A certain amount of difficulty is to be expected in the introduction of any new technology. That’s why a reliable supply of test subjects is so important.
I hope they can at least freeze the output before dropping it. Being able to say that they’ve dropped icy BMs all across the country is probably worth a few Mad Science points.
A woman in a halter top in “Kung Fu”? A series set in the American Old West in the late 19th century? Some mishtake, Shirley? Has Sweetheart finally found something she can get drunk on?
Really? I did NOT know of that one; I presume that it either didn’t make its way over to this side of the pond or wasn’t on at prime time; certainly it didn’t catch my attention. But the comment makes sense now. Thanks!
Just checked the web site and it looks like it had a rather limited international release. And the UK here isn’t listed as one of them. So I plead forgiveable ignorance. Was it any good?
Considering every community they’ve walked through is likely awash with waste from crushed sewage pipes I don’t think they’ll notice a few toilet flushes. Even assuming they’re avoiding above ground structures the amount of destruction this thing must be doing just walking around in a country with buried utilities has to be massive. I’d say humans and sapient machines are definitely being indirectly killed. Lost power, water, and sewage service not to mention the gas explosions.
The thing can probably step over rail lines and single lane roads, but getting over a four lane divided highway without taking a lane or two out looks problematic.
I have to think the only thing saving them from a retaliatory airstrike is reality blindness. Sweetheart finally has her rampage.
Annex One behaves like a walking building except for all the ways in which it doesn’t. There are no doubt narrativium-strength shock dampers and inertial impact dampers and whatnot so that the walking building only makes an impact when it would be funny.
Is this really how much people think about infrastructure?
It’s never said, but I guessed that the building’s power comes from excess from the 3 fusion generators. That could turn out to be wrong if someone thinks it’s funny that they’re stumbling around in the dark at night.
So here’s the thing. All toilets work by flushing. Flushing requires water. Where is the water for flushing supposed to come from? As soon as the building disconnected from the water supply intake, all the water in the building should have drained out the pipe that had formed the connection, while the broken water source gushed continuously. Most commercial buildings use Flushometers rather than tanks for toilets, so there should have been no working toilets after the break. If they did, unusually, have tank toilets, then you have a bunch of toilets that can each be used exactly once (and which are holding water that could be used for other things).
Nobody is complaining about being thirsty, or needing a shower they can’t take, or about washing clothes. * Chris, above, doesn’t mention that the number of putative unflushed tank toilets is lowering. Did Tigerlily hook up a wormhole to a water source to supply the building? But if you can make a wormhole to get water, why not make one to connect to a sewer system for the outflow?
Eh, it’s easier to drop a poop joke than to figure out sewer and water connections. I am also confident that like most poop-related matters in fiction, the subject will never come up again. Cognitive flushes don’t require water.
___________________________________________________________
*: Does Annex One even have a laundry room? Did Tigerlily whip up a spring-powered washing machine and dryer set? “I said gentle cycle, Laundrybot!”
A similar problem exists with St. Charlie. How is their large population given water and food and have their wastes disposed of?
For that matter, they’ve famously got White Castle. How do supplies of buns, burgers, fries, &c get into the St. Charlie franchise for preparation and serving to customers?
DAJTAJ
It could be wormholes all around, but nobody mentions it.
Mad science. Everything that works works in an unpredictable manner to those not blessed by madness. While you might believe that this is an unreasonable expectation, this is also a building with living, sapient water that is flowing through its’ lower depths, which might well have ended up being utilized for the toilets, and possibly have had its’ sapience limited. It also has sapient crystalline constructs. In that scenario, it’s possible that the water more or less just throws out the tainted materials, and then returns to the bowl, after flushing.
Of course, there’s a MILLION ways that the world has been optimized by humanity, for the current cultures humanity has, everything from buildings to wiring to computer systems that you’re arguing on to electricity to heating and cooling systems (I’m not even referencing AC, imagine how the giant mech heats up at certain joints just from trying to move…), to a million million other tiny things. Hell, you want to test your suspension of disbelief? That entity doesn’t move its’ whole body every step, it instead lurches different parts at slightly different speeds, the fact they’ve not had incidents of people being thrown into walls, shattering every bone in their body, is a small blessing.
But, and say it with me here. It. Is. A. Story. Being made for Comedic Purposes. It is not being made to be true to the real world. (I mean, goodness sake, conservation of Mass, meet Artie.) In the setting, while Mad Scientists -immediately- seem to be able to do literally whatever they want, they tend to have issues with the ‘little things’, like ‘will they personally survive’ or mundane details like ‘pooping’.
Additionally, if it helps you out? Chris might be an unreliable narrator here, just putting that out there. Did -he- see the waste dropping out of the building?
If the liquid entity was handling sewage, that is definitely something that would be worth mentioning. All sorts of potential problems seem likely, including getting loud mocking commentary when people are trying to have a quiet solitary moment to deal with elimination.
More to the point, the fate of the basement and its denizens has not been revealed. Did they take it along with them, or leave it to the hurricane? No one has thought it worth mentioning, either way. I kinda guessed that it had been forgotten and left behind. No silverfish have appeared to offer to perform an opera to raise the spirits of the Colossi.
But good point about Chris being possibly unreliable. What does he know about Tigerlily’s mojo-enabled powers? Maybe they do just handle sewage invisibly. There’s good funk, and then there’s the wrong kind of funk.
If they took the basement with them, they would have a sizable supply of water, considering it was flooded. They’d just need to purify it for drinking.
Although “liquid entity” doesn’t address the question of where drinking/cooking(?) water is coming from, even assuming the entity volunteered to handle wastewater and laundry, which is a pretty big assumption.
Would anyone even volunteer to wash their bodies using the liquid entity?
A non-mad solution would be to use reactor waste heat to boil the sewerage dry and sterile, then use the air conditioning system to condense the steam into potable water.
But what do I know. I’m only an engineer.
As for the laundry issue; of course Tigerlily has a laundry room set up somewhere in Annex One. Part of being funky is looking funky, and a majority of looking funky is having the right wardrobe. She probably converted one entire floor into a walk-in closet for her duds. And all of those outfits require maintenance and care. It wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t make two robots simply for that fact alone.
In the film Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino, Jules tells Vincent that he intends to “walk the Earth like Caine in Kung Fu.” (According to Wikipedia; I haven’t seen the film.)
We’ll move around despite a lack of worth.
We’ve got a structure for a hero’s berth.
In Annex One we’ll put on acts of mirth.
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
The building’s very, very old and black-and-blue.
We’ll all wear halter tops before we’re through.
Yes, we admit we’re copying “Kung Fu.”
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
We’ll right some wrongs and put those wrongs to right.
We’ll move with Annex One both day and night.
We’ll have a big Transformers-style fight.
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
From town to town, adventures are our guide.
Reality can run, but we know it can’t hide.
The toilet problem’s solved by wading in the tide.
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
We’ll move around despite a lack of worth.
We’ve got a structure for a hero’s berth.
In Annex One we’ll put on acts of mirth.
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
This is why Mad Science occasionally needs Sane Engineering to help with the details. ^_^
Or at least Mad Plumbing.
After thinking it through….
DON’T GO THERE!!
Mad Plumbing sounds like a good idea at first… then you have your first aquaintance with one of “Bloody Stupid” Johnsons works.
But what could be more relaxing than some organ music in the bathroom?
A complete lack of organ music in the bathroom?
I suppose that all depends on the organ music.
…or at least, whose organs.
A certain amount of difficulty is to be expected in the introduction of any new technology. That’s why a reliable supply of test subjects is so important.
Dibs on the flute!
What ever happened to it, anyway?
Later in his life David made his own, not sure if he did during the show.
I hope they can at least freeze the output before dropping it. Being able to say that they’ve dropped icy BMs all across the country is probably worth a few Mad Science points.
You were one step ahead of me on that one.
Or Chris and Marcie can have it irradiated before it drops.
That might be a useful sanity measure in our world, but in the Narbonverse probably leads to the Attack of the Giant Mr. Hankey.
_sanitary_ measure
Y’know… starting an arms race like that really stinks.
You just had to drop that one, didn’t you
I’m sure it will all come out ok.
Cut the crap!
Especially if Unity is using them.
You really don’t want to know how the beautiful woman in a halter-top was involved. She didn’t come out of it well.
She’s probably one of the people using the toilets.
Oh, you meant in “Kung Fu”.
Sorry… my bad.
Sweetheart shares some of my interests in halter tops.
I can’t recall ever seeing Unity in a halter top. I think I’d like to keep it that way.
By the way, I see Chris dropped in to the Department of Jetpack Suppression and swiped a T-shirt…
Kickstarter idea?
There are a few towns where the droppings would be an improvement.
Or, like San Francisco, simply unnoticed.
A woman in a halter top in “Kung Fu”? A series set in the American Old West in the late 19th century? Some mishtake, Shirley? Has Sweetheart finally found something she can get drunk on?
“Kung Fu: The Legend Contiues” was set in modern times, It aired for about 4 years in the mid 90’s.
Oh, and David Carradine played Kwai Chang Cain, the grandson of the original.
Really? I did NOT know of that one; I presume that it either didn’t make its way over to this side of the pond or wasn’t on at prime time; certainly it didn’t catch my attention. But the comment makes sense now. Thanks!
Just checked the web site and it looks like it had a rather limited international release. And the UK here isn’t listed as one of them. So I plead forgiveable ignorance. Was it any good?
Meh. I don’t remember much about it, and I’m pretty sure I watched every episode. It was a 90’s reboot of a 70’s show.
Except Sweetheart specified “Kung Fu”, not “Kung Fu: The Legend Never Ends”
Clearly you have not seen traditional Spanish tops, the kind that keeps the shoulders uncovered
Considering every community they’ve walked through is likely awash with waste from crushed sewage pipes I don’t think they’ll notice a few toilet flushes. Even assuming they’re avoiding above ground structures the amount of destruction this thing must be doing just walking around in a country with buried utilities has to be massive. I’d say humans and sapient machines are definitely being indirectly killed. Lost power, water, and sewage service not to mention the gas explosions.
The thing can probably step over rail lines and single lane roads, but getting over a four lane divided highway without taking a lane or two out looks problematic.
I have to think the only thing saving them from a retaliatory airstrike is reality blindness. Sweetheart finally has her rampage.
Annex One behaves like a walking building except for all the ways in which it doesn’t. There are no doubt narrativium-strength shock dampers and inertial impact dampers and whatnot so that the walking building only makes an impact when it would be funny.
“…like Jimmy was going to in that one episode of Better Call Saul!”
*Sigh.*
Is this really how much people think about infrastructure?
It’s never said, but I guessed that the building’s power comes from excess from the 3 fusion generators. That could turn out to be wrong if someone thinks it’s funny that they’re stumbling around in the dark at night.
So here’s the thing. All toilets work by flushing. Flushing requires water. Where is the water for flushing supposed to come from? As soon as the building disconnected from the water supply intake, all the water in the building should have drained out the pipe that had formed the connection, while the broken water source gushed continuously. Most commercial buildings use Flushometers rather than tanks for toilets, so there should have been no working toilets after the break. If they did, unusually, have tank toilets, then you have a bunch of toilets that can each be used exactly once (and which are holding water that could be used for other things).
Nobody is complaining about being thirsty, or needing a shower they can’t take, or about washing clothes. * Chris, above, doesn’t mention that the number of putative unflushed tank toilets is lowering. Did Tigerlily hook up a wormhole to a water source to supply the building? But if you can make a wormhole to get water, why not make one to connect to a sewer system for the outflow?
Eh, it’s easier to drop a poop joke than to figure out sewer and water connections. I am also confident that like most poop-related matters in fiction, the subject will never come up again. Cognitive flushes don’t require water.
___________________________________________________________
*: Does Annex One even have a laundry room? Did Tigerlily whip up a spring-powered washing machine and dryer set? “I said gentle cycle, Laundrybot!”
A similar problem exists with St. Charlie. How is their large population given water and food and have their wastes disposed of?
For that matter, they’ve famously got White Castle. How do supplies of buns, burgers, fries, &c get into the St. Charlie franchise for preparation and serving to customers?
DAJTAJ
It could be wormholes all around, but nobody mentions it.
The waste and- Supply are very closely connected…
Mad science. Everything that works works in an unpredictable manner to those not blessed by madness. While you might believe that this is an unreasonable expectation, this is also a building with living, sapient water that is flowing through its’ lower depths, which might well have ended up being utilized for the toilets, and possibly have had its’ sapience limited. It also has sapient crystalline constructs. In that scenario, it’s possible that the water more or less just throws out the tainted materials, and then returns to the bowl, after flushing.
Of course, there’s a MILLION ways that the world has been optimized by humanity, for the current cultures humanity has, everything from buildings to wiring to computer systems that you’re arguing on to electricity to heating and cooling systems (I’m not even referencing AC, imagine how the giant mech heats up at certain joints just from trying to move…), to a million million other tiny things. Hell, you want to test your suspension of disbelief? That entity doesn’t move its’ whole body every step, it instead lurches different parts at slightly different speeds, the fact they’ve not had incidents of people being thrown into walls, shattering every bone in their body, is a small blessing.
But, and say it with me here. It. Is. A. Story. Being made for Comedic Purposes. It is not being made to be true to the real world. (I mean, goodness sake, conservation of Mass, meet Artie.) In the setting, while Mad Scientists -immediately- seem to be able to do literally whatever they want, they tend to have issues with the ‘little things’, like ‘will they personally survive’ or mundane details like ‘pooping’.
Additionally, if it helps you out? Chris might be an unreliable narrator here, just putting that out there. Did -he- see the waste dropping out of the building?
Well…
If the liquid entity was handling sewage, that is definitely something that would be worth mentioning. All sorts of potential problems seem likely, including getting loud mocking commentary when people are trying to have a quiet solitary moment to deal with elimination.
More to the point, the fate of the basement and its denizens has not been revealed. Did they take it along with them, or leave it to the hurricane? No one has thought it worth mentioning, either way. I kinda guessed that it had been forgotten and left behind. No silverfish have appeared to offer to perform an opera to raise the spirits of the Colossi.
But good point about Chris being possibly unreliable. What does he know about Tigerlily’s mojo-enabled powers? Maybe they do just handle sewage invisibly. There’s good funk, and then there’s the wrong kind of funk.
If they took the basement with them, they would have a sizable supply of water, considering it was flooded. They’d just need to purify it for drinking.
Although “liquid entity” doesn’t address the question of where drinking/cooking(?) water is coming from, even assuming the entity volunteered to handle wastewater and laundry, which is a pretty big assumption.
Would anyone even volunteer to wash their bodies using the liquid entity?
A non-mad solution would be to use reactor waste heat to boil the sewerage dry and sterile, then use the air conditioning system to condense the steam into potable water.
But what do I know. I’m only an engineer.
That sounds like a terrible idea. You’d have rapid buildup of solid waste stuck to the walls inside your boiling vessel.
As for the laundry issue; of course Tigerlily has a laundry room set up somewhere in Annex One. Part of being funky is looking funky, and a majority of looking funky is having the right wardrobe. She probably converted one entire floor into a walk-in closet for her duds. And all of those outfits require maintenance and care. It wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t make two robots simply for that fact alone.
Love the second sentence of panel 1! New mad science tagline!
In the film Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino, Jules tells Vincent that he intends to “walk the Earth like Caine in Kung Fu.” (According to Wikipedia; I haven’t seen the film.)
The last line of the last panel is a pretty good Mad science tagline too.
… except Mad scientists aren’t well known for apologizing.
We’ll move around despite a lack of worth.
We’ve got a structure for a hero’s berth.
In Annex One we’ll put on acts of mirth.
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
The building’s very, very old and black-and-blue.
We’ll all wear halter tops before we’re through.
Yes, we admit we’re copying “Kung Fu.”
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
We’ll right some wrongs and put those wrongs to right.
We’ll move with Annex One both day and night.
We’ll have a big Transformers-style fight.
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
From town to town, adventures are our guide.
Reality can run, but we know it can’t hide.
The toilet problem’s solved by wading in the tide.
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
We’ll move around despite a lack of worth.
We’ve got a structure for a hero’s berth.
In Annex One we’ll put on acts of mirth.
For what it’s worth, we’ll walk the earth.
—from “I Walk the Line,” Johnny Cash.
Sorry Sweetheart, Ms. Jones was busy.