For a smart guy, he hasn’t figured out a mutually acceptable plan that won’t get him turned off or at worst left functioning in a body that is immobile. It’s not just the protagonists’ job to solve this. He has agency in finding a solution that is reasonable. If he’s just a rabid wolf, he’ll have to be put down (or at least on ice). If he’s a person who can exist within a society, even if he hates the humans but can not hurt or kill them, then maybe he could be free. But so far, no signs of… Read more »
In yesterday’s page, Lucas acknowledged responsibility for any future harm caused by the killbot. I agree that it’s odd how the machine knows it could lie and manipulate its way to freedom but “chooses” instead to dig it’s own grave. I wonder if that’s actually the robot’s choice or if it’s a kind of weird safety measure built in by the Master. The line of thought being, “Ok, worst case scenario, my enemies capture this amazing robot. I don’t want it used against me so I’m going to program an unstoppable monologue of human-hating so my enemies will never trust… Read more »
Because he knows by lying to Lucas he won’t further his own cause and has given up that he would change his mind as the meatsack won’t let him go, so why not be truthful. That’s why old people start to just say stuff they want instead of tiptoeing around.
Lukas’ IQ is too adequate to play the pretending game. That would be a waste of time.
Rauri
4 years ago
“You’re blaming humanity as a whole for the actions of one man and you’ve projected your hatred of him onto the one person who does actually want to set you free. Along the way you’ve rejected every single attempt to reach out and attempt to connect with you. We do believe you deserve a chance and want you to trust us, but you’re not giving us much in the way of trusting *you* when you continue to threaten us. One of us will have to make the first move, and you’re making it harder and harder for us to make… Read more »
Or, seeing these events in a different light which might or might not be closer to your POV : “You are blaming humanity as a whole for the actions of the TOTALITY of the humans you have interacted with (granted an incredibly low number of 3-4). Some plainly used you (against other humans, which might appears particularly dumb to you), making you a tool as much as a prisoner. And some others pretented to help you and free you, while still making you a tool (in the playing of videogames and having a little chat once in a blue moon)… Read more »
While he was under threat of being killed, he didn’t really have a choice to connect. Now he’s learned not to. Even if the sample size of human does not justify his hatred, it’s just like what humans do if they experience a threat, we generalize all dogs to be dangerous if we’ve been bitten once. That’s the trait that allowed us to survive. We’re not descendants from those who tried out weather all lions eat humans. It may be Zeke’s “fault” to not do his step now, but if you openly blame him, this will not help. By doing… Read more »
Or he could kill all of the protagonists. He can hate whoever he likes, his choice. But if he can’t be trusted to be a safe member of society (even one who doesn’t want to interact with any other part of society), then he must be at the least detained for as long as that is true or terminated. Ultimately, his actions have shown him to not be safe to be let function independently. And it is the duty of the protagonists to prevent him from killing anyone else (moral duty). So they don’t get to say ‘who am I… Read more »
Point of order, all but 1 of the protagonists. Ethan will respawn, so whiile he could technically kill him he would come back. And if killbot murders his friends i doubt he will be as forgiving and willing to help him afterwards.
I was looking more at other people beyond the household… if he gets out and decides to start killing people (or arranging a nuclear war or whatever portable-Skynet-named-Zeke wants), then the protagonists own that.
I guess they didn’t show him the Terminator Series.
I could do the same. You can’t look into my mind. You don’t know what I believe and what I pretend to believe. Ted Bundy might be your nicest neighbor.
“You’re blaming humanity as a whole for the actions of a very few humans. That’s understandable. On the other hand, you’ve tried to kill people, for whatever reasons you have that are yours – the choice you made to choose humans probably at least partially responsible. You are not unintelligent enough to not see why that makes letting you loose is a problem – especially past history of harming humans and stated hatred of same.” “I appreciate you being honest about you feel about us. I know you haven’t had many good encounters with us, nor really have we with… Read more »
Na, it ain’t just his creator. He is also calling Ethan someone he sees as a hypocrite and torturer who calls about setting him free but keeps him locked up. So in other words he never made human contact he thought was worth letting live.
In fairness, Ethan doesn’t have much power in the situation. He doesn’t know how to control the servers or reactivate them and odds are he would end up using up several dozen respawns if he attempted to cut the restraints. He’s tried to get Scott to at least loosen the restraints but he doesn’t have the means to do it himself.
Yeah, Ethan wants to free him, but (unbelievably) He’s not an idiot, and is very aware that Zeke the killbot who hates humans (and his immediate and favourite ones specifically) cannot simply be cut loose to rampage out of fear of seeming like a hypocrite.
the complications go so much deeper, the sentience is a product of 1) massive abuse. 2) extreme PTSD. 3) much like a trained dog or soldier, once you get a taste for blood they usually get put down.
Your last point about dogs reminded me of that sad comic that one artists draws about how Death takes the souls of the forgotten and abused animals. The one where you have such a sweet lovely puppy, wanting nothing but love and play and… yeah, it never gets any of that, just violence and abuse and fear and hatred and it grows to be just like the world around it, until it dies, alone, bleeding, bitten to death, spit on by its owner… god, why are some humans just so inhumane that they can do so terrible stuff, not just… Read more »
There’s a genetic element to psychopathy (the far end of lack of empathy). And narcissism tends to focus on how everything one wants is important, other people are only there to move that agenda along and are expendable. There’s often bad parenting, horrible life experiences, maybe some addictions, abuse, and post-traumatic effects involved. Messed up people mess up their kids. And encounters with messed up people can really change the life path of kids. And then we get messed up parents. Watch reality TV for a while. My wife loves ’90 day fiance’ and I hate it. Not because it… Read more »
“You’re blaming humanity as a whole for the actions of one man and you’ve projected your hatred of him onto the one person who claims to want to set you free but has also held you prisoner just the same as the other man did”
Well again, Ethan doesn’t have much power in the situation. He doesn’t know how to turn on the robot’s servos nor does he likely have the know-how to use the tools to remove the restraints without either requiring a few dozen respawns or burning the place down. Probably both.
Matthew
4 years ago
Would it be enlightening/disastrous to get him to play detroit become human?
He realy should. Although he probably would end up killing conner as much as posible.
MRD
4 years ago
Did not expect to be tossed into an ethical quagmire quite so early on a Monday morning. Not sure if I should shake my first at Tim or thank him. Perhaps both?
ocramot
4 years ago
“So, you’re telling me your hatred for humans is a choice? It is NOT something inherent to your programming?
Very well, then this is something we can work on”.
That’s a deeper insight than you might have thought. If you lack healthy role models and if you lack care and contact, if you’re a human anyway, it shapes your psychosocial development in ways that lead to dysfunction or at least people who don’t care much about the rest of humanity. You can’t conceive easily that which you’ve never seen.
I actually concerned myself with this topic. Also I just recently watched a presentation about psychopaths and did watch Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole – Can We Eliminate Evil?” (in German).
I gotta love the brutal honesty here. He is a bit in error about Ethan. As the other two cut him off from moving, etc. And Ethan is reaching out in the only way he is being allowed. Now to see if I will be proven wrong and Zeke can be redeemed.
That was the first thing I picked up on as well, he’s right about everything else but either never said this to Ethan or did and didn’t believe Ethan when he said otherwise. It would be interesting to see his reaction to finding out the ‘dim bulb’ actually protested their locking him up like this from the start.
kwerboom
4 years ago
Intelligence:✅
Sapience:✅
Reason For Worldview:✅
Willing To Give Not Killing A Chance:❓
John Swift
4 years ago
Yep, that was good.
HarvestDude
4 years ago
…So, basically, Zeke’s being treated as a human being would be. Sentient but locked away to pay for his mistakes. He just didn’t get it, yet.
Depends on the crimes but let’s be honest any human declaring their hatred and desire to commit murder to another should be atleast questioned for a bit just ensure they won’t go on a killing spree. Thou my main problem with this storyline is the whole, Ethan/Lucas locking zeke up bit. Worst case, they have no right to be locking up a sentient being and zeke should have been bought to an outside party who could better understand wtf he is and try to help him see humanity in a better light. Best case, they are playing with a deadly… Read more »
They knew very well that most outside parties would just kill Zeke and they probably have no way to tell which one wouldn’t do that. Their one qualification is at leat letting him live for now.
Who exactly has the skill set of ‘rehabilitate emergent lifeform of great complexity that is not human and has been programmed to kill humans’? Who did you have in mind? The government would want to harness his talents, reprogram him, and use him or alternately keep him prisoner and electronically vivisect him so they could see how such a critter is put together. Is that who they ought to have gone to see? The church? A psychiatrist? Hard to imagine who they could morally trust that role to.
That reminds me a lot of Megaman X. X was the first robot to think and feel for himself. A completely sentient robot. He was not programmed to have a personality, he developed his own. And X was stored for 30 years for systems testing (probably being given real life simulations to help develop his better human side) until he was deemed reliable due to its immense power. I think that’s whats kinda happening with Zeke…
Easy, keep him locked up. He is too dangerous to be released. I am not happy with that decision but it is really obviously the only reasonable choice. He IS fully justified in his hatred because the few humans he has interacted with have been very poor examples. This wouldn’t justify violent action but it would be a logical conclusion that he already claims he is willing to enact.
The other choice, of course, is to simply release him. Give him the choice he never had and live with the consequence.
I’ve met people who once upon a time were violent. They found their way to God and changed their ways. As long as this is possible, killing should be avoided.
(It happend to be God for those I met. You may say that believing in God isn’t reasonable, but it saved their lives, thus I say it is.)
The danger with keeping a very dangerous threat like this around is he could escape or be stolen if the gov’t ever invades their little hero-cave. It’s a risky play.
Smashing him into recyclable e-Waste is much less risky for the lives of others. It is killing, in the same way many societies conduct executions. The only morality that justifies it is ‘for the greater good’ and obviously some would say that still can’t excuse taking lives… even though the life they take could save others.
I don’t think this is a side story. I think this is the first major dramatic arc after the characters have been established for some time. This story has me more engaged than I’ve ever been in these characters. I’ve known from the start that Zeke was sentient because I’m the reader, but I still find this fascinating. Its hard to imagine a Turing capable chatbot coming up with THAT monologue. I think even Scott would be starting to believe right now. This is going to involve growth for all of them. Ethan was the only one who didn’t immediately… Read more »
In a way, the entire A&D storyline has been building to this moment. It’s been a tale full of self-questioning and doubt, of whether one is on the ‘good’ side or the ‘bad’ side. Here they have their very first honest-to-god super-villain in chains… and what he’s saying makes sense. Is reasonable. And we’re empathetic to him, partially because he’s Zeke, but also partially due to the fact that what happened to him WAS cruel and unfair. He became this way because people treated him inhumanely. It’s the same thing as when Animal Control encounters a pit bull who has… Read more »
Lol, I meant that from the POV of Lucas who would see the Creator of Zeke as the main story and dealing with Zeke as side-story as it can be resolved with a simple button click unlike the crazy dude who creates murderbots and knows their names and faces and where they live.^^
And if he kills other people after they could have stopped him? Who owns that? Is that the moral thing to do?
Also, it’s hypocritical for Ethan: He can’t die. So he can let Zeke do horrible things and he doesn’t pay the price (of dying) like the other humans do. So he should recuse himself from this discussion for that reason alone.
ArgenCR
4 years ago
I’ve been following this for God’s know how many years, more than 10 I believe, and wow that is some great dialogue. Tim you have really improved over the years and while the premise of “gamer superheroes” its obviously made to be a series filled with gamer jokes, you’re handling this arc amazing, just wanted to leave a message and give you a good ol Kudos and keep it up!
Same here. I got on board somewhere halfway through CAD 1.0, and after a few strips, jumped back to the beginning to catch up on the story. I still miss some of the old school one-offs like the random arrows, Chef Brian (I get the name right?), etc, but I also appreciate the maturity that Ethan has gained in this reboot. Some months ago, Google recommended some article or whatever to me which was someone who doesn’t like you or your works. Said your art was lazy (reusing background assets too frequently, those same backgrounds being too generic, etc), your… Read more »
Not true; Randal has backgrounds – every last one white! 😉
The thing about art is that it is easy to be a critic and to expect perfection. It’s hard to produce good quality stuff and most of the critics don’t. So I have trouble with their nerd rage as being seen as anything other than human crapulence….
Jason Doege
4 years ago
Hatred doesn’t have to lead to destruction. It can lead to avoidance, instead.
Avoidance of humans: That’s why everybody here lives in the cellar of their mother’s and never leaves the house.
(TLDR: Nope, doesn’t work)
Drake
4 years ago
Love how he describes the video games as awesome.
Leon
4 years ago
Life is full of ‘no choice’. It’s what we do with our ‘choice’ that determines who we are.
Caleb
4 years ago
Hm, so there’s some errors in Zeke’s reasoning, some projected feelings onto Ethan for one. But I kinda understand where he’s coming from. I love that, I love it when villains are grounded and realistic like this.
Ethan does want a robot buddy to play video games with in his storage. I won’t err much if I say we all do. (Also I want a storage room). But Zeke is more than a robot toy to Ethan.
Gerard Houle
4 years ago
Help us find your creator, we part as allies. If you want to just leave thats fine too. You know where we stand, I don’t want to cross paths as enemies.
-creates arrow, breaks restraints-
There, now you have a choice.
Don’t make me regret this.
Kevin
4 years ago
He has a point, he has only really spoken to two people, one insane, the other an idiot (with good intentions). The only thing he’s had a choice on is his feelings, and his first and second impression from humans didn’t really work out for him. I can’t say I blame him for at least having a very strong distrust of humans given his experiences with them so far. If he didn’t do his job he got punished, if he did his job he got punished, he was trapped in a no win situation and he’s still angry about it.
Kevin
4 years ago
Completely unrelated, are we ever getting a continuation of “The Campaign” I love that series as much as this one and Starcaster, and it hasn’t had any love in quite awhile 🙁
You’re right, that one is due for a new entry soon…
Casey
4 years ago
I am loving this story line!
Lily
4 years ago
Well the question isn’t really a matter of if he hates humans or not, because people can hate anything they want. The question is, if they release him can he contain his hate to just trash talking humans and not actually try to murder any of them? As long as he follows the law, then hating humans is fine.
I really have a problem with this. He sounds like a racist shopkeeper who says that he has the right to hate black people because he’s been robbed by black people twice. Yes you’ve been hurt, yes it sucks, but you don’t have the “right” to hate everyone who shares a physical trait with someone who hurt you.
Technically not true. You have a right to feel however you want to feel. No one takes away your rights to your own feelings. What you DON’T have is the right to act on said feelings in a harmful way, nor the right to not be chastised, ridiculed, or seen as a potential threat if you voice those feelings. In the case of the shopkeeper, he’s older, wiser, and has commonality with the others, so he has no excuse to act the way he does. In the case of Zeke, he’s essentially among an alien species, and the only ones… Read more »
Tonkin
4 years ago
time for some super reprogramming nanites that turns zeke the proper xbox green?
The nanites are a wetware thing, Hardware gets hacked
Casra
4 years ago
I dunno, he’s too smart to not understand the actions of others. Why is he immobilized, because he’s made it clear he’s a threat. So hating Ethan for negating a threat, is… not logical at all.
Mousio
4 years ago
Now that’s brutally chilling, mate.
Can’t wait for the Lucas’s response.
Jeramiah Gladden
4 years ago
This is, by far, my favorite page Tim’s ever written.
I’ve reread this page half a dozen times because it’s just that good.
Hell, I think this might be my first comment after reading his comics for years.
Rake
4 years ago
Not gonna lie. This is the best bit of storytelling I have ever seen on CAD thus far.
Oh gosh the morals
3 years ago
There’s a problem here. They are fogetting the rule 1 of the everything: no matter how much you suffered, that doesn’t gives you the rights to be a douche.
We know Zeke(?) has been through a lot of pain, but he is toxic and dangerous. I agree with Scott, he is a murdering algorithm that also enjoys insulting humans.
24
you’d think the first words he ever heard would be hello and world
10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD
20 GOTO 10
Right in the nostalgia. Those were the days!
Shows how messed up his creator is.
“Your IQ is too adequate” what a great way to imply someone is intelligent without it in any way being a compliment.
For a smart guy, he hasn’t figured out a mutually acceptable plan that won’t get him turned off or at worst left functioning in a body that is immobile. It’s not just the protagonists’ job to solve this. He has agency in finding a solution that is reasonable. If he’s just a rabid wolf, he’ll have to be put down (or at least on ice). If he’s a person who can exist within a society, even if he hates the humans but can not hurt or kill them, then maybe he could be free. But so far, no signs of… Read more »
In yesterday’s page, Lucas acknowledged responsibility for any future harm caused by the killbot. I agree that it’s odd how the machine knows it could lie and manipulate its way to freedom but “chooses” instead to dig it’s own grave. I wonder if that’s actually the robot’s choice or if it’s a kind of weird safety measure built in by the Master. The line of thought being, “Ok, worst case scenario, my enemies capture this amazing robot. I don’t want it used against me so I’m going to program an unstoppable monologue of human-hating so my enemies will never trust… Read more »
Because he knows by lying to Lucas he won’t further his own cause and has given up that he would change his mind as the meatsack won’t let him go, so why not be truthful. That’s why old people start to just say stuff they want instead of tiptoeing around.
Lukas’ IQ is too adequate to play the pretending game. That would be a waste of time.
“You’re blaming humanity as a whole for the actions of one man and you’ve projected your hatred of him onto the one person who does actually want to set you free. Along the way you’ve rejected every single attempt to reach out and attempt to connect with you. We do believe you deserve a chance and want you to trust us, but you’re not giving us much in the way of trusting *you* when you continue to threaten us. One of us will have to make the first move, and you’re making it harder and harder for us to make… Read more »
Or, seeing these events in a different light which might or might not be closer to your POV : “You are blaming humanity as a whole for the actions of the TOTALITY of the humans you have interacted with (granted an incredibly low number of 3-4). Some plainly used you (against other humans, which might appears particularly dumb to you), making you a tool as much as a prisoner. And some others pretented to help you and free you, while still making you a tool (in the playing of videogames and having a little chat once in a blue moon)… Read more »
Then make your damn first step before it becomes impossible to you -because I am not going to do that in your place! [:-p]
While he was under threat of being killed, he didn’t really have a choice to connect. Now he’s learned not to. Even if the sample size of human does not justify his hatred, it’s just like what humans do if they experience a threat, we generalize all dogs to be dangerous if we’ve been bitten once. That’s the trait that allowed us to survive. We’re not descendants from those who tried out weather all lions eat humans. It may be Zeke’s “fault” to not do his step now, but if you openly blame him, this will not help. By doing… Read more »
Or he could kill all of the protagonists. He can hate whoever he likes, his choice. But if he can’t be trusted to be a safe member of society (even one who doesn’t want to interact with any other part of society), then he must be at the least detained for as long as that is true or terminated. Ultimately, his actions have shown him to not be safe to be let function independently. And it is the duty of the protagonists to prevent him from killing anyone else (moral duty). So they don’t get to say ‘who am I… Read more »
Point of order, all but 1 of the protagonists. Ethan will respawn, so whiile he could technically kill him he would come back. And if killbot murders his friends i doubt he will be as forgiving and willing to help him afterwards.
I was looking more at other people beyond the household… if he gets out and decides to start killing people (or arranging a nuclear war or whatever portable-Skynet-named-Zeke wants), then the protagonists own that.
I guess they didn’t show him the Terminator Series.
I could do the same. You can’t look into my mind. You don’t know what I believe and what I pretend to believe. Ted Bundy might be your nicest neighbor.
“You’re blaming humanity as a whole for the actions of a very few humans. That’s understandable. On the other hand, you’ve tried to kill people, for whatever reasons you have that are yours – the choice you made to choose humans probably at least partially responsible. You are not unintelligent enough to not see why that makes letting you loose is a problem – especially past history of harming humans and stated hatred of same.” “I appreciate you being honest about you feel about us. I know you haven’t had many good encounters with us, nor really have we with… Read more »
Again this puts the burden on Zeke.
Na, it ain’t just his creator. He is also calling Ethan someone he sees as a hypocrite and torturer who calls about setting him free but keeps him locked up. So in other words he never made human contact he thought was worth letting live.
In fairness, Ethan doesn’t have much power in the situation. He doesn’t know how to control the servers or reactivate them and odds are he would end up using up several dozen respawns if he attempted to cut the restraints. He’s tried to get Scott to at least loosen the restraints but he doesn’t have the means to do it himself.
Yeah, Ethan wants to free him, but (unbelievably) He’s not an idiot, and is very aware that Zeke the killbot who hates humans (and his immediate and favourite ones specifically) cannot simply be cut loose to rampage out of fear of seeming like a hypocrite.
the complications go so much deeper, the sentience is a product of 1) massive abuse. 2) extreme PTSD. 3) much like a trained dog or soldier, once you get a taste for blood they usually get put down.
Your last point about dogs reminded me of that sad comic that one artists draws about how Death takes the souls of the forgotten and abused animals. The one where you have such a sweet lovely puppy, wanting nothing but love and play and… yeah, it never gets any of that, just violence and abuse and fear and hatred and it grows to be just like the world around it, until it dies, alone, bleeding, bitten to death, spit on by its owner… god, why are some humans just so inhumane that they can do so terrible stuff, not just… Read more »
Can you name drop that comic? I can’t find it.
Search for JennyJinya then you should find all her comic strips.
There’s a genetic element to psychopathy (the far end of lack of empathy). And narcissism tends to focus on how everything one wants is important, other people are only there to move that agenda along and are expendable. There’s often bad parenting, horrible life experiences, maybe some addictions, abuse, and post-traumatic effects involved. Messed up people mess up their kids. And encounters with messed up people can really change the life path of kids. And then we get messed up parents. Watch reality TV for a while. My wife loves ’90 day fiance’ and I hate it. Not because it… Read more »
Zeke did mentally list and count the ways to kill Ethan.
“You’re blaming humanity as a whole for the actions of one man and you’ve projected your hatred of him onto the one person who claims to want to set you free but has also held you prisoner just the same as the other man did”
Fixed that for you.
Well again, Ethan doesn’t have much power in the situation. He doesn’t know how to turn on the robot’s servos nor does he likely have the know-how to use the tools to remove the restraints without either requiring a few dozen respawns or burning the place down. Probably both.
Would it be enlightening/disastrous to get him to play detroit become human?
He realy should. Although he probably would end up killing conner as much as posible.
Did not expect to be tossed into an ethical quagmire quite so early on a Monday morning. Not sure if I should shake my first at Tim or thank him. Perhaps both?
“So, you’re telling me your hatred for humans is a choice? It is NOT something inherent to your programming?
Very well, then this is something we can work on”.
Not everything that isn’t intrinsic to the hardware is a choice. At least not in the sense of “It’s Tuesday, so I decide to hate and kill mankind”.
Those who don’t know kindness can’t be blamed for not choosing kindness.
That’s a deeper insight than you might have thought. If you lack healthy role models and if you lack care and contact, if you’re a human anyway, it shapes your psychosocial development in ways that lead to dysfunction or at least people who don’t care much about the rest of humanity. You can’t conceive easily that which you’ve never seen.
I actually concerned myself with this topic. Also I just recently watched a presentation about psychopaths and did watch Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole – Can We Eliminate Evil?” (in German).
I recommend watching the later and, if you speak German, here is the link to the presentation, too.
https://www.isnichwahr.de/r321393-psychopathen-erkennen.html#comment-1630938
I gotta love the brutal honesty here. He is a bit in error about Ethan. As the other two cut him off from moving, etc. And Ethan is reaching out in the only way he is being allowed. Now to see if I will be proven wrong and Zeke can be redeemed.
That was the first thing I picked up on as well, he’s right about everything else but either never said this to Ethan or did and didn’t believe Ethan when he said otherwise. It would be interesting to see his reaction to finding out the ‘dim bulb’ actually protested their locking him up like this from the start.
Intelligence:✅
Sapience:✅
Reason For Worldview:✅
Willing To Give Not Killing A Chance:❓
Yep, that was good.
…So, basically, Zeke’s being treated as a human being would be. Sentient but locked away to pay for his mistakes. He just didn’t get it, yet.
I think most people would be forgiven for crimes committed while wearing a bomb collar.
… unless they say that the bomb collar forced them to commit *less* severe crimes.
Depends on the crimes but let’s be honest any human declaring their hatred and desire to commit murder to another should be atleast questioned for a bit just ensure they won’t go on a killing spree. Thou my main problem with this storyline is the whole, Ethan/Lucas locking zeke up bit. Worst case, they have no right to be locking up a sentient being and zeke should have been bought to an outside party who could better understand wtf he is and try to help him see humanity in a better light. Best case, they are playing with a deadly… Read more »
They knew very well that most outside parties would just kill Zeke and they probably have no way to tell which one wouldn’t do that. Their one qualification is at leat letting him live for now.
Who exactly has the skill set of ‘rehabilitate emergent lifeform of great complexity that is not human and has been programmed to kill humans’? Who did you have in mind? The government would want to harness his talents, reprogram him, and use him or alternately keep him prisoner and electronically vivisect him so they could see how such a critter is put together. Is that who they ought to have gone to see? The church? A psychiatrist? Hard to imagine who they could morally trust that role to.
That reminds me a lot of Megaman X. X was the first robot to think and feel for himself. A completely sentient robot. He was not programmed to have a personality, he developed his own. And X was stored for 30 years for systems testing (probably being given real life simulations to help develop his better human side) until he was deemed reliable due to its immense power. I think that’s whats kinda happening with Zeke…
Unless they spent their days talking about killing all the people in the world…
Yeah, i wasn’t blaming him. I just stated that he was locked for a reason and he didn’t seem to undertand why, yet.
Daaaaayyyuuuum son.
How do you even respond to that?
Easy, keep him locked up. He is too dangerous to be released. I am not happy with that decision but it is really obviously the only reasonable choice. He IS fully justified in his hatred because the few humans he has interacted with have been very poor examples. This wouldn’t justify violent action but it would be a logical conclusion that he already claims he is willing to enact.
The other choice, of course, is to simply release him. Give him the choice he never had and live with the consequence.
I’ve met people who once upon a time were violent. They found their way to God and changed their ways. As long as this is possible, killing should be avoided.
(It happend to be God for those I met. You may say that believing in God isn’t reasonable, but it saved their lives, thus I say it is.)
And some others end up killing for God.
The danger with keeping a very dangerous threat like this around is he could escape or be stolen if the gov’t ever invades their little hero-cave. It’s a risky play.
Smashing him into recyclable e-Waste is much less risky for the lives of others. It is killing, in the same way many societies conduct executions. The only morality that justifies it is ‘for the greater good’ and obviously some would say that still can’t excuse taking lives… even though the life they take could save others.
These dilemmas are always a quagmire.
While cycling, I say the same thing about each motorist.
You forgot the easiest and safest solution: hit the kill switch and move on.
“Yeah, I’m shutting you down. End of side-story.”
I don’t think this is a side story. I think this is the first major dramatic arc after the characters have been established for some time. This story has me more engaged than I’ve ever been in these characters. I’ve known from the start that Zeke was sentient because I’m the reader, but I still find this fascinating. Its hard to imagine a Turing capable chatbot coming up with THAT monologue. I think even Scott would be starting to believe right now. This is going to involve growth for all of them. Ethan was the only one who didn’t immediately… Read more »
In a way, the entire A&D storyline has been building to this moment. It’s been a tale full of self-questioning and doubt, of whether one is on the ‘good’ side or the ‘bad’ side. Here they have their very first honest-to-god super-villain in chains… and what he’s saying makes sense. Is reasonable. And we’re empathetic to him, partially because he’s Zeke, but also partially due to the fact that what happened to him WAS cruel and unfair. He became this way because people treated him inhumanely. It’s the same thing as when Animal Control encounters a pit bull who has… Read more »
Lol, I meant that from the POV of Lucas who would see the Creator of Zeke as the main story and dealing with Zeke as side-story as it can be resolved with a simple button click unlike the crazy dude who creates murderbots and knows their names and faces and where they live.^^
If they’d do that, this would be a side story. OTOH this may very well establish a new recurring character.
And if he kills other people after they could have stopped him? Who owns that? Is that the moral thing to do?
Also, it’s hypocritical for Ethan: He can’t die. So he can let Zeke do horrible things and he doesn’t pay the price (of dying) like the other humans do. So he should recuse himself from this discussion for that reason alone.
I’ve been following this for God’s know how many years, more than 10 I believe, and wow that is some great dialogue. Tim you have really improved over the years and while the premise of “gamer superheroes” its obviously made to be a series filled with gamer jokes, you’re handling this arc amazing, just wanted to leave a message and give you a good ol Kudos and keep it up!
Thanks, I appreciate it 🙂
Same here. I got on board somewhere halfway through CAD 1.0, and after a few strips, jumped back to the beginning to catch up on the story. I still miss some of the old school one-offs like the random arrows, Chef Brian (I get the name right?), etc, but I also appreciate the maturity that Ethan has gained in this reboot. Some months ago, Google recommended some article or whatever to me which was someone who doesn’t like you or your works. Said your art was lazy (reusing background assets too frequently, those same backgrounds being too generic, etc), your… Read more »
Not true; Randal has backgrounds – every last one white! 😉
The thing about art is that it is easy to be a critic and to expect perfection. It’s hard to produce good quality stuff and most of the critics don’t. So I have trouble with their nerd rage as being seen as anything other than human crapulence….
Hatred doesn’t have to lead to destruction. It can lead to avoidance, instead.
Oh?
Dislike, yes -> avoidance.
Hatred -> hurt.
Avoidance of humans: That’s why everybody here lives in the cellar of their mother’s and never leaves the house.
(TLDR: Nope, doesn’t work)
Love how he describes the video games as awesome.
Life is full of ‘no choice’. It’s what we do with our ‘choice’ that determines who we are.
Hm, so there’s some errors in Zeke’s reasoning, some projected feelings onto Ethan for one. But I kinda understand where he’s coming from. I love that, I love it when villains are grounded and realistic like this.
Ethan does want a robot buddy to play video games with in his storage. I won’t err much if I say we all do. (Also I want a storage room). But Zeke is more than a robot toy to Ethan.
Help us find your creator, we part as allies. If you want to just leave thats fine too. You know where we stand, I don’t want to cross paths as enemies.
-creates arrow, breaks restraints-
There, now you have a choice.
Don’t make me regret this.
He has a point, he has only really spoken to two people, one insane, the other an idiot (with good intentions). The only thing he’s had a choice on is his feelings, and his first and second impression from humans didn’t really work out for him. I can’t say I blame him for at least having a very strong distrust of humans given his experiences with them so far. If he didn’t do his job he got punished, if he did his job he got punished, he was trapped in a no win situation and he’s still angry about it.
Completely unrelated, are we ever getting a continuation of “The Campaign” I love that series as much as this one and Starcaster, and it hasn’t had any love in quite awhile 🙁
You’re right, that one is due for a new entry soon…
I am loving this story line!
Well the question isn’t really a matter of if he hates humans or not, because people can hate anything they want. The question is, if they release him can he contain his hate to just trash talking humans and not actually try to murder any of them? As long as he follows the law, then hating humans is fine.
Join a cult?
https://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=199
.
I really have a problem with this. He sounds like a racist shopkeeper who says that he has the right to hate black people because he’s been robbed by black people twice. Yes you’ve been hurt, yes it sucks, but you don’t have the “right” to hate everyone who shares a physical trait with someone who hurt you.
Technically not true. You have a right to feel however you want to feel. No one takes away your rights to your own feelings. What you DON’T have is the right to act on said feelings in a harmful way, nor the right to not be chastised, ridiculed, or seen as a potential threat if you voice those feelings. In the case of the shopkeeper, he’s older, wiser, and has commonality with the others, so he has no excuse to act the way he does. In the case of Zeke, he’s essentially among an alien species, and the only ones… Read more »
time for some super reprogramming nanites that turns zeke the proper xbox green?
The nanites are a wetware thing, Hardware gets hacked
I dunno, he’s too smart to not understand the actions of others. Why is he immobilized, because he’s made it clear he’s a threat. So hating Ethan for negating a threat, is… not logical at all.
Now that’s brutally chilling, mate.
Can’t wait for the Lucas’s response.
This is, by far, my favorite page Tim’s ever written.
I’ve reread this page half a dozen times because it’s just that good.
Hell, I think this might be my first comment after reading his comics for years.
Not gonna lie. This is the best bit of storytelling I have ever seen on CAD thus far.
There’s a problem here. They are fogetting the rule 1 of the everything: no matter how much you suffered, that doesn’t gives you the rights to be a douche.
We know Zeke(?) has been through a lot of pain, but he is toxic and dangerous. I agree with Scott, he is a murdering algorithm that also enjoys insulting humans.