My Location 2013-05-14

[Dave]

Well this does at last explain why Lilly and her friends were left lost in the desert to die. The stargates malfunctioned and dropped them just short of the terminus and the memories were either the damage of such a dump or the memories are in the storage system waiting to be released.

I'm not sure the dates work out for that. Lily said that she died in the desert "around five thousand years ago", and the Mapimi explosion is given as 6,367 years ago. There could be quite a gap between the "sauve qui peut" rush to the stargates, and the point at which Lily found herself still-alive-and-dying in the desert.

[KnightDelight]

I have to wonder what the plan was to revive those stored in the crystals (assuming they are there)? What's the use of storing everyone if they have no hope of being restored? They should have already been restored since the ELE never actually happened. OTOH, maybe they already have been restored and the crystals are empty.

[MerchManDan]

"Well done, Brandilyn. You've saved the day by destroying the world."

[Fairportfan]

If an advanced civilization can create stargates, it can also create a Babel-fish-like universal translator.

It's gotta be exceedingly sophisticated--or it will babble in translation.

[drops a fishing fly towards the pun jar, angling for an escape]

I evince the TARDIS.

[Dave]

I have to wonder what the plan was to revive those stored in the crystals (assuming they are there)? What's the use of storing everyone if they have no hope of being restored? They should have already been restored since the ELE never actually happened. OTOH, maybe they already have been restored and the crystals are empty.

Well, there's no reason to believe that Brandi would have intended to put herself into crystal-storage. By the time the Mapimi debacle arose, she'd already been a golem for thousands of years - she's either "not alive" or "immortal" depending on how you want to view her status - and would not have been at any risk from bad air, global warming or volcanic winter, etc.. She may have decided (kinda on the spur of the moment) to put the Lantians/Anasazi/??? into storage quickly (to save their lives during the extinction-level event) and then initiate the revival herself after a few hundred (or thousand) years.

If so, something (or some-things) did not go as they might have. For one thing, it appears that the ELE didn't actually occur. Whatever ecological disruption the supervolcano(s) caused, wasn't as bad as Brandi is saying it would be. Either she was mistaken about the effects, or was lying outright, or something else happened to suppress or correct the ecological damage.

For another thing, Tsillah's remarks in the Library imply that nobody revived the "lost folks", which may mean that somebody stopped Brandi from doing so.

[jwhouk]

What about all those "faces" that Jin always saw when she was having her psychotic episodes?

[scantrontb]

"any science, sufficiently advanced, will seem to a primitive culture, like demons and magic"

"ANY technology, no matter how primitive, will seem to be magic to those who don't understand it" Florence Ambrose.

[Timotheus]

I will mention again that we have no geologic record of an extinction level event happening around that time. Only the kikai volcanic event near Japan. So if an event of this scale occurred all traces of it were somehow erased or it occurred on a parallel time cycle. Or maybe this is a training video.

[DilyV]

I think.. I think all those "storage crystals" are people.

At least they are not green squares sold in super markets near you.

Don't be so sure:

Mmmmmm... Soylent Green!!!! Now in watermelon flavor!!!! LOL

*Tosses a Charlton Heston trading card into the pun jar*

[illiad]

"any science, sufficiently advanced, will seem to a primitive culture, like demons and magic"

"ANY technology, no matter how primitive, will seem to be magic to those who don't understand it" Florence Ambrose.

ah thanks for that, it does get a bit mangled, But I define technology as a physical thing, and science as the whole knowledge of it, so I updated it..

[Julie]

The Anasazi spoke modern English?

Oh for heavens sake! This one is easy to explain away! If you're dealing with a complex "computer" that has a "rosetta stone" of ancient languages stored away, is it really so hard to believe that said "computer" could translate audio files into the language of a couple of users? If you're worried that it wouldn't "know" modern English...didn't it just hear Kat translate the oldest entry?

I posted before coffee

As someone absorbed in an unfolding mystery about an ancient civilization, having something not normally associated with that time (English) is a bit of a shock. It's like in the film Saving Private Ryan, when, after two hours of gritty, bloody, heartbreaking action, they finally catch up with Private Ryan, and decide to join his team to defend the bridge and are awaiting the climactic German assault, at one point we see Private Ryan smile.

And Private Ryan has perfectly white hollywood teeth.

Pulled me right out of the story momentarily. So did this.

Ahh...my husband suffers from that problem. I get so absorbed into the story that I rarely catch things that could be classified as errors/mistakes on the first run-through.

[Sidhekin]

I'm assuming this was not spoken in English, nor translated by the program. I'd say either:

• Kath is translating (from subtext?) on-the-fly, utilizing her Rosetta welcome.
• Brandi is speaking some language that Atsali understands (as a spoken language, at least).
• The "sound" recording is actually a mental message, put in words by each witness seperately. (The welcome screen was visual only.)

... or it's a blunder ...

[Grantwhy]

Who's to say that this isn't where the guy Kat read about (who found the kachina dolls) disappeared into this place?

I wonder if that means that guy has also been stored in crystal? Maybe the one Lilly and Suzie found?

Well this does at last explain why Lilly and her friends were left lost in the desert to die. The stargates malfunctioned and dropped them just short of the terminus and the memories were either the damage of such a dump or the memories are in the storage system waiting to be released.

I'm not sure the dates work out for that. Lily said that she died in the desert "around five thousand years ago", and the Mapimi explosion is given as 6,367 years ago. There could be quite a gap between the "sauve qui peut" rush to the stargates, and the point at which Lily found herself still-alive-and-dying in the desert.

Maybe they were successfully stored in crystals for over a thousand years and then restored, but without all their memories?

[kingklash]

Also, this AI has been sitting around and listening to English as broadcast on RF for about 100 years. I think it should be just fine translating spoken language.

Assuming, that is, that a hundred years or so of exposure to multiple simultaneous broadcasts of American radio haven't left it firmly in the "frothing psychotic loony AI" category. There are some things that no sentient being should be exposed to... overdoses of talk-radio are high on the list

To paraphrase Harlan Ellison's story "Laugh Track", concerning Aunt Babe's afterlife trapped in the electronic ether of Broadcast Television: It's amazing what prolonged exposure to Gary Coleman can do to a person.

[Fairportfan]

Also, this AI has been sitting around and listening to English as broadcast on RF for about 100 years. I think it should be just fine translating spoken language.

Assuming, that is, that a hundred years or so of exposure to multiple simultaneous broadcasts of American radio haven't left it firmly in the "frothing psychotic loony AI" category. There are some things that no sentient being should be exposed to... overdoses of talk-radio are high on the list

To paraphrase Harlan Ellison's story "Laugh Track", concerning Aunt Babe's afterlife trapped in the electronic ether of Broadcast Television: It's amazing what prolonged exposure to Gary Coleman can do to a person.

Odd we should mention that:



(Mouseover text: "The strongest incentive we have to develop faster-than-light travel is that it would let us apologize in advance.")

[NOTDilbert]

Reminds me of...

SETI just translated the first message from another star system: send more Chuck Barry.

[Opus the Poet]

Reminds me of...

SETI just translated the first message from another star system: send more Chuck Barry.

Yep, that's an old SNL skit.

[DinkyInky]

"any science, sufficiently advanced, will seem to a primitive culture, like demons and magic"

"ANY technology, no matter how primitive, will seem to be magic to those who don't understand it" Florence Ambrose.

Doggy!

[DilyV]

I'm assuming this was not spoken in English, nor translated by the program. I'd say either:

• Kath is translating (from subtext?) on-the-fly, utilizing her Rosetta welcome.
• Brandi is speaking some language that Atsali understands (as a spoken language, at least).
• The "sound" recording is actually a mental message, put in words by each witness seperately. (The welcome screen was visual only.)

... or it's a blunder ...

Orrrrrr.... Paul had to put it in a language we could read because trying to decipher glyph would have left us all going WTF????? LOL

[Sidhekin]

That doesn't explain how Atsali reacted to what she was saying.