The time guys are ticketing dragon lady for a paradox, which leads her to come here at the beginning of the storyline, which causes her to become the dragon that sits on her car, which is the paradox she’s now getting ticketed for by the time guys.
Whoa. The Bureau of Temporal Anomalies moves in, and the sneaky gate closes. I fully expect the dept of metafiction to directly address us next…
(For those of you utterly confused by my comment, the sneaky gate was the practice of typing in predicted urls @ girlgeniusonline.com to see the occasional comic a few hours to a day early. Here, one could navigate to the image directory and then see the whole week early, sometimes. But today, The Bureau came in AND the sneaky gate closed. Coincidence? Maybe, but time travel messes with coincidence…)
And then we discover that past/future Ira has a voice changer that he uses to trick the BTA into never actually scanning him, via faking a bootstrap paradox.
Call from self saving present self work? Sure, but you’re just kicking the can down the road. LATER you’re gonna have to do that research to pay yourself back.
No, you just keep working on the investigation as a whole, and when you’ve solved it, you call your past self to say not to bother with dead ends. They never have to bother testing Ira, because they’ll find out that his apparent future sight was just being primed by [spoilers removed].
I never did get that about time travel stories. The future self travels to the past to fix things or save work for the present self? Why? We hard working future type are going to bust our humps so those gold-bricking past selfs can get an early lunch? Fat chance!
codebracker: I’m not sure. Her insurance company said a dragon sat on her car. This doesn’t mean that it had anything to do with the repairs she was claiming for then.
I wouldn’t put it past an insurance company to deny a claim based on something unrelated which hadn’t happened yet, though. Especially in a world where some people can predict the future.
I want a cell phone dialer app that has a feature where it will remind you to make a call to yourself when it’s about to be the time when you received a call from yourself that’s in your call log, provided that you’ve now got the phone number the call came from.
Question: Are these people physically unhinged in time, or do they just have devices that register anomalies and allow communication with the past and future?
um, what?
The time guys are ticketing dragon lady for a paradox, which leads her to come here at the beginning of the storyline, which causes her to become the dragon that sits on her car, which is the paradox she’s now getting ticketed for by the time guys.
The punchline is causality.
Looks like I was right about Ira…
Okay, who had the bright idea to infect Gallifrey with bureaucrats?
Robert Holmes, I believe.
Robert Holmes, back in 1976. “The Deadly Assassin.” Redundant title, excellent story.
https://books.google.com/books?id=w-GQCwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT106&dq=%22a%20bureaucratic%2C%20stuffy%2C%20desiccated%20society%22&pg=PT106#v=onepage&q=%22a%20bureaucratic,%20stuffy,%20desiccated%20society%22&f=false
Nonsense. They could be INEPT assassins.
The title that inspired the Comic Relief special _The Curse of Fatal Death_.
Whoa. The Bureau of Temporal Anomalies moves in, and the sneaky gate closes. I fully expect the dept of metafiction to directly address us next…
(For those of you utterly confused by my comment, the sneaky gate was the practice of typing in predicted urls @ girlgeniusonline.com to see the occasional comic a few hours to a day early. Here, one could navigate to the image directory and then see the whole week early, sometimes. But today, The Bureau came in AND the sneaky gate closed. Coincidence? Maybe, but time travel messes with coincidence…)
Jonathan Fisher
I like their glasses. Shiny!
And then we discover that past/future Ira has a voice changer that he uses to trick the BTA into never actually scanning him, via faking a bootstrap paradox.
Worse — the future self already “knows” Ira’s clean, so he can call back, forming a stable loop protecting Ira.
Of course, Ira has looped through his own past so often that he could probably cover for Heinlein’s Jane, a terminator, and a Morlock/Eloi team.
Call from self saving present self work? Sure, but you’re just kicking the can down the road. LATER you’re gonna have to do that research to pay yourself back.
Maybe, but if future woman-with-unconventional-haircut is as annoying as the present version, she deserves the extra work.
Fortunately for Kay, I doubt they actually have the authority to put valid parking tickets on cars left outside a derilict building.
No, you just keep working on the investigation as a whole, and when you’ve solved it, you call your past self to say not to bother with dead ends. They never have to bother testing Ira, because they’ll find out that his apparent future sight was just being primed by [spoilers removed].
I never did get that about time travel stories. The future self travels to the past to fix things or save work for the present self? Why? We hard working future type are going to bust our humps so those gold-bricking past selfs can get an early lunch? Fat chance!
A paradox?
I thought that there was a dragon riding on that car.
Maybe Manifesta is giving Doctors Riley and Sanders a lift?
There was a paradox there. It’s rather flat now and easier for these two to pick up. Fits very neatly in the envelope.
They’ve got to sort out the time travel shenanigans, and that requires a ticket.
The paradox is that she was in the comletition because her car was crushed by a dragon.
Which hapened 5 minutes ago.
codebracker: I’m not sure. Her insurance company said a dragon sat on her car. This doesn’t mean that it had anything to do with the repairs she was claiming for then.
I wouldn’t put it past an insurance company to deny a claim based on something unrelated which hadn’t happened yet, though. Especially in a world where some people can predict the future.
Doesn’t Manifesta still have to talk to these guys in her future? Unless they’ve already talked to her in their past…
I like these guys! Not only do they rock the chronotech, they get rad glasses!
I want a cell phone dialer app that has a feature where it will remind you to make a call to yourself when it’s about to be the time when you received a call from yourself that’s in your call log, provided that you’ve now got the phone number the call came from.
Question: Are these people physically unhinged in time, or do they just have devices that register anomalies and allow communication with the past and future?
Oh those jerks! They’re dropping Skin Horse comic spoilers!
Oh also ticketing that poor dragon’s car. That’s rude too.