Christmas Break

He put Kleya on the Nice list. Shh, don't tell her!

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it!

22 Comments

Happy Holidays!

FYI: The last page button directs one to page 628 and not the actual last page.

I’ve been thinking of something lately and want to throw out a new theory about whats going on. What if the “DeconstructMe” group wasn’t a terrorist organization out to end the world but rather a band of folks trying to push for OpenSource tech. They might not be doing everything legally (i.e they may be breaking into places to steal their code and publish it), but they weren’t planning for world destruction. It would fit with their name.

I think you’re on to something there.
I also have thought a lot of what people are saying is more propaganda and a false narrative than what actually happened. It’s just that too much of it just doesn’t fit with what we’ve seen, and a lot of other little things that make me suspicious.
Of course, we have the advantage of the view from outside the box, and get to see more of what Kleya does and thinks, in addition to some of the other characters thoughts and back scenes plottings as well.

One of the things that makes this comic interesting is use of fallible characters. The argument between Dude and Bandit is a great indicator of this.

The fact of the matter is that we know very little about anything that happened before page one simply because it (mostly) is nothing but hearsay. I have doubted the existence of Deconstruct Me ever since the hacker attacked Danni. I think that there were a lot of people doing a lot things, and that Kleya (using D) was doing the most visible and drastic things. It’s possible that there is a group that now uses the name “Deconstruct Me,” but I doubt the presence of this group before the ending.

I haven’t seen any evidence anywhere to suggest the existence of a terrorist group of hackers. Period. The hacker that attacked Danni wasn’t a member (if we believe the Tenka announcement) and the “virus” that doubles as Tenka’s “anti-hacker” software is either run by or is a facet of D.

That leaves the underground/resistance/rebel group with Jane and Sandra and the group of Dude (which might the same group). Neither of those groups has revealed so much as a tacit connection to Deconstruct Me.

On the other hand Kleya seems to feel genuinely guilty about her actions. So even if she isn’t THE monster that everyone portrays her as, she still feels like its her duty to be a HERO instead.

And we also know that Kleya has kind a a temper sometimes and she gets real scary when she does.

Maybe its a case of an AI going nuts, which Kleya set free.

I can totally see Kat when she’s mental telling: “D, hurt them. Hurt them wherever it hurts. Spread out into the net!” (where ‘them’ just happens to have a near monopoly on certain hard and software)

D might have copied itself to as many systems as it could to do that. An instance of D might have made a quick calculation and come to the conclusion that, if all cars running ‘their’ AI operating system started going nuts and kill people, it would hurt ‘their’ stock options. Another instance might have thought that it would certainly hurt ‘their’ reputation if a few autonomous airplanes running ‘their’ autopilot would crash without reason.

Each D. instance might have made a reasonable assumption, with limited but acceptable loss of life. Take them all together simultabeously and you have an apocalypse.

As someone holding a talk on self driving cars put it recently. “When looking at modern car security, the worst case need to prevent is not a hacker getting access to the car to steel it, or disable the brakes and lock the gas pedal down. The real danger is safety of the fleet. Imagine an over-the-air firmware update that disables the brake and locks the gas pedal down to all vehicles simultaneously, all during rush hour.”

I can top that. Instead of doing that during rush hour, do it while a large scale evacuation is going on and everyone is trying to get out of the city because the reactor cooling system at the local power plant just failed.

Also hack the local natural gas pumping station to increase the pressure in the city gas network beyond safe limits, so the pipes started bursting and leaking all over the place.

And while we are at it, stop the pumps to city water supply. Usually that’d just be a nuisance, but without water the firefighters will have a hard time stopping the localized fires to combine into a citywide firestorm.

Have I mentioned power is out and communication networks are down?

And since we ARE talking about the future, a few law enforcement robots shooting innocent bystanders randomly add to the mood.

I don’t doubt Kleya’s guilt, I just doubt the existence of DM. I don’t think that Kleya’s responsible for everything, just a lot. I think she freaked out when her father was seized and told her eager young AI to fix it. Being eager and young, it went too far…

yea I can totally see that being the case and I was already sold on the idea that Kat didn’t purposefully cause the end or anything remotely near that level of bad. Though she may of started the donimo’s falling and was not able to stop them. I do think it’s also possible that there was really a DM group, but like Dragon master said, their goal wasn’t wanton terror and destruction. I think it could be that Tekna’s tech was getting quite wide spread adoption but where also Following a path more like Apple where they want to make it hard to use 3rd party products with theirs so you have to buy more from Apple. Likewise Tekna was trying to make it so if you used Their products in somethings there wasn’t really any simple way to use competitor products for other related tasks. DM was trying to Hack in to keep the various systems compatible despite Tekna actively trying to make their products less cross compatible on purpose.

When Kat’s dad got seized that to go from just wanting to be the thorn in their side to hurt them enough so they’d have to release her dad. Which could be when she took D from D from being a regular ai to full on virus and let it lose with the directive to Cause harm to the company. which then leads to the events that Corvus describes. both Kat and the DM don’t act right away thinking that this is a good thing but then when they realize it’s getting out of hand they are trying to contain the damage as much as they can which means they are having to hack in and do all sorts of things to try head off D. Meanwhile everyone else who is watching their stuff go crazy and seeing this group trying to hack into things like crazy just assume they are causing the problem not trying to prevent it, since there is probably proof out by now or would be soon that they started the whole mess no one’s going to believe they are trying to stop it only make it worse and thus they get blamed for purposefully causing the cascade failures that lead to the end. when that was never their goal.

I like the idea of DM being a hacktivist group whose goals have been obfuscated by the events of the ending. It’s an idea that I hadn’t considered before and it opens up some interesting opportunities.

One thing that I find interesting is the existence of a second AI that is similar to D (the one that runs her dad’s character). I think D was a failed project that Kleya got to work without other people knowing that she found it. It’s possible that she only managed to get the hakido to work by using D.

On the topic of Kleya’s guilt, note the number in the red splotch?
http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-14/
I recall a more explicit statement, and I could have sworn it started with a one, but I suspect that to be what Kleya “considers” to be her personal, real-life, kill-count, that needs to be atoned for.

Aside from rumours, such as stories of her destroying the hospital that her mother was in, or exterminating an army with her mind, there doesn;t seem to be much revealed yet about what actually happened. I would say that her kill-count is the most reliable data that we have. I think that it is too low to include swapping the magnetic poles and triggering global volcanoes. Still, way too high for just waving a chainsaw around a holiday-camp…

Well, consider the context. Kleya felt like just using the avatar of a dead person would bump her counter higher.

It could just be everyone that died in circumstances that were at all tied to any product she’d ever helped develop.

I still think it’s all because of a super-volcano. And the rebel hackers are just normal “Destroy the evil empire” types. Of course, it could have all been staged by ‘D’ in order to bring about an army of terminators.

I have high hopes that it’s not something as blunt as that. We do know that D tends to be a bit literal to the point of causing problems; and that *may* have played a role somehow — but I don’t think it’s the major plot point. That would be seriously anti-climatic.

Such scenarios are often brought up to illustrate potential dangers of powerful AI — but they are actually way too simplistic. There is no reason to believe that an AI smart enough to stage such complex machinations, would at the same time be too dumb to understand the numerous implied constraints to such a command…

Why not tell her? She’d be happy!

If you told her, she would quit and the comic would be over. She would just tell D to take her and the submarine to an underwater entrance to a volcanic island, just like in the Bond movies she used to watch with her father, and then she would sit on the beach all day because she is nice now. Mission accomplished.

Assuming the atmosphere doesn’t kill her…

She hacked the magnetic poles on a whim, probably just by glaring at them, a few rotten eggs won’t even slow her down.

Since nobody else mentioned the obvious, I guess I will.

Kleya wants to get on the “Nice” list legitimately, without hacking.

Merry Christmas!!!

only to those who celebrate it? seems rude to exclude jews 🙁 the sentiment of a merry christmas applies to all

One – it’s not just the jews.
Two – for those who don’t celebrate it it’s at least awkward to be included anyway.

Yeah used to be everyone understood when ya said Merry Xmass it wasn’t to be an assuming d*** to people. It was implied to be “Here’s to another holiday we survived!” No one got butthurt over it. >_> Now no matter what ya say about anything in general it’s walking on eggshells.

That’s why I say “happy Christmahannukwanzaka.” Everyone is either offended or not based on whether they want to be offended, not by inclusion or exclusion.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

Christmas Break