…Matter 55
Luke and Freya: For those wondering, Freya and Annie were in the same year at Magellan, Luke was a couple of years ahead so, even though Luke was kicked out of the Academy, Freya and he still know each other.
Next update: Tuesday September 10, 2019: Surprise guest!
I must say, the clown job about the alphabet matches quite well with the motus operandi. Going through things alphabetically. What a switch.
Hmm, surprise guest? Well, lots of people from 2002 are still around in the main timeline, so there are just too many possibilities to make an educated guess of which local’s younger self can show up out of the blue. No reason for MindMistress to show up, unless she is just randomly exploring. I know, Loxie and Zoot! Annie goes over to their place to unwind. 😉
The surprise guest could even be Jenny Everywhere.
I think it is spelled “Jekyll”.
lol, I checked the spelling to make sure I had the right number of “l”s and then totally spelled it wrong anyway. Thanks, I’ll fix later today.
A couple of years ahead? I had somehow gotten the impression that Luke was in the same class as Annie, and that his expulsion had happened the same academic year that she, Freya, et al. had graduated.
That’s an interesting take on the story so, “Good Job!”, with that Grace! I’m still hoping to see one of our telepaths show up (as the surprise guest) to give some confirmation to it.
I don’t know if I’m going to get used to this depiction of Drop-Bear, though 😕🙃
So you are thinking this will be when Vostok gets introduced during an unfortunate misunderstanding that ends up killing a Mir cosmonaut?
I wasn’t thinking of Vostok specifically, although that would be a cool dovetail with this story!
On an unrelated note – Grace, where is Oz Magellan HQ? The picture seems like it’s looking back to the Harbour Bridge from the East?
There’s a lot of unknowns during the Wombat years at Magellan that I’m looking forward to learning. We still don’t know what Luke did exactly to get kicked out, or as implied at one point, was framed for or at least misunderstood. The Magellan Council has shown itself capable of finding the best-face, face-saving explanations or policies, not necessarily always fairly to an individual, and (warning: unpopular single-reader opinion) Ken is often, possibly always an asshole, and not in just the blunt-truth, cutesy drill instructor way. I’m definitely inclined to know more about the events before I buy the official story as we’ve seen it so far.
Similarly, we still don’t know exactly what Luke did between then and Go!Anna’s graduation, in terms of fightin’ crime or whatever, and apparently she didn’t know much about it either, so it may not have been atrocious enough to be real news. Maybe he was already a real loose cannon like Drop Bear, Spence, and Dianne claim, and maybe not. Maybe he turned into one after being kicked out (i.e. as a screw-you to them) and maybe not. I don’t trust them enough to accept their summary judgments, since what they say reeks of too-similar phrasing and acceptance of an official Magellan decree … and especially since Drop Bear has already admitted that Wombat Man has been effective and that they more-or-less collaborate with him as long as no one admits it.
This comic has a great way of raising these questions and making them relevant to the plot without being holes, cheats, or teases. Part of the technique seems to be avoiding really annoying expository dialogue; people talk and act on the basis of events and opinions about them that everyone knows, so they don’t blather about it. That makes it work no matter what gets revealed or doesn’t. Maybe we’ll learn more about these events as their ripples turn into waves during a story. Maybe we’ll never learn the precise details, only that people disagree about them, and that’s OK with me too.
Well that’s depressing. Assuming they’re right, Brunton was quite literally not in his right mind and the man being locked up is (more or less) innocent.
Yes, no, maybe… the world of Magellan has ways of dealing with these grey zones… as we’ll see.
All they have to do is call in a registered telepath, Magellan member or not, to check out Brunton and see if he’s telling the truth. They then proceed based on what the telepath finds out.
I don’t know how telepathy works here, but an expert may not want to touch a ‘disordered’ mind, possible contagion. Also, telepathic evidence is probably legally considered hearsay, and is not admissible in court. We shall see.
Regarding the idea of telepathic evidence being considered hearsay: It’s a fair point. I’d think that could well be the case in a world that resembled ours more. In an “Age of Miracles” setting like Magellan, it might be deemed admissible.
What if you play it like they do in “Minority Report”? That is, independent examination by three registered telepaths? That way, you could get confirmation or rebuttal and be relatively sure of the results.
Difficult for the kid if Brunton goes free. Knowing he’d always be out there.
Its Kaycee our protag
True Jekyll and Hyde syndrome is not truly a multiple personality disorder, rather it is one personality that has very dramatic swings between a normal emotional state and an extremely angry and dark emotional state. One personality, but with two modes of operation so different that they may as well have two. But the person’s memories don’t change between the two states. That being said, Magellan’s universe is full of a lot of really weird and fantastical happenings, so it wouldn’t be surprising if its psychologists defined some things a bit differently to account for the circumstances that are their reality.
Even if it is Jekyll /Hyde where it is two different personalities that are not Co-conscious, he can’t go free. He’s a danger as long as his “hyde” is in there somewhere. Logically, he would have to plead insanity and accept a psychological lock-up to still be considered innocent.
And given that Telepathic Mind Control exists, a proper Justice system would need some way to rule that out. Ergo, you have to allow telepath testimony in some respects, even if it is only as “Expert Testimony”. There are too many situations where their expertise would be needed.
Dang… Tuesday 😞 What to talk about until then? Hmm… there’s still my idly curious question about the location of Oz Magellan HQ. And I still wonder if any red flags go up when a powered individual like Brunton goes off the grid.
This revelation makes you feel bad for original-future Brunton who was killed by Maverick. Both a dangerous psycho and an innocent man died that day. Hopefully current-timeline Kaycee will make a different choice, maybe even get Olga to suppress the Hyde half.
In the alternate timeline, GoAnna died before meeting Kaycee again and potentially passing on the critical piece of info that Brunton was half innocent. Current timeline GoAnna seems to be slowly building a friendship with Kaycee where that sort of information might get passed along (as soon as Grace knows how it all plays out); GoAnna might also be inclined to share her personal experience with Kaycee as to what it means or the hardships she’ll face if she blows her chance to work with Magellan. Either way, future info (Alt Maverick) or past info is available to help Kaycee make a different choice.
A roadblock to this theory – Go!Anna is not the only one who knew that information. I’d think that by the chroner’s present, it would likely be available to most people with a bit of research. Shoot, it ought to be not-difficult to find out for connected folks in the main storyline’s present.
I would be interested in the legal implications of such a thing in the real world, though this is a fictionverse scenario. Creative in its way to challenge ones concepts on justice in the classic Greek philosophers sense of the idea.