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Comic for 26 July 2012; You kept something like this from me?
Topic Started: Jul 26 2012, 01:06 PM (375 Views)
HiFranc
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Koala Commander
What did they keep from Rachel?
Francisco
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Minivet
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HiFranc
Jul 26 2012, 01:06 PM
What did they keep from Rachel?
The ghosts. Three comics back.
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Chrysophase2003
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Rachel can see ghosts. The rest of the agency apparently doesn't know about the existence of ghosts, aside possibly from Josh. I don't recall if it's been brought up to him. Since the existence of ghosts would cause a panic, and the more people who are in on a secret the more likely they are to leak it, it stands to reason that Pat and Hope would choose to keep a lid on the ghost war and keep the agency focused on rogue agents.

Poor Rachel thought she was losing her mind.

I suppose that brings into question how many other agents have seen ghosts but chosen to disregard it as a hallucination. It will also be extremely hard for Pat and Hope to make use of the resources they're taking with them (the other agents) if they are all not brought up to speed on the existence of ghosts, which makes me wonder if Carlota and Mako already know what's up, have just been briefed, or are going to be kept in the dark.

Also, Rachel's hair is FABULOUS!
If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

If God wants all the credit, he's getting all the blame.
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Chrysophase2003
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This is probably late, been covered elsewhere, and in the wrong place, for which I'm sorry, but something just occurred to me which is I imagine is glaringly obvious to others. While we're so focused on Clarice, the rogue agents, and what the senator who tried to play Pat are up to, there still remains the corporation that created, mass produced, and implanted the chip. I believe somewhere in the archives Pat explains that it's the private sector that makes the tech and the government who implements it, so what happened to the folks that made the chip? Are they the same folks that gave Clarice that new arm and spinal attachment? If so, that kind of research and development shouldn't be so hard to track down as an insane agent and a bunch of ghosts.

Has the agency considered running the R&D folks to ground? Are they even still in existence? And if not how is Clarice getting her upgrades?

Or is this all stuff that is addressed Waaaaaaaaay later when the reader has forgotten about it so you get that great blindside effect?
If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

If God wants all the credit, he's getting all the blame.
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Minivet
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Chrysophase2003
Jul 27 2012, 06:34 AM
This is probably late, been covered elsewhere, and in the wrong place, for which I'm sorry, but something just occurred to me which is I imagine is glaringly obvious to others. While we're so focused on Clarice, the rogue agents, and what the senator who tried to play Pat are up to, there still remains the corporation that created, mass produced, and implanted the chip. I believe somewhere in the archives Pat explains that it's the private sector that makes the tech and the government who implements it, so what happened to the folks that made the chip? Are they the same folks that gave Clarice that new arm and spinal attachment? If so, that kind of research and development shouldn't be so hard to track down as an insane agent and a bunch of ghosts.

Has the agency considered running the R&D folks to ground? Are they even still in existence? And if not how is Clarice getting her upgrades?

Or is this all stuff that is addressed Waaaaaaaaay later when the reader has forgotten about it so you get that great blindside effect?
No, this is a good question, I'm kind of unclear on it all. My thoughts:

1. The R&D company was almost certainly identified in the safehouse documents.

2. The people Pat et al. really want to go after are not so much the R&D company - that's grunt work - as it is the people who hired them, as those are the ones who actively schemed to make zombie slave cyborgs to wreak havoc with their chips on their behalf (or to the highest bidder). Our indications are that these people have a tremendous amount of power. One of them is Senator Hanlon, Helen's husband.

3. Hanlon and company are also identified in the safehouse documents, but virtually nobody knows that the Program has them.

4. The only external use Pat has made of the safehouse documents so far is as protective blackmail against the powerful people who started the program, to keep them from interfering as the Program finds its feet.

5. The implication of the link in 4 is that Hanlon and company are too powerful to bring to justice now. But as Pat allies with Perez and gains political power, that might be a long-term goal.

6. What connection do Hanlon and company have with the rogue ghosts and Clarice? Do they know about the civil-war plan? Were they originally affiliated with the rogues but let Clarice take over the initiative in the group? To all this I have no idea.

7. However, if they are all in combination together somehow, since Pat hasn't used the documents other than with Perez, the R&D company (or the cream skimmed from its talent) could well be the source of Clarice's tech support.
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Chrysophase2003
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Wow, and I thought I was good at making connections. You're making me jealous.

One thing to keep in mind is that we don't know if Senator Hanlon is still alive anymore. Remember, his wife was planning to feed him to sharks, and it's been five years since then.

Also, concerning point 2: Considering how Clarice has stated that she went ahead and cut the chips out of several other agents who defected with her, we can make two assumptions:

1. Clarice does not have access to more third-generation chips, else she wouldn't have needed to kill her own men to obtain more. This suggests that if she is getting help from the R&D company, it may be from several members who have defected or from several members who are still employed but are working with her on the sly.

2. Clarice, much like the Agency, doesn't full know how the chip works. This means that even tracking down members of the R&D company for questioning would be beneficial to both factions.

Taken as a whole, if the Agency hasn't already gone after the R&D group, we can extrapolate two reasons:

1. The R&D group has already been disbanded, destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth, and all its grunts given a nine-millimeter severance package by someone in Hanlon's cabal looking to do damage control.

2. Touching anyone in R&D would alert whoever is pulling their strings early, so R&D is off limits until the Agency is ready to go after their puppet-masters in government.

Both of these are just wild shots in the dark that I would take were I writing this story, of course. So I suppose they're to be taken with a pinch of salt.

One thing I still haven't pieced together is something Clarice said during the safehouse raid. She indicated that her initial cyborg arm that Hope ripped off was part of yet another government research project. If she went rogue, then how did she get hold of a new and improved arm afterward? Presumably this project would be closed to her. The only reasons I can surmise are that she's not really left the employ of Senator Hanlon's group or that she is somehow still able to steal experimental government tech, but that would require she or others with her have the technical know-how to install and maintain cybernetic implants. A bunch of thugs and kidnappees running a human chop-shop in an abandoned warehouse wouldn't exactly have the facilities at their disposal to handle something like that, making me think it's more the former than the latter.

I'm giving myself a headache now, and you're welcome to sound off if there's anything I've said that sounds even remotely credible, so I'll sign off with one more thought: Clarice cut the chips out of the heads of several agents. She intimated as much. Is she trying to analyze them, modify them, or re-implant them in other people? Whatever she's trying to do with them, she's going to need some serious cash and technical backing to pull it off. Much like the installation of her new arm, that's not something that can be done with a Swiss army knife and by biting down on a leather strap.

Also, since Clarice got herself a new arm, are Hope and the Agency going to be running into any ghost-in-the-shell full-body type cyborgs do you think? Clearly various implantation programs are still ongoing, and Clarice couldn't have been the only one involved.
If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

If God wants all the credit, he's getting all the blame.
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