So I don’t know if this was ever addressed, but HOW does Sulla fly? I mean, there doesn’t appear to be any obvious propulsion system (no flames or whatever coming out of her feet). And here she’s clearly just levitating over papers that are completely unaffected, so there doesn’t appear to be any downward force (such as air) coming from her body.
I forget the fuel, if it was ever specified, but some kind of gas thruster. It was mentioned in a few of the past pages, complete with Gimel panicking appropriately. They specified also that she has a limited fuel quantity, though I think Sulla did her own tweaking on it.
Clearly, the best explanation is that despite being bio-human sized, she’s actually ultralightweight and therefore the amount of thrust needed to levitate her wouldn’t disturb the papers on the ground :p
She seems to be of a similar weight to well, an organic human her age. The concern with weight was that having a human pilot and life support systems massively increase weight and without that even 80 kg robots could fly on like 20 kg of fuel.
Wait what? There is another synthetic brain? I thought the only one like this is sitting inside Sullas skull!
Edit: whoops nope there are several brains that look like this!
My previous comment got flagged for moderation because I added links, but it seems this is the same one Al was building back in the day and the one Brendan hooked up to record Al’s memory patterns.
See: Chapter 3 p10 and Chapter 5 p25. Edit: Also Chapter 5 p36-37.
I just had a thought. What if Sulla in recreating Al used some of her own ‘data’ much like Jurassic Park used another existing species to fill in the missing blanks in the damaged dinosaur DNA?
If Sulla used some of her own data to repair the damaged copy of Al, then the present copy of Al would be cross pollinated so to speak with Sulla’s own individual personality characteristics, thus the original Al might not have been proto-transsexual(???) but that element was introduced/retconned into his personality by Sulla.
All in all, The Al in the robot body is NOT the original Al, think about even the divergent differences of a biological identical twin. This is the painful truth of such a technological resurrection, you are getting a passible reproduction, but no reproduction is the same as the original that has been lost. The robot Al would also have no way to really tell how much of what he remembers is from the biological original or from Sulla’s filling in the blanks except perhaps from possible gross inconsistencies which may or may not be noticed since they are both so closely similar on a psychological level.
I suppose it is possible you are right, but I think that the symbolism with the ballerina was always supposed to be hinting at it, along with Al’s interest in Brendan, but not accepting things in quite the same way Brendan did, which at the time, I took to be internalized homophobia, but now, it may be because Al was not a gay man like Brendan is, but a trans woman, even if Al hadn’t quite figured that out just yet.
I think it’s fair to discuss whether our robo-Al is the same person as bio-Al, but even if we want to consider them different people, that doesn’t change the fact that there are clues in the text that hint at Al being trans and closeted. I didn’t personally pick up on them my first reading, but others here in the comments section over the past few pages have made some compelling arguments and when rereading the early chapters that struck me as the most likely explanation for what was going on with Al. Even if there aredifferences between bio-Al and robo-Al, I doubt being trans originated with Sulla.
Sulla might be using a form of compressed gas for propulsion when she ‘flies’, but most of the time she is actually ‘floating’ about like a balloon, she has no axis or orientation that remains consistent when she is floating about, she can even cross her legs while floating when it has been shown that when in full flight there are visible gasses of some kind being ejected downward from her feet like a manga robot. In any case, compressed gas release is always audibly noticeable, from the indelicate low pressure oscillating fart to the shrill compressed air jet at a gas station or car garage, to the screaming fighter jet engine. If she was actually using her ‘jets’ to maintain her hovering about, everything would be blowing around quite a bit as well.
So I don’t know if this was ever addressed, but HOW does Sulla fly? I mean, there doesn’t appear to be any obvious propulsion system (no flames or whatever coming out of her feet). And here she’s clearly just levitating over papers that are completely unaffected, so there doesn’t appear to be any downward force (such as air) coming from her body.
I forget the fuel, if it was ever specified, but some kind of gas thruster. It was mentioned in a few of the past pages, complete with Gimel panicking appropriately. They specified also that she has a limited fuel quantity, though I think Sulla did her own tweaking on it.
I’m pretty sure theres a seperate comic where Sulla is explained a little more in depth.
http://ohumanstar.com/comic/chapter-6-page-43/
“Hydrogen-powered propulsion; the hydrogen fuel cell prototype from Meier and Bernasconi’s single-person aircraft.”
I think that’s about as much detail as we ever got. We were told how it was powered, but not how it actually flies.
Clearly, the best explanation is that despite being bio-human sized, she’s actually ultralightweight and therefore the amount of thrust needed to levitate her wouldn’t disturb the papers on the ground :p
She seems to be of a similar weight to well, an organic human her age. The concern with weight was that having a human pilot and life support systems massively increase weight and without that even 80 kg robots could fly on like 20 kg of fuel.
Awww!
Wait what? There is another synthetic brain? I thought the only one like this is sitting inside Sullas skull!
Edit: whoops nope there are several brains that look like this!
My previous comment got flagged for moderation because I added links, but it seems this is the same one Al was building back in the day and the one Brendan hooked up to record Al’s memory patterns.
See: Chapter 3 p10 and Chapter 5 p25. Edit: Also Chapter 5 p36-37.
Edit: Apologies for making a double post, Blue.
Aleph-01 and Aleph-02, I see …
I just had a thought. What if Sulla in recreating Al used some of her own ‘data’ much like Jurassic Park used another existing species to fill in the missing blanks in the damaged dinosaur DNA?
If Sulla used some of her own data to repair the damaged copy of Al, then the present copy of Al would be cross pollinated so to speak with Sulla’s own individual personality characteristics, thus the original Al might not have been proto-transsexual(???) but that element was introduced/retconned into his personality by Sulla.
All in all, The Al in the robot body is NOT the original Al, think about even the divergent differences of a biological identical twin. This is the painful truth of such a technological resurrection, you are getting a passible reproduction, but no reproduction is the same as the original that has been lost. The robot Al would also have no way to really tell how much of what he remembers is from the biological original or from Sulla’s filling in the blanks except perhaps from possible gross inconsistencies which may or may not be noticed since they are both so closely similar on a psychological level.
I suppose it is possible you are right, but I think that the symbolism with the ballerina was always supposed to be hinting at it, along with Al’s interest in Brendan, but not accepting things in quite the same way Brendan did, which at the time, I took to be internalized homophobia, but now, it may be because Al was not a gay man like Brendan is, but a trans woman, even if Al hadn’t quite figured that out just yet.
I think it’s fair to discuss whether our robo-Al is the same person as bio-Al, but even if we want to consider them different people, that doesn’t change the fact that there are clues in the text that hint at Al being trans and closeted. I didn’t personally pick up on them my first reading, but others here in the comments section over the past few pages have made some compelling arguments and when rereading the early chapters that struck me as the most likely explanation for what was going on with Al. Even if there aredifferences between bio-Al and robo-Al, I doubt being trans originated with Sulla.
Sulla might be using a form of compressed gas for propulsion when she ‘flies’, but most of the time she is actually ‘floating’ about like a balloon, she has no axis or orientation that remains consistent when she is floating about, she can even cross her legs while floating when it has been shown that when in full flight there are visible gasses of some kind being ejected downward from her feet like a manga robot. In any case, compressed gas release is always audibly noticeable, from the indelicate low pressure oscillating fart to the shrill compressed air jet at a gas station or car garage, to the screaming fighter jet engine. If she was actually using her ‘jets’ to maintain her hovering about, everything would be blowing around quite a bit as well.
Aaahh, the lady poster..