| abstract
| - In Castle Heterodyne, Gil [ produces] [[Chronology - Volume #|✣ ]] a Dingbot, recovered in Sturmhalten, which appears to be Dingbot Prime. Dingbot Prime was in Sturmhalten, and we do not see it becoming reunited with Agatha after activating the projection device in Tarvek's laboratory. However, when Agatha was in Mechanicsburg building the coffee engine, in [ one panel] [[Chronology - Volume #|✣ ]] she and the machine are shown surrounded by dingbots, one of which appears to be Dingbot Prime. (We see what appears to be Dingbot Prime twice in Sturmhalten; once when it [ appears] [[Chronology - Volume #|✣ ]] while Agatha is imprisoned with the Geisterdamen, and later when it [ starts the projector in Sturmhalten] [[Chronology - Volume #|✣ ]]. In the later appearance, its eye color seems to match the Coffee shop Dingbot better, but that can easily be explained by the dim light inside a locked room in Castle Heterodyne.) How can this be explained? Several theories are possible:
* Before Agatha lost her locket, she was [ shown] [[Chronology - Volume #|✣ ]] working on a device which strongly resembled Dingbot Prime, but which did not work. Thus, while Agatha was [ asleep] [[Chronology - Volume #|✣ ]] when she constructed Dingbot Prime, and did not remember building it, it quite conceivably was still based on plans of which she had been consciously aware, to which she then applied corrections during her sleep-Sparking state. Hence, having lost Dingbot Prime in Sturmhalten, she could have constructed a second one, which was identical to the first because she made it according to her original plans (being now able to consciously make the appropriate corrections), and from standard parts, unlike the ones made by the dingbots themselves.
* While the dingbots we have seen have all been diverse in appearance, it could well be that some of the second-generation dingbots were identical or nearly identical to Dingbot Prime in appearance, and it is one of those we saw with Agatha in the coffee shop.
* Somehow, Agatha could have arranged for Dingbot Prime to be conveyed to Gil, and Gil is simply lying to Zola and her minions about where it came from. This seems unlikely for three reasons:
* Agatha had no reason to think Gil would have a specific need for Dingbot Prime,
* For her to have a means of contact with Gil appears to contradict some of the plot we have seen, and
* For Gil to mention having been in Sturmhalten presents at least some slight risk of exposing him as Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, and thus if it was not the truth, and he were making up a story out of whole cloth, there would be no reason for him to mention Sturmhalten in that story.
* A second identical-appearing dingbot appears [ here] [[Chronology - Volume #|✣ ]]. While it is barely possible the one Gil had has now homed in on "mommy", it seems unlikely as Agatha does not seem surprised to see it.
* We have seen Agatha, with Gil and Moloch, looking into the past through a time window. Could Gil's Dingbot Prime be the same Dingbot Prime we saw in the coffee shop, but sent back to Gil, in Sturmhalten, from the future?
* If so, did Gil see the time window, or was Dingbot Prime returned to Sturmhalten secretly, prior to his arrival?
* In favor of this possibility is the fact that, in addition to a Geisterdame, the people we saw in a time window that appeared to Bang were Agatha, Gil, and Moloch, so we might suspect that the time window was from a time that is coming soon.
* Against this hypothesis is the question of why it was so important for Dingbot Prime to be with Agatha in the coffee shop that a time paradox has to be risked to make this possible.
* Conversely, in the coffee shop, the apparent Dingbot Prime appears in only one panel, with several other dingbots, and Agatha is not looking in its direction. Thus, perhaps the Dingbot Prime we saw in Sturmhalten remained there to be retrieved by Gil, while Agatha took with her from Sturmhalten one or more other dingbots, which survived or which she repaired. Then, unbeknownst to the Agatha of the present, prior to her building the Coffee Machine, Dingbot Prime was sent through a time window from the future to secretly join, and hide among, the other dingbots with Agatha.
* This allows the version of Dingbot Prime that came from the future not to have been noticed by either Gil or Agatha as yet, reducing the chance of a time paradox. Of course, it's still unclear what crucial contribution Dingbot Prime could have made, either to the construction of the Coffee Machine, or in some other way, prior to Agatha meeting Gil, but that could always be revealed later in the story. In [ this] [[Chronology - Volume #|✣ ]] episode, we see Dingbot Prime (the one with Gil) building a second dingbot from parts it found around the Castle. Will a dingbot made from the Castle be reliable? Will it be influenced by the origin of the parts? Will we soon see an "Evil Dingbot" thickening the plot even further? Will Dingbot Prime unplugging a wire labeled "do not remove" cause problems for Gil? Who labeled this wire? Certainly not Gil. Was it Zola's team? Or was that label there for decades, having been placed as part of Heterodyne construction activity? Is the "contribution" Dingbot Prime makes in the Castle going to be a negative one? It seems likely to be negative in the short term from appearances on that page, so perhaps the real question is whether Dingbot Prime will get the opportunity to switch to making a positive contribution, and if so, how long it will be before that happens. What happens if there are two Dingbots Prime, time-shifted, one with Gil, one with Agatha, and they meet?
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