I tried my hardest to think of a way to include the word "nice" on this page but unfortunately it did not suit the mood.
Transcript
Talita: Can I get back to you on that. I need to think.Bip: Sure! When?
Talita: By Monday.
Bip: After work?
Talita: Sure.
Bip: Ok!
The tablet screen goes black. Talita stands there awkwardly as Gillie and Idrisah stare at her.
Idrisah: Talita. Seriously?
Talita: I didn’t promise them anything.
Idrisah's phone buzzes in her pocket.
Gillie: (ASL) Text from mom?
Idrisah: Shit.
31 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 69”
RadInternetStranger
This was posted on my birthday!!
Yay
Happy belated birthday!
Origamigryphon
I like how the closeup of Talita’s trunk in the first panel drives the point home that that is where she talks, just in case anyone would miss it in the last 68 pages somehow
ShadowWasser
I just thought of something disquieting. If AIs in general consider copying themselves to be making a “child”, Bip had to have, after or during the incident that led to them becoming damaged, *copied* themself in part onto the phones – creating a child on the phones. So this isn’t “really” a part of Bip stranded outside their brain, this is Bip’s smaller-brained child, begging for help in freeing their parent.
And if this is Bip’s child, and we know from one of the cast Q&As that Bip does not want children, what will happen to the child if (when) they rescue the ship-Bip brain? Phone-Bip has only diverged a little from the ship-Bip, and might be able to copy over their new memories into them, which would maintain the illusion of a continuity of consciousness, especially since ship-Bip has probably been unconscious without their power source. But phone-Bip will still be left behind. What are they doing to do?
It’s just like how it worked in the video game “Soma.” You cannot “move” a virtual consciousness from body to body, only copy it. This must be the case, or else Calcery could have just copied their data into their new job/ship, and wouldn’t have needed to move all those bulky servers.
0xabad1dea
I suspect that AIs sometimes copy themselves to new bodies out of necessity (equipment too old or damaged to simply patch up) and wipe the shut-down old body afterwards to avoid an unplanned budding, but that in Calcery’s case, it’s cheaper and easier to move the old body than to buy a new one at the destination and attempt a long-distance transfer (which is probably a very, very large amount of data to be attempting to beam through space)
as such, Bip may be intending to overwrite part of their master databanks with their phone-self while those databanks are still powered off, then wipe the phones. Kind of existentially horrifying from a human point of view, but a routine medical procedure for AIs.
eMander
There’s a way to merge without killing the copy; rather than copying over all memories at once and then shutting down the copy, instead, memories and new neural features are incrementally copied to the ship and deleted from the phones, with consciousness distributed between the phones and the shipboard side. As more of the phone-bip gets moved to the ship, the phones are doing less and less over time, until finally all of bip is on the ship and none is in the phones. A seamless merge without the existential horror of the murdering twinmaker.
Lace
I like Talita’s thoughtfulness and sensitivity. I think the comic did a good job introducing her situation with Calcery– probably the person she talked to the easiest, most often, and who had the kind of tone she’s compatible with, and brings out her personality. Being that Cal is an AI, it lets us, the reader, not jump to any kind of conclusions about AI from Bip alone But ah we also have enough context to know this is kind of “fella living in your walls” vibes. It’s intrusive and invasive and frightening, precisely because AI have been so ‘humanized’ to us (for lack of a better term) (necessary when any universe can have…. any kind of AI). The contrast between Calcery and Bip kind of lets us in on the degree of infraction as much as sympathize, both lol… though as I understand, in the worldbuilding, everyone has some kind of passing familiarity with the AI around their areas, even if there are not many of them in the grand scheme… so Talita isn’t so unusual… though maybe her degree of closeness with Calcery was, I’m not so sure. (offhand… I wonder if Calcery’s dislike of avatars or module interactive bits makes interfacing much easier for Talita who is easily nervous in conventional company).
Despite Bip’s intrusions, I’m sure Talita HAS to sympathize with the kind of (body??) horror an AI can uniquely face, as something tied to a server or something like a ship. “Criminal” or not, ‘left for dead’ and effectively without autonomy, Bip is presently a kind of disabled and needs help to function at normal levels, but is in a position asking for that help is very risky. I would have to think about it, too. The person living in my walls would probably rather not be doing that, it’s not glamorous, it’s not fun, it’s a product of circumstances outside of their control. Being hundreds of phones is not Bip’s ideal… the behavior is er the opposite of disarming, but Talita is kind to want to see it as an issue worth thinking deeply on. It might be a fate nobody deserves to languish in.
nice
I never thought of it that way but you’re right. Talita has essentially come across a gravely wounded person who needs medical help only she can really provide. Does she report them to the authorities b/c they’re a criminal, meaning they might never get the help they need? Or does she help them herself?
Duna
I keep reading Bip in Bill Cypher’s voice and its hilarious
Zuorai
Bip when they first split: LALALALALA
1d4Nadg
Ooooh, Talita is keeping her options open here, the little rogue AI did a good job at tempting her!
evileeyore
I think Talita is just maybe feeling a bit more sympathy for the ‘rogue’ AI than others might, since Cal, her best friend in the whole wide galaxy just transferred off planet… so Talita is probably going to help reconnect Bip’s servers to power, even if it’s just to get Bip back into them so Bip will … eh… “feel better” before turning Bip over to the proper authorities (which we already know they won;t do, because it is “runaway to the Stars” not “Arrest the Pirate AI”).
Electron Kaleidoscope
The adventures of that one time the gang turned their call to adventure in to the police then quietly went back to work
R
nice
Ruby
Oh poor Idrisah. I was wondering when that shoe was going to drop.
Apollo235
Which shoe? Her parents or Talita being receptive to Bip’s offer?
Kedamono
Much like the fey, when dealing with rogue AI, never commit to or promise them anything.
dokki
really envying bip’s ability to just shut off talitas screen like that. if i was an AI with a display id be doing that to comedic effect constantly.
Trees
Even 69 (noice!) pages into the comic I realise my mental image of Talita is still too small.
When a page features panels from the ‘low’ perspective of normal humans it really reaffirms that, oh yeah, Talita is fucking gigantic. I wonder is the advantage of being able to reach every top shelf in existence eclipsed by having to treat the human world like a game of Tetris in which your body is the long block.
Greenjoe
what day is it in the comic anyway? How much longer is Bip gonna need to wait?
Jay Eaton
It’s Saturday evening.
Maia
I really like the composition of this page and the posing in general. Talita’s trunk coming in gently from offscreen in a way that feels uncomfortably intimate. Her soft expression in the second panel, contemplative and a far cry from the rage she showed not too long ago. A compassionate consideration is being given, despite Bip’s untrustworthiness.
Panel 5 though. That’s my favorite here, and it only works because of the build up from before. The way Talita is depicted tall over Idrisah, stern and resolute. No snarl, no raised quills, no bearing of teeth, just resolute and measured. Standing tall to Idrisah’s incredulousness over her even considering something like this, even considering doing something right for a troublemaker. In another comic I think this would have been the better one to leave off with, because it has a lot of punch. Panels 6 and 7 break that tensions and help roll into the next scene though.
DasGanon
I love the tiny gang in the midpanel. 0 detail but expressing absolutely everything and nothing.
Xeredek
Bip would gladly thank you next Tuesday for a reassembled brain today
ImJustaTourist
That’l be 5 dollars Simulated Intelligence Outside of a Licensed Server Cluster Tax! Per phone.
Gar G
Well that went better than I thought.
And yeah, she just said she’d give an answer after having time to think about it, not that she agreed to help them.
Kage
I’ve realised I’ve never thanked you for posting somewhere with a proper RSS feed. thank you for making your work so easily available, I’m loving it all!
Apollo235
What does the RSS feed do?
Moth
A website’s RSS feed can be plugged into an RSS checker (currently easily available as websites, web extensions, and installed programs) that will regularly check its list of feeds for updates. Traditionally they are used with blogs and news sources — in this case, we recieve an update each time a new page drops.
It’s a great tool for getting update notifications from several webpages in the same place, without having to grant the websites any particular permissions. Unfortunately, nowadays, many websites don’t confirm that their RSS feeds function (though many have ones that sort-of work as a byproduct of using wordpress), so it’s great that Eaton does.
Bramble
It lets you add the comic to RSS aggregation apps, so you can get notified about updates without manually checking the site or worrying about announcements on social media getting buried by the algorithm or lost under all the memes. It’s a useful little artifact of the earlier internet that isn’t as widely used anymore but is still perfectly functional.
Amanda/OwlBear
it provides an update notification that can be read by a rss feed reader, basically you subscribe to it with an rss reader, and then your rss reader lets you know when it updates