Unity by Claire Connelly
Shaenon: Claire writes, “I redraw bits of the strip almost every evening; it started as a way to get nice avatar images, but has ended up being a longer term project.”
That is…amazing, and thank you very much for this illustration of Unity about to set her arm on fire.
Channing: Great work, Claire! The grin is particularly unsettling.
Ouch.
If you put your arm in a heat source, and it burns to a crisp, then it was never really yours.
I think that’s how the saying goes, anyway.
Well, in Unity’s case, that is literally true. I also get the impression that she doesn’t feel pain when she catches one of her limbs on fire. Otherwise, she would learn to avoid doing that.
The black goo that is the essence of Unity was probably designed specifically to exclude pain as we know it.
Pain in any biological system is meant to avoid injury, an often lethal condition in Nature.
Unity has no such constraint although I suppose she does have other aspects of a nervous system. I remember vividly having stitches under a local anesthetic. It seemed I could actually feel the texture of the suture as it ran through, but no pain per se.
Sheik: I think Unity did say something at some point along the lines of her not having nerve endings because she’s a super-soldier. I don’t know when, though, or exactly what she said.
That happened to me last week. It was freaky.
I once stuck my finger in a light socket. I can attest that, for normal people, “ouch” is an understatement. At least I didn’t set my arm on fire.
When I’ve gotten an electrical shock, it’s been more of a sudden ZAP! than actual pain—there would’ve been if I hadn’t reflexively jerked away from it, along with burns and such.
(This is as good a place as any to say that what Unity stuck her finger in might or might not be electricity. It could be…but with Dr. Lee, you never know…)
It appears to be a small Van de Graaff generator, which – as Madblood would tell you – is an essential item in any Mad scientist’s lab.
Yup. I went back and looked at the original, and that may be part of one that Dr. Lee is carrying while fleeing from the now-burning lab.