Oni2 talk:Truth Number Zero/Course Of Events: Difference between revisions

:::I am not completely ignoring the part where "monitoring her progress" may be referring to Chrysalis integration and not to mission status. But that data cannot be easily extracted from Shinatama except through Damocles (and the big data is probably archived at the TCTF HQ, too, rather than in Shinatama's head). Therefore, anyone wishing to find out more about Konoko's symbiosis -- as a possible complement to torturing her sister soul with high voltage and severing her bond with Griffin and the TCTF -- would have to peek into the raided TCTF HQ's data terminals, just like Mai did. We can imply that "Kojiro" (the coordinator of Barabas's raid) took care of that, or we can show that Mukade is in the house as well, and associate him with data theft early in the plot. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 13:12, 8 June 2020 (CEST)

::::Who's overthinking this again? Lol. Muro says he wants to know what progress Konoko is making, and asks for the android. That was pretty clear-cut until you started doing all this mind-reading. If you're going to point out that there's no interface for Shinatama to be hooked up to in ACC, then you might as well point out that there's no chair or obvious means of binding Shinatama in place. Let's not read into a scene that was obviously slapped together at the last minute of Oni's development. Muro could have learned plenty from Shinatama, at any time prior to this, in another location, or by simply hooking up a computer to her, or via the very torture being depicted. By the way, "I have seen everything you have seen" doesn't sound like someone who needs Damocles to keep track of information about Konoko. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 14:45, 8 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::As for extracting the data, "I have seen everything you have seen" isn't really the same as "I have all the big data at the tip of my tongue.". Even if Shinatama's RAM still holds the current and most relevant data about Mai's status as a symbiote, extracting it from her verbally will be a pain (pun intended), and interfacing with her electronically might involve custom ports/drivers/protocols that Muro does not necessarily possess, and wouldn't be able to conjure up in just a few hours. So if I were Muro/Mukade/Kojiro, I'd use my time at the TCTF HQ to grab Shinatama ''and'' the data. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 15:35, 8 June 2020 (CEST)

:My suggestion (in the TNZ scope and more generally) is to present the RSB/Rooftops episode as Mukade's initiative. Whoever or whatever he is, he's messing with Mai in his own way, and it has nothing to do with Muro. Unlike Konoko, he can apparenly hack the data from ''any'' terminal and not just the one in the basement, and yet he puts on a show: killing cops in the lobby (after making sure that more are on the way) just in time for Konoko's arrival; leaving a trail of corpses throughout the building; waiting for Konoko to come online before he starts stripping files right in front of her, then waiting for her to catch up with him again, and again, and again... Chase sequences often have awkwardly convenient timing, but here it's just too much. At the very least, he has a perverted crush on her, and is going out of his way to freak her out. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

:I haven't re-read your theory in detail (I'm not even sure you unveiled it in full detail, for that matter), but I did mention "aliens dumping their trash at us", without specifying the nature and purpose of the "trash" (xenoforming, forward time travel, etc). "Alien trash" is also what the Roadside Picnic reference/link is about: in that book by the Strugatsky brothers (read it! now!), there are multiple Contaminated Zones around the globe, full of artifacts and hazards of alien origin. Some artifacts are obvious pieces of tech that can be put to scientific/technological use (Energy Cells, perpetual-motion devices, etc), others are hazards that can only be "useful" to the military (pools of goo, deadly "spiderwebs" or "jelly", etc), and some of the atrocities are so violent and unpredictable that your best bet as a "stalker" (harvester) is to avoid them altogether. A mental image of this pollution is that it's like trash left by aliens on their way through the galaxy (motor oil, cigarette butts, food leftovers, etc) -- not clearly a means to an invasion, but ominous enough just the same ("evil plot" or not, what difference does it make if it kills or alienates us all?). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

::But why use Earth as a dumping ground, when you have the vastness of space? That's just plain mean-spirited. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 02:59, 8 June 2020 (CEST)

:::In the case of Oni, the aliens aren't even space-roaming ones, they're visiting us through phase portals. Like in your SoW take, they're tethered to us through "Gaia" and such, and don't need to be a space-faring race at all. So, throwing trash our way comes quite naturally. I'm not saying that's what actually happens, just pointing out that they'd be "phase aliens" if anything, not "space aliens". --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:03, 8 June 2020 (CEST)  

:::And if I'm completely missing it, and you are if fact saying that it's mean of the WCG to dump toxic waste into the Zones instead of sending it to the Moon or something -- getting tons of payload into high orbit has got to be costly, at least by conventional means. Of course as soon as Phase Tech allows teleportation, the first thing the WCG would try is make waste disappear -- but how well would that work, and what would it look like if it backfired? Possible explanation for the appearance of the Zones in the first place: instead of traveling to the Phase and staying there, the first "few" loads of NBC waste boomeranged back at the Earth and got scattered around the globe, and it took a while for the scientists to notice it. Possibly the toxicity/virulence of the waste was enhanced while traveling through the Phase, and perhaps some of it was Daodan-tainted in the process as well. Real-time brainstorming over. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:03, 8 June 2020 (CEST)

:Another recent point of mine -- that not all of the Contaminated Zones need to be identically (or homogeneously) polluted -- is also similar to Roadside Picnic (unintentionally so). It just occurred to me that there are many ways to pollute a restricted area, especially in a sci-fi-ready world such as Oni's. Even if the origin of the pollution is the same (Phase-related or not), it can always go in slightly different directions in two different Zones -- just look at the variety of ecological disasters in the modern world. Unless, of course, it's deliberate xenoforming of some kind -- in that case, indeed, there's a chance that all the Zones will look/behave more or less the same. Or if the pre-WCG countries have been secretly producing and dumping the same kind of waste for years prior to the Uprising -- that would work too.--[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

:One important difference between the TNZ perspective (so far) and SoW's is that in SoW the BioCrisis predates the Uprising, i.e., the Contaminated Zones (whatever they are) became a major concern before the Uprising (prompting it, even?), rather than a couple of years after. Indeed it's a bit tight to have the Uprising happen in 2012 (with the general public oblivious to the "air gone bad") and then in 2014 there are already ACCs everywhere, and the world outside them is poisonous (but the pollution is still "made easy to ignore" somehow? WTF). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)