From my post to the 5/8/06 comic.
> "The memories I experienced were actual memories from another dimension where alternates of Kaoli and I existed and were friends ,,, or they were alternates of Nioi and Elliot who were a little different."
Well, then I'm a little disappointed. My previous assumption was that Ellen and Kaoli were experienceing 18 years of life by exercising their free wills in an imaginary world. But now it's clear that the both of them have been spoon-fed other peoples' memories, lock, stock and barrel. They had zero free will within their "second-life" dreams. So how does that count as "experiencing life?"
As I suggested many, many months ago. If (and I'm still not convinced, but), if Nioi's rant about it being bad that Ellen's "soul" was less experienced than her apparent physical age (thereby completely discounting the 18 years of true real-life memories she shared with Elliot), then the easiest course of action would be for Nioi to draw up a reading list of good books to read and a viewing list of good films to watch whereby she could vicariously encounter life situations though the fictional characters.
So now we see the result of Nioi's handiwork. Ellen gets a "life experience" completely devoid of any free will up to the point of tagging along on an alternate-Ellen's crush on Archie, up to the point of alt-Ellen's sleeping with Archie.
This is pretty sick.