‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 587

Since there are two Cities in China, they call them by what province they were once in.

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35 Comments

Poor Jake, trying to be nice and being told that he’s getting better at being ruthless. 🙂

But I’m not so sure about the PR if she goes to Bandit’s friend’s city. They’d have to sell it as trying to heroically save a dying city… I guess in that case it’s a life-or-death sentence for the hacker girl.

I think they should send her to Brandon’s city. If it goes well, it will be good PR. If it does not go well, they can still spin it as “at least we tried”. If they do not send anyone there it will give them a bad reputation no matter what else happens.

Unless there is another city that is also pretty clearly “will die if not given a programmer” but has a better chance of being saved. Sending the programmer to a city that is not struggling as badly will likely fuel the anti-TENKA groups.

Ah, does this mean that Brandon did not create his own special or that only minimal programming skills is required to create one?

I’ve always been under the impression that Bandit created the special for Brandon. Kind of like how Kleya did that for Danni.

But Brandon could also be a really good programmer and his City just needs more. One programmer is rarely enough 🙂

That City placement always strikes me as so weird. No Cities in the US or India, the only European City is in freakin’ Norway, China has two Cities but one of them appears to be in freakin’ Xinjiang – I thought it was in Mongolia at first – and meanwhile there are Cities in Saudia Arabia/Yemen, Libya, South Africa, Chile, and GREENLAND. Not to mention Tenka City, which is literally in the middle of nowhere underneath the Arctic icesheet.

I think Cities are basically autonomous and self-governing. They were definitely built before the end of the world so that would mean that only countries that are ok with autonomous, self-governing Cities would allow them. Also, they are probably fairly expensive. With those two points, that makes the US a no-go. Buying land in the US for an autonomous City would be prohibitively expensive while the US would also not like a self-governing entity to reside in it.

Most of the Cities on the map have both cheap land and easier laws so I think that is what explains their location.

We also know that some Cities have failed. There is the “Berlin City” and now we know that the Guangdong City is having issues. So there might have been some Cities in the US that have since failed. I think there was a mention of a super valcano eruption and one of the best locations for that is Yellowstone. If that did happen, any City in the western half of the US would have probably been obliterated.

All that. And the fact that the surviving cities needed to be in safe zones after the atmosphere quit, still have enough people around that weren’t slaughtered by mecha armies and stuff like that, USA probably had a big advanced hackable military. It is also likely that there is a lot more to how the ending went down and the remaining cities might be the ones that whoever was defending against Deconstruct Me, or possibly Deconstruct Me, or just Kleya was able to save from being hacked; or they just didn’t turn into main battlegrounds for the Ending.

In fact, based on the previous map, it looks to my Bad At American Maps skill that the U.S. did have an autonomous city in Texas – if I had to guess, it would fail because if it was Houston, it spent too much time trying to rectify the satellite systems.

I hates to say it, but I’m so lost story-wise. I been following this since day 1 and was hanging in there until this recent “break to LIFE”… and now all the politics and subterfuge and eberthing has me scritchin’ my noggin. I understand that Kat once did something really, really bad because she refused to lose the game (dunno what) and that it had some serious ramifications on real life (dunno what), and that there was a hacker witch hunt (understandably). But why would a city want a programmer (aka hacker) and why are the cities still dying after all this time and who are the recent characters (“Aunt”) and why are they… well, you get the idea.

Maybe someone who gets all this could give those like me a brief summary of what’s going on outside the game so we can figure out what all the problem is here. Thankyewverymuch. : )

Ok – the comic has been deliberately obscure as to WHAT exactly destroyed civilization. But the clues have been pretty consistent. Basically all of the following happened in a very short span of time.
A) Magnetic pole of the Earth flipped (we were due for that) but it was down for long enough for
B) Solar storms to wreck a LOT of vital electronic stuff. Basically any/all of the cheaper consumer stuff. (but not anything unpowered at the time – like new stuff in packages)
C) Every volcano on Earth went off destroying a LOT of urban land and spewing enough ash into the air to kill off all of agriculture. (Yellowstone is a giant volcano – would have destroyed most of the USA by itself)

Now A, B and C might all be the same natural disaster. Solar storms happen often enough that any longish natural event would have some. (In fact its been a few years and the magnetic poles/volcanoes are still settling.) The real world ending disaster happened because of people.

D) A largish group of hackers released ALL their nastiest terror programs to make… some sort of political statement. This was either shortly before or DURING the natural disaster – which is why some people think the disaster was caused by the hackers. The disaster made the hacks far more lethal then they should have been.
E) A scared reaction/overreaction by civilians and governments both ending up killing pretty much every technician on the planet. (Those that didn’t get killed by volcanoes anyway)

Then after the killings/death slowed down and recovery started…
1) An arctic research station (TENKA) became the default superpower.
2) Blame was pushed onto dead/missing programmers so the lynchings would stop.
3) A famous child prodigy got filmed doing something impressive and meme-worthy. That got her the “honor” of being labeled the leader of the hackers “at fault” for the whole mess.

Currently TENKA is frantically trying to keep all the things from breaking before they can gear up enough to make more things. (Might take awhile because the atmosphere is still full of ash)

My understanding is your points D and 3 are reversed. The child prodigy (Kleya) did (or may have done; in any case, she thought she did) something in the game that leaked out into the rest of the real world’s computers, which led to all the computer-controlled robots that ran most of the world’s infrastructure and militaries to turn on everyone. A poor-quality broadcast reporting on the investigation into the initial cause of the “hacks” then led the general populace to believe that all programmers were hackers that wanted to destroy the world, and the world gave this theoretical group a name, Deconstruct Me. The common folk then lynched most of the worlds programmers, which put a major crimp on recovery efforts, since the robots all required reprogramming to remove the virus and restore correct functionality.

While SOME of the “hacks” may have been accidental (possibly whatever Kleya had done) – the cars and military hacks prove that MOST were intentional. And with intent to kill at that.

In other words – kinda like if 9/11 and Hurrican Katrina both happened to New York City on the same day. People would blame the failure of the levees on the terrorists even if that part was a coincidence.

Considering what we know about D (see http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-108/ and http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-157/), it is possible that all the cars and military hacks were D reacting to Kleya. Here’s a possible timeline:

1. Kleya’s mother is taken away from her through force or maybe through deception on her father’s part.
2. Kleya reacts violently to take her back (use of mechas to storm the hospital or wherever she is, hacking military/police to prevent them from stopping her)
3. D follows her reaction and takes over all of the world’s military arsenal and uses them to attack anyone and everyone.
4. Kleya finally realizes what happens and gets D to stop.
5. Hacker wars begin as people react to the horrific deaths from hacked mechas/whatever
5. Magnetic poles flip
6. World goes up in flames

I can’t help but wonder if the Deconstruct Me is a backronym, from “DM”, which originally stood for “Dungeon Master”, as in the person (on in this world, a computer program) that creates the game for the people to play… XD

It would appear that Cities are fairly autonomous and heavily depend on computers to keep things running. When we saw the power outage in Tenka City, it appeared to have caused problems around the world. So, you need people with computer expertise to keep things running smoothly. A City that doesn’t have “programmers” (basically the world’s euphemism for someone that knows how to use a computer) is more dependent on other Cities. Their leaders hate that (see Kleya’s team’s sponsor) and so they constantly want more programmers.

p.s. I guess my main question at this time is who is this “spy” and why is she considered a spy? What happened? Okay, someone created a portal, but what does that mean and why is everyone so upset about it? I create portals in VR games all the time. They usually lead to chocolate chip cookies. So am confused. Which is not unusual. ; )

The other dots on her map probably have multiple functions. If you go back a few pages, a red dot probably marks her current location. Afterwards they mark volcano eruptions. But I have no idea whatsoever what the green dots a few pages later mean.

As for the story:
– The hacker hacked a portal into the Game for unknown reasons. We don’t know who she is.
– Cities desire programmers, because they’re rare ever since the hacker hunts and everything is LiFe-based. Programmer doesn’t equal hacker though, as many programmers failed to get the mob to understand shortly before dying. I would be SO dead in that world. 😀
– We don’t know what exactly Kat did and why. She’s suspected to have hacked earth’s geomagnetic field.
– Cities are still dying because humans still struggle to survive in this post-apocalyptic future. Yes, they still do, even though a few years have passed. 😉
– As for Kimi I think it’s best to reread the Reality Arc.

I found the “spy” conversation a bit confusing as well, but I think I get it now. It goes like this:
– Kat’s team was started on her dad’s island, which is a fairly hostile location. I’m sure TENka picked this starting point on purpose. It could have been to test Kat, or because there was something there that Bandit was supposed to fix, or some other reason.
– A creature (the deslion) showed up that wasn’t supposed to be on the island. This alerted the team to the existence of a portal.
– Kat, Bandit, and Jane could all tell there was something wrong about that portal. Jane wanted to get off that island, but didn’t want to use that portal. Kat and Bandit could tell a hacker had put it there.
– Once out of the Game, Bandit checked in to find out who inserted the unauthorized portal. This was the “spy” Kimi caught, who had apparently been enticed to hack the Game by an anti-TENka group who said they’d located the “spy’s” missing uncle, an Outsider. This group seems to be known to Dr. Grace, Kimi and Bandit, though they don’t know the members. Dr. Grace doesn’t seem to take this group very seriously.
– Cities seem to be dependent on computers, not just for L.i.F.e. and the Game, but to run real-world life support and keep people alive. Something very bad happened to the planet at about the same time that Kat went on a rampage– she has been blamed for “hacking the earth’s geomagnetic field.” This magnetic field protects the earth from the solar wind. Without it, our atmosphere would be swept away and the surface of the planet would receive high doses of radiation. (This is part of why Mars is a dangerous place for humans in the real world–it has no protective magnetic field.) There were also super-volcano eruptions, which would be very bad news. This might be why there are no Cities in North America– look up “Yellowstone super volcano” for more information.
-We don’t know if Kat is actually responsible for damaging the geomagnetic field or the super volcanoes. Bandit seems to think it is unlikely. Kat WAS responsible for hacking a large number of combat robots and semi-computerized combat armor units (with human soldiers inside) and killing a lot of people. She also killed people by hacking self-driving cars. She seems to have started doing this when TENka (or a government?) took her father away, and in the process, her mother died. A lot of the damage may have been done by D getting out of hand. The surviving humans refer to D as “the virus” and are afraid of it. The Virus has killed people by using computer equipment. D uses the same logo attributed to the hacker group “Deconstruct Me,” which is generally blamed for all the troubles. We don’t know if this group only consists of Kat and D, or if there were more actual human hackers involved. A lot of “hackers” were killed after Kat’s rampage.
– After the hacker witch hunts, there are not enough skilled programmers to go around. Some Cities are failing as a result. Sandra is desperate to get more programmers for her City, wherever it is, and this is probably why her organization is sponsoring Kat.
-Sandra’s organization might be the same one that bribed the hacker to make the illegal portal, but probably not, since Jane didn’t want to use it. Jane is working closely with Sandra. This means there are multiple anti-TENKa groups operating.

Kat WAS blamed for some of those acts of hacking, it really it’s her group that’s also gotten credit, hence ‘hacker hunts’ rather than ‘Kat hunts’.

What’s the first rule for destroying civilization?
Make sure someone else gets blamed for it.

If you’re going to blow up everything, you’re going to have someone ready to finger for your deeds. You really don’t want credit when civilization collapses and millions of people want to “reward” whoever made it fall.

I’m speculating here, but think that whatever happened involved…
– Kat did have a role in things.
– Kat was not the instigator.
– something smaller started it. Possibly the magnetic flip triggering volcanism Possibly car hacks. Possibly other chaos.
– once blame landed on Kat, the public reacted, and wanted her and her hacker buddies dead or alive (Actually, forget the alive bit. They wanted them all dead).
– Kat: billions want you dead. Armies are being mobilized against you. Your choices are die or curb-stomp the armies.
– the armies were stopped. With a healthy dose of collateral damage. I’m pretty sure Kat gets full credit for this.
– Kat fell off the grid – probably by appropriating some abandoned(!) military transport, possibly something submersible to better lose her satellite observers.

the familiar map is indeed familiar, but now makes we wonder what the extra red dots on Kleya’a map are all about….

I think the red dots are dead Cities. The “Berlin City” was mentioned earlier and there is a red dot where a “Berlin City” could feasibly be located.

I agree that the red dots are probably dead or cut off cities.

I doubt the tenka map would bother with dead cities, and we obviously can’t see anything marked under the speech bubbles or, on the earlier one, behind Kat.

On a side note, I have to wonder about the red dots. If defunct cities, I’d sure as heck be willing to raid one for parts to help keep a functional city going. Of course, I doubt being a “dead city” actually means it’s not populated. After all, there are outsiders that live outside the cities, so one can assume that a populace can survive inside a dead city as well, though no where near the same level as when it was a “live city”.
Of course Tenka is pretty ruthless, and I doubt they’d be bothered by little ethical issue like that.

Geomagnetic field reversal. Worst part is the lack of functional magnetic shielding for planet. Basically the daytime gets more radiation and UV, so lots of species kick the bucket under the daily abuse. Humans have ways to avoid that for the EM portion of that mess, avoid the day, use sunscreen, stay under cover. The trashing of the ecosystem and crops is a whole different story. If this mess resulted in an EMP when it occurred, that would mess up lots of electronics that weren’t properly shielded.
Supervolcanoes got mentioned by people. There are several, but I only recall the singular being used in the comic, but it didn’t say which one. Other than a possible EMP from field reversal (don’t know if that would actually happen), the effects of even one supervolcano eruption would be much worse for the planet and humanity.

Ok, I’ve babbled too much and went way off target, shutting down the font of misc. 😉

I would assume that defunct Cities still have population. The population just went from being a “Citizen” to become an “Outsider”. It would probably be a “stable place” (http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/charactership-side-story-04/).

Based off of http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-231/, it would appear that moving outside of Cities can be very dangerous. So, if you want to raid a defunct City for parts, you would probably send droids. I think that is what they use to send supplies to Outsiders.

I don’t actually think Tenka is ruthless. Most of the characters we’ve met have a reason to not like Tenka (Sandra is from a competing City, Kleya is hiding, Jane hates Citizens). But Bandit, Dude, and Dannie don’t seem to have a problem with Tenka. The Lillies haven’t seemed to say anything bad about Tenka (correct me if I’m wrong). Tenka City is really just trying to survive like everybody else. Danni’s City is willing to pull her off of life support just so they can bring another person in. That sounds pretty ruthless but you can also say that she is heartless in not allowing another person the chance to live.

Of course Bandit doesn’t have a problem with Tenka, he works for them. And possibly so does Dude. Danni is just clueless about anything beyond dancing, she probably didn’t know what Tenka was, before trying to get into the Game.

“We did promise his City a programmer.”

“Yes, but if I recall correctly, that one is dying.”

For a while I thought he meant that the programmer being discussed is dying. (So he’s perhaps concerned about sending a programmer that is about to keel over anyway, especially when they so desperately need a capable one?)

It was only after reading and reflecting on the rest of the dialogue that I realized — Oh, he was referring to the City (capital “C”?) as dying.

Perhaps “that City is dying” would avoid the ambiguity of “one”.

I just lost all my respect for Dr. Grace.

north america has one surviving city and its in !@#$ing newengland? what about the midwest or middle of nowhere canada? that seems much more likely

I actually think that City is in Canada but it probably doesn’t matter.

As mentioned above, there is a defunct City in Texas area. As for why not north western Canada, it is possible that the Canadian government might not have allowed a City to be built in that area. I know in the Western United States, the majority of land is federally owned so it might be that case in north western Canada.

Denmark. Greenland is officially part of Denmark. at least in our time.

Urg. ignore that. I should check the map to be sure I know what I’m talking about before hitting “Post”.

The closest currently existing town to where Aneeka has put a city in Australia is Boulia in Queensland that only has a population of about 230 people… looks to me like most of my country are either Outsiders, or dead.

They may have moved/travelled there from elsewhere in the state, with the most convinient location for power or food just being there.

I’m suddenly not very fond of Dr Grace.

He’s using PR to decide what he does?
What about saving lives? Restoring the tech base? Or are those things he does not want to happen?

And spies…. that implies that there is someone with an outside agenda we haven’t seen yet. Which implies a conflict of sorts…

I just found something funny:
If you don’t click on the store link on this page, but instead use the menu item “Store” and follow the “It’s open” link on that page, you go to page 249. 😀

Aneeka, was the expression you were trying for in Panel 2 something along the lines of “[Your approval fills me with shame|http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0171.html
]”?

Not A Villain Webcomic

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

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 587