Thanks to the jackass that is trying to spam the comic with insulting comments - I have disabled all guest comments. This will continue until farther notice. If you are a regular commenters sorry ..
I suggest everyone who comments gets a comic fury account to continue commenting.
Yay for Daylight Savings Time. I knew you had Douchie as a Psyco Wack Job but this is seriously Screwed Up. With his psycho moods surprised he hasen't killed himself out of spite just so every one else dies. Reminds me of the ending of "Dr. Strangelove.".
Oddly, I know that last year on daylight savings the comics updated at 1 AM local time rather than midnight. I'm pleasantly surprised I can read this now.
<blockquote>Yay for Daylight Savings Time.</blockquote>
I refer to it as "Daylight STUPID Time". Seriously, to even consider such a plan, you have to miss the entire point of having a unified time system. Even by the standards of government, it's impressively stupid.
Well, for his priorities, they are a good idea. They have successfully prevented his assassination, to date. That his inevitable death will lead to the demise of his nation is immaterial to him.
in theory it makes sense; it's a surefire way to remain in power (although everyone would hate you for doing so) and it nicely positions yourself as a total tyrannical monster.
The "Samson Operation" has an analogue in the real world. Acantha's description pretty much describes the Russian Systema "Perimetr" (see below).
Thinking and installing the 'unthinkable' is a very old hat for humans.... Oh, and if you thought the physics packages were the scary part of the payloads, you should have read the descriptions of some of the biological packages that were in those same MIRV systems!
A raging paranoid, megalomaniac, psychopath. Can you think of a more complete threat to make sure people back off on trying to kill him besides, "If it actually works you or a lot of people you care about are gonna die," that can potentially be made? The real questions are why did lots of people help him build this mess? Also, why didn't others either stop him during construction (this cannot be good for the future of Nova Roma so the Cassians should have stopped him) or imprisoned him and undid the nonsense after it was built? I can only imagine that he managed to find a lot of suicidal people to help him and then miraculously kept it secrret from the Cassians somehow until it was a fait accompli.
The Cassians are compelled to follow his orders, whether they think they're a good idea or not. In fact, if you're trying figure out who would set all this up for him, there's your answer. He gives the order, they complain, he repeats the order, they do it.
OH SH!T!!! No wonder no one has rubbed out Douchimus!!! Gah! That is even WORSE than all the speculation from the commentors from earlier pages.
I would say Acantha DEFINITELY has Dolly's attention. She almost HAS to follow Acantha's plan to keep the contingencies from going off. That threatens New Troy if they do, so anything that can prevent that is something she will go for.
LOL, Please tell me that Decimus has NOT read the Evil overlord list, and put an on-off switch on his doomsday device? Preferably one that is clearly marked....
I don't know about regularly, but most of those systems that would be launched are out in the city. And I seem to recall the hard line between the city and palace being cut.
Why? Putin never disabled the Russian Система «Периметр», Systema "Perimetr" aka "Dead Hand" system. It's still 'hot to trot' and end the world by emptying the silos of Родина/Rodina. It's status was confirmed a couple of years ago. (And life with the rejuvenated and re-armed Russian Empire is becoming more interesting daily!)
Bush the Elder stood down our 'version,' the Emergency Rocket Communications System (ERCS)when other SIOP committed forces stood down.
The US version required surviving personnel to launch the packages as well as someone in the lawful succession acting as National Command Authority to give the release order; Systema "Perimetr" didn't require any living survivors to 'flush all the birds.' In other words, the Russians really do have the means in place and enabled to act out those final minutes of Doctor Strangelove.
So no, Dec is not at all "that crazy!" We (and 'they') have been thinking 'unthinkable' things far worse for many, many years, and both the Russians and Chinese are still regarding them as viable. Did you really think the North Koreans are the only lunatics on the planet?
Take a course in Nuke Arms policy as taught by the guys who make the policies in DC and elsewhere... you will be forever terrified.
That depends on how you look at it Sheela. Did they disable the system that they had in place since the 1950's? Yes, I believe they did.
Do they now have a different system in place that is highly classified and uses updated technologies, both electronic and ballistic? I believe it would be foolish to assume otherwise.
Just to make sure no-one ever gets any sleep ever again, what would you think of an ICBM equivalent that uses stealth technology?
And ICBM with stealth? Very old Old hat! It was hard to detect the carrier (the rocket) in the first place after it goes ballistic after boost phase or its chicks (the individual MIRV vehicles) after separation and deployment.
That's why the name of the game is to intercept a missile during boost phase. It's why there is such frantic interest in airborne laser and, (in the future) particle beam platforms.
There were always lots of decoy reentry vehicles packed into the MIRV systems.
We also already have stealhed delivery systems as 'they' do. Cruise missiles fly 'nape of the earth' where radar can't see them (except for aircraft borne' look down sets) and are really 'first window on the left' accurate. They were always to be part of the N arsenal since being very accurate means you can use a smaller-yield physics package.
You do realize that both we and the Russians never actually fired an ICBM from a silo and it was always a gamble they would actually work? (The Russians did try but they misfired and didn't launch.) That's why the bombers and sub launched systems were always so important, the silo launched missiles were not considered reliable.
We had them on railroad cars and being moved about in fake moving vans to various above ground launch sites in a shell game routine. I still think FedEx is the most efficient warhead delivery system though.
All parties who have silo-based birds have test fired birds from 'working' silo's with dummy warheads. The silos were then cleaned and reloaded with warshot birds. So the Russians, the US and others all have plenty of experience of lofting missiles from silos.
Silo missiles, however are vulnerable to a number of attacks; N-bunker busters, fratricide attacks and other strategies come to mind, all basically because they are stuck in a big, immobile hole in the ground visible to sat-recee. Which is also why both side were pretty much had a hair trigger, 'launch-on-warning' posture - 'use it of lose it is very real for silo based delivery systems.
Silos also made sense in the Fifties when the circular error probability of an ICBM was measured, especially for the Russians, in a radius of miles. This also meant you had to have far higher throw-weights (bigger-yield bombs) per missile to assure the destruction of a given target.
As accuracy increased, and the CEP shrunk, (eg. the SS-18 heavy ICBM) silos make less and less sense. Which, BTW, since the Russians were playing catch-up at that point anyway, is why they (and others) began opting for mobile launch technologies such as SS-24 MOD 1 Rail carried system and their many heavy trucked systems. If you can't find the missile, you can't knock it out. (Basically very high stakes Three Card Monty!)
It's also why the US tried to switch over to rail launched systems (LGM-118A Peacekeeper) starting in 1976 and continuing through the 1980s which would have either been on a dedicated rail and bunker system in Nevada and Utah deserts or one of 25 rail garrison units traveling around the country in disguised railway car launchers.
Nope - A system like this would, at least if I were designing it, would require a live, conscious and cooperative person to send a RESET with multiple layers of authentication to the countdown / triggering device.
Then I make sure it was known about and well known that "I" might just set it off for spite! In other words, the fact that the 'finger on the trigger' is a vengeful, spiteful lunatic who goes absolutely, terminally, whacko, ballistic when thwarted really works in Dec's favor!
The frequency of your required reset signals also increases the chance of interception and location of your trigger system, which could help shutting it down.
Considering the duration and degree of her infiltration of New Rome, it's weird that story Tokyo Rose hasn't already located and neutered the failsafe system.
The only thing that really makes sense for how Decimus could've set it up and how Tokyo Rose couldn't disarm it and would require Aeneas to be fixed to disarm, is if Decimus somehow got control of a notionally partially lobotomized part of Aeneas. Something that still had the cognitive ability and computational horsepower to be an active defense for itself, but something lacking the free will and personality of the actual AIS capable of disputing the order.
Yeah, it cuts down on the help he'd require for initial setup too. Separating that part of Aeneas away from AIS persona control seems like a legitimate goal his grandfather might've been attempting to achieve. It also adds another reason for being pants-crappingly terrified of what Aeneas would do to him.
As a side note, "pants-crappingly" has been one of my favorite adverbs for several years now. Maybe even a decade already.
You STILL don't get a fail-deadly system.... any portion of the system fails - BOOM! It could even be set up cascade kill the rest of the control system to ensure irreversibly.
A lot of folks here appear to be laboring under the assumption that someone like Dec is going to want to stop Armageddon before he can pull out his fiddle on the balcony to play tunes to a world en brochette on the barbi.
If he can't have the world, nobody will!
Or at least that my read of what the Ladies (CC&TR) have let us see of Dec's personality so far. (I hope poor "Kitty" makes it though)
I get the fail-deadly concept. The thing I disagree with you on is I have a lower view of human competence and a very healthy appreciation of entropy.
A true and complete fail-deadly system with no safeguards or ability to cancel an activation is VERY sensitive to mistakes in implementation and unexpected parts failures. A system like that will go off. It's only a matter of time. That raises the risk of its existence and makes finding a way to disable it a necessary matter of survival (i.e. more motivation for your adversaries).
If you have dynastic tendencies, you don't want it killing your heirs. If you're involved in tampering with human biology giving an 80 year old a 30 year old body (Setorius), then making firm plans on your maximum [natural] life expectancy is also difficult.
A "soft" fail-deadly system makes a better deterrent. There's more room for mistakes and maintenance. While it always will have an out to stop it, if well implemented that is sufficiently difficult to do that the risk-reward calculation tips back to "leave the crazy fucker alone" from "it's only a matter of time, so we need a plan and cannot rest until we succeed."
The Russian system I think you're talking about (don't recall name, just description as similar to Dr. Strangelove plot in a news story that was revealed in the past decade), was a soft system, as what I recall for that system was an active connection from the Kremlin that if stopped or turned off/activated allowed a person in a very deep underground bunker to launch, I think all remaining, nukes. It was designed to be convincing and capable enough to ensure retaliation capability to destroy the US if we got the jump on a surprise first strike, but not so insanely dangerous to accidents to make an attempt at a risk to disable it (and then take out anyone who'd put it back together) to be worth considering.
Of course it all depends on if the contingencies CAN be activated. If the various power and communication lines and their back ups could be disabled so the distribution net that triggers the actions fails, then death shall lose its sting.
It may not be easy, but that's the weak link in the system, not his lowness, but the contingency system's ability to respond to him.
What Rose said about "active confirmation signals" got my attention. The system could be set up so that any sort of lingering, massive network failure or jamming signal could trigger it. Probably, if a certain encrypted signal isn't regularly sent on a certain pattern, then stuff goes off automatically. (There could be a timer counting down as they speak.)
Hopefully, Aeneas is either familiar with these failsafes or can figure them out swiftly. I doubt anyone here, other than Aeneas or maybe Dr. Silver could shut them down safely. May require blowing/disabling equipment in three places simultaneously, though.
A system like Dec would have created would be designed to execute Armageddon if NOT STOPPED. In other words, the detonator was pushed, the birds are hot and the 'final countdown' was started years ago, Dec just keeps sending RESET commands to the countdown device to reset and start counting down again from the beginning (and he'd be the ONLY one with the knowledge to sent the proper command).
No reset command issued any a living, conscious and contented Dec, for whatever reason, the world ends, period; end of story! (And yes, I do see Decky as the kind of person who would 'pull the trigger' out of spite if he was loosing his grip on power... the ultimate "If we don't play it MY WAY, I'm gonna take my ball and go home, nayh, nayh, nayh" tantrum!
Well, the automatic attacks on the other cities is an angle I had not anticipated. I did not realize that he considers himself to be important enough that the other cities would actually go to the trouble.
I viewed the attacks on the other cities as still at least somewhat inward focused.
If CentComm or Deep Blue were attempting to attack New Rome, they'd be ready to destroy his equipment close to home. On the other hand, if he wasn't even on their radar and that kind of attack got launched, they'd finish the annihilation that the other contingencies started.
I suppose it may also be partially arrogant temper tantrum thinking the others would be involved, but if so it seems like another example of shortsightedly seeing what he wants to see (which granted, he has done frequently).
I suppose another question would be, "Does Nova Roma have any weapons that could actually reach the other cities through the current high air defense alert status they all seem to be in?".
In a situation like this, you CANNOT assume otherwise!
You cannot prove the negative - that your opposition does NOT have the devices and means of delivery and you don't dare take the chance of forcing their hand.
Nope, all it takes is strapping a rocket engine and a guidance computer onto a BIG honkin' piece-o-rock! Instant Kinetic Energy Weapon (KEW)!
Kinda' makes the upcoming mission to capture and move a moon orbit for study a bit scarier. All the tech and devices are right there to create a (KEW) Impactor.
In a way, we are demonstrating our capability to the Russians and Chinese exactly the same way Soviets demonstrated capability with Sputnik.
Sputnik showed that they could put an object into orbit. Anyone who can orbit an object can easily manage a sub-orbital flight path to deliver a nuke or a biowar package.
Of course, NASA has no intent of doing anything with KEW system, but somewhere, someone IS and my bet is in 10 years, the tech will be turnkey. After all we've been seriously talking about the system for nearly 60 years in SciFI, and a lot of Fen and ProFen work or consult for the defense industry.
Kinda' makes the upcoming mission to capture and move an asteroids to a stable moon orbit for study a bit scarier. All the tech and devices are right there to create a (KEW) Impactor.
As I posted above, it's viable that part of Decimus' plan is to provoke retaliation to take out anyone in New Rome his first two fail safes missed. He may not even care that much if he damages New Sparta or New Troy.
Dec would want to take the world down all by himself through his own actions. His own flaming triumph of the will to destruction. His final act of ultimate control over all the peoples of the world - annihilating them!
"From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee," indeed!
We know he's an arrogant megalomaniac who wants to conquer the world (and presumably farther if he can manage it). We know he's somewhat nihilistic.
We don't necessarily know his degree of external vs internal focus, and we don't know the flexibility of his fail safes to adjust later as his current area of conquest expands.
While he'd like to rule all existence with an iron fist, focusing at home first to consolidate power is not uncommon. With the rest of the world generally seeming hazy on a lot of details about New Rome (CentComm had to question a trader, even if she did also plan on using him as cover transportation), a primary focus on finishing the destruction of New Rome started by the first two protocols is still a possibility.
I'm sure he'd be happy about any damage he manages on New Sparta or New Troy, but it's not clear that he thinks he can manage a surprise attack that would cripple them. Considering his fear of his own, barely functional AIS, it would take some very odd mental contortions for him to believe the fully functional Deep Blue and CentComm could be destroyed or disabled by a blind "last gasp" strike, especially CentComm, who has access to the weapons he covets so greatly.
It's feasible he'd kill a lot of people in both cities (though not certain), but ridiculous to think that he could disable the AIS which likely still reside in the (potentially repaired and improved) fortified remnants of the previous war. He might be blindly insane enough to believe it, but I think it's slightly more likely that he believes he'd be provoking CentComm's retaliation to finish what Nero & Ahab started.
I'm guessin' Aeneas can pull the plug on Prince Douchebags NAS system once he gets up to speed again which, if possible, Kyle is accomplishing. Doc Silver might be of some help as well with her 'Reach out and touch a 'puter' skill set. Either way, any system can be overridden or corrupted and rendered harmless.
"any system can be overridden or corrupted and rendered harmless."
The last words of many an EOD tech... Why do you think they use robots and explosives to detonate-in-place.
Case in point: Look up the bombing of the Harvey's Resort Hotel/Casino Lake Tahoe back in 1980. It's a classic. EOD thought they could handle that one too.
It ain't like the movies with clocks, digital countdown timers and red wires and blue wires. A properly designed device will be rife with secondary triggers and with even current levels (let alone New Roma's) of data encryption, no way to break the reset commands before time runs out.
I'm lookin' forward to a long, long run for this comic. :)
It's true, any professional bomb maker would seal his system against intrusion.
Amateurs on the other hand, often forget to secure the detonators, and you can simply pull out the detonators, or even the explosives themselves, rather than mess around with the triggering mechanism.
Can't resist it, even if the OP will probably never read it...
With almost 20 years in EOD, I think I can say that we do what we do because someone has to, sometimes shit happens or you just run out of time, or it's a command detonate with someone watching to try and take the tech out too.
Nowadays, there are signal jammers and other things that weren't even prototypes when I took my training, the remote manipulators are a fraction of the size with many times the capability, and things just work differently.
Still, I have and wear my "we blow shit up that blows shit up" shirt and our motto is and was "initial success or total failure" you only get one chance to get it right, not sit back and armchair quarterback it for years and years saying what someone did wrong when you weren't there to give them advice and probably didn't have the training or experience to second guess them anyway...the sad part is that sometimes the good guys lose but that doesn't mean you don't try.
and that's why you put a trigger on the det so if it's moved it sets the main charge off, and a collapsing circuit on the firing leads so if you cut one same boom. It's also why you use a disruptor if possible.
Even if that were true, it's not enough to know what a particular system can do. You also have to know where that system is, which I'm guessing is a well guarded secret of Prince Decimus.
It's also a question of who else helped with it and how many are still able/capable/functional. If he had Cassians assist, at the very least Kali likely knows.
Hacking Kali and the Cassians to alter their inhibitor forcing them to serve Decimus and swapping allegiance to Acantha might be enough to disarm the failsafes. Especially if he doesn't realize they've been subverted.
Don't forget that his "cat" was actually a superhuman experimental castoff that has, at least, beyond normal human senses. The "cat" may know more than he thinks possible, too.
She could be emotionally retreating to the feline persona and be generally able to function normally (as her sister seems mostly able to). She could be incapable of generally normal function, but still have areas of advanced clarity (similar to some people not on the near end of the autism spectrum). She might've also been sent to Setorius for deliberate mental alterations by Decimus early on (with his level of paranoia, I can see it as viable).
I wonder if we'll find out much or if her resistance will be a last gasp.
Of course it doesn't. But, clearly, all Douche-head really cares about is himself and staying in power. So he doesn't care about consequences for that possibility. Whoever installed such contingencies must have been just as insane as the Prince. That, or they left as soon as they got their money. (Though, that assumes they were left breathing. More likely, he didn't want anyone alive who knew how to shut it down.)
I don't think the Cassians had anything to do with this.
This is the sort of thing, that was build by an army of engineers and drones, that were fanatically patriotic about their job.
If anything, the Cassians are a result, of this paranoid way of thinking, they help keep him safe.
I suspect he considers this to give the doctors an incentive to try harder.
I also suspect that Kali, at the least, is sufficiently in the know to verify the system's existence and function. People would likely believe his threat pure bluff otherwise.
Hopefully, they shut down the failsafes and then face the Prince. He can shout, "Idiots! You can't hurt me or you kill everyone." It should be interesting to see his reaction when it is explained that this is no longer the case.
What I'm curious about is what Maxus is planning to do. As their general, surely he is aware of the Prince's contingencies. He must know he can't just kill the Prince. But Maxus has a sharp mind. So there must be a plan. Help the rebels? Disable the contingencies? Capture the Prince alive?
My bet here is that Dec would never allow any fail-safes to be placed between himself and the weapons! He's the guy in total control of the system.
He would never trust anyone with the power to thwart his plans/life insurance policy. That just does not ring true to his psychology as revealed by the Ladies so far.
Maxus could be doing several things. He might be disabling automated systems one-by-one to avoid the ability for them to be launched, possibly by mobilizing troops to hit endpoints all at once. He might know which Cassians know the internals of the failsafe system and have a method in mind to alter their inhibitors. If the failsafe was originally set up by previous generations, he may have had a method to disable them handed down to him that he's going for.
He might also have been headed to attempt to rescue Acantha & Lynn. I'd consider that he might've been starting evacuating the city, but he wouldn't have left his lady in his safe room if that were the case.
well now that's a hell of a thing! Still does not explain why they did not take him down, lock him up, and make sure that dark little hart of his kept beating is some dark deep hole somewhere.
So ya got him in a cell an say, 'play nice and we let you live...'
He sends a code, the counter appears to reset. You say 'Good Dec! We'll do this again tomorrow."
An hour later the silos blow open and the system flushes all the birds into the sky!
A personality like Dec has to be the Big Kahuna or he's nothing and may as well be dead and if he can take the world with him when he goes, so much the better!
After all Samson is one of our great biblical heros for pulling down the temple onto his own head. We celebrate JSOC people who call down an fire mission or airstrike onto their own position if it will save others.
Exactly!! And making sure they know it too so that they can suffer horribly waiting for their inescapable ends. Dec's foreknowledge of the suffering is spicing on his cake.
"Qualis artifex pereo!"
Check out Suetonius' account of the death of Nero.
@Sheela - I seem to remember one of the authors hinting that Decimus' "cat" might turn against him at some point and be part of his downfall.
So too much trust in the woman you're regularly banging who doesn't actually have your best interests at heart may turn out to be another Samson parallel.
I get the Samson reference, and the Nero Reference. but "Ahab" confuses me. The only Ahab I'm aware of is the one in the bible, and he was a weenie, but his wife, Jezebel was evil incarnate.
Shouldn't that be something more like a "Harod" initiative? A person is born that you don't want to live, so you order your soldiers to slaughter everyone in that village...
Untrue - it's actually easy to test a doomsday system like this. One way might simply disable a permissive action link just before the terminal circuit.
How do you know your detonator is properly wired up? You send a very low current through the circuit, far to low to activate the detonator, but plenty to validate the circuit.
And remember, in an age of self-diagnostic machines, verifying function and capability is childsplay.
Well, I think we all suspected, and now it's been spelled out to us. However, now they are aware of it, our expert infiltrators might be able to do something about it. Doctor Silver particularly. I'm also wondering if the system has a maximum range, and if it would allow Dec to travel outside that range. Then again, he probably finds that his megalomania starts to ache if he goes to any place where he isn't in charge. Another possibility: would mind control drugs/techniques be up to the job, and does the system check him for their presence? If so, and if it doesn't:
Dolly: Hey, Deckhead! Have you finished sending those confirmation signals?
Decimus: Yes.
Dolly: Good. Back to your basket, then. Go on!
Teedee: Wait! I wanna make him stick a CO2 extinguisher down his pants again and set it off!
Decimus: I don't like that! It gives me frostbite on my-
Dolly: Quiet, you! All right, Teedee, but make this the last time today. I'd thought you must have used up every extinguisher in the palace by now...
Teedee: They keep replacing them! And anyway, it'll only be a few more days before our guys have 86ed those Zero, Ablab and Shitstain directive things, and then it'll just be that public execution that you won't let me do! *pouts*
Dolly: *sigh* We have to maintain a professional demeanour, at least in public. You're likely to get carried away. And you can stop whining, Deck. You know you'll be a constant threat to everything while you're alive, don't you?
Teedee: Plus you deserve it for being such an utter little shit. Now - fire extinguisher! Go! And keep the handle pressed all the way down this time! :)
CentComm has had centuries to twiddle her thumbs since stopping war. I'd imagine that she's analyzed all the New Troy data for prisoner re-education and possibly done some experimenting on her own. It's not impossible that she has developed a method for human mind control, or barring that a human equivalent of the flash stick they use for androids and the method to slurp the data contents (brain liquefaction still possible). Ceci could easily be equipped with or able to fabricate those devices if CentComm has discovered them.
@Greenwood Goat - Doc Silver might be able to disarm, but she also tends to be a little too cocky, so she could just as easily trigger them in the attempt. Honestly her overconfidence hasn't bitten her nearly as much as it's set up to do in the story we've seen so far (an extra fine and reminders of old stories from Marcus is about all).
An Epiphyte might be able to do the job, but it would require constant control, because it only takes a moment for Decimus to send the "Fuck You" command signal and set off the apocalypse. It would be virtually impossible to find an Epiphyte who's both willing to crush the mind of another sentient into obedience like that, and is powerful enough to do so. The concept of imposing such subjugation is utterly disgusting and reprehensible to them.
Would Epiphytes likely have the same scruples over deliberate mental eavesdropping or possibly more active information discovery attempts? I'd think, especially considering the potential lives (and environment) saved, that might be easier to swallow.
Granted, immersing in Decimus' consciousness and thought process probably wouldn't be very comfortable for anyone not similarly deranged.
I really have to hand it to the team here! CentCom and Tokyo Rose have done something very few do, thought the unthinkable plausibly, fairly realistically and done a pretty good job of it so far. Giving Dec graduated levels of 'unthinkable' options (Nero, Ahab, Samson) is also a very good move. It lets Dec demonstrate intent and will without pulling the final trigger. (And yes, there were graduated, 'limited exchange,' controlled escalation scenarios back 'in the day' too.)
For those of us who grew up and lived through 'Duck and Cover,' 'Mutually Assured Destruction,' SIOP, air raid drills and sirens, 'defensive' weapon systems like nuke-tipped Nike Hercules launch installations only a few blocks from home; what CC and TR have come up with isn't very far fetched or even that unusual at all. This is what we grew up with in the 50's and 60's, less so in the 70's, and again during the 80's when everyone thought 'Star Wars' (the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)) was a bad Reaganite war fantasy (little did you know). By the early-to-mid 60's, most kids didn't expect to live to graduate high school. It's just people don't believe this kind of game continues on to this day... it does! We're modernizing our strategic arsenal of physics packages and both the Russians and the Chinese are bringing new generations of both warheads and delivery systems on line over the next decade as older systems are retired.
For those of you who may wonder about some of my comments, NBC weapons design and policy were amongst my class subjects in University, thinking the unthinkable and gaming nuclear war, terrorism and end-of-the-world scenarios was my day-to-day homework for a while (living in a many-multiple, extremely high-value target urban complex did help either.) Nothing classified here (or then either) plenty of stuff in any good university library to keep you totally terrified and up all night for weeks on end.
Don't forget, while we never (to my knowledge) really build something like Samson, the Russians did and it is active to this day according to some sources. A lot of people DID spend a lot of time (and money) to think the unthinkable, a lot of people built things based on those thoughts in many countries and there were even a few who really did want to 'Cry Havoc' and let the missiles fly. There is nothing so horrible that it is unthinkable.
Heh, I lived in Denmark in the 80's, and Denmark got propaganda from both the US *AND* the USSR.
Bloody headache that way. Hated the bombdrills, they always scared the kids.
Which, I guess, was the point - Scared kids makes for easy targets when you want new soldiers.
I'm thinking that Aeneas is the key. If he is back and fully functioning I get the feeling he could make Douchimus' deadman switch into a dead letter instead.
Aeneas may supposed to be the ultimate decider on the fitness of the ruler, but damaged he can't fulfill that role. That sounds more like something the 'original' architects of the city might have had in mind before the Livus family tried to change it, violently. And then Douchimus completely perverted the system.
I guess we'll have to wait and see how it gets resolved. IF it gets resolved, after all Douchimus might survive to provide more trouble for the survivors in the next arc. The 'good' guys don't always win, not in the real world.
Which makes it rather odd that Aeneas is still around in any capacity and Douchimous didn't completely level that complex. Especially when you consider that the only other equivalent-level AIs (Cent and TR) took over for a less destructive military policy.
Remember story TR's description of Aeneas' state to Kyle. His consciousness and the AIS equivalent of his will are separated from many of his functions. The AIS equivalent of his unconscious functions still provide vital city services (which is one reason they tried to lobotomize him but not kill him). Aeneas is disconnected from most of himself and incapable of repairing.
Also the best explanation for Decimus' failsafe is that it's actually part of Aeneas, as the AIS were in control of the entire military system during the war. Something like that would be way too complex for Decimus to reasonably create from scratch, he'd need too many capable people willing to do too much work to set it up, and he wouldn't have been able to keep it secret long enough to avoid being killed before it was finished. Managing to gain control (or being passed down control) of a disconnected part of Aeneas that is still capable of active cyber defense makes much more sense.
I was in elementary school in the 60's. Maybe I was sheltered, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn't live to graduate from high school. I suspect that only those kids who were in military families, or lived near missile silos or something like that, had that fear. No one I knew was that scared.
I'm the daughter of a government Bureaucrat, growing up in 80's. He was part of the U.S. defense national stockpile, basically the strategic material reserves in case a prolonged WWIII came about and we need to recreate entire divisions. He was involved in the what to do post launch. Basically it amounted to gather whatever scraps were left and rebuild. It would take at least 3 weeks for it to be survivable post armageddon. But that meant at some point later in life you'd die of cancer, just not right away. The safer bet was to hole-up for 3 months or so so the radiation wouldn't be problematic. ALl things said and done, most of the east coast of the US would have been wiped out, and due to prevailing winds and such would have the heaviest radiation levels. So the three months would make more sense. Apparently the theory was that after a while, rain and runoff would wash away most of the topsoil radiation. This in conjunction with the radioactive decay would make the environment livable.
In 1319 i wondered why neither Dolly and Cecy reacted when Acantha mentioned Aeneas ?
Now i see that they just assumed this was the name of some nerd who fiddled with the tracker - but did not connect the name to the AIS.
Only when Acantha mentioned "Aeneas Tower" the coin fell.
After that no Pokerface for Ceci or Dolly for sure. CeCi with all the knowledge of CentComm is eager to know more about Aeneas ...
And excellent display of bodylanguage here - Acantha mentioning meeting Aeneas, then telling about Nero Ahab Samson - Dolly must be thinking for second that Acantha is insane - but then the explanation. Dolly is for sure touched by story of Acantha, holding her shoulders.
I must say Dolly is being much more reasonable about this than I anticipated. I expected there to be much greater tension between Dolly's "Get Lynn Safely Home" agenda and Acantha's "Prevent Lynn from Going Back through a F*ing Warzone" counter proposal.
I am glad to see that Acantha is concerned about preventing unnecessary casualties to the red troops. Her language could have been a bit stronger though. As the rightful ruler of Nova Roma, the lives of her people should be a top priority, not merely a personal preference. On the other hand, perhaps she is phrasing the argument in the way she thinks Dolly would be most likely to accept.
Finally, does anyone seriously think Acantha is planning on fixing Aeneas? She has made it very clear that she doesn't have the technical knowledge, and since he was her only friend prior to meeting Lynn, she would have started the process a long time ago if she even thought it possible. None of these players knows about Kyle (unless one of them is secretly Tokyo Rose in disguise) so the plan is only to hide, not to fix.
I doubt that Acantha has any real knowledge about fixing Aeneas.
I seem to remember Archbishop Setorius mention that New Rome's nano tech is far behind New Troys.
The plan may also be to ask Aeneas what information he has on the contingencies and what he knows that she can use to start taking control. Aeneas' ability to speak in the throne room strongly suggests that he's got some degree of listening ability at times too. He'll know a lot that could be helpful.
Acantha's manner when Lynn was mourning Kyle kinda' said she had been deliberately trying to avoid facing what would need to be done about Decimus. She may have deliberately avoided asking Aeneas these types of questions in the past. Possibly partially avoidance and partially so that if Decimus tried to test if she knew more than she should that she wouldn't give herself away.
Is Acantha wearing or carrying the ring Aeneas gave her? IIRC it allows Aeneas to track her and listen and has a limited selcast repeater built in.
And would THAT be something. They get where one of Aenea's Dolls are, and he can selcast in, possibly to try to either repair some of his own damage himself OR to confront douche head in person.
Acantha has the ring in her pocket. She IS carrying it shes not wearing it because she does not need to and she didn't want anyone asking questions . and its a fairly large ring for her.
Is it me or does anyone else feel like Acantha is frustrated here?
She seems like she needs SOMEONE to pay attention to what she has to say. Not just come up with another plan and fit her into it. She has endured SO much in her life, I get the feeling she is near a breaking point if she can't get Dolly to listen to her.
And I though Deck's failsafe was a city buster nuke on a dead-man switch.
I obviously credited him with too much sanity. Why settle for his own death and the death of his city when you can take out the rest of the world with you.
oh i righti think i vaguely recall them mentioning he had this kinda failsafe. i g uess that answers my previous issue of "how tf did they not just make him accidentally die somehow" if literally no one likes him
I refer to it as "Daylight STUPID Time". Seriously, to even consider such a plan, you have to miss the entire point of having a unified time system. Even by the standards of government, it's impressively stupid.
Seriously...who is the MORON who actually wired all this up thinking Oh this is good nothing can go wrong here.!!!
Give the lady an (irradiated) see-gar!
Thinking and installing the 'unthinkable' is a very old hat for humans.... Oh, and if you thought the physics packages were the scary part of the payloads, you should have read the descriptions of some of the biological packages that were in those same MIRV systems!
The nukes were only the appetizers!
EDIT: Sorry ProfEtheric, I didn't see your comment before I posted.
This is an ancient idea, scorch and salt the earth tactics at it's finest.
I would say Acantha DEFINITELY has Dolly's attention. She almost HAS to follow Acantha's plan to keep the contingencies from going off. That threatens New Troy if they do, so anything that can prevent that is something she will go for.
Frankly, this feels more interesting than the bit where Dolly linked up with Lynn.
And to think that Douchebag wants even MORE weapons from Centcomm.
They could be used as weapons too, and I'm sure we could fit a few in the throneroom.
TeeDee is eager to try, at the very least. :)
...world destruction as contingencies???
No wonder he is still alive... - ...and those names...
Bush the Elder stood down our 'version,' the Emergency Rocket Communications System (ERCS)when other SIOP committed forces stood down.
The US version required surviving personnel to launch the packages as well as someone in the lawful succession acting as National Command Authority to give the release order; Systema "Perimetr" didn't require any living survivors to 'flush all the birds.' In other words, the Russians really do have the means in place and enabled to act out those final minutes of Doctor Strangelove.
So no, Dec is not at all "that crazy!" We (and 'they') have been thinking 'unthinkable' things far worse for many, many years, and both the Russians and Chinese are still regarding them as viable. Did you really think the North Koreans are the only lunatics on the planet?
Take a course in Nuke Arms policy as taught by the guys who make the policies in DC and elsewhere... you will be forever terrified.
And when the USA said they had turned their system off : Were they telling the truth ... or were they lying?
Do they now have a different system in place that is highly classified and uses updated technologies, both electronic and ballistic? I believe it would be foolish to assume otherwise.
Just to make sure no-one ever gets any sleep ever again, what would you think of an ICBM equivalent that uses stealth technology?
That's why the name of the game is to intercept a missile during boost phase. It's why there is such frantic interest in airborne laser and, (in the future) particle beam platforms.
There were always lots of decoy reentry vehicles packed into the MIRV systems.
We also already have stealhed delivery systems as 'they' do. Cruise missiles fly 'nape of the earth' where radar can't see them (except for aircraft borne' look down sets) and are really 'first window on the left' accurate. They were always to be part of the N arsenal since being very accurate means you can use a smaller-yield physics package.
Silo missiles, however are vulnerable to a number of attacks; N-bunker busters, fratricide attacks and other strategies come to mind, all basically because they are stuck in a big, immobile hole in the ground visible to sat-recee. Which is also why both side were pretty much had a hair trigger, 'launch-on-warning' posture - 'use it of lose it is very real for silo based delivery systems.
Silos also made sense in the Fifties when the circular error probability of an ICBM was measured, especially for the Russians, in a radius of miles. This also meant you had to have far higher throw-weights (bigger-yield bombs) per missile to assure the destruction of a given target.
As accuracy increased, and the CEP shrunk, (eg. the SS-18 heavy ICBM) silos make less and less sense. Which, BTW, since the Russians were playing catch-up at that point anyway, is why they (and others) began opting for mobile launch technologies such as SS-24 MOD 1 Rail carried system and their many heavy trucked systems. If you can't find the missile, you can't knock it out. (Basically very high stakes Three Card Monty!)
It's also why the US tried to switch over to rail launched systems (LGM-118A Peacekeeper) starting in 1976 and continuing through the 1980s which would have either been on a dedicated rail and bunker system in Nevada and Utah deserts or one of 25 rail garrison units traveling around the country in disguised railway car launchers.
Then I make sure it was known about and well known that "I" might just set it off for spite! In other words, the fact that the 'finger on the trigger' is a vengeful, spiteful lunatic who goes absolutely, terminally, whacko, ballistic when thwarted really works in Dec's favor!
Considering the duration and degree of her infiltration of New Rome, it's weird that story Tokyo Rose hasn't already located and neutered the failsafe system.
The only thing that really makes sense for how Decimus could've set it up and how Tokyo Rose couldn't disarm it and would require Aeneas to be fixed to disarm, is if Decimus somehow got control of a notionally partially lobotomized part of Aeneas. Something that still had the cognitive ability and computational horsepower to be an active defense for itself, but something lacking the free will and personality of the actual AIS capable of disputing the order.
That really is the only thing that makes sufficient sense, isn't it? Aside from the fact that Decimus is shitting-his-pants-terrified of Aeneas.
As a side note, "pants-crappingly" has been one of my favorite adverbs for several years now. Maybe even a decade already.
You STILL don't get a fail-deadly system.... any portion of the system fails - BOOM! It could even be set up cascade kill the rest of the control system to ensure irreversibly.
A lot of folks here appear to be laboring under the assumption that someone like Dec is going to want to stop Armageddon before he can pull out his fiddle on the balcony to play tunes to a world en brochette on the barbi.
If he can't have the world, nobody will!
Or at least that my read of what the Ladies (CC&TR) have let us see of Dec's personality so far. (I hope poor "Kitty" makes it though)
A true and complete fail-deadly system with no safeguards or ability to cancel an activation is VERY sensitive to mistakes in implementation and unexpected parts failures. A system like that will go off. It's only a matter of time. That raises the risk of its existence and makes finding a way to disable it a necessary matter of survival (i.e. more motivation for your adversaries).
If you have dynastic tendencies, you don't want it killing your heirs. If you're involved in tampering with human biology giving an 80 year old a 30 year old body (Setorius), then making firm plans on your maximum [natural] life expectancy is also difficult.
A "soft" fail-deadly system makes a better deterrent. There's more room for mistakes and maintenance. While it always will have an out to stop it, if well implemented that is sufficiently difficult to do that the risk-reward calculation tips back to "leave the crazy fucker alone" from "it's only a matter of time, so we need a plan and cannot rest until we succeed."
The Russian system I think you're talking about (don't recall name, just description as similar to Dr. Strangelove plot in a news story that was revealed in the past decade), was a soft system, as what I recall for that system was an active connection from the Kremlin that if stopped or turned off/activated allowed a person in a very deep underground bunker to launch, I think all remaining, nukes. It was designed to be convincing and capable enough to ensure retaliation capability to destroy the US if we got the jump on a surprise first strike, but not so insanely dangerous to accidents to make an attempt at a risk to disable it (and then take out anyone who'd put it back together) to be worth considering.
It may not be easy, but that's the weak link in the system, not his lowness, but the contingency system's ability to respond to him.
Hopefully, Aeneas is either familiar with these failsafes or can figure them out swiftly. I doubt anyone here, other than Aeneas or maybe Dr. Silver could shut them down safely. May require blowing/disabling equipment in three places simultaneously, though.
No reset command issued any a living, conscious and contented Dec, for whatever reason, the world ends, period; end of story! (And yes, I do see Decky as the kind of person who would 'pull the trigger' out of spite if he was loosing his grip on power... the ultimate "If we don't play it MY WAY, I'm gonna take my ball and go home, nayh, nayh, nayh" tantrum!
The reset fails, everybody dies!
Asshole...
If CentComm or Deep Blue were attempting to attack New Rome, they'd be ready to destroy his equipment close to home. On the other hand, if he wasn't even on their radar and that kind of attack got launched, they'd finish the annihilation that the other contingencies started.
I suppose it may also be partially arrogant temper tantrum thinking the others would be involved, but if so it seems like another example of shortsightedly seeing what he wants to see (which granted, he has done frequently).
You cannot prove the negative - that your opposition does NOT have the devices and means of delivery and you don't dare take the chance of forcing their hand.
One might slip through.
For all we know, he might be dropping rocks from outer space.
Kinda' makes the upcoming mission to capture and move a moon orbit for study a bit scarier. All the tech and devices are right there to create a (KEW) Impactor.
In a way, we are demonstrating our capability to the Russians and Chinese exactly the same way Soviets demonstrated capability with Sputnik.
Sputnik showed that they could put an object into orbit. Anyone who can orbit an object can easily manage a sub-orbital flight path to deliver a nuke or a biowar package.
Of course, NASA has no intent of doing anything with KEW system, but somewhere, someone IS and my bet is in 10 years, the tech will be turnkey. After all we've been seriously talking about the system for nearly 60 years in SciFI, and a lot of Fen and ProFen work or consult for the defense industry.
Kinda' makes the upcoming mission to capture and move an asteroids to a stable moon orbit for study a bit scarier. All the tech and devices are right there to create a (KEW) Impactor.
Dec would want to take the world down all by himself through his own actions. His own flaming triumph of the will to destruction. His final act of ultimate control over all the peoples of the world - annihilating them!
"From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee," indeed!
We don't necessarily know his degree of external vs internal focus, and we don't know the flexibility of his fail safes to adjust later as his current area of conquest expands.
While he'd like to rule all existence with an iron fist, focusing at home first to consolidate power is not uncommon. With the rest of the world generally seeming hazy on a lot of details about New Rome (CentComm had to question a trader, even if she did also plan on using him as cover transportation), a primary focus on finishing the destruction of New Rome started by the first two protocols is still a possibility.
I'm sure he'd be happy about any damage he manages on New Sparta or New Troy, but it's not clear that he thinks he can manage a surprise attack that would cripple them. Considering his fear of his own, barely functional AIS, it would take some very odd mental contortions for him to believe the fully functional Deep Blue and CentComm could be destroyed or disabled by a blind "last gasp" strike, especially CentComm, who has access to the weapons he covets so greatly.
It's feasible he'd kill a lot of people in both cities (though not certain), but ridiculous to think that he could disable the AIS which likely still reside in the (potentially repaired and improved) fortified remnants of the previous war. He might be blindly insane enough to believe it, but I think it's slightly more likely that he believes he'd be provoking CentComm's retaliation to finish what Nero & Ahab started.
The last words of many an EOD tech... Why do you think they use robots and explosives to detonate-in-place.
Case in point: Look up the bombing of the Harvey's Resort Hotel/Casino Lake Tahoe back in 1980. It's a classic. EOD thought they could handle that one too.
It ain't like the movies with clocks, digital countdown timers and red wires and blue wires. A properly designed device will be rife with secondary triggers and with even current levels (let alone New Roma's) of data encryption, no way to break the reset commands before time runs out.
I'm lookin' forward to a long, long run for this comic. :)
Amateurs on the other hand, often forget to secure the detonators, and you can simply pull out the detonators, or even the explosives themselves, rather than mess around with the triggering mechanism.
With almost 20 years in EOD, I think I can say that we do what we do because someone has to, sometimes shit happens or you just run out of time, or it's a command detonate with someone watching to try and take the tech out too.
Nowadays, there are signal jammers and other things that weren't even prototypes when I took my training, the remote manipulators are a fraction of the size with many times the capability, and things just work differently.
Still, I have and wear my "we blow shit up that blows shit up" shirt and our motto is and was "initial success or total failure" you only get one chance to get it right, not sit back and armchair quarterback it for years and years saying what someone did wrong when you weren't there to give them advice and probably didn't have the training or experience to second guess them anyway...the sad part is that sometimes the good guys lose but that doesn't mean you don't try.
Hacking Kali and the Cassians to alter their inhibitor forcing them to serve Decimus and swapping allegiance to Acantha might be enough to disarm the failsafes. Especially if he doesn't realize they've been subverted.
Don't forget that his "cat" was actually a superhuman experimental castoff that has, at least, beyond normal human senses. The "cat" may know more than he thinks possible, too.
But if her intelligence is impaired, she might not be smart enough to use any of it to any good effect.
It's not unusual to have "lowly servants" know a whole lot more about things, than their "Masters" wants them to know. Even in the real world.
She could be emotionally retreating to the feline persona and be generally able to function normally (as her sister seems mostly able to). She could be incapable of generally normal function, but still have areas of advanced clarity (similar to some people not on the near end of the autism spectrum). She might've also been sent to Setorius for deliberate mental alterations by Decimus early on (with his level of paranoia, I can see it as viable).
I wonder if we'll find out much or if her resistance will be a last gasp.
I like it!
In a way it is the perfect Dec move... the ultimate Viking funeral but instead of a mere longship, an entire planet burns!
This is the sort of thing, that was build by an army of engineers and drones, that were fanatically patriotic about their job.
If anything, the Cassians are a result, of this paranoid way of thinking, they help keep him safe.
I also suspect that Kali, at the least, is sufficiently in the know to verify the system's existence and function. People would likely believe his threat pure bluff otherwise.
Possible mate confirmed ?
What I'm curious about is what Maxus is planning to do. As their general, surely he is aware of the Prince's contingencies. He must know he can't just kill the Prince. But Maxus has a sharp mind. So there must be a plan. Help the rebels? Disable the contingencies? Capture the Prince alive?
He would never trust anyone with the power to thwart his plans/life insurance policy. That just does not ring true to his psychology as revealed by the Ladies so far.
He might also have been headed to attempt to rescue Acantha & Lynn. I'd consider that he might've been starting evacuating the city, but he wouldn't have left his lady in his safe room if that were the case.
So ya got him in a cell an say, 'play nice and we let you live...'
He sends a code, the counter appears to reset. You say 'Good Dec! We'll do this again tomorrow."
An hour later the silos blow open and the system flushes all the birds into the sky!
A personality like Dec has to be the Big Kahuna or he's nothing and may as well be dead and if he can take the world with him when he goes, so much the better!
After all Samson is one of our great biblical heros for pulling down the temple onto his own head. We celebrate JSOC people who call down an fire mission or airstrike onto their own position if it will save others.
It all in how you define 'the win.'
And for Decimus, it's all about making the others loose.
Exactly!! And making sure they know it too so that they can suffer horribly waiting for their inescapable ends. Dec's foreknowledge of the suffering is spicing on his cake.
"Qualis artifex pereo!"
Check out Suetonius' account of the death of Nero.
So too much trust in the woman you're regularly banging who doesn't actually have your best interests at heart may turn out to be another Samson parallel.
Shouldn't that be something more like a "Harod" initiative? A person is born that you don't want to live, so you order your soldiers to slaughter everyone in that village...
"From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
And here I thought Khan came up with that line.
*hangs up and goes back to playing Space Invaders*
Wishful thinking, I know...
How do you know your detonator is properly wired up? You send a very low current through the circuit, far to low to activate the detonator, but plenty to validate the circuit.
And remember, in an age of self-diagnostic machines, verifying function and capability is childsplay.
Dolly: Hey, Deckhead! Have you finished sending those confirmation signals?
Decimus: Yes.
Dolly: Good. Back to your basket, then. Go on!
Teedee: Wait! I wanna make him stick a CO2 extinguisher down his pants again and set it off!
Decimus: I don't like that! It gives me frostbite on my-
Dolly: Quiet, you! All right, Teedee, but make this the last time today. I'd thought you must have used up every extinguisher in the palace by now...
Teedee: They keep replacing them! And anyway, it'll only be a few more days before our guys have 86ed those Zero, Ablab and Shitstain directive things, and then it'll just be that public execution that you won't let me do! *pouts*
Dolly: *sigh* We have to maintain a professional demeanour, at least in public. You're likely to get carried away. And you can stop whining, Deck. You know you'll be a constant threat to everything while you're alive, don't you?
Teedee: Plus you deserve it for being such an utter little shit. Now - fire extinguisher! Go! And keep the handle pressed all the way down this time! :)
>:=)>
Like, say, an Epiphyte ?
@Greenwood Goat - Doc Silver might be able to disarm, but she also tends to be a little too cocky, so she could just as easily trigger them in the attempt. Honestly her overconfidence hasn't bitten her nearly as much as it's set up to do in the story we've seen so far (an extra fine and reminders of old stories from Marcus is about all).
Granted, immersing in Decimus' consciousness and thought process probably wouldn't be very comfortable for anyone not similarly deranged.
For those of us who grew up and lived through 'Duck and Cover,' 'Mutually Assured Destruction,' SIOP, air raid drills and sirens, 'defensive' weapon systems like nuke-tipped Nike Hercules launch installations only a few blocks from home; what CC and TR have come up with isn't very far fetched or even that unusual at all. This is what we grew up with in the 50's and 60's, less so in the 70's, and again during the 80's when everyone thought 'Star Wars' (the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)) was a bad Reaganite war fantasy (little did you know). By the early-to-mid 60's, most kids didn't expect to live to graduate high school. It's just people don't believe this kind of game continues on to this day... it does! We're modernizing our strategic arsenal of physics packages and both the Russians and the Chinese are bringing new generations of both warheads and delivery systems on line over the next decade as older systems are retired.
For those of you who may wonder about some of my comments, NBC weapons design and policy were amongst my class subjects in University, thinking the unthinkable and gaming nuclear war, terrorism and end-of-the-world scenarios was my day-to-day homework for a while (living in a many-multiple, extremely high-value target urban complex did help either.) Nothing classified here (or then either) plenty of stuff in any good university library to keep you totally terrified and up all night for weeks on end.
Don't forget, while we never (to my knowledge) really build something like Samson, the Russians did and it is active to this day according to some sources. A lot of people DID spend a lot of time (and money) to think the unthinkable, a lot of people built things based on those thoughts in many countries and there were even a few who really did want to 'Cry Havoc' and let the missiles fly. There is nothing so horrible that it is unthinkable.
Bloody headache that way. Hated the bombdrills, they always scared the kids.
Which, I guess, was the point - Scared kids makes for easy targets when you want new soldiers.
(1) Get under your desk;
(2) Put your head between your knees; and
(3) Kiss your ass goodbye.
Aeneas may supposed to be the ultimate decider on the fitness of the ruler, but damaged he can't fulfill that role. That sounds more like something the 'original' architects of the city might have had in mind before the Livus family tried to change it, violently. And then Douchimus completely perverted the system.
I guess we'll have to wait and see how it gets resolved. IF it gets resolved, after all Douchimus might survive to provide more trouble for the survivors in the next arc. The 'good' guys don't always win, not in the real world.
Nah. The Devilish Duo wouldn't let it be that easy.
Levelling his compound, might make him retaliate.
Plus, some of the contigency systems might be one of his subsystems.
Also the best explanation for Decimus' failsafe is that it's actually part of Aeneas, as the AIS were in control of the entire military system during the war. Something like that would be way too complex for Decimus to reasonably create from scratch, he'd need too many capable people willing to do too much work to set it up, and he wouldn't have been able to keep it secret long enough to avoid being killed before it was finished. Managing to gain control (or being passed down control) of a disconnected part of Aeneas that is still capable of active cyber defense makes much more sense.
Thank you all for the compliments!
Now i see that they just assumed this was the name of some nerd who fiddled with the tracker - but did not connect the name to the AIS.
Only when Acantha mentioned "Aeneas Tower" the coin fell.
After that no Pokerface for Ceci or Dolly for sure. CeCi with all the knowledge of CentComm is eager to know more about Aeneas ...
And excellent display of bodylanguage here - Acantha mentioning meeting Aeneas, then telling about Nero Ahab Samson - Dolly must be thinking for second that Acantha is insane - but then the explanation. Dolly is for sure touched by story of Acantha, holding her shoulders.
I am glad to see that Acantha is concerned about preventing unnecessary casualties to the red troops. Her language could have been a bit stronger though. As the rightful ruler of Nova Roma, the lives of her people should be a top priority, not merely a personal preference. On the other hand, perhaps she is phrasing the argument in the way she thinks Dolly would be most likely to accept.
Finally, does anyone seriously think Acantha is planning on fixing Aeneas? She has made it very clear that she doesn't have the technical knowledge, and since he was her only friend prior to meeting Lynn, she would have started the process a long time ago if she even thought it possible. None of these players knows about Kyle (unless one of them is secretly Tokyo Rose in disguise) so the plan is only to hide, not to fix.
I seem to remember Archbishop Setorius mention that New Rome's nano tech is far behind New Troys.
Acantha just considers it the only safe haven in Roma.
Acantha's manner when Lynn was mourning Kyle kinda' said she had been deliberately trying to avoid facing what would need to be done about Decimus. She may have deliberately avoided asking Aeneas these types of questions in the past. Possibly partially avoidance and partially so that if Decimus tried to test if she knew more than she should that she wouldn't give herself away.
The plot thickens!
Ouch ladies!
And would THAT be something. They get where one of Aenea's Dolls are, and he can selcast in, possibly to try to either repair some of his own damage himself OR to confront douche head in person.
She seems like she needs SOMEONE to pay attention to what she has to say. Not just come up with another plan and fit her into it. She has endured SO much in her life, I get the feeling she is near a breaking point if she can't get Dolly to listen to her.
Anyone else picking up that vibe?
I obviously credited him with too much sanity. Why settle for his own death and the death of his city when you can take out the rest of the world with you.