Ardent and Gavia are stranded in the future
Either on purpose or accidentally. Ardent and Gavia were from somewhere in the 'near' future, where humans have gone to space and developed powerful nanotechnology. Somehow, in trying to beam down to earth, they were then catapulted thousands of years into the future. Sometime in those years, the end has been and gone and the survivors have rebuilt, or been transplanted into, the town Alice guards.This explains many of the incongruities, especially Gavia's inability to contact the Praeces: they don't exist anymore.- Jossed: They ARE thousands of years in the future, but they knew that already.
No one in town actually has modern knowledge
They actually do think Alice is a witch, and their town is maintained by automatic processes with the help of Alice. It explains why the response to coming from *points up* is 'The Sky?' and the rant says 'There's nothing higher than the sky, silly...' as well as why Alice emphasizes that these are SIMPLE people.- Still unconfirmed, but likely. Conversely, another settlement devotes major effort to unearthing old rocket technology and has at least one inhabitant who knows about the orbital colonies, indicating that levels of awareness on this subject are not universal.
The Town is a human ecological preserve
Sometime in the thousands of years implied to have passed, humans went extinct on Earth. The town is an anomaly just like the Night Walker and genetically modified beings: a recreation of a 20th century human habitat made by ancient technology, with inhabitants lacking modern knowledge of the technology that makes the place run: they call Alice a witch because they really think she is one. Alice may either be the 'zookeeper', or have stumbled upon it and taken it on herself to investigate.- Unlikely, since as noted above it's been shown there's at least two other human settlements around (one of them quite large) with a greater awareness of technology and (evidently) no resident guardian.
Alice is a Praeses.
Either she's not counted among them because she was disgraced for some reason, she's a Defector from Decadence, or both.- Given Alice describers them as "Talking Trees" I doubt they look human. Her words during said statement also imply she isn't one even if they do.
- It might be metaphorical. She then talks about "their sap" and "her sap".
- Jossed. She predates the Praeses, and even was around during the time of the Blink that ended the techno/bio transhuman war. And a Praeses does appear, as, indeed, a talking tree. Or rather an orbital, space-station-sized, sapient tree (one of many, in fact) that can form a blue-skinned avatar/spokesperson out of its sap, along with multiple entire synthesized realities.
Alice Grove takes place in the world of Numenara
A region where, for some reason, a modern town was recreated. The themes of being surrounded by lost technology and the hints that it is actually set in the distant future all contribute to the idea.Intelligent machines do exist
Also, Alice and/or the Praeses are said intelligent machines. Alice could be an android, which would explain how she can be thousands of years old. It may also be related to her Super-Toughness. As for why Gavia believes it to be impossible, that may be a lie told by the Praeses for some reason. Perhaps they don't want the secret of what they are getting out?
Note, Alice never actually says Gavia is right. She just says the Night Walker isn't intelligent.
- It would certainly be more in line with Jacques' actual beliefs on transhumanism and The Singularity
- Semi-Confirmed: Artificial intelligence USED to exist, but when the world was reborn in The Blink they all vanished.
Alice Grove is the (possibly bad) future of Questionable Content
Lets see, sentient AI's integrated into society? Check. It's impossible to say what stage the war is in, or if it has even begun.- It's definitely possible, but biotech hasn't developed far enough in Questionable Content for the war to have started yet.
- To expand on this theory, the seeds of the war were sown by Hannelor's parents: AI from her father and biotech from her mother.
- Jossed by Word of God as per author commentary on Questionable Content #3019
.- Which is a shame, because I would totally have WMGed that Alice is QC's Bubbles. The deadpan expression, the stoicism, the fact that Alice was once a weapon, while Bubbles is expressly built for combat . . . hell, I'm gonna put it in my fanon anyway, at least until we see more of Alice's story.
The entire comic is taking place in a simulation
The world was not edited as described at the end of chapter two. The war continued and wrecked all the human population on Earth, so someone (either machines or humans) stored a simulation of humanity in a machine to preserve it, and that simulation is what we are seeing.- That would imply that Alice has an important role in the simulation somehow, though what it might be beyond being an observer is a good question. Maybe it's a more benevolent version of The Matrix and she really IS just there to keep the simulated humans more or less comfortable.
The Night Walker is Pintsize evolved.
The reason it stares at the moon is because buried deep within its programing there is still the millennia old association that moon=butts.- This would sadly indicate that his endeavour to BECOME PORN when the Singularity hits has failed.
- Jossed as noted two WMGs up. Aliceverse is not a Bad Future QCverse.
Alice was a mother long ago. Her children were not immortal.
Long before she discovered she was effectively immortal, she had a family during the immediate post-Blink years. Neither her children nor the father(s?) of her children were immortal. If any descendants of her survive, their lineage to her is so minuscule that she has not bothered to keep track anymore.The Night Walker was not interested in Gavia's nanites.
When the Sibs went out on their ill-advised night excursion and ran afoul of the Night Walker, they presume that it was interested in Gavia's nanites; to what end, Alice doesn't know. However, it could instead have been interested in Ardent's nanites that were subversively implanted into him by the Praeses.- Jossed. The Walker follows the group all the way to Sedna's and takes over/kidnaps Gavia, ignoring Ardent in the process.
The Night Walker isn't AI, but is Artificial Emotion, and it's lonely.
We know artificial intelligence technology existed and was wiped out. As QC has shown us, machines can have emotions. These two concepts are independent from eachother. So we know AI has been wiped out, but artificial emotions in machinery may remain at large. The Night Walker is a clustering of nanomachines, and we know that Ardent and Gavia are the only other things with nanomachines. We know that it can at least self-organize, so detecting other nano machines is pretty easy for the Walker.What if the Night Walker remembers a time before AI was wiped out, and nanomachines became rare on earth? We know that it can't withstand direct sunlight, so going to space is out of the question for it. But what if the night walker knows there's nano machines up there in the orbital settlements? What if it looks toward the moon, not because it's programmed to do so, but because up in space, there's other nano machines, and if it could get to space, it wouldn't be alone anymore? It could end the isolation, but it's trapped on Earth. The Walker reached towards Gavia AND Ardent, because with those nanomachines, it wouldn't be as alone anymore. Maybe with Ardent, his enhanced nanomachines could help the nightwalker escape Earth, and finally be among other machines.
The walker isn't an AI, but it has emotions, and it's lonely.
- Partially Jossed, as noted directly above; whatever the Walker wants, it has nothing to do with Ardent.
Alice vs Sedna was an Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight.
Sedna was first, but Alice was later. She was made just a bit faster and stronger, and also has that weird Henshin Armor thing going on.- Which just might make Alice vs Church an Upgrade vs Even Further Upgrade fight.
- Alice vs Sedna is probably Jossed. Alice and Church are Super Soldiers. Sedna is a super... mechanic. Regardless of who's older, Sedna was probably a less powerful model.
Alice Grove is the future of Trigun
Some time before the blink the colonists succeeded in terraforming the desert planet and even rediscovering some lost technology, such as nanomachienes. The residents of the floating cities eventually became the Praeses. Alice and Sedna are Plants as they are apparently immortal, and Alice at least has some limited ability to transform. Since she is responsible for the previous hole in the moon, she might even be Vash the Stampede. No idea how the gender swap happened, but it would be far from the wierdest thing, in either series. The "Grove" in Alice Grove refers to the Praeses
The Praeses are clearly something related to trees (the names are tree genus and they're specifically referred to as trees several times, though it's yet to be shown if they're trees like we know them or not). So "Grove" doesn't have anything to do with Alice herself, but more with a relation to the Praeses.- For the record, the Praeses are technically trees.
- Alternate theory: It's the name of the town that Alice guards.
The "Blink" was actually a time gap of several millenia, perhaps as part of another entity restoring Earth's life from a saved backup.
The massive number of changes that happened in the Blink - the stars changing, especially - suggest that the Blink did not really happen in an objective instant, and that Alice only perceived it as such because she was frozen in time while the other changes involved were made. Of course, this presupposes that another entity could have done it - maybe the Praeses, or even whoever made them? The "Blink" was the Matrix activating
Now that we know the Praeses operate multiple different realities/simulations/whatever, it seems like the Blink could be the Praeses isolating the superhumans into one reality isolated from the many others.