Alice Grove: A new webcomic by Jeph Jacques of QC

Everybody around thinks he loves it and keeps giving him jars of the stuff?

It's possible. I've always been taught it's rude to refuse a gift, maybe he was taught the same way. He was probably happy to see all that peanut butter go to someone who liked it.

And it's self-reinforcing too: "You sure he likes it?" - "Yeah, he never refused a single jar!"

edited 17th Jul '15 1:19:40 PM by Adannor

Or he was serious about believing it to be the secret to his longevity and forces himself to eat it as a medicine.

That's what I was thinking.

There is no possible way this can mean good things.

....did Ardent do that, or did something just happen?

It kinda looks like he super-upgraded the pump. Meaning he probably has nanotech too.

edited 22nd Jul '15 10:27:09 PM by Adannor

YOUVE AWAKENED THE PUMP!!

FEAR THE MIGHT OF THE PLUMBING DEMONS!

Ardent has clearly gone to the Video Game School of Fixing Appliances.

HE IS THE CHOSEN ONE OF THE PUMP GODS!!

We don't argue with Alice, Ardent.

Don't argue with the time lord

More accurately don't argue with the whateversheis that can squish you like a grape and has already been shown to have a temper.

Alice, you need to start making some sense.

Is there a trope for "person who's carrying a bomb, but they don't know the bomb exists"? Because I think that's what Alice thinks Ardent is.

The Why Am I Ticking? trope possibly?

edited 28th Jul '15 2:40:28 AM by Medinoc

Whatever it is she's talking about, she's probably right. She said earlier that their stated explanations for being down on the surface made no sense.

Maybe the Praeses aren't as benevolent as everyone thinks?

If I had to predict with the limited amount of info we have, they're doing some paternalistic deal, We Know Best and so we are going Improve Your Situation whether you want it or not.

And yet you don't do it, do you, Jeph?

He did clear up one thing over on his other comic: QC and AG do NOT share a universe.

Infectious nanomachines. Interesting. If her theory is true I wonder why they would do that? Maybe they want to advance the people planetside and Alice is keeping any significant technological breakthroughs? Or perhaps the planetside people have something the space(?) people want and they're going to give them tech to keep them distracted before they run off with it whereby the tech will self destruct, possibly taking them with it?

Or maybe I should just wait and see what happens.

On at least one level, Earth has resources the space stations do not. The stations are apparently doing perfectly fine, but they, by necessity, have a closed system with a limited number of resources. Earth (while technically fitting that category as well) is on a much vaster scale, even after the Blink or whatever it was called. If the Praeses control Earth, they could do basically anything they wanted.

That seems a bit silly. Space has far more resources than Earth—getting into space is the hard part, but they're already up there, so they can just mosey on over to the asteroid belt and strip mine it or whatever.

Unless the "resources" are living people (which, admittedly, is a possibility), I just don't see that as the reason.

They may be trying to get to the ancient tech like The Walker to try and re-create the A.I.s.

They sound like they ARE AIs in some (presumably tree-like) form though.

Really, we know approximately jack shit about how things really work up in orbit, so we can't even guess what they could want.