Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2019-05-28
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2019-05-28

by shaenon on May 28, 2019 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Green Noah
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Discussion (54) ¬

  1. Frank
    May 28, 2019, 12:06 am | # | Reply

    Dr Lee, she’s giving you the answer. The horses wind them, of course!

  2. David B Huber
    May 28, 2019, 12:07 am | # | Reply

    A true Mad has as little concern for the Laws of Thermodynamics as the Roadrunner has for the Law of Gravity…

    • awgiedawgie
      May 28, 2019, 12:14 am | # | Reply

      Virginia has an advantage over most Mads, in that she actually understands how Mad science works. Of course, it’s also a curse, because it tends to violate the laws of science, and that really bugs her.

  3. Moe Lane
    May 28, 2019, 12:11 am | # | Reply

    Because this is the Narbonverse, Virginia, where science is effectively head-canon.

    • awgiedawgie
      May 28, 2019, 12:17 am | # | Reply

      And a head-cannon is the product of Mad science.

      But she just wants things to make sense!

      • warpzone32
        May 28, 2019, 1:44 am | # | Reply

        Then she should discover and publish more accurate natural laws.

    • fromthedarkorblackwater
      May 28, 2019, 5:22 am | # | Reply

      My new head cannon

      https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/new.png

  4. David B Huber
    May 28, 2019, 12:15 am | # | Reply

    I envision a percolation similar to the way penguins endure winter – the robot in back migrates to the front so every robot takes a turn in the rear rank but gets wound whenever necessary.

    • awgiedawgie
      May 28, 2019, 12:22 am | # | Reply

      Or… the one in front steps aside after being wound, and allows everyone else to pass him. That way he’s not expending any energy before taking his place at the back.

      • David B Huber
        May 28, 2019, 12:25 am | # | Reply

        Your Kung Fu is better than mine 🙂

    • dornbeast
      May 28, 2019, 1:26 am | # | Reply

      I was visualizing them forming a circle and winding each other, and somehow ending up ahead. It still violates the laws of thermodynamics, but at least something makes sense.

      • Efogoto
        May 28, 2019, 1:34 am | # | Reply

        While reading your comment, the Escher staircase in Ascending and Descending came to mind. I love that place.

        • AltarBoy
          May 28, 2019, 2:12 am | # | Reply

          It’s a great place if you aren’t prone to falling down stairs.

          • Forrest M Davis
            April 23, 2020, 6:08 pm | #

            Or falling up stairs, for that matter.

  5. palenoue
    May 28, 2019, 12:20 am | # | Reply

    “Why doesn’t anyone listen when I yell science?”
    That should be a banner at the next climate/extinction protest, if not a T-shirt worn by scientists whenever they present their findings to congress.

    • Pygar
      May 28, 2019, 12:36 am | # | Reply

      It got worn out over the XX/XY chromosome thing…

    • Xerxes Aragon
      May 28, 2019, 9:45 am | # | Reply

      I could also envision that line coming from Agatha Heterodyne.

  6. chh01
    May 28, 2019, 12:20 am | # | Reply

    The universe is closed, and warped. If you go forward enough, you end up where you started, but upside down. The robot chain becomes fully self-winding if you use enough robots to span the universe (it helps if you make them really small so they don’t get into each other’s way.)

    • jrwences
      May 28, 2019, 2:18 am | # | Reply

      The Long and Möbius Road.

      • Shadowmehr
        May 28, 2019, 8:43 pm | # | Reply

        I think I still have that album . . .

    • sweetuncle
      May 28, 2019, 12:43 pm | # | Reply

      We’ve all done that. Thanks for reminding us….

  7. David B Huber
    May 28, 2019, 12:23 am | # | Reply

    I think you just explained dark matter!

  8. Barbara K
    May 28, 2019, 12:37 am | # | Reply

    You don’t even have to go into non-Euclidean spatial systems; just put all the wind-up robots in a circle to wind each other.
    Conservation of energy’s another matter (no pun intended). They can’t self-energize forever, as energy’s being expended in other ways than circle-f self-winding. Especially if they’re gonna fight.
    However, Mad Science (and life as we know it) can run on Entropy, especially if you don’t mind things heading in the direction of random chaos. (This use of Entropy is probably what gives Unity such strength and motivation.) it’s easy to make things fall apart.

  9. Bruce A Munro
    May 28, 2019, 1:27 am | # | Reply

    Everything is ultimately powered by the Rule of Funny.Laughter is not only the best medicine, but also a clean fuel, a dessert topping, and a floor wax!

    • awgiedawgie
      May 28, 2019, 9:41 am | # | Reply

      It also makes an excellent lubricant.

  10. greenknight32
    May 28, 2019, 1:42 am | # | Reply

    So Tigerlily constructed not just a clockwork army, but a perpetual motion clockwork army. That’s what I call truly mad science!

    • warpzone32
      May 28, 2019, 2:09 am | # | Reply

      Perpetual motion machines are useless in combat. They just keep going faster and faster!

      • Bruce A Munro
        May 28, 2019, 2:17 am | # | Reply

        Well, if you use them as Kamikazes…

      • awgiedawgie
        May 28, 2019, 9:45 am | # | Reply

        Perpetual motion machines don’t necessarily go faster and faster, but they do keep going, which is very useful in combat.

  11. Bruce A Munro
    May 28, 2019, 3:45 am | # | Reply

    “Tell me that makes sense”

    Now there’s fine example of the undependable nature of Mads. She can make a vending machine into a device that quick-clones human bodies, but she doesn’t get _digestion_.

    (Which is why you don’t ask a Mad for help with your digestive troubles, or you might get a stomach made of gears with external tanks of oil of vitriol attached to your spine)

    • Hannibal's Lectern
      May 28, 2019, 7:04 am | # | Reply

      And this is where my Inner Ginny starts screaming about how YOU CAN’T DO THAT, because oil of vitriol (active ingredient H2SO4) is NOT an acceptable substitute for stomach acid (active ingredient HCl)… Never mind the gears and tanks and glass tubing (in corkscrews, of course); that’s just engineering and it can be as mad as you want, but you have to get the chemistry right!!

      Dangit, I think way too much like Ms. Lee…

  12. Schismatism
    May 28, 2019, 5:15 am | # | Reply

    Look, Dr. Lee, at the quantum level, energy seems to spring from nothing.

    • Seph
      May 28, 2019, 8:53 am | # | Reply

      And then go back to nothing. You can’t make use of it for macroscopic periods of time.

      • David B Huber
        May 28, 2019, 9:41 am | # | Reply

        Unless you actually use the springs.

        • Moe Lane
          May 28, 2019, 11:14 am | # | Reply

          So THAT’S how she does it.

  13. Dr. Steve
    May 28, 2019, 9:20 am | # | Reply

    Power or energy may be understood as being available any time there is a difference. For example, when a battery is charged electrical power is available because there is a difference between the two poles of the battery. When it is completely discharged, no voltage is measurable between the two poles, so no energy/power is available. The same general idea may be applied to understanding energy available through kinetic motion. Water flows because there is a difference in altitude. That may be a large difference in a short space (such as a waterfall) or a smaller distance over a greater space (such as a meandering stream stream). That difference in altitude enables the water to flow – which then may turn a water wheel or electric generator, etc.

    The power of paradox may also be a source of energy. It can’t happen but it does and the difference between the two provides the power…. simple.

    • David B Huber
      May 28, 2019, 9:45 am | # | Reply

      So magic is powered by the distance between personal belief and consensus reality… Hm.

      • felbloodreaper
        May 28, 2019, 10:46 pm | # | Reply

        That’s literally what the circles are for.

        The outside is different from the inside.

  14. Robert Nowall
    May 28, 2019, 10:09 am | # | Reply

    What’s to object? They’re intelligent creatures. (Well, by the loose standards that operate in the Skin-Horse universe, they are.) They can see the benefit of winding each other up, probably.

  15. Robert Nowall
    May 28, 2019, 10:10 am | # | Reply

    (By the way, does anybody besides me see a tiny, tiny smiley-face primitive emoji down in the scrolled-down extreme lower left corner of this webpage?)

    • awgiedawgie
      May 28, 2019, 10:42 am | # | Reply

      Now that you mention it, yes, I do.

      • Robert Nowall
        May 28, 2019, 11:43 am | # | Reply

        Good. I thought I was hallucinating.

        • Moe Lane
          May 28, 2019, 8:16 pm | # | Reply

          BEWARE, FOR HE OF THE ABSENT PARTITION HAS LOOKED UPON THE FORBIDDEN SIGIL, AS FORETOLD BY THE CHROMIUM MARGINALIA. MAKE READY YOUR VISUALIZATIONS, FOR THE TIME OF THE LAST RECTIFICATION IS UPON US.

        • Shadowmehr
          May 28, 2019, 8:47 pm | # | Reply

          You could still be hallucinating, but along with the (: at the bottom, you could be hallucinating comments to your post – kind of the cyberware equivalent of hearing voices.

          Sometimes I’ve wondered if I’m someone else’s hallucination, then I realize few people have that boring an imagination.

    • siraureus
      May 28, 2019, 2:13 pm | # | Reply

      Looking at the page source, it appears that it’s an image used by a wordpress plugin to track page hits.

      • felbloodreaper
        May 28, 2019, 10:49 pm | # | Reply

        Wow, such a whimsical easter egg turned out to be somewhat sinister.

        • warpzone32
          May 31, 2019, 1:02 am | # | Reply

          It’s okay! It’s just being used for advertising purposes!

          You know, all those ad banners you’re constantly seeing for robot parts and fashion gowns!

  16. AJ Milne
    May 28, 2019, 12:10 pm | # | Reply

    As much fun as is the rule of funny stuff, because geek, I immediately started trying to imagine the technology that would make an army of wind-up robots at least not obviously break the first law… Without having to wind them all yourself, natch…

    I figure you’d want something a bit like the Borg recharging platform, except, obviously, with lots of fun steampunk pipes and a huge flywheel. Possibly water powered. Hook up to the flywheel wrong, and hilarity ensues, where hilarity involves smaller wind-up automatons being flung off at high speeds into the upper atmosphere…

    A field-transportable one you could put behind the lines of a robot war, would have to be powered by a Tokamak or something. Because mad science.

    … for wind-ups that couldn’t make it back to the platform under their own power on time, you probably want something like those ‘start carts’ they used to start the SR-71’s engines, only all-terrain, for field restarts. Those should probably use gas turbines or something, tho’, again, because hell, we’re already doing a Tokamak.

    • awgiedawgie
      May 28, 2019, 12:52 pm | # | Reply

      All they really need to do is harness the energy of the Earth’s rotation.

      • Sheik
        May 28, 2019, 2:24 pm | # | Reply

        Or the differential potential of fast vs slow molecules ala Maxwell’s demon.

    • Barking Monkey
      May 28, 2019, 4:48 pm | # | Reply

      It would seem like in some climates you could use the robot’s shell as a solar oven to self wind a metal coil spring through thermal expansion. Not super efficient or fast, but the powers ‘free’.

      • awgiedawgie
        May 28, 2019, 7:40 pm | # | Reply

        Perhaps you could use solar panels to power an electric motor that would wind the springs. You could store the energy in batteries until the windings reach a certain level of “unwinding”, which would then flip a switch and turn on the motor to wind it, until it reached sufficient tension to flip the switch to turn the motor off again. Yes, it still might violate the laws of thermodynamics, but it’s Mad science, so who (other than Virginia) really cares?

        • Shadowmehr
          May 28, 2019, 8:50 pm | # | Reply

          You mean, besides us?

          • awgiedawgie
            May 29, 2019, 12:12 am | #

            Well, I certainly don’t care if it violates the laws of thermodynamics. But then, I’ve always tended toward Madness myself. It’s much more fun than sanity.

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