘molly’ I told you nkt to use my stuff” vorps out
Man harems mom must be frazzled getting her to school ” … But mom i’m already there ….”
For once being the new kid in school would be awesome….
The cost of the idea “this’ll be funny” would probably be incalculable by this point of humanity.
On par with “hold my beer”
sigh…. that can never be as innocent as it once was. granted it wasn’t very innocent to begin with but now…..
Don’t for get “Guys check this out!” knew more of those than I care to admit…. or admitting any form of participation… lol
No one asks me to “hold my beer & watch this” anymore…I’d always drink the rest of it while they were doing their stupid stunt, under the impression that they wouldn’t be coming back for it.
LOL I have done that, drinking the beer while laughing at the fool. My “check this out” was pretty dumb. It was 1978 just after a blizzard and the roads were glare ice so me and 2 other guys decided to “bumper-ski” down a steep hill road on the back of a ’71 olds delta 98. The guy driving must of hit 30+ and I slipped and started to go under the car so i spent some very scary moments with my feet on the rear axle clinging to the bumper while the other’s were banging on the trunk lid to get the driver to stop…. no never again LMAO
Wow. you know, at this point i’m almost surprised she also didn’t pull an Agent Smith and pretend to absorb people and replicate with her extra bodies.
That would only work if she could *VORP* people
She needs to vorp away with one of her bodies and the plant and instantly vorp back with 2 of her bodies
Don’t believe she can *VORP* plants either
And she has a weight limit on what she can *VORP*
Plant can mean “seeding the audience with people who are in the know for your trick.” Tiijay means “VORP one body away with her collaborator, and vorp 2 bodies in.”
Still can’t *VORP* another person, even if they are in on it (except Vahriah)
At this time how many people how about her alters. Let alone there all her.
She can increase her weight limit significantly if she temporarily un*VORP*s one of her bodies.
She. Still. Can’t. *VORP*. People!
But yeah, having Vahriah being the ‘plant’ would probably have worked… prior to her becoming nationally recognized, even going to some Podunk town has the risk of someone recognizing her or Vahriah and spoiling the prank
she can disguise one of her clones as someone else
and have another clone look exactly the same as the one doing the prank
then she approach the disguised, mimic the whole hand in stomach, while the disguised mimic convulsion
then have the disguised vorp away and the exact copy vorp in her place
tadaam: scene replicated, she “turned” “someone” into herself
Harem has an absolute limit on the weight of anything she teleports. Even with only one body (the fewer number of bodies manifested, the closer to maximum weight she can handle) she can barely teleport a Barret 50 with some ammo for Peggy’s use…And she had to take off her boots (page #207) to do it.
She did that as an “equipment run” for her teammates at the start of that first big battle in the parking lot (page #203 & #204 in the archives)…Heck, that’s one of her ‘standing orders,” besides acting as field medic & triage. They didn’t carry all of those weapons into the restaurant with them, ya’ know.
Dabbler said in a Dabbler Science Corner that Harem does have a weight limit. 25 percent of her body weight (which includes her own gear and clothing), or roughly 25-50 lbs depending on how many of her there are at the time, unless she starts de-teleporting herself. The only exception to this is Varia, because of Varia’s gestalt superpower.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-dabblers-science-corner-2/
See panel 4, the blackboard.
“Carry-On – She can only take ~25% of her body weight with her, though her weight increases slightly the fewer of her there are. ~25-50 lbs.”
She was barely able to heft Peggy’s thunder-stick, and that was even de*VORP*ing the others and taking her boots off
Based on what we saw suring the restaurant fight, Peggy’s sniper rifle is a Barrett M82 anti-materiel .50 cal (aka the Wall Destroyer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnB3CQMkVTQ
We know this because of several things.
1) Maxima calls it the Barrett on comic #204 (“Harem, can you hump the Barrett?” – panel 5)
2) We see a picture of it on comic #216, panel 9
3) A few people a lot more knowledgeable about firearms than I already identified the gun used.
The Barrett M82 50 cal antimateriel sniper rifle weighs 29.7 lbs, which does, in fact, mean Harem would have had to lighten her load by about 5 lbs, which she apparently decided was her boots and one of her bodies.
Her maximum carrying weight for vorping is 50 lbs, if she de-vorps all her doubles though. At least until she gets stronger in the future.
Which answers the question of who her ‘planted
victimvolunteer’ will be, when she does try that one. For maximum impact, I would suggest doing it in a cinema that is actually showing the Matrix – make sure she has an audience primed for it.Begs the question of what happens if one of her duplicates dies.
Something Daphne is not in a hurry to test, specially seeing how even she’s not 100 per cent sure which one is the ‘original’
Or if there even is such a thing as an original.
Yep. Ask Triplicate Girl or Duo Damsel as she’s was called later. It’s not a fun thing to handle.
One of the few things that really seems sort of weird when you look at it in Invincible is how calm DupliKate seems to be with multiple hers getting lethally mowed down.
Actually in this very page’s description Dave points out that the strawberry blond one seems to be her original since new bodies of her pop-in looking like that version.
That’s her original look, yes. But if I remember correctly, she shuffled bodies around enough before she started customising them that she’s not sure whether the one currently in ‘original flavour’ is her first body, her second, etc.
Yes, that ^
I mean, until we get to see her sixth spawn and seventh spawn in, we’ll just have to assume that new bodies appear next to a random body of hers. But I posit that they always spawn next to the “original” her. Maybe. Like I said, until we see the sixth and seventh, it’s probably random.
I think she spawns new bodies by teleporting somewhere without de-teleporting any of her bodies – so the new Daphne appears at the location, and all five others stay where they are.
That has already been addressed in comic: No one knows, and we hope we’ll never find out.
Presuming that the dying version didn’t pull the rest down with her, it would still be bad. All of the conscious iterations would experience the sensations of the dying body. We have seen early on in the comic that the sensation of having sex impacts all five bodies.
As someone who has actually died before (thank goodness medical science is at a point where they can bring someone back from across the brink, even if just barely), dying is not a pleasant experience.
First off, it really, really, hurts for a couple seconds… that’s the easiest part, as stuff still makes sense. Then the pain stops. This is not because the world is suddenly better. This is because your ability to feel pain just burned out (I’m still regaining my ability to feel emotions, and this was over a decade ago). Pain is like the dials in the dashboard of your car. If they’re all on, that’s bad. If they all suddenly cut off, that’s worse.
That’s when the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ effect begins. You see, this isn’t some mystical event. What happens is the nerves in your eyes are shutting down. What’s happening is your vision is shutting down. Color is gone, pattern differentiation is gone. All that’s left is a narrow band of “Is there light? yes/no” but light receptors in the center of your eye get more light than the outside rim. Usually your brain compensates for that. When you’re dying, it can’t. Hence, the tunnel.
Also, your ears loose audio detail. People can sound like different people, and they’re already reduced to vague shadows. Ability to count disappears. People (or gaps between people) are easy to mistake for other people. You lose sense of time. You can see or hear people that aren’t there. You think you recognize them. You actually can’t recognize anything. You may call out for someone… someone whom you’d think help you, because you’re dying. But they do nothing.
You lose the ability to feel body position, so it feels like you’re floating, being ‘pulled’ down that tunnel. That’s vertigo. You can still feel that for some reason. So you end up thinking you’re moving towards people who aren’t there. You no longer understand the world around you at this point.
Then, everything remaining starts shutting down. You stop seeing, feeling, moving, talking, etc. You’re not all the way dead yet, though. Your heart probably just stopped… you can still hear muffled talking. All of a sudden you don’t have that pounding roar in your ears you’ve had your entire life and been blocking out. You can make out the talking. People are saying your heart stopped, and you’re dead. But like it takes a few minutes after cutting blood off before your arm goes numb, the brain is the same way. You can hear for just a little bit longer. You hear them doing things. No… you’re still alive, you try to tell them… but you can’t. You’re stuck. You’re dead. But why are you still thinking? Is it going to be like this forever? You don’t want to be buried like that. You can’t be dead, with it’s little power left, your brain runs through everything it can think of, maybe there’s some way… some way out of it, everything in your brain flashes out, trying to get some solution before it dies. But you can’t even move. There’s nothing you can do. You’re lost. Then you start feeling parts of your brain wink out of existence. Pieces of you just… shutting down.
The earlier fear is all of a sudden less terrifying. Being stuck in a box forever, unable to do anything except thing isn’t as bad as just… ceasing to exist. Everything they taught to you in whatever religion you were in… it doesn’t matter. You got it wrong. This isn’t what you were promised. Finally, there’s just one last light of ‘you’ left. A candle remaining in infinite void. And it’s going out. There is no mystery here, no grand beauty beyond the veil. You know what it is, and it’s happening to you.
Then the zap from the paddles. It hurts like hell. Electricity literally just shot through your heart. And that pain is delicious. All the lights start to come on, and you cry. Maybe you got cut off of dying early and didn’t finally realize what was happening. Maybe those new sensations didn’t make sense and you try to piece it together and come up with some elaborate story. Maybe you’ll make something up, because you can’t let people know that’s all that waits… it’s too scary. You can’t live your life that way, you can’t doom others to that fate.
But then… maybe you do go to that last edge, that last flicker before thankfully being rescued. Maybe you see something realize that the fate that awaits us isn’t guaranteed. A scientist talking about extending life, a new medical breakthrough that can bring people back from a minute longer after they pass. There’s hope… hope you won’t have to go through that again, hope others won’t have to go through it. And then… you do your best to tell people, in the hope that you can push society forward a little. So maybe, just maybe, we can figure a way out of it within people’s lifetimes.
That’s seems really frightening – thank you for sharing your experience ! I guess it can’t be easy, and i guess that experience changed a lot of things for you. I hope the best for you :)
Oh yea, it definitely did. For one, it turned me into a violent pacifist. (Basically, I refuse to kill, but I have no problem maiming, harming, etc. in self defense or similar). For another, I don’t look at death in a positive light, like, at all. Kinda killed religion for me a bit, too.
Sounds like you’d really like “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” hpmor.com Exactly that philosophy towards death. And Death.
Yea, someone pointed me to that fanfic before, and I went ahead and read it.
Decent fanfic even if the author turned out to not be that great of a person.
Yes, my mind IS blown after reading that, thank you…
Glad to blow.
That came out wrong.
But in all seriousness, yea, traumatic experience for me, but I feel people should know what’s at the end if we, as a species, are to motivate ourselves to find a way around it.
That sounds awful, and I’ve nearly drowned (that’s horrifying), and nearly bled to death (really bone chilling cold), along with huge kinetic impacts (always an ouch, often for weeks).
Still, nobody has ever died and came back to life. (Let’s not get into religions and myths.)
Rather they were terminal but not dead, and our ability to deal with that has improved greatly.
It’s just that some places haven’t updated their “official” definitions of how to define “death”.
Large parts of cultures worldwide are also still centuries behind.
On the scale of human civilization it’s only been recently that we could revive someone from drowning, asphyxiation, heart attacks, deep comas, and hypothermia. (Not all of them, but enough that it counts.) Those used to be “death” only a few centuries ago, but we now only consider them “terminal if not treated properly”.
Some of the very recent medical research has even shown promising signs on being able to revive the “brain dead”. Perhaps soon those considered to be terminal now from lack of neural activities may be revivable as well.
It’s amazing to think that if you were to go back several centuries, your knowledge of CPR and even first aid could get you declared a miracle worker able to bring back the dead!
Honestly, being “Dead” is probably best defined as “When a person completely stops.”
When we have our first person come back from cryogenic freezing (they’ve done animals, but not humans yet, because the thawing process isn’t fast enough yet and results in tissue damage), that person will have come back from the dead. We’ve already brought animals back from the dead. We can start calling it that, imho.
Getting further than we are now, might be better to start calling it “Bringing them back from decay”
damn. i suddenly became aware of everthing as you described it wit so much details.
just immaginating it was a super scary experience for me. i was hoped for a more serene scenario but i guess that’s just in fantasy, litterature or movies.
reminds me, when it;s my time. i hope i’m either asleep, it happens so quick i don’t notice or i’m so high on drugs that it won’t make me go thru that but that also might not be a thing either.
thanks for the perspective. not pleasant but a very informative thing to learn.
creeped out as fuck but glad i got to learn this today.
thanks.
You’re welcome.
And yea, it’s only serene on the outside looking in. Going through it, is less so.
the true moment of no return is a point when the brain is decaying that the ions just bug out, basically the particles that had been contained in the brain during though processes are no longer “chained” as it were and vanish back into whatever.
Some like Einstein believe everything that made you, you; your memories are contained in this energy.
However even if your memories continue on via some quantum state anomaly being *soul* or whatever its still not the “you” that you are right now. So much of what makes a person who they are is governed by a lot more biology than many people are comfortable considering, social survival instincts, chemical balances, hormone balances, sensory based experiences; if this particle memory continues on or can link to another body in the future, that “reincarnation” would never be you just another host for new experiences and memories to be uploaded to the particle cloud later. Without the chemicals hormones, expectations, reflexes, and other behaviors governed by biology there is no telling what outlook a non-corporeal form with your memories would “think” of those memories or do with them or even if it would continue to care about what you cared about (the existential life after death version of Kaguya syndrome where such an alien existence so significantly alters your perspective that you simply can’t care or have any of the emotional ties you once did).
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/revealed-what-happens-to-your-brain-in-the-last-minutes-before-you-die/6NZQO4VICZIGVLH6KB6LLYPNQA/
now ions can store data.
However while all that sounds well and good, the physical brain via chemical responses if the toxic function that are triggered by this process didn’t start to break down neurons and thus destroy the brain, the brain or “hardware” could also store this same date, in which we get the ship of Theseus on a “spiritual” level.
-kind of the if these particles are what a “soul” really is, and store the data of your life time but are this sort of “other you” after; but if the brain can be preserved to prevent its break down then it could theoretically be recharged and have the same memories with new ions.
not unlike a computer, you can have energetic storage or hardware storage or both. So if you could find a way shut down the brain without its cytochemical breakdown happening, but find out your memories were transmitted into the quantum field or whatever; which of these two would you personally think counted as the original before death occurred. Or do either even count as the original and both are copies, just an energetic copy and a hard copy.
with machines that don’t rapidly decay just because the power is off this is easier to answer, funny enough this same process is apparently also copying all the data in computers as well into this particle field so if this is what is being defined as a soul by the oroponents of this outlook then your computer also has a soul as would any thinking machine, your computer could be the simple minded reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln…until the power went out, and when the power is restored a new “soul” flows into the hardware and copies the same data potentially.
When thinking of stuff like this I remember something Neil Degrasse Tyson once said, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
So yes with this outlook on particle physics you could write a story where someone was a roomba in a past life until its batteries died and then became the family cat.
the meat can be restored and wave of death *including that many if not all after life experiences of patients are dreams that the brain uses to ease the process…how it knows or would even have such a process is a question unto its self)
https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-Happens-to-the-Brain-After-Death.aspx
https://www.livescience.com/61876-dying-brain-depression-wave.html
this is all still very young science and hard to research, heck much of the particles back up information stuff is found with those researching using computers to back up memories. Which really again complicates the idea of “self”.
That was a lot of words to confusingly say “The body cools, releases circulated heat, and then begins to decompose as homeostasis is no longer maintained.”
the big thing here was the debate on how much data is retained by the particles in the brain and if this could be backed up by computers or if theoretically your memories are naturally backed up, as well as the confusing possibility that if kept from decaying if the brain could be turned back on with its memories intact despite the former being the (out) religious types like to point as *maybe that’s the soul”. A lot of this research is so extremely recent that to say anything as a certainty now would be either wishful thinking or pessimism. Although the decapitating rats thing and reviving big brains and such is eyebrow raising in how they are performing this research, but I suppose its hard to do it effectively with dying patients.
The energy the body gives off is heat, EMS, and motion.
Although ‘thinking’ is energy getting passed around your neurons, your neurons are what provide the direction and control of energy. In other words, ‘capturing the energy’ basically just means you’re going to have some general energy and might be able to run an LED off the person; it’s not going to be anything that can encode a person, heck, forcing through energy in an MRI, we don’t got enough resolution to reconstruct a person, and the real benefit there is showing the neural structure.
The energy in the body is akin to the energy in a computer. Yes, your computer’s current running is its energy, but you don’t learn to build a computer from watching its energy, you learn it from the chip lay out, and turn it back on by running new energy through the older system. Humans are the same way.
What you are describing is the basic model of thought theory
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/201902/what-actually-is-thought-and-how-is-information-physical
which has backing in how machines work on and off, 1s and zeros, punch cards, and networking.
what I am describing is a quantum mechanics theory in addition that describes a potential quantum entanglement between the particles being passed around that some aspects of these patterns may persist in the absence of the brain. Again this is extremely young theoretical physics and is hard to research, although it is the basis behind some communication technology experiments. However even if it can happen naturally the end result as stated in my above posts wouldn’t be identical to the living person as the biology that governs so much of who you are would be missing, and what exactly or how much if any of these particles stay entangled to keep this data is unknown. Again very young science.
I am providing the possibility in discussing this, which again, not speaking as a certainty as neither of us are particle physicists researching this. So not going to try and bring out the math or relation between electrochemical signatures and ionized particles and all that fun stuff that is guaranteed to *woosh* if you didn’t spend years studying it.
in short the brain as we know it seems to operate in a biological version of binary computing, however it has also displayed reactions and memory recall that go against what it should be capable of, this where quantum cognitive thoughts/fuzziness, probability and what not enter the story; the theory based on these uncertainties being that there may be another layer at work that is filtered and restricted by the biological process that may also be storing and interpreting experiences. Again this is a very young science and difficult to research and I am only presenting it here in this discussion as a positive what-if counter to *shut off and cease to exist* that science is researching.
a tad old *like six years* but some basic ideas of what is being looked at. granted the focus here is on how the brain works beyond what should be its limits not on if it retains the data after brain destruction.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830500-300-is-quantum-physics-behind-your-brains-ability-to-think/
the topic of the data remaining after death is one most tend to tip toe around due to cultural stigmas, religious institutions, and this affecting their reputations and future fundings.
It doesn’t take particle physics to know what means of potentially encoding data do and don’t exist in “electrochemical signatures and ionized particles and all that fun stuff”. In other words, not nearly enough to encode a fraction of anything useful, and it decays on a timescale of microseconds to minutes at the most (different ‘stuff’ at different rates, most of them highly statistical). Handwavy ‘Quantum’ might impress the ignorant, but it is just technobabble – you may as well just call it magic and be done.
Another ex-dead person here. I was killed when a drunk driver hit me on my bike at what was estimated to be 45-65 MPH with “greatest confidence” speed of 60. I was over 100 feet from the initial impact when my body stopped flying and I “died”. I have no memory of getting hit after the driver of the truck swore at me to get off the road that was the only place I could ride home from work. Anywho the next thing I know is I’m in a lobby or some kind of waiting room watching what looked like a fishtank full of stars with a really old guy who told me that was the entire universe and the display could zoom all the way in to a specific atom if I wanted to and could find it, and I spent what felt like hours trying to find our galaxy because I didn’t know how to control the display. But nothing hurt and I wasn’t cold or hot, basically I had no physical needs.
I never did figure out how to find the Milky Way, much less Earth.
And then they started scaping my body off the street and I told the guy near my head to be careful of my broken femur and he almost dropped me, because when they started to pick me up I didn’t have a pulse or respiration. I don’t think they checked real well because they could see how far I was from the blood splatter of the impact site and assumed I had to be dead. The truck that hit me was scrapped because the passenger side of the cab was pushed back so far it was almost flat against the top of the window opening.
Ouch, that had to be painful, and hello fellow undead! (I make light, but I know it’s serious, but humor is my defense mechanism.) My incident was also a roadside accident… car + environment in my case though, no other drivers.
It’s weird, and I did glaze over that part in my description. The whole ‘brain shutting down’ stage, some parts of your brain get some weird dreams. I emphasis the some parts, because whichever part of my brain was actually keeping track of sequence of events was tied to the self-awareness part of me, not the dreaming part. When ‘the lights came back on’, dream sequences that other parts of my dying brain were having did come back to me. In my case, it was a puzzle, trying to figure how to put it together that was supposed to somehow help me figure something out. That memory feels really ‘disconnected and out of time’ though. As someone who’s been through biology, I just know that’s because it wasn’t connected to the part of the brain that keeps time, similar as the floating sensation is caused by the experience no longer being capable to feel your own weight.
The similar part between our two stories is the ‘struggling to figure something out’ part. That part of the brain knows something is wrong, and is trying to find answers, but doesn’t have access to memories, current sensation, or movement, so it’s just “I got to figure something out.” And fills in the gaps best it can.
…Why did they use a defribrillator when your heart was stopped, not fibrillating? Defribrillators don’t restart your heart. The entire point of them is to stop your heart in hopes that when it restarts it beats normally.
I want to make a pithy joke response but Harmony and Opus’s posts are too harrowing (and chilling) for it any joke I make to be funny.
@Pander
Go ahead. Humor is my defense mechanism, and I was having memories flashing and typing and hit ‘post’ before I stopped to ask myself, “should I really be posting this on a comic where it’s more about comedy and enjoying life?”
And then I look back at the question I was responding to, and think, “This is why we don’t want Harem to experience a copy dying… that either it wouldn’t be funny, or it’d be way too flippant to literally the worst thing.”
… which in retrospect, “It wouldn’t be funny or it’d be too flippant” would be quicker and less harrowing of a share than “Hey, here’s what it’s like to die, enjoy trying to sleep, tonight.”
So uh… sorry to everyone I gave insomnia to.
Okay fine…. well the joke is in response to tying two of your posts together. The one where you practiced ‘not breathing.’
The pithy line goes something like this.
“When you practice not breathing, you are really dedicated to it, huh?”
In fibrillation the heart has quit beating, it just hasn’t quit twitching. But yeah it is kind of like a reset button that crashes current activity in the hope of resuming normal function. At one point in my career I was in charge of looking after a bunch of automatic defibrillators. Every building in the facility had at least one and they all needed to have their batteries looked after. Those were some god tier batteries. They had terrific shelf life and huge discharge capacity. The manual was extremely clear that you did not want to get an accidental discharge from one of these things. The AED actually had pretty good software and wasn’t supposed to discharge unless it detected certain conditions but I suppose you should never underestimate the ability of someone to screw things up.
Good question. I wasn’t exactly in a mental state to ask why. I wasn’t exactly fully conscious either. It might not have even been a defibrillator, and just something that felt like one. Maybe CPR feels that way when you’re that far gone? Like that tingling sensation when blood flow starts to an arm that’s asleep, but since it’s the only sensation it feels like a massive jolt? I really don’t know, and I’m sorry I don’t have an answer for you.
I think in your case it would be toe-may-toe/toe-mah-toe. CPR isn’t much fun to be on the receiving end either. If all you have after CPR is cracked ribs, you are lucky. Someone is bouncing up and down on your chest hard enough to compress your heart.
Inquiring mind wants to know, what happened before and after you were… gone? I mean one must have a story worth telling that lead into said deadness and about events thereafter?
Ummm, @DaveB, errr… We seem to be short of a title in the URL? I do understand the lack of title is not significant as the “grrl-power-{serial #}” should get us to the right place, but…
Huh. WordPress auto generates those. Maybe something changed with an update, or… random computer foibles happened?
Foible honestly sounds like a fun ‘super’ name
“So, foible, what’s your power?”
“I foil villains.”
“Yes, but how do you do it.”
“By winning.”
“What? Like… automatically?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your power?”
“I foil villains”
Just made me imagine someone who’s power was to wrap people in foil. Could be very useful against someone with electrical powers, but pretty useless otherwise unless they could also enhance the strength of the foil.
Also useful for making baked potatoes in a campfire or storing leftovers.
You realise Pander could send her Ginja delivery squads to wrap us in luxury coated with foil?
so classic gold and silver age heroes’ true power.
and modern heroes based on those like Squirrel Girl.
*how, how did you win? You don’t have the power.”
-I do, the greatest power of all, the power of friendship and a balanced diet.
Parry, riposte, job done, next!
Now do it on a crowded sidewalk or stadium.
Here ya go.
https://i.imgur.com/3vP1p8V.jpeg
sadly I can’t find the logout command. guess I was written to annoy you pander….
It’s okay palmvos. You’re not a bug, you’re a feature. :)
Alright, I had some ideas, this one was better!
It kinda looks like Daphne changed her shirt to a slightly different style after teleporting away here…..the cleavage is gone in favor of a short v-neck.
Didn’t even notice that. But her shirt style did change. For shame, author.
Whoops!
No need for the “Whoops!”
Daphne looks far more {young teen|thoughtlessly} mischievous in the tee, you couldn’t get that attitude with the cleavage.
Could always make it canon.
“Daphne, like she can slightly alter the appearance of her clones, that includes things within a few centimeters of her skin meaning she can also slightly modify her clothes on teleport.”
This could be important if she ever teleports from a very warm climate to a very cold climate. It could also make a devastating attack by teleporting within touching distance of…
…no wait, that thought just passed through my head, and its way too gory. Forget I said anything.
Thought it was just one of her other selves, and this was when she was playing at Identical Twins
Actually this raises a question for me – we know Harem’s clothes and belongings go with her now, but what happens when she first pops a new instance? Does the new body start au naturel, or wearing/carrying exact copies of whatever else her original has? And if a copy, what is the most valuable / beneficial thing she could duplicate during her next cloning? A brick of unobtanium? Some secret quantum/alien tech? Sydney’s orbs?
ArcLight really has an infinite selection of research projects to be working on, so jealous.
So many potential research projects, so few researchers.
My interpretation is that the VORPing works a bit like picking up a game piece and putting it down elsewhere, as opposed to moving it across the board like everybody else does. Each ‘piece’ keeps the equipment it was carrying when removed from the board, and the equipment returns to the board when the piece does. Gaining a new body is therefore analogous to getting a fresh piece out of the box rather than duplicating one of the existing ones. It can be VORPed in without having to VORP one out, and it will arrive with no modifications, clothes, or equipment.
That’s friggin’ brilliant!
Did this occur before or after Harem joined Archon?
Considering she looks real young, and nothing like the establish Harem, most definitely prior (possibly one of the ‘stunts’ that lead her to joining, voluntarily or not)
As a VR user, it’s worth pointing out that the prank isn’t quite accurate.
That is, one of two things happens IRL:
The user quits
The user takes off the headset then quits.
For the first, there’s some hand movement – just enough to point to a wire button, and they’re just gone.
For the second, which is more akin to what is being mimed in the comic, the user takes the HMD off their head, and puts it down. The thing is, their avatar isn’t actually bound to their body* but to the headset itself. So the actual effect is more along these lines:
Hands drop down (controllers placed down) / hands go to head
Instead of hands moving past head, head instead lifts up. Body follows
Head rotates (due to unbalanced hmd, or because it’s just easier to grip at an angle) pulling body in weird ways
Head “falls” either to about 2ft up (headset put on chair etc) or to the floor.
* If the user is using full body tracking, while the HMD determines where the avatar is rooted, you may see their legs walk around a bit, or walk off and end up sticking out pointing in the direction of the user when outside the length of their limbs
Avatar then disappears as the user quits from their PC
Thought I’d mention this, not to be a pedant, but because the actual thing that happens is worse to watch than someone just vanishing.
> not to be a pedant
I never met anyone who was pedantic and was trying to be.
They just are and never are happy when someone tells them they are being pedantic.
On that note…
Hi
*pink panther theme*
pedant, pedant, pedant pedant pedant pedant pedannnnntt….
Which is why it would be ideal to have a compression switch as part of the worn headset so once removed the switch is disconnected, thus disconnecting the system/avatar.
I get what you’re saying, but that’s how it worked in Ready Player One. I think it’s about simplifying actions for the audience’s benefit. It seems unlikely that Stephen Spielberg is going to make audiences sit through a logout sequence with menus and loading screens.
Yeah and if you are using a futuristic neural link system the device can be said to autodisconnect/turn off the avatar when the connection with the user is lost , just as removing the headset beyond a certain range from the user’s brain.
Let’s step this through.
Daphne in cleavage is playing the character. As the character, she must pass information from her “controller”, but must keep the suspense up.
Daphne in the tee is the controller. The way you end a session is either press the “Off” button, or lift the headset from your face, and in this case she mimes Daphne in cleavage actually doing that… All as a pantomime.
And now Daphne just Vorps out, possibly to return wearing the tee.
I didn’t watch Ready Player One, only read the book, so I have no visuals. But this one worked well for me, and told the story very effectively.
it doesn’t matter what actually happens, it is what they are willing to believe. i once convinced a guy in college i could read his mind. trick was that he had been in registration line in front of me, but he ignored me and was bragging to pretty girl in front of him and told her his life story.
later, on a bet with someone else, they wanted me to prove that i could con someone with impossible claim. (this came after we were in lobby of dorm watching episode of loveboat where guy was pretending to be angel to stop lady from committing suicide). so we made bet and he chose the guy at random, but let me choose the con. so i said hi to the guy, asked about sick aunt and his sister had passed some test. he did not remember me being in line with him.
i ended up convincing him i was telepathic and after bet was over, he wouldn’t believe me and avoided me after that.
in comic above, i wonder if anyone went on a murder spree when they thought it wasn’t real so it didn’t matter what they did or did not do
Evidently whatever VR system Daphne was ‘using’ has the log-out command button mounted to the headset.
or a kill switch for when the link is disconnected, what would be a monumental pain in the ass for a current gen (or earlier console) *controller comes unplugged, game turns off or logs out automatically*; would for a truly fully immersive VR simulation be a quick and easy out that would look cool in-game to other players. Especially if its a server based MMO game as the dialogue for the prank would imply.
sure a log out screen in-game makes more sense, but a player safety feature (in so much as not accidentally leaving your avatar standing helpless and still in the simulation) where if by some accident or rush the head gear came off it logged out the avatar. That way you wouldn’t have a (oh crap I am late for *whatever*, throw off the head gear and run out the door forgetting in your hurry to log out, only to come back hours later to find your avatar was standing like a statue in a field the whole time and is now dead and half eaten by boars or something.
That’s just how it works in the simulation we are currently experiencing. The one where we have to deal with these fleshy bits we call arms and fingers.
*slow clap*
That was amazing.
As both a teleporter/duplicator, she could probably pull a ‘I’m an NPC, *you are* the main character’ prank. Have the same few face types in the background, act like she’s different people despite looking exactly the same (and there being no way someone could have beat the subject of the prank from place to place), etc.
It’d take a bit more work, but…
I’m hung up on the fact someone gave her a beer. Not that it doesn’t happen, but that one “simulation hypothesis” guy probably has a LOT of explaining to do.
Or, they’re in Europe or the UK. No reason she couldn’t have friends she visits personally on the other side of the Atlantic.
Um… Did you lead a very sheltered life? ’cause most teens i know didn’t bother to wait until 21 to get drunk, while yes it’s illegal in the US, that still doesn’t stop them. and from the amount of people that DIDN’T know about her powers, I’d say that this was something equivalent to a college frat party where she was invited in, and the older-looking guy was old enough to buy the beer for the bunch of them.
Technically until recently, it was only illegal to SELL alcohol to minors, or give them alcohol in public. It was and in many places still is quite legal to give a minor alcohol in private, as long as they are not allowed to consume to excess.
The way many of the laws are written about “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor” is entirely up to the officer/prosecutor’s discretion. There are many religious celebrations where young people are given wine and 3 that I know of where they are given given a type of beer.
So it is entirely subjective.
I got drunk for the first time at 14 and was able to buy beer at 16 (I was big for my age and already had a full beard)
Another teleporter figuring out what she did: “No, you can be phrasing the orders as questions. Computer. End Program.” *Teleports away*
Welp, I hope she got good mileage out of those pranks since basically everyone knows she’s a super or that supers are real. Wait… Would that trick work MORE that people know supers are real? Like, if you found out superpowers were real, but then someone you didn’t know that well pulled this stunt, would you be convinced? That having superpowers were a DLC and/or micro-transaction?
Or have someone, or group in universe with the same theory as seen in the comments here that supers could be the avatars of hyper advanced aliens with memory restrictions in place for immersion purposes. Only in universe rather than Nth level aliens with memory restrictions using reincarnation programs the in universe conspiracy theories could go with reality is a game and supers are the players with rules against telling the truth. Given the aliens and supers reveal I could see some people fall down this hole as an odd coping mechanism as it is so unreal to them so somehow everything is not real starts to make sense to them. Be surprised what denial can convince people of.
I’m still a little confused about if DaveB thinks that strawberry blonde means pink hair or not. Because strawberry blonde is actually this type of hair:
https://i0.wp.com/therighthairstyles.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/warm-strawberry-blonde.jpg
Although it might be that, since DaveB’s artstyle is so heavily influenced by anime (from what I’ve noticed at least), Strawberry Harem’s pink hair might just be representative of the above link. So what we see as pink is actually strawberry blonde in the Grrlpower universe.
However, at the same time, I was under the impression that Peggy’s hair is literally dyed pink, because that seems very much like something Peggy would do.
I guess that’s me being dumb and expecting inconsistent art because I was supposing that that pink haired lady wasn’t Harem but someone else.
Nah, you’re not dumb. I thought it was Heatwave at first as well yesterday. The pink hair was looking too dark, closer to red. It wasn’t until I noticed the freckles on her body in the last panel that I realized it was Harem, not Heatwave. Also because Harem’s eyes are blue, while Heatwave’s eyes are green.
“They’re gonna fuck and I’m MISSING OUT ON IT!!”
This is funny and actually less evil than some teleporter pranks like the time travelers prank but more evil than the alien beam up prank.
and know i kinda want a cut away explaining that she keep in contanct with them, and how the “pregnant woman” was simply shy about the guy she did it with”, otherwise it becomes EXTREMLLY VILLANOUS
God dammit, Dave.
This made me laugh so hard I woke up the entire house in the middle of the night.
I can’t decide if I should congratulate you, or hunt you down for horrible vengeance.
I can give you the number for Dial-a-Ninja. They don’t just do pun vengeance.
oh god I’m crying a bit haha that would seriously mess some people up haha
Honestly. I fail to see how she’s responsible for anything on that. If said people can fall for that, I find it all on them.
I could however, see how her friends may not care for her after that if they hate that they were pranked.
Yeah, that’s just the way the world is now: very few will take responsibility for their own actions and instead will blame anyone else
But then again, if they were that quick and willing to believe it was all a simulation and act like that, doubt any court would judge them in fit mind to be held accountable
OMG I love it! That is complete and utter brilliance! Seriously like the funniest prank ever
Priceless,…Bravo !!! I lol’d and that takes a lot :)
I’d help point out a few laws, foible and flibbertygibbets, but nitpicking would just ruin the moment :)
Welp that is an interesting prank, rather cleverly well done too.
Gonna admit… I’d do that.
Miiiiight mean I’m a bad person.
“Even NPCs should know better than to raw-dog it.”
You sir, owe me a beverage. And possibly a monitor if I can’t get his one clean. Absolutely HILARIOUS OMG, I’m dying here. WELL played.
…I only just realized that was Harem and not Heatwave.
yeah i also thought too last page.
We all did, I fear.
Wait, is that guy Leon’s brother? They have the same facial shape
I bet that her pranks would work better and last longer if she didn’t do them with GROUPS. Granted, they’d end up a lot closer to gaslighting than pranks at that point, so…
The guy with the grey hair is really loaded…
IF a User Logged Out from in-Simulation, the Logout Process would MANIFESTLY wipe all memory, and other records, of non-standard exit. This isn’t running on Windows; they’re not leaving a Simulation-breaking loophole in basic, continually used routines.
TRUST ME on this… if you want to find a Glitch, you’re going to need to look much, MUCH Deeper. ;)
“Do you suffer form short term memory loss, …I don’t remember”
ever wonder why we have multiple things that cause this condition? not just anesthetic drugs
Forgetting what you came into a room for is just reloading the level after you failed your previous attempt.
heh, I heard a theoretical physicist (wish I could remember which one) say something to the affect that this is like fractal timelines, you entered a room, there were two possible actions you could have taken, normally the one action with the greater impact on local events would become the true event and the other’s few seconds collapse *no alternate timeline* however if both events were totally equal to each other they could end up colliding and cancelling each other out resulting in neither happening so you just end up standing there like, “what the hell did I come in here for?”
that is assuming the Omega civilization tier engineers want to bother covering that, sure it would be a simple matter to program the localized fractal time stamp to overwrite the few seconds around an exit point so local events don’t record the departure as something anomalous to the “reality” of the simulation.
Like she exit, fractal collapse protocols overwrite the event to look like she just walked out the door. Even if they ran to check and she wasn’t anywhere down the hall and they think there is no way she ran that fast; likewise the just turned a corner or went behind a tree methods of covering the exit points. This is enough to create a *doubt* scenario where a (reasonable individual) will simply “shrug and whatever” the oddity and continue with their complex NPC lives.
But whose to say the engineers of every sector or every tagged (of interest) world is on the same page and thinks it would be funny to either not program a fractal collapse cover-up event, but add particle effects…I mean be a total jerk and make it look like a flash bang goes off every time someone exited out of the universal sphere, or some freaky mirror effect (or just require users to use marker points that could only be regarded as magic like exiting through mirrors, reflections, shadows, just no clip through the floor ect… of course that depends on how you want to run the simulation and might be a player type preference, a simple cover up so they can continue to play SIMs rather than some fantasy adventure game because the self replicating and adapting NPCs would catch on to something too anomalous for a normal persona.
Ok. That is soooo not what I was expecting.
I mean, TECHNICALLY SPEAKING, every Abrahamic faith group (Jewish, Muslim, Christian) believes that the world is a simulation. We just use “Spiritual” terms to describe the ‘real world’, which is Heaven/Paradise.
I personally believe that we came to this world as humans so that we could learn what agency and free-will actually means and that our decisions have consequences for us and the people around us. Then we will be judged based on how reasonable our decisions are and receive an inheritance that we will agree with after reviewing our lives on the mortal plane.
I do love how well God designed the Physic of the Universe, I hope we unlock Space Travel soon.
Not before we dispose of capitalism.
While I agree space travel won’t happen without a socialist agenda, we have a few more important problems to sort first. None of these are applicable in the Grrl Power universe because Rule of Story, but they definitely do apply in the Real World. You may want to have a read of The Sparrow (1996) Mary Doria Russell.
Russell treats cultural collision extremely well, but completely misses biochemical collision (aka: allergies) because Rule of Story. Asimov in one of his early Robot novels does treat an allied problem of what could be called “vitamin” deficiency, but could well be plant flavinoids, on the colony planets.
The upshot is that in general any contact between stellar species could be fatal to all of them. At least one “lesser” work — sorry, I cannot remember title or author — postulates trade and conversation as restricted purely to ideals and concepts.
I do not believe in pure Capitalism or pure Communism/Socialism. I believe that the best and most efficient society is a blend of both, for all things must exist in balance.
We will achieve Space Travel soon, but it will not be purely through private endeavors (they will help), nor through public endeavors like NASA (they will help also), but through a combined effort of everyone. It will most likely be a multi-national achievement where everyone solves a piece of the puzzle and comes together.
There will still be competition, but it will be more friendly and helping one another out. It might not be in our immediate (current) lifetimes, but perhaps the next one or two. War is already quickly becoming pointless (or more pointless) so the human desire to flex will be shifting to more intellectual pursuits.
“I do not believe in pure …”
No belief required. Gravity is a Thing. Vacuum is (still) a Thing. Capitalism is a Thing. Socialism is NOT a Thing, it is a belief system.
Capitalism is not the antithesis of Socialism. The two often walk hand in hand.
Capitalism is often a description of (financial) greed, see Gordon Gecko. And poorly administered Socialism is better termed “Stalinism”.