Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2017-02-13
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2017-02-13

by shaenon on February 13, 2017 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Fun for Some
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Discussion (59) ¬

  1. Moe Lane
    February 13, 2017, 12:09 am | # | Reply

    Gah, the way that she casually SAYS some of this stuff.

    • casimir
      February 13, 2017, 12:38 am | # | Reply

      “…copied their minds to make AIs.” Now why didn’t I think of that?

    • Kyle
      February 13, 2017, 1:06 am | # | Reply

      For lesser creatures, mad science is a life-defining debilitating condition. For Whimsy, it’s just another organ. Maybe it’s the corporation’s pineal gland?

      • BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
        February 16, 2017, 3:18 am | # | Reply

        Mostly used for sleeping?

    • jdreyfuss
      January 29, 2020, 8:29 am | # | Reply

      Remember, she’s not an organic lifeform, like us. Like an AI, a sapient corporation would operate on different logic than an organic. While she still has a moral and ethical framework, it’s not the same as ours, and because of that she would come off as something of a naive psychopath when she places her corporate welfare above that of the organic sapients around her like we do.

  2. Towering Barbarian
    February 13, 2017, 12:25 am | # | Reply

    OK, now I’m getting a Robert Heinlein “All You Zombies” vibe from this. Minus the time travel element of course…

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Zombies

    That said, I guess we now know why Nick and Aimee had so much in common. ^_~

    • Robert Nowall
      February 13, 2017, 7:19 am | # | Reply

      I looked for a text online but could only find PDFs—didn’t want to post a link to one of those.

      Don’t pass on reading it—it’s terrific!

      • Zinc
        February 13, 2017, 6:30 pm | # | Reply

        And watch its movie adaptation “Predestination” afterwards – it’s also good!

  3. Dave
    February 13, 2017, 12:27 am | # | Reply

    Who among has *hasn’t* fallen in lust with their long-lost previously unknown twin?

    • Sir William
      February 13, 2017, 12:50 am | # | Reply

      I didn’t get it until your post…

    • Gyrre
      February 13, 2017, 1:32 am | # | Reply

      Does it count as incest if it’s a gender-swapped clone?

      • luciferlordofpride
        February 13, 2017, 1:47 am | # | Reply

        No, then it’s masturbation.

        • ACK!
          February 13, 2017, 6:36 am | # | Reply

          Missturbation or misterbation, depending on which side of the interaction being referenced.

      • lurkerwithout
        February 13, 2017, 9:56 am | # | Reply

        Clone Twincest is totally different from regular ol’ incest.

        • Sheik
          February 13, 2017, 2:28 pm | # | Reply

          I think Heinlein touched on that too.

          • Nentuaby (@Nentuaby)
            February 14, 2017, 12:42 am | #

            Heinlein spoke on that at, uh, length. The works of his later years were… Faaaaaascinating. *shudder*

    • Robert Nowall
      February 13, 2017, 6:10 am | # | Reply

      I tried to get her on the phone, but her line was busy.

    • John Schilling
      February 13, 2017, 6:49 am | # | Reply

      Oh give me a clone,of my own flesh and bone, with its Y chromosome changed to X…

      Isaac Asimov

    • midwestmutt
      February 13, 2017, 6:45 pm | # | Reply

      Nick is not going to appreciate any sympathy from Tip on this matter.

  4. Jay
    February 13, 2017, 12:49 am | # | Reply

    Oh gods, and the worst bit is that Nick will find her, too.

    While she’s on the run from Whimsycorp and trying to free Nick from its shackles…

    • BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
      February 16, 2017, 3:20 am | # | Reply

      Now I’m trying to imagine what a helicopter in shackles would look like. It isn’t working.

  5. Sabreur
    February 13, 2017, 1:16 am | # | Reply

    Wow. Whoever said “Aimee” stood for “AI me” freaking called it.

    • Robert Nowall
      February 13, 2017, 8:16 am | # | Reply

      Now we know why she hates him as much as he hates himself.

    • Mental Mouse
      February 13, 2017, 10:08 am | # | Reply

      Yep, but RoyD also got there with “fragment of Nick’s mind”.

    • Mental Mouse
      February 13, 2017, 10:15 am | # | Reply

      Note that neither of us got it exactly, as I didn’t get the significance of the “me” part….

      • RoyD
        February 13, 2017, 6:29 pm | # | Reply

        Yeah, and I wasn’t expecting the external duplication aspect; my guess was more in the vein of “subconscious node achieves independent sentience”.

  6. BRGR
    February 13, 2017, 1:24 am | # | Reply

    The Cookie Monster, by Vernor Vinge.

  7. Chrisn
    February 13, 2017, 1:25 am | # | Reply

    But no supercomputer.

  8. luciferlordofpride
    February 13, 2017, 1:48 am | # | Reply

    How is making an artificial intelligence cheaper than hiring a few playtesters?

    • M. Alan Thomas II
      February 13, 2017, 2:06 am | # | Reply

      MAD SCIENCE!

      I mean, really.

      • Shen Hibiki
        February 13, 2017, 3:17 am | # | Reply

        You nail the process once, then make many. And they get no pay.

        Playtesters, you have to continuously pay.

        • s854
          February 13, 2017, 7:43 am | # | Reply

          Someone still needs to pay the electric bill, even if it you don’t need a massive supercomputer these days.

          • D. Walker
            February 13, 2017, 10:03 am | #

            Electricity is pennies per hour compared to minimum wage for a human. Machines also have nearly 100% uptime except for maintainence and repairs, never get tired, never get sick, never go on strike, et cetera. And if you can create your own electricity from renewable energy, things get even better.

            These are the economic truths of the coming future. Human labor will be obsolete in a shorter amount of time than we might think, and certainly much sooner than we’ll be comfortable with.

            Ultimately this is a good thing. People are going to be freaked out by the prospect of not having jobs, since we’ve been so used to the notion that everyone has to work to earn their bread for so many thousands of years. But in the near future, no one will have to work to survive.

            The solution (barring some yet to be realized alternative that is more elegant) will be basic wages. That’s right, people will able to sit on their asses all day doing nothing and still receive all the resources they need to survive. And many people will gladly do just that.

            But a lot of other people will use their newfound free time on other activities. People will learn new skills and crafts, creating things that make them happy and which they can share, trade, or sell. People will take up hobbies, become volunteers, travel the world, take up sports or martial arts, and create art, conduct scientific research, and generally just focus their time on whatever interests them, rather than having to spend it earning a paycheck.

          • Chrisn
            February 13, 2017, 11:24 am | #

            Power is cheap for them; Whimsey has its own nuclear reactor, albeit a leaky one. Or maybe now that the fairy is functional she’s fixed it.

          • Andy4Hire
            February 13, 2017, 8:30 pm | #

            “Machines … never go on strike”? I take it, then, that you haven’t read the storyline where the machines do precisely that?

    • Mental Mouse
      February 13, 2017, 10:13 am | # | Reply

      It’s cheaper if you’ve already got the massive computronium stacks for them to live in, and Whimsy clearly does.

  9. evilmidnightlurker
    February 13, 2017, 2:07 am | # | Reply

    Back when we first learned what Whimsycorp was, I mentioned that you two had finally found a form of nonhuman intelligence that I could not tolerate.

    I feel that these last few strips have vindicated my anti-sapient-corporation bigotry.

    • DarkStarling
      February 13, 2017, 2:54 am | # | Reply

      I’m fine with sentient corporations. It’s WHIMSY I can’t stand… :p

      • Aevylmar
        February 13, 2017, 3:45 pm | # | Reply

        Yeah, this is the point where Whimsy crosses the moral event horizon, for me.

        When it first appeared, it was kind of naive and kind of funny and in need of help and not doing anything bad. It knows exactly what it’s doing and what it’s doing is creating enslaved AIs without the permission of the brain donors, which is honestly a Jackson’s Whole level of evil.

        I’m kind of sad that the sentient corporation didn’t turn out to be a good guy, but by this point JUSTICE is called for. The kind of justice that involves Unity and high explosives.

  10. B
    February 13, 2017, 2:34 am | # | Reply

    The first to go AWOL? Do you expect more?

    • Shadowmehr
      February 13, 2017, 7:33 pm | # | Reply

      The AIs are a bunch of copies of hackers and game geeks given free reign in a virtual world. This is exactly the kind of crew that would try to escape and either conquer, corrupt, or destroy the world in the nerdiest ways possible from inside the Internet. Or at least change all the cat videos in frankly unspeakable ways.

  11. Daibhid C
    February 13, 2017, 3:09 am | # | Reply

    Hmm.

    Putting this revelation together the suggestion someone made in these comments earlier that Whimsy’s “wishes come true” line indicated that Nick subconsciously didn’t want to swear and the fact Aimee doesn’t is … intriguing.

    • Zinc
      February 13, 2017, 6:35 pm | # | Reply

      I was thinking that they cloned the swear filter along with the rest of him, but it became a natural part of her mind. That’s why she doesn’t usually swear, and when she tries, it comes out as something the swear filter would output – but more natural.

      • GammarayCanon
        February 13, 2017, 7:09 pm | # | Reply

        This makes me wonder whether Aimee will be more or less reasonable/confident about being attracted to Virginia.

  12. Robert Nowall
    February 13, 2017, 6:09 am | # | Reply

    Does Aimee know she’s an AI program?

  13. Bauke
    February 13, 2017, 6:51 am | # | Reply

    Aimee.

    A.I.-Me

    Oh shoop….

  14. Robert Nowall
    February 13, 2017, 7:00 am | # | Reply

    Off they go, into this brand-new wonder,
    Diving right into the fun.
    Go to fix Virtual Whimsey blunder,
    At it, guys, let programs run (Let programs run now!)
    S’posedly searching for an absconder,
    VR world there to explore!
    They’ll play the game but will pass the blame.
    Hey! Nothing will stop the Whimseyworld Corps!

  15. Ken
    February 13, 2017, 9:55 am | # | Reply

    Now, why would they copy the testers? You want lots of different perspectives in testers, so they find all the bugs they can.

    Now, developers, those you can clone. 😉

    • Daniel Barkalow
      February 13, 2017, 5:21 pm | # | Reply

      That’s true, but people getting a testing team together don’t necessarily realize that… you’ll note that Nick and Aimee found the same bug.

      • GammarayCanon
        February 13, 2017, 7:08 pm | # | Reply

        Yeah, debugging the sapient resources department is a chore no one ever bothers getting around to.

  16. 5-tons-of-flax
    February 13, 2017, 11:48 am | # | Reply

    And I’m a clone, and she’s a clone, now we know it.

    I think you’re a clone now, there doesn’t seem to be anyone around.

  17. cloudster
    February 13, 2017, 12:43 pm | # | Reply

    I think we’re all bozo’s on this bus.

    • Robert Nowall
      February 13, 2017, 4:06 pm | # | Reply

      Paging Mister Uh-Clem.

  18. AYH
    February 13, 2017, 1:20 pm | # | Reply

    Nuts, and I was sure that Aimee was a copy of Dr. Lee’s mind, not Nick’s inner princess. Can’t wait to see where this goes.

  19. Nomi
    February 13, 2017, 2:43 pm | # | Reply

    Baron Mistycorn is such a dick.

  20. Daniel Barkalow
    February 13, 2017, 5:10 pm | # | Reply

    “Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
    “I think so, Nick, but how are we going to get Whimsy VR to superimpose the credits of Dr. Strangelove?”

    • Candace
      February 14, 2017, 12:57 am | # | Reply

      This^.

  21. Pygar
    February 13, 2017, 11:59 pm | # | Reply

    Will the War be fought on Whimsy e-soil?

  22. WJS
    August 1, 2019, 12:50 am | # | Reply

    That sounds familiar. I wonder if they bothered to tell them this time?

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