branding lady, meet meek little lamb

[mxglam]

Glam isn't allowed to actually patrol the following day (it's a Sunday), so they mostly browse the 'net and read books. Echo's busy with her family (and she is allowed to go out patrolling), and Lorica's... doing something.

They're slightly worried about the fact that Yates hasn't replied to their email, but it's the weekend, so maybe that's why.

Has she replied to the email by Monday?

Comments

[thinkering]

Hop hop hop hop hop!

[mxglam]

Stop.

Bye binoculars, hello small toy telescope.

Couple more buoys.

Stop.

"Hm. Now if I were to guess it's the angle. It's far enough away that any new buoys would be hidden by the old ones."

But! A few of the buoys have started disappearing. And it's not been half an hour yet.

Glam has not noticed this.

[thinkering]

One of the robots does. "Are you dismissing intervening buoys on purpose so they're not blocking your view?"

[mxglam]

"Uh. No? Where?" Telescope not good for this, old binocular better. They look. They're hard to find, what with all the buoys, but eventually Glam notices a gap. "Huh. That's new."

[thinkering]

"It hasn't been half an hour. Maybe we should check your limit on how many things you can have at once too." Does the robot with the duck still have the duck?

[peterxy]

It does! It does still have the duck!

[thinkering]

"And it's only some things and not in order." Any pattern to where the gaps are?

[peterxy]

There isn't a visible pattern. In fact, not-a-visible-pattern can be described as the pattern - it's almost as if someone picked exactly the right number and distribution of buoys that would make it hard for Glam to notice any are missing very easily.

[thinkering]

"They look random but only almost. It would be hard from where you're standing to notice the gaps."

[mxglam]

"Really now. Hmm. I think anything like a direct hard limit on distance is starting to sound less plausible. What if I started making buoys in all directions instead of out in a straight line?"

[thinkering]

"Well, if you use more directions than I have robots it will be harder to keep track of them, but sure."

[mxglam]

"I meant not necessarily counting them like that, but maybe more spread out, without an obvious pattern. My hypothesis is that there's something related to attention here, too."

[thinkering]

"All right, buoys everywhere, go for it." A robot spirals high to get a birds-eye view.

[mxglam]

Buoys everywhere!

At first, as the circle of buoys expands in all directions, they all stay.

(Actually not all, some of the buoys of the line suddenly had never been there.)

(It's kinda hard to keep track of the buoys when the disappearing effect makes you question whether you were really seeing that in the first place.)

But eventually, once the sea has moved them enough that some buoys could get away with disappearing without the casual human eye noticing, they do.

[thinkering]

The robots do not have the deficits of human memory. They notice.

"You've got disappearing buoys. Behind the waves, behind other buoys."

[mxglam]

"Hrm. I wonder if I can counteract this by glaring at the buoys."

[thinkering]

"Try it."

[mxglam]

They do!

...it's worse. While they're glaring at a subsection of the buoys, more buoys from areas they're not glaring at go away.

[thinkering]

"Nope, they're just vanishing behind your back."

[mxglam]

Sigh. "Of course they are. What I'm curious about is why the buoys vanish but not the duck."

[thinkering]

"I haven't told you the duck's status," Lorica points out.

[mxglam]

"True. Has the duck vanished?"

It has! It has vanished. At some point while they were glaring.

[thinkering]

"Ninety seconds ago."

[mxglam]

"Oh. Hm. That's. Suggestive."

[thinkering]

"Oh?"