Grrl Power #506 – Square root access
Krona may have root access, but it seems someone else has machine level access.
So yeah, Krona may have some… well, not insight, really, but she might help unlock a piece of the orbs’ puzzle. As intricate as that big panel is, it’s about 1/10th of what I had pictured when I started it. I would have needed a full or even a double page spread and another week to draw it. Still, you get the idea. Just pretend a dozen people from WETA spend a month doing it in CG.
Apparently the orbs were all “Hey, time travel, or… sort of. Whatever that was. Sure, that’s worth a point.”
A related note for the prior page; Cartomancer is apparently what Izanagi is, with the card magic. Several people informed me in the comments. I’ve never actually seen Card Captor Sakura or Yu-Gi-Oh! besides flipping by it on a channel, and just happened to catch him speaking in a comically deep voice. Someone explained to me that he’s possesed or has a split personality or something that takes over probably for clutch dramatic reasons. Anyway it was jarring seeing a 13(?) year old talking like M. Bison.
Oh, also related to the previous page, by request I cut out the panel of Max flying and posted over at DA. Enjoy!
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like. Share the comic with your friends, then compete with them to see who can contribute the most!
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Nobody has commented yet that it seems like Krona is a fellow nerd. What with the tabletop and dicebag references?
Well, her Council banner has the Konami cheat code as her official insignia.
↑↑↓↓←→←→BA
It’s either a reference to Einstein’s famous quote “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”, or Hawking’s famous response “God not only plays dice with the universe, he throws them where they can’t bee seen”.
Can an unseen dice give a critical result?
If so what does it sound like, if it is also unheard?
So…. “If a dice rolls a 20 where no one can confirm it, is it still a Critical?”
A supernatural 20?
+1
So, does that mean it hit Crowley or Cas?
They are -10 to smugness and sarcasm, respectively.
I would say that Hawking’s statement to be closest to the truth. After all, we can’t even perceive anything unless it’s moving at speed-of-light or slower. All of our technical engineering is based on the same limitation of speed-of-light or slower. Every fact humanity has figured out about the universe is derived from speed-of-light or slower.
Now, consider what the Scientific Method of Inquiry is all about; Observe, Theorize, Experiment to learn data that supports the Observation. I contend that the first step of the Scientific Method is NOT Observation…It’s Perception. How can we observe something that’s beyond our ability to perceive it?
If there is anything that actually operates on physics applicable to faster than the speed of light, then it’s a part of physics we can’t really comprehend, because we can’t observe & study it to learn it. We can imagineit, but we cannot learn it.
I always figured that not only does God roll dice, but they are his dice…
“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
I’d like to point out that we may still be able to feel and touch things that we cannot see. ^_^
I didn’t limit anything to merely visual perception up there…
As a programmer, I am well accustomed to the thought that truly unpredictable (“random”) events never happen, only that unknown inputs are used to update the psuedo-random number generator’s internal state while you’re not looking at it. So then physicists come along and say quantum events are inherently unpredictable, and I’m thinking, no, you just don’t know all the inputs and current state of your event generator.
I speculate our universe is eternally bombarded with a massive flux of tachyon state changers that affect the standard model of physics many orders of magnitude below any level our mathematical tools can calculate, frequently enough to create the events that cause zero point of energy in empty space.
Why no, I don’t do drugs.
Although you did previously.
*points paw at confession*
*gives a very concerned look*
That was only at 9:19 am today, compared to 9:31 am for your post. Twelve minutes is an awfully short time to have forgotten something. Mythbusters and scientists have shown that even goldfish have longer memories than that! I fear that something has affected your memory.
*offers notepad and tattooing kit*
Here are a couple of options to help you cope bud. I suggest you start with tattooing “read notepad, in pocket” on the back of your hand. Completing important life experiences in the latter, of course.
Observation does not require Perception.
Exoplanets, for example, are beyond our current perception, and yet thousands have been observed.
Fundamental particles with lifetimes too short for our perception, are observed all the time in experiments.
The difference is that things that we can perceive, we can observe directly. Things we cannot perceive, we can only observe indirectly.
Also, the Scientific Method is not a strictly linear approach. It is cyclic contains cycles within it, and the cycle can be initiated from any of several places.
So one initiated from three places would be a tricycle, whereas those from a single one would be a unicycle. The best are bicycles mind, as they can go either way.
By the way perception is still required, even for the examples you cite. You have to percieve the effects that you use to infer the existence of the things under discussion (the exoplanets, for example). In fields where you cannot do either then you are restricted to theoretical predictions only, as you lack a means to corroborate your theory.
Feel free to swap theory and hypothesis as you prefer. Or hippopotamus and thyroid, for that matter.
“You may have the Dice of God, but I have his DM’s Screen.”
I think there was a line in the game Alpha Centauri as well.
“Einstein would roll over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded.”
God doesn’t have to use loaded dice. He’s the One who made the charts that define what every single possibility that each die-pip means. Whatever number He rolls, He already knows what’s possible & what’s not.
Before time began…
A pair of ten-sided dice spontaneously appear, on top of a flat surface, and roll:
37 – A cheese sandwich appears.
A voice comes from the void “Not bad, let’s try another”…
42 – The Big Bang occurs
I always preferred a variant of it. Comes from the old Alpha Centauri game. Building a new building of a type or sometimes new techs gave a quote, like all the Civ games do. Forget the minutia but the quote is: “Not only does god play dice. The dice are loaded.”
“What do you mean, ‘God Does Not Play Dice’?…
We.
ARE
God’s
Dice
…Each & every one of us.”
Considering the replies a lot of people seem to take Einstein’s quote out of context. When he said that he was talking about the quantum physics idea that some things are truly random (eg position of electrons) but Einstein believed that everything could be measured and predicted if they could get better math/measurements.
Basically it’s an argument over whether or not a physics model actually represents the universe or if it just is an approximation that’s the best we can get yet.
Every model represents the universe (or some part thereof).
Some represent it more accurately than others.
But are we running in an accurate model, or the real thing?
A lot of quotes referring to uncertainty get taken out of context. The “Butterfly Effect”, for example, originally had nothing to do with butterflies, until someone later read Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder and joined two dots that had no business being joined.
I guess it’s just each generation’s version of Uncertainty McUncertaintyface.
So, in discussions about uncertainty, where people are not certain about what is meant, a small event, such as the release of a book, can alter the opinions of an entire generation of people.
Wow… deep.
So God’s a douche of a player, is what I’m hearing.
No.
God is the dealer, only God knows the rules, the deck is stacked, and the stakes are your life and your soul.
But didn’t God tell us the rules already? What about the 10 Commandments?
:P
The Bible actually contains two complete sets of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17 and Deut. 5:6-21). In addition, Leviticus 19 contains a partial set of the Ten Commandments (see verses 3-4, 11-13, 15-16, 30, 32), and Exodus 34:10-26 is sometimes considered a ritual decalogue. On top of that, many readers of the Torah claim there are 613.
And they were carved in stone. And carried down a mountain by one guy.
Was Arnold Schwarzenegger offered the Moses role?
From History Of The World, Part I:
Moses: God has spoken unto me, these Fifteen – oop!
*crash*
… um… TEN! TEN Commandments!
I always liked the Alpha Centauri game’s take on that one (for one of the technology quotes)
“Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded.”
She many not know what the unknown orbs do till she has time to examine the code. If you dropped notepad.exe into a dissembler, it would take a while to figure out what it is for if you don’t see the file name.
Don’t mind me, I’m just having a massive nerdgasm over Krona’s reaction.
#Nerdgasmatgrrlpower
Kind of figured that. Ok, the creator is careless and left his tools lying around. Sydney found em’. Gonna be a PITA if he shows up wanting them back.
Reality Programmers look up this library and despair. Open to all, yet incomprehensible. A mass of noodles and twine, unhelpfully documented with cryptic sporadic comments.
It turns out that the giraffe’s neck wasn’t supposed to be that long. It was just a data entry error.
the giraffe’s neck started short, but the trees kept growing taller
A smart designer would use a series of frameworks capable of being adapted as necessary and systems where direct input is unnecessary unless desired.
That acutally makes a bunch of sense.
A girraffes neck has the same number of bones as a humans. Just longer.
Are you suggesting they left the comments attached after the compile?
I haven’t seen that in commercial code in decades and never by a student.
They did, but not like it would do you any good.
/* I finally got it working but I have no idea how and am sure not going to try and figure it out! */
Final comment
/* Holy Crap! It didn’t collapse into a black hole in the first thirty seconds! Expansion cleared up the particle fug! Matter exists and is stable! Carbon has actually formed and is a nuclear catalyst as planned! Iron and silver are the bottom of the packing fraction curves! ANYBODY SO MUCH AS TOUCHES A SINGLE CONSTANT IS DEAD!!! */
/* TODO: write Lisp to globally change all variable and object names to random women’s names in the checkin/handover code. Just to fix that b* in SQA for filing a harrassment grievance. */
Abandon all hope, for it is written in LISP…
I saw the last line of the source code, it was “)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))”.
No wonder it’s all screwed up. They left out the goddamned semicolon and bracket.
I hated coding without at least 2 Monsters in me, this always ended up happening and was always a pain to debug.
gcc: semicolon missing on line 1347.
me, yelling at gcc: Well, PUT one there if it’s so important to you!
We had this one student where I went to college – he was writing a Forth compiler in LISP, or was it the other way around ….
If it helps any, we only ever saw him consume Orange Crush soda and Cheetos. Seriously. The dude’s teeth glowed orange in the dark.
I never did learn if he graduated ….
People don’t graduate, they level up. He was probably recruited by a government agency so secret that even the people who work there don’t know its name…
My brain just broke at the idea either of those options.
At least it wasn’t in APL. Properly writing code in that language requires a special keyboard… with three backspace keys that do slightly different things. A number of operators take two symbols in the same space – but examining a printout does not always reveal WHICH two symbols, and gives no clue which backspace key was used to get them into the same space.
(Fortunately, I “studied” it in a language-survey class, and we spent I think two hours on APL. So the fact that I failed completely did less-than-noticeable damage to my grade.)
Soon we shall have a quantum computer compile the code for true AI’s. The trick is that the computer will need to be complex enough to maintain the entire code in a state of quantum flux. Thereby guaranteeing that within it is a combination which has an AI which humanity can peacefully co-exist with.
Then start the production line running using that template.
The source code for that AI already exists. It’s somewhere in the digits of pi. But be careful, because the source for the AI that will destroy humanity is also in there. We have no way of knowing which code appears first. https://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/04/pi_meme_on_reddit_and_george_takei_your_life_really_is_encoded_in_its_digits.html
or in the very real programming language called brainf*ck. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck. please note that the source code for this language is NOT read left-to-right or right-to-left, but in any direction left, right, up, down. Direction changes as a function of the source code instructions themself. No, I’m not making this up. the language actually does exist.
Yeah, I had the same reaction when I started learning assembly languages. You get over it a bit after a couple days.
Only because of the macros.
I did much better at assembler than at APL. In fact, I wrote some macros which did some fairly complex assembly-time logic (heck I was using a stack… at assembly time) and sent my instructor off to get a brief introduction to things like if-else-endif blocks and while loops…
Krona is moved like she saw a quadruple rainbow.
I am the alpha and the omega…
I am the tostitoes and the salsa…
I am the pie and the ice cream…
I am the Lemon and the Paeroa (don’t ask, you really don’t want to know :P)
World famous, in Middle Earth.
__________________________________________________________________
I am the kiss and the cuddle.
I am the Slap and the Tickle.
For some reason, I am imagining Krona hearing the dimensional key theme from the he-man movie…
WHOOOOOOO! NEW POWERS FTW!
You know, this sort of “Deep Code” thing is exactly what you want to make in a 3d program.
You’d still draw most of it out, but in linear form, each element. Each column would be split and flattened, and you wrap it around a cylinder in your program of choice. Each sphere and other bobble is drawn in two halves and put around a corresponding shape. Transparencies and 2-sided textures…
I’d suggest Blender, ’cause it’s free and has a ton of tutorials. But doing that would mean you don’t need to re-draw it every single time you want to show it, and you could show it from any angle. Heck, I’d even be willing to do it for you, if you could put up with Student-level work (should still look good).
“I’d suggest Blender”
Heh! Krona looks like she’s peering into God’s Universal Blender…Set on Puree.
Yea Blender would be pretty easy to wrap that. And could make it a lot easier to add annotations later.
Or Bender 4D, to capture the unseeable essence. Like the one you described, but more perverted and with a tin ass.
Had a thought
One of the most frustrating aspects of the orbs is the fact no one can scan them (much like maxima’s skin which came from a symbiote also I believe found in ocean, moving on). Everyone who has attempted has reported the same thing, they just look like empty space.
So, why is it Krona can see the “deep code” now? Logically, it is because of the power up, but why would that make a difference? If the orbs can typically hide this code from the likes of Krona’s reality hacking eyes, why can’t they now.
All of the orbs powers are turned off while the upgrade is in progress. They go into a stasis.
Does this mean that one of the unknown orb’s functions is obfuscating the nature of the orbs? Looking at the skill tree pinup from DeviantArt, the green unknown orb only has 2 nodes active. It’s power could correspondingly be limited. A good candidate. Perhaps empowering that orb will lend her invisibility or unnoticeablility which is a power set the Might Halo currently lacks.
Also, there has to be something going on with the fact the orbs slowly power down over time, if Sydney doesn’t interact with them. She had to touch them to reactivate them when she revealed them to Maxima and ARC, and when we see her going to sleep the orbs slowly dim, and sink down next to her while she is no longer conscious of their presence. This has to mean something, and my best bet is some sort of psychic connection that allows the orbs to be keyed to Sydney… Do we know what would happen if someone else grabbed an orb while it was floating around her head? No one has ever tried that and I wonder what would happen. Could be control of the orbs is what the red mystery orb is all about, allowing her to move them freely about her and the like, but there would have to be more to that power set one would think.
They went to stand-by and dropped into root mode. I feel sorry for Krona, because this is her ultimate moment, but it’s only temporary. Of course she could decide to become Sydney’s room mate and BBF…
I have so many yes for this
BBF? (unless you mean BFF :)
Nope, Bed Buddies Forever
Bed buddies you say …
https://www.gogetaroomie.com/comic/free-bed-buddy-get-one-today
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
forgot to say that links is SFW but the rest of the comic is at times NSFW … you are welcome.
Have been reading about Roomie for years already :D
At times?
Mostly at those times that end in either a digit or “o’clock”.
With no edit function, shit will happen…
Will leave the first few points alone as I don’t like speculating but dabbler has grabbed one of the orbs, while she was scanning them during the meeting in the ballroom. What one specifically isn’t stated, and if she tried to activate it is likewise not known. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/630
Also, Max was holding onto Mr. Tubey while the orbs were inside of it. But when Sydney’s orbs are active, they can act as some form of defense if Sydney wants them too, like stopping Math’s finger just before he pushed Sydney’s knee into an orb-ital path of one of them.
I think the big question here would be: If Sydney is asleep or unconscious & someone tries to handle or otherwise interfere, do the orbs have some sort of “automatic defense mode” to defend themselves and/or Sydney?
I’m not seeing where Dabbler grabbed one but yeah they will mildly move out of the way of things unless Sydney specifically tells them to hit. so grabbing them might be hard or they may not care unless Sydney calls it back.
Yeah, Dabbles was pointing to her knoggin where she got beaned by the Bubble Ball
It is not shown. However there is the line of dialogue, by Sydney, in three speech-bubbles:
“Plus something I thought…”
“… during the scan…”
“…grabbed the orb”
This is ambiguous. The two possible meanings are:
A)On this page Sydney felt something grab one of the orbs. We can see that nothing did, however we know that Dabbler does have a pair of arms that are invisible, when she is disguised as a human. So it is entirely possible that, as part of her examination of the orbs, she did indeed hold one of them. And Sydney was able to feel that!
If Sydney had the truesight orb in hand, she would have been able to see the ‘invisible’ hands. However she does not summon that orb until the next page.
One big thing against this is that Sydney did not make any reaction to feeling this. And, as we saw with Sydney hitting both Dabbler and Daphne, she was on a hair-trigger at that time. I do not think it likely that she would have attempted to conceal detecting such a grab.
However it is possible that the feeling was subtle, or simply hard to place, as Halo had never experienced anything like it before. So it remains a possibility, albeit not one that I would rate as a high probability.
B) Whilst Sydney was grasping the truesight orb,* she spotted something other than the purple four-armed demon in her face. But was just having a difficulty in getting her ADHD brain to focus on what it was.
This version fits with the subsequent reveal of ‘X’. So I think it is just foreshadowing of that, rather than option A) above. But only as a balance of probabilities. The other interpretation remains viable.
* I.e. Sydney was speaking about herself, in the third speech bubble “[when I] grabbed the orb”. The ‘during the scan’, in the first bubble, simply places when this occurred. And we know that Sydney grabbed the truesight orb during Dabbler’s scan, so it does fit.
Hmm, the ‘B’ explanation hadn’t ever occurred to me in all my times reading through the archives, it makes sense and I would be willing to accept that explanation as the correct one, though I will stand by my explanation until proven wrong..
A) looks more like Dabbles put her hand on Sydney’s shoulder in panel four, or maybe was simply in the process of turning around after panel three
Okay, had further chance to read the appropriate page (this one), Sydney was attempting to track down her thoughts, back to the whole Dabbles reveal
Going by context, we can deduce the full thoughts to be something like, this:- “Plus… (there was) something (more)… I thought (I saw someone)… during the scan… (when I) grabbed the orb…”
No one else touched her balls, least of all Dabbles (other than when Dabbles got bonked on the noggin for not getting hit by the chair)
Actually Maxima has grabbed one of Halo’s orbs and used it to drag her around. They will only move so far from her or her from them. I like the idea that Krona only sees the code during the “upgrade phase”. Maybe the rest of the time the orb’s security software is running? Maybe, as you imply, right then is the only time the orbs can be stolen from Syd? We do know that noone else (so far at least) can power them up.
No, Maxi has grabbed Mr Tubey, and the only place she went was arse over tits and faceplanted the ground (after Mr Tubey smacked her in the face for daring to woman-handle Sydney’s ball without buying dinner first)
In Yu-gi-oh! the deep voice is that of the pharaoh that is inhabiting the main character. I seem to recall that the hair color/style also changes when the pharaoh takes over the body.
Its really more that he gets older looking. Like he shot up from 12-16. And im not entirely sure that he actually does, I think its more a visual representation for us viewers to understand who is in charge now, because like, noone ever talks about how yugi gains a foot in height and has gone through puberty every time he duels, only to regress right afterwards.
Believe Tea started to notice when Yami Yugi was in control
Anyone else reminded of comment code by the green glyphs? :Reads reader comments: Nope plenty of others do as well.
The blue structures remind of exploded diagrams.
Actually, has anyone else noticed that Krona’s “control panel” matches the colours of Sydney’s orbs?
Double check, Someone did comment that Sydney and Krona seemed similar in the way the colours matched, but people seemed to shrug it off as being Dave’s art style. I think this page should be considered evidence that it’s more that art style.
Her last panel was also laid out in a circle of seven arcs.
My theory based on the symbols in the expanded code, the location of where the orbs were found, and the naming conventions used in comics is that the orbs are lost technology from the Aztec empire, officially known as “Az-Tech”
Or their rivals, the Mix-Tec, who diversified across many branches of industry. Competing against the dye makers Huas-Tec. Not to mention the suppliers of information technology to the imperial tax collectors, the Tol-Tec.
Then there were the inventors of the first mechanical lighter, the Zapo-tec. Also well known for their heavy metal and music industries. Then, of course, there were the great battlemech producers, the Ol-Mec.
Interestingly their Caribbean rivals were into biotech and explored lycanthrope technologies. Their lack of non-biological artifacts has meant history did not realise the significance of the the Lycan People.
Well played…
You forgot the culinary contributions of the ancient Tex Mex.
The reason the colors match are obvious really, its Krona;s power, so of course what she is seeing is trying to fall into the mental framework she already has for it.
Good argument. Although coincidence and a deep connection are also still on the table. With a bigger stack of chips, n the latter, given today’s comic.
So howmuch do I need to hork over to your bank to have you make a double-page version of the deus-ex reality diagram?
Surely Krona has built in a “screen capture” feature so she can examine things she has seen later at her leisure…
…so no need for a pen…
Krona can see the truth behind the visible orbs. Prominent amongst which is the fact that this cannot be captured on camera. That much we can infer from our previous knowledge of the orbs.
Yeah, this would be why Krona is asking for pen & paper…Even her Power isn’t capable of recording it for later examination.
I love this comic, so many layers. Correct me if I am reading this wrong but it seems that our heroine’s power ups are less rpg type rewards i.e. defeat enemies gain powers rinse repeat, and are more like a fighting games tutorial where when she uses powers in certain ways it unlocks more power options. Both times she got an orb she was experimenting rather than fighting.
I can’t help thinking that Sindey has some colored pencils and a pad of paper in her Craft pouch.
She may need to add that though it may not work like cameras don’t on the orbs interface.
May need a lot of work to find a way to record the interface never mind the code / mechanics behind it.
early web browsers weren’t very good at “printscreen” because there were so many “html->Javascript->insert php to->generate html snippet-> to href some gif” paths needed (or possible) to recreate what user actually saw. krona’s “print screen” may have same problem.
Besides which, if it did work, could you handle another Sydney being printed out? Where would she live? Would she have a share of the shop? Would the contract with the original Sydney, that she signed with Archon, also apply to the new Sydney. Be she a 3D or 2D printed version.
Oh, you thought that printing would only give a static copy of information? No when you copy the raw code of the universe and print it you get an actual working replica.
The biggest problem is we gotta wait for next Monday…
Lo Krona saw the code underpinning the universe.
And the Halo code looked back.
…And the code was the blue-on-blue eyes of Muad’dib staring back at her…
So, someday, Sydney will not need the weirding orbs?
So.. Krona’s thing is that she can re-program reality. And apparently while the orbs are in power-up mode & have enabled their help function, enabled root access, popped the hood to allow some tweaking, whatever.. can she now re-program the orbs? Or learn enough to start emulating their functions?
…unless our author is evil, and she blacks out after an upgrade is chosen, only to find that she has a handful of notes she can no longer understand and her memories of the writing have been blanked.
Far simpler (and potentially implied in his blog) is that it is simply beyond her comprehension. She might recognise the alphabet, but not have the ability to understand it. Musical notation looks beautiful, and we can copy it down, but most of us could not actually recreate the music that is represented there.
True eno, but her reaction implies a certain level of understanding of what she is looking at (there are literal tears in her eyes at the sight).
Plus, given she is so far the ONLY person who can see the writing at all, I’m guessing it has a fair amount of crossover with her ability. More akin to a musical student listening to the (simultaneous) works of a master in a world where everyone else is deaf, than a sheet of music read by a non-musician.
Still wondering why she can see it though. Random luck? Krona’s powers are from the same source as the orbs? The orbs were originally created by/for one her ancestors? As has been speculated by others, perfect set-up for the two to become friends or associates, anyway.
Well reasoned.
As for the last, I feel that is just the way Krona’s power works. When looking at the grenade, she would see an overlay (augmented reality style) showing its key characteristics, such as ‘armed’. Obviously, when looking at a room full of beings, or the panorama of a cityscape, Krona will not want much more than just a keyname and (at most) a one-line summary of things she is seeing.
Whereas if Krona wants to do something exotic (such as give someone a wegie) she then needs to call up a more detailed information screen.
Therefore when looking at Halo’s orbs, whilst they are doing their normal thing, I imagine she would get something very similar to our Who’s Who entry for Halo and her orbs.
However, when the skill tree opened up, each key element in the chart had a label appear next to it. And many of the things the orbs do (such as the fly-ball manipulating gravity at a fundamental level) tap into the raw mechanics of the universe. Which needs its own language to properly describe.
Hence the result we see above. Even without burrowing down into detail, for each aspect, the summary is telling her more about the nature of the universe than she has ever seen before. Even when she has the hood up on lesser objects and people.
Minus Krona and the speech bubbles, request for a new wallpaper on that bottom panel!
Please !!!
Krona is focal in that though.
:-/
What, Krona doesn’t have a “PrtScrn” button? Tsk, tsk.
The problem with PrntScrn is it only really has access to the clipboard you need further programs to make use of the information captured.
Didn’t use to. On a DOS box with a printer attached it made loud noises start to happen if you hit it.
If you press Win+PrtScrn It saves a screen shot to your photos.
Krona, may I press some of your buttons, to see if I can record a screenshot of you?
code so advanced it’s more a work of art painted in at least a trillion subtle colors then something that can be explained with words
A picture ten times as big and an exta week to draw.. sounds like some bonus art is incoming.
You seemed to miss the need, in order to achieve that, for the work of a dozen artists from the Wookies for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
You’re the best, Dave.
Keep up the great work!
+1
…& I vote to “+1” your “+1”, if I may.
$vote++;
Now would be the time to point to the two unknown orbs and shout, “Hey Krona, any comments in the code on what these two do?”
That would be a good question, except that Sydney is busy going full plaid and Krona is leading the way…
This reminds me of Order of the Stick- Sydney is Elan and her REAL power is the ability to stumble over plot-important elements completely out of the blue.
… and she recognizes and uses plots and tropes to get where she wants to go.
Yet another entry on the long list of reasons that Sciona had time to get away. I am torn between being amused by Sydney antics and watching the characters do stupid things.
That’s called ‘being human’. So hold my beer and watch this!…
So. Sydney’s orbs might be the tools that the creator(s) used to shape up the universe. The machine-level interface that shaped and created everything, that defined every rules. As a Machine-tool, she can use it to enter debug-mode… As she enables new functions into the debug-tool, she can alter the fundamental rules locally more and more.
Or maybe they are just her golf-buggy? Something relaxing to play with, on the seventh day.
Okay, is anyone else thinking that two gamer girls + code access = Powergaming/MinMaxing the hell out of her future upgrades?! If Krona is smart, she will code herself some short term photographic memory so that she can capture that raw data before Sydney spends her skill point… if she doesn’t, Arclight is going to skin her alive (if she survives this mission and the upcoming chronopocalypse).
Maybe access to Sydney’s code… occasionally… will be enough to lure Krona over to Arc-Light? At very least, I’ll be expecting her to show up often for game night at Syds house.
Speaking of Yugioh, there were actually two different animes for it. The first (often called “Season Zero”) was never dubbed in English, and follows the original plot of the manga – which was a lot darker. I personally like it better.
Panel two’s emphasis on the orbs motion gave me a totally random idea:
Sydney accidentally let her wrist-com run out of power on her first day. The orbs continually orbit her head anyway. What she needs to do is stick magnets on each of the orbs and add a coil of fine wires to her headband. Then if she ran a cable down her sleeve to the communicator she could generate enough power to keep it charged up.
Left flipper down a bit. RIght… more right. Spot on! Secure that in place.
*skewers two slices of bread on long forks*
OK, full ignition and keep it running!
*toasts the bread, to a nice golden-brown colour*
Oo, maybe she can label the skill tree.
I hope Halo remembers where she is supposed to put that point.
It will be somewhat disturbing if it turns out that SYDNEY is capable of eventually leveling up to Ultimate Cosmic Power…
But in her current apartment she still has itty bitty living space.
“Pretty”, “lots of text here”, “looks kinda like a pokemon or a death star”, “OMG this is awesome!”…
But Sydney has recently become the Queen of Salt, so she’ll soon able to afford better living conditions.
:)
There appears to be a small inconsistency with the upgrade lights in panel 5, though I am not sure how i noticed it with everything Krona is seeing.
In panel 3 the inner ring and center heptagon sections are lit up for the Flight and Forcefield orbs but in 5 they are lit up on the Telepresence and Energy Tentacle ones. Panel 6 also shows Telepresence and Energy Tentacle but these are not lit, which i think is the way it is meant to be if my memory of the upgrade panel serves.
It is an art error. When Dave drew the reverse view of the diagram he mirrored the ball positions but not the line layouts. (Too many more goofs like this and he could get his artistic license revoked)
So. I came up with another ridiculous theory. So. Krona is a hacker. She … uses what she can see of the Universe Program to do things with.
Now, where my theory goes crazy is … Halo’s Orbs being the “Administrator Tool” for the universe. The previous owner locked it down of course … To prevent accidental use of the “Destroy Planet” command and such. The Orbs are programmed to only reveal what Halo absolutely needs. Each nodes and upgrades are for the most part, an Administrator Function, that she will have to unlock slowly over the course of her life not to become overwhelmed with the power of having that. So, when the orb levels up, the underlaying program, the source code of the universe, reveals itself …where Halo can pick which ‘Macro’ to gain access to.
In resume. Krona needs to write a program to make stuff happen. Halo needs to unlock a specific command. That would explain why nobody can detect its presence. Since its the universe source code, which is basically something that runs behind what we can see, there is no means to see that, unless you have the Administrator Tools. Of course. that also means Halo has Root Access to the universe right? Thankfully the previous owner went and locked the really world-ending level nodes! Or things like “What’s that button do?” Boom. sun explodes. … hopefully before it gets to that point, Halo will have a good understanding of what she got her hands on … or hopefully, know better then to push the big red button!
On another note. The reason why only Krona seems to be able to see the ‘Deep Code’ …is that she is the only one that actually knows what it is. The others also saw the overlay when Halo had her level, but none really knew what the other stuff around it meant. Krona, being a reality hacker, has seen brief glimpses of that code in her hacking the world.
ps: as a reality hacker, she might also have the ability to see that code while hacking. See? Her own terminal is open! So that might let her see it.
Really really really really really really REALLY need please a full page view of what Krona is seeing in that last panel. Please. NEED.
#wallpaperrequest
Wait.
Please, please, please tell me people had already been guessing the orbs were related to Krona’s power?
I mean, it was pretty obvious. They both have inexplicably powerful abilities, that are weirdly outside the scope of known ones- not magic, not super, and have this overall “blankness” about them when people to understand them. Krona’s display is even made of seven colored segments!
It was so obvious, in fact, that I had been thinking to suggest this idea in the comments for some time now. And then this happened. I could have called it, dammit!
So, please tell me I was just one of many who’d had this idea, and this isn’t really unexpected? That I didn’t miss my chance at being the one to predict this twist? Please?
People have been mentioning it before, though mostly it seems because the GUI that Krona uses has similar colors as Sydney’s orbs.
I’ve mentioned and thought it too though, or at least that their abilities are rooted in the same source.
Focus Sydney! Start with the important information about Frakendyke, then you can mention that you leveled up, and that apparently Krona can see extra stuff in your skill tree! Don’t pick an orb until after she’s had a chance to stare at it for a while and drool.
Screencap, Krona! Screencap! Use the ‘PrintScreen’ button!
Dabbler tried that, with her cybernetic eye, the last time the skill tree was displayed. It did not work. Although Dabbler could see it with her organic eye Which is why we saw her working on recreating it, from memory, on the whiteboard earlier.
I would imagine that Kronas “PrintScreen” would save what her eyes see to her fleshy hard drive, to be called back at any time. Unless she records her life first person like an über-vlogger.
Her eyes might not be seeing it though. Nobody else’s eyes are, after all. So it is not a matter of photons hitting the eyeball and being converted into electrical signals. Capturing that part will probably just record the orbs, but none of the grid. The same as happened to Dabbler.
I speculate that the ‘skill tree’ (and likewise Krona’s more detailed code) is being projected directly into the mind of the ‘viewers’.
I wonder if Pixel is Halo’s eighth orb? The human-orb interface. The colour of magic.
There is dirty joke about holding orbs in there some place, just waiting to come out.