they were on both sides during the surgery, as Dr Jones’ Operating Theater would feature a rotating gurney/stage and disco dance floor with fog machines.
Looks like his visual field is reversed — Virginia’s on his left first-person view of panels 1 & 2, but on his right from third-person view in panel 4.
I’m pretty sure that’s not really how vision works, though.
We technically already see the world upside down, because of the way the lenses of our eyes invert the light entering into them, and our brains just correct for the inversion. But you can’t switch left and right, because your eyes simply aren’t spacially oriented that way.
You could theoretically flip the image each eye receives / perceives horizontally, but then that would mess up your stereo vision, because your eyes themselves don’t change position. It wouldn’t make things to your left appear to be on your right and vice versa – it would make things on the outer edges of your vision appear to be in the center, and vice versa, which would mean extreme visual warping in ways that would be incredibly disorienting.
It would be disorienting but after a few days, you would adapt to it just fine. They’ve done experiments with this by having people wear glasses that make everything appear upside-down or swapping right and left images. It is difficult at first, but they’ve found that soon the subject is able to do anything they would normally be able to just as if they weren’t wearing the glasses.
That’s because you don’t really see with your eyes. You see with your brain. The eyes are mere low-level input devices to provide the raw data the brain turns into seeing.
There is so much weird about human vision. Like blanking during saccades — when your eyes move quickly your brain kinda turns them off during the motion, then back-fills your perception of that time with whatever is in your field of view when the motion stops. This is the mechanism behind chronostasis — a blinking LED or a jump second hand on a clock seeming to freeze for a moment when you first look at it.
Your brain can do a _lot_ of rearranging of the raw eye-data on its way to seeing.
Third panel is ALSO his point of view – Dr. Lee’s scrubs are still visible in the lower left corner. So if Dr. Lee is to his right, then Tigerlily is even FURTHER to his right.
Also, that thing behind Dr. Lee’s head is most likely a surgical light. I’m going to go with the assumption that whoever designed the visual connections got it backwards, and Nick’s spent several years with his brain attuned to that screwy setup.
Given his high adaptability rating, I figure he’ll need less than twenty-four hours to reset his brain.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I think Nick would be happier if that’s not all they got rid of.
Of course, Tigerlily being ultra-godmode-mojoed, she could probably whip up a painless circumcision-o-mat (no, not a scalpel — or not just a scalpel, anyway) in less time than it takes to say “I hope you remembered that I’m Jewish”.
I wonder how long it’ll be before he decides he wants to go back to being a mothball farming chopper again. Not gonna lie, having the ability to fly would be hard to give up.
My whack notion — which I guess we will find out shortly, one way or the other — is that Nick is still a cyborg; his brain is still threaded with transceivers and such (as Dr. Lee has put it), including wireless interfaces of various types.
Being able to directly connect to a flying drone, sending navigation signals while receiving the camera input streams — well it’s not quite the same as his former Osprey host body, but it’s maybe better than nothing. At least until something better comes along.
Interesting thought. Maybe along with connecting with a drone, he can interface with other systems as well, increasing his hacker abilities exponentially.
Of course, this is Tigerlily we’re talking about, so both Bruce Munro and Owlmirror may be right simultaneously.
Well, I kind of took it for granted that now he can interact physically with Dr. Lee — but that he might miss flying.
So:
Good = a body that can interact physically with Dr. Lee AND can get some of the sensation of flying (via drones)
Better = a body that can interact physically with Dr. Lee AND can fly (even if it’s by piloting a more ordinary helicopter or airplane)
Best = a body that can interact physically with Dr. Lee AND can fly the Osprey (further to the whack idea: Tigerlily boosted his transceivers so that he can actually connect remotely to the Osprey, just as he did from the Osprey to the Violet Bee drone, fly it out of Anasigma like a Bat Out of Heck, and bring it to Annex One to give Dr. Lee a ride)
At the least, Nick seems to be in slightly but noticeably better shape and more attractive (according to Western/North American standards of beauty and athleticism) while also being able to swear. I am admittedly curious about several things…
“mothball-farming”, “fudge”, “shoot”, “sugar” — wait, Nick wrongswears in his thoughts? I thought the whole point of the filter is that Nick swears all the motherfucking time in his thoughts while composing his speech, and the filter then alters the swears into wrongswears on vocal output. What the ever-living fuck is going on with this shit?
The filter replaced his swear words with random similar words.
It is more effective to choose suitable words before the filter replaces them.
Nick also tried hacking the filter before, by using swear words the filter didn’t know about. But the filter was adaptive and caught on to it. My guess is that Nick was trying to teach the filter that the words the filter used to replace his swears where also swear words, probably in an effort to have the filter produce actual swear words instead.
It has been observed that sometimes the filter produces substitutes where it is obvious what the original swear was, while sometimes they are funny but have no obvious connection to the word being censored. Your theory suggests that the former are where Nick is trying to manipulate the filter, and the latter are where he isn’t focusing on the filter.
That certainly seems much more plausible than the preposterous idea that some substitutes are written by Shaenon and some by Jeff.
There’s also the little detail that when in Virginia’s presence, he tended to not swear of his own free will, rather than swearing and having the filter catch it.
I suppose I could be remembering that wrong, since I’ve been too busy lately to do any binge reading, but it seems that she inspired him to at least try to act more like a gentleman.
I have a hypothesis that Nick has figured out that the filter, while it cannot be bypassed, can be primed. That is, just as it can figure out that new (or even old) words that he’s using are swears (or are intended as swears, like “pork”), it can also detect when he’s thinking of words that are attempts to not swear, and will use those words preferentially.
Case example 1: [Can’t quite remember where] Nick described SH as a “monkey-fart operation”. Dr. Lee commented that the filter was sounding more natural, and Nick said that, no, that was him trying to be polite. “I can be a monkey-farting gentleman.” The filter didn’t use random words; it took the phrase he had just used as a euphemism.
Case example 2: The customer-service fail at the beginning of “Once and Future”. Neither “head” nor “tote” are swears, nor did Nick want to use them as swears, but I suspect that he was thinking about how the headless was toting the head of the bodyless, and the filter emitted head-toters twice, even though that sounded like he was mocking them (to his immediate chagrin).
Case example 3: Right after the above, Nick is speaking to Gavotte, and the filter outputs “Ma'am” as a substitute. Nick might be too stubborn to actually show respect, but he might well have been thinking things along the lines of “Yes, Ma’am. Sorry, Ma’am. Won’t happen again, Ma’am. Please don’t punish me, Ma’am.”
Anyway, Nick may well have registered seeing Virginia, and automatically tried to think of priming words that would indicate that he was being as considerate as possible. Had the filter been working, he would no doubt have said “HOLY FUDGE!” (or one of the other words).
Hypothesis: He’s used “fudge,” “shoot,” and “sugar” so often that the swear filter was catching them, and when “fudge” wasn’t replaced, he used the other words to see what would happen.
So what was yesterday’s comic about, then? It’d be one thing if the Clone-O-Matic had been a red-herring, but this is like some weird inversion of that trope.
Welp, seems maybe the clone-o-mat could generate a body after all, just not a cool *robot* body. Assuming Nick isn’t happy with this state of affairs (and it would seem kind of cheesy if he now suddenly is), maybe they’ll keep looking for a proper robot body?
Why on earth would Tip need to? Nick’s brain contains billions of cells, all of them having his original DNA.
He doesn’t even have to give up any neurons. The brain also has multiple cell types that are part of protective membranes. A single cell from the dura mater (which is thick enough that a single cell can easily be spared), for example, should be enough to give a clone-o-mat enough DNA to form a body from.
They got rid of the unibrow. That means they did some genetic manipulation. Given that they can produce brains mechanically, they didn’t necessarily need donor material, but it would be neat if they got the separate eyebrows from Tip. Of course, if they had done that, they would have run the risk of carrying along some of Tip’s mojo – we don’t know where mojo is generated.
What has happened here clearly isn’t down to genetics. They’ve created a version of Nick which is physically almost identical to how he thinks of himself as a human (I forget if we’ve ever seen how his original body looked when he was wearing it). It would have taken Nick years of hard work to get the original to look like that, so they must have done something else.
You certainly don’t need genetic manipulation to remove unwanted hair.
Now here’s the important question…he was brainwashed to be a helicopter. He’s got a human body back. Is that what he wants, long term?
Hmm, they implied that they did the helicopter brainwashing with sensory and self image stuff… seems to me that Nick could re-acclimate to a meat suit with a good intensive goinking. Of course, it would need to be someone who cares about him and would affirm how he sees himself… :p
But yeah, seriously. Being a helicopter (and the mind control) was the biggest barrier to a relationship with Virginia. Well, that and she stole his brain in the first place, but we’ve had more messed up relationships. BUT he actually really enjoys being a helicopter and seems to have genuinely identified as nonhuman, even though he knows it was forced on him in the first place.
Why do you write “brainwashed”? His brain was installed in the helicopter to control it. His brain integrated well with the helicopter, such that controlling it felt as unself-conscious as any human controlling their human body. He seems to have honestly felt that this integration meant that the helicopter was now his body.
Nobody tried to change how he felt and thought; it all followed from how his brain integrated with the Osprey’s systems. In fact, the lack of brainwashing nearly led to his death; the original military plan was that if he wouldn’t be a weapon, then his brain would be discarded. And he refused to be a weapon.
Of course, now that he has a human body — quite possibly in better shape than his previous human body — he may well now feel so well integrated with this body that he now becomes convinced that it is his real body.
On the contrary, they did try to change how he felt and thought. He was in the middle of the “brainwashing” that was supposed to make it a seamless transition, when “Goldbug” crashed the system. So while the process wasn’t completed, it had been begun. That may have indeed affected his choice to identify as a helicopter. The fact that the program was interrupted allowed him to retain his free will, which is what nearly got him terminated.
As for this new body, I suspect that his feelings for Virginia may have more impact than anything else on whether he wants to keep it.
nothing makes me happier than this comic having a character who LITERALLY identifies as an attack helicopter.
personally, i think he’ll choose to go back to being a helicopter. Being given a human body will make the choice more meaningful- he isnt just making the best of the situation, he really is transhuman
But VR-Nick wasn’t being conditioned to think he was a helicopter; he was being conditioned to think that he was a human controlling a helicopter!
I don’t think the military cared whether Nick thought he was a helicopter or not; they wanted an autopiloting helicopter that would be obedient regardless of how it thought of itself.
Wasn’t their strategy to slowly replace Nick’s human self-image with the copter? Wings instead of arms, landing gears for legs, etc…? I don’t know if brainwashing is exactly the right term, since they weren’t changing the way he thought about things like morality, but they were definitely planning to use the VR program to change how he thought about himself. I seem to remember that it was the fact that they were looking for someone they could disappear (no close relations) and that was adaptable (to being turned into a helicopter) caused them to overlook the fact that he was otherwise totally ill-suited to the situation they were trying to force him into.
But I don’t think that was anywhere near complete, from what Dr. Lee says. It was the ultimate goal, not where they thought they were at the time.
When old man Dr. Lee shows up in Nick’s VR house at the beginning of the story, the tech “he” brings is a retinal camera — so maybe something to integrate Nick’s visual system with the helicopter’s various sensors? Presumably, Nick would have tested and used the retinal camera for a while before the next piece of tech was delivered. But Goldbug came and crashed things before Nick could even try out the retinal camera.
@Owlmirror: And the comic you cited is precisely why I said what I did in my comment above. The process was nowhere near complete, but it had been running long enough to have a definite effect on his thinking.
@awgiedawgie: The thing is, Dr. Lee is right there when Nick says the helicopter is his body, and she doesn’t say, “Huh, that’s the expected end result of the Homunculus program.”
I think a distinction can be highlighted between “feeling like controlling the helicopter is like controlling your own body” (the Homunculus goal), and “feeling like the helicopter is your body” (Nick’s claim). Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference, or something for cognitive philosophers to clarify.
Anyway, the data in this instance are ambiguous.
As one more datum, this strip — note the screen in the third panel:
Nick had been in the VR with the Homunculus program running for at least three weeks before Goldbug crashed the system (when old-fat-guy Dr. Lee showed up with the high-density retinal camera, (s)he said (s)he hadn’t been there in three weeks, which means that Nick had been in VR for at least that long). There was no indication given for how long the Homunculus was supposed to run, which is really the only ambiguous part of the whole thing. So while it is unclear how close it was to finishing, the brainwashing had quite definitely been begun.
As for the third panel in the 2008-09-20 strip, Goldbug was merely showing Nick the command that was currently running, just before he shut it down, leaving Nick in stunning darkness.
She didn’t say “Huh, that’s the expected end result of the Homunculus program”, because it wasn’t the expected end result. She had already pointed out to Nick that had the program run its course, he would have been programmed with flight protocols, so there was more to it than simply replacing his human self-image with that of the craft.
+5. Although it’s not clear whether it’s even registered with him yet that she’s in the room. But she was his first sight, which is absolutely as it should be, so +5.
Okay I gotta ask – because this comic is also syndicated by GoComics and they DIDN’T censor it, does this make yours the first comic strip to appear in national syndication to use that particular swear?
Nah, he self-identifies as a transport/cargo VTOL. He preferred death to becoming an attack helicopter, or any sort of weapons platform. But, yeah, the memery is nice to have. 😀
…if you really want to keep the meme description for drawing in the newbies, he LITERALLY identifies as a “conscientious objector attack helicopter.” Which might be even better, now that I think about it.
daaaaangit, I am not replying to the right threading, even when I THINK I’ve re-enabled javascript in enough places. Supposed to be a follow up to edddddthemadgenius , but misplaced.
I think the clone-o-matic assembles an android around his brain rather than growing a clone. Clones don’t grow that fast, and you’d need to replace the brain. The latter would not be a problem for Dr Lee, but I see no scars around the skull.
Which still leaves the question open about what the body is assembled from. Probably the same raw materials that Dr Lee’s brain dispenser uses.
I think the truth may be closer to having the clone-o-matic grow out specialized cells that are then assembled in the preferred configuration.
That way it can build brains that are perfectly acceptable to zombies and can just as easily assemble a new body around Nick’s original brain.
Sadly, it’s not the key to immortality, but at least it could mightily improve quality of life.
Like I said before, since the Clone-o-mat (and would people please quit calling it the “clone-o-matic”) was built by Tigerlily on full Mojo, there’s theoretically no limit to how fast it might be able to produce a full clone, and it could theoretically grow the clone both from and around Nick’s brain simultaneously, thereby eliminating any need to transfer his mind to a new brain, or to install his brain into an empty head.
Remember, Mad Science is not limited by the possible.
Nick reverting to a sexual being again will certainly aid his relationship with Ginny. I just hope his little journey of discovery also helped him to grow out from being a bitter, self-loathing jew with mommy issues.
Was Nick *ever* a sexual being though? I thought he was an angry virgin cellar dweller before he became a helicopter. Which is one reason Dr. Lee appeared as an old man in the VR.
As happy as I am for Nick and Ginny, I find Dr. Jones’s exuberant triumph delightful as well! (one can almost hear echoes of “It’s ALIVE!” ringing from the welkin…)
Further to my notion above that Nick is still a cyborg — the filter might be there, but is only active on output from the transceivers. So meat-Nick can swear all he wants, but if he’s using his implants to communicate, the swears will be trout-polishing redacted.
Aw, poor Nick. He’s been conditioned to not-swear… and it lasted for like five seconds.
OILY CHEF!
Incorrect. He was never conditioned not to swear, and he in fact swore all the time. He just had a filter that replaced his swears with wrong-swears.
Given that he calls it “mothball-farming darkness,” I think the filter had an effect on him, even if that wasn’t the intention.
That could be a literal description
they were on both sides during the surgery, as Dr Jones’ Operating Theater would feature a rotating gurney/stage and disco dance floor with fog machines.
Looks like his visual field is reversed — Virginia’s on his left first-person view of panels 1 & 2, but on his right from third-person view in panel 4.
Good catch
I’m pretty sure that’s not really how vision works, though.
We technically already see the world upside down, because of the way the lenses of our eyes invert the light entering into them, and our brains just correct for the inversion. But you can’t switch left and right, because your eyes simply aren’t spacially oriented that way.
You could theoretically flip the image each eye receives / perceives horizontally, but then that would mess up your stereo vision, because your eyes themselves don’t change position. It wouldn’t make things to your left appear to be on your right and vice versa – it would make things on the outer edges of your vision appear to be in the center, and vice versa, which would mean extreme visual warping in ways that would be incredibly disorienting.
It would be disorienting but after a few days, you would adapt to it just fine. They’ve done experiments with this by having people wear glasses that make everything appear upside-down or swapping right and left images. It is difficult at first, but they’ve found that soon the subject is able to do anything they would normally be able to just as if they weren’t wearing the glasses.
That’s because you don’t really see with your eyes. You see with your brain. The eyes are mere low-level input devices to provide the raw data the brain turns into seeing.
There is so much weird about human vision. Like blanking during saccades — when your eyes move quickly your brain kinda turns them off during the motion, then back-fills your perception of that time with whatever is in your field of view when the motion stops. This is the mechanism behind chronostasis — a blinking LED or a jump second hand on a clock seeming to freeze for a moment when you first look at it.
Your brain can do a _lot_ of rearranging of the raw eye-data on its way to seeing.
First 2 panels are Nicks PoV. If his head is turned to the right while laying down, it works.
Third panel is ALSO his point of view – Dr. Lee’s scrubs are still visible in the lower left corner. So if Dr. Lee is to his right, then Tigerlily is even FURTHER to his right.
Also, that thing behind Dr. Lee’s head is most likely a surgical light. I’m going to go with the assumption that whoever designed the visual connections got it backwards, and Nick’s spent several years with his brain attuned to that screwy setup.
Given his high adaptability rating, I figure he’ll need less than twenty-four hours to reset his brain.
I wouldn’t put it past Tigerlilly to move that fast, or be able to lean bending her body into a Z shape
He had a unibrow? I never noticed.
Looking back at “I Can Fly”, VR-Nick does seem to have a little fuzz between his eyebrows.
Which eye was it over?
“Both.”
“Ah… Cro-magnon.”
Since he’s blond it’s hardly visible.
I have a question that I absolutely refuse to ask because it’s none of my goram business anyway.
Yes, Virginia almost certainly did see him naked.
I’m assuming it’s regarding circumcision, personally.
He was apparently raised observant, so of course.
Ah, but Manifesta, did Virginia (or the Cloneomat, somehow) have the presence of mind to remove or even avoid growing the foreskin?
As I mentioned elsewhere, I think Nick would be happier if that’s not all they got rid of.
Of course, Tigerlily being ultra-godmode-mojoed, she could probably whip up a painless circumcision-o-mat (no, not a scalpel — or not just a scalpel, anyway) in less time than it takes to say “I hope you remembered that I’m Jewish”.
And if they cared for him at all, they would have taken care of that little detail before plugging in his brain.
Laser scalpel made of coat hangers.
What can we say? Love hurts.
I wonder how long it’ll be before he decides he wants to go back to being a mothball farming chopper again. Not gonna lie, having the ability to fly would be hard to give up.
Maybe he has built in propellers. Go Go Gadget…er, Nick-copter!
My whack notion — which I guess we will find out shortly, one way or the other — is that Nick is still a cyborg; his brain is still threaded with transceivers and such (as Dr. Lee has put it), including wireless interfaces of various types.
Being able to directly connect to a flying drone, sending navigation signals while receiving the camera input streams — well it’s not quite the same as his former Osprey host body, but it’s maybe better than nothing. At least until something better comes along.
Interesting thought. Maybe along with connecting with a drone, he can interface with other systems as well, increasing his hacker abilities exponentially.
Of course, this is Tigerlily we’re talking about, so both Bruce Munro and Owlmirror may be right simultaneously.
Something better did just come along—now he can know Ginny, in the biblical sense.
Well, I kind of took it for granted that now he can interact physically with Dr. Lee — but that he might miss flying.
So:
Good = a body that can interact physically with Dr. Lee AND can get some of the sensation of flying (via drones)
Better = a body that can interact physically with Dr. Lee AND can fly (even if it’s by piloting a more ordinary helicopter or airplane)
Best = a body that can interact physically with Dr. Lee AND can fly the Osprey (further to the whack idea: Tigerlily boosted his transceivers so that he can actually connect remotely to the Osprey, just as he did from the Osprey to the Violet Bee drone, fly it out of Anasigma like a Bat Out of
Heck, and bring it to Annex One to give Dr. Lee a ride)Perhaps he can be both.
It may turn out that Ginny is able to convince him that a flesh and blood body has certain …advantages.
Awww! Do we really want Nick in a wet-wear suit?
Nick is (based solely on appearances, at any rate) wearing a basel8ne human body and able to swear. This will be very fucking interesting.
At the least, Nick seems to be in slightly but noticeably better shape and more attractive (according to Western/North American standards of beauty and athleticism) while also being able to swear. I am admittedly curious about several things…
“mothball-farming”, “fudge”, “shoot”, “sugar” — wait, Nick wrongswears in his thoughts? I thought the whole point of the filter is that Nick swears all the motherfucking time in his thoughts while composing his speech, and the filter then alters the swears into wrongswears on vocal output. What the ever-living fuck is going on with this shit?
I guess he got used to it.
The filter replaced his swear words with random similar words.
It is more effective to choose suitable words before the filter replaces them.
Nick also tried hacking the filter before, by using swear words the filter didn’t know about. But the filter was adaptive and caught on to it. My guess is that Nick was trying to teach the filter that the words the filter used to replace his swears where also swear words, probably in an effort to have the filter produce actual swear words instead.
Applause!
Hey, there’s no call for that sort of language.
It has been observed that sometimes the filter produces substitutes where it is obvious what the original swear was, while sometimes they are funny but have no obvious connection to the word being censored. Your theory suggests that the former are where Nick is trying to manipulate the filter, and the latter are where he isn’t focusing on the filter.
That certainly seems much more plausible than the preposterous idea that some substitutes are written by Shaenon and some by Jeff.
There’s also the little detail that when in Virginia’s presence, he tended to not swear of his own free will, rather than swearing and having the filter catch it.
I suppose I could be remembering that wrong, since I’ve been too busy lately to do any binge reading, but it seems that she inspired him to at least try to act more like a gentleman.
He does swear, but I think a lot less frequently.
I have a hypothesis that Nick has figured out that the filter, while it cannot be bypassed, can be primed. That is, just as it can figure out that new (or even old) words that he’s using are swears (or are intended as swears, like “pork”), it can also detect when he’s thinking of words that are attempts to not swear, and will use those words preferentially.
Case example 1: [Can’t quite remember where] Nick described SH as a “monkey-fart operation”. Dr. Lee commented that the filter was sounding more natural, and Nick said that, no, that was him trying to be polite. “I can be a
monkey-fartinggentleman.” The filter didn’t use random words; it took the phrase he had just used as a euphemism.Case example 2: The customer-service fail at the beginning of “Once and Future”. Neither “head” nor “tote” are swears, nor did Nick want to use them as swears, but I suspect that he was thinking about how the headless was toting the head of the bodyless, and the filter emitted
head-toterstwice, even though that sounded like he was mocking them (to his immediate chagrin).Case example 3: Right after the above, Nick is speaking to Gavotte, and the filter outputs “
Ma'am” as a substitute. Nick might be too stubborn to actually show respect, but he might well have been thinking things along the lines of “Yes, Ma’am. Sorry, Ma’am. Won’t happen again, Ma’am. Please don’t punish me, Ma’am.”Anyway, Nick may well have registered seeing Virginia, and automatically tried to think of priming words that would indicate that he was being as considerate as possible. Had the filter been working, he would no doubt have said “HOLY
FUDGE!” (or one of the other words).Hypothesis: He’s used “fudge,” “shoot,” and “sugar” so often that the swear filter was catching them, and when “fudge” wasn’t replaced, he used the other words to see what would happen.
Well. I seriously didn’t expect that.
So what was yesterday’s comic about, then? It’d be one thing if the Clone-O-Matic had been a red-herring, but this is like some weird inversion of that trope.
Comedy interlude. Chris & Marcie didn’t know about the Clone-o-mat.
Welp, seems maybe the clone-o-mat could generate a body after all, just not a cool *robot* body. Assuming Nick isn’t happy with this state of affairs (and it would seem kind of cheesy if he now suddenly is), maybe they’ll keep looking for a proper robot body?
Do we know for sure what the body is made of? With the Tigerlily / Lee team it could be one or the other or both… or something completely different.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Tip provided the donor DNA for the Clone-o-Matic?
“Nick, I am your father…”
Why on earth would Tip need to? Nick’s brain contains billions of cells, all of them having his original DNA.
He doesn’t even have to give up any neurons. The brain also has multiple cell types that are part of protective membranes. A single cell from the dura mater (which is thick enough that a single cell can easily be spared), for example, should be enough to give a clone-o-mat enough DNA to form a body from.
You are of course correct. That would be the same thing to do… 😉
“sane thing to do.” – *sigh*
Which might be considered proof that it’s not what they did.
They got rid of the unibrow. That means they did some genetic manipulation. Given that they can produce brains mechanically, they didn’t necessarily need donor material, but it would be neat if they got the separate eyebrows from Tip. Of course, if they had done that, they would have run the risk of carrying along some of Tip’s mojo – we don’t know where mojo is generated.
What has happened here clearly isn’t down to genetics. They’ve created a version of Nick which is physically almost identical to how he thinks of himself as a human (I forget if we’ve ever seen how his original body looked when he was wearing it). It would have taken Nick years of hard work to get the original to look like that, so they must have done something else.
You certainly don’t need genetic manipulation to remove unwanted hair.
Whoo! Overcome that conditioning!
Now here’s the important question…he was brainwashed to be a helicopter. He’s got a human body back. Is that what he wants, long term?
Hmm, they implied that they did the helicopter brainwashing with sensory and self image stuff… seems to me that Nick could re-acclimate to a meat suit with a good intensive goinking. Of course, it would need to be someone who cares about him and would affirm how he sees himself… :p
But yeah, seriously. Being a helicopter (and the mind control) was the biggest barrier to a relationship with Virginia. Well, that and she stole his brain in the first place, but we’ve had more messed up relationships. BUT he actually really enjoys being a helicopter and seems to have genuinely identified as nonhuman, even though he knows it was forced on him in the first place.
Heavy.
Why do you write “brainwashed”? His brain was installed in the helicopter to control it. His brain integrated well with the helicopter, such that controlling it felt as unself-conscious as any human controlling their human body. He seems to have honestly felt that this integration meant that the helicopter was now his body.
Nobody tried to change how he felt and thought; it all followed from how his brain integrated with the Osprey’s systems. In fact, the lack of brainwashing nearly led to his death; the original military plan was that if he wouldn’t be a weapon, then his brain would be discarded. And he refused to be a weapon.
Of course, now that he has a human body — quite possibly in better shape than his previous human body — he may well now feel so well integrated with this body that he now becomes convinced that it is his real body.
On the contrary, they did try to change how he felt and thought. He was in the middle of the “brainwashing” that was supposed to make it a seamless transition, when “Goldbug” crashed the system. So while the process wasn’t completed, it had been begun. That may have indeed affected his choice to identify as a helicopter. The fact that the program was interrupted allowed him to retain his free will, which is what nearly got him terminated.
As for this new body, I suspect that his feelings for Virginia may have more impact than anything else on whether he wants to keep it.
nothing makes me happier than this comic having a character who LITERALLY identifies as an attack helicopter.
personally, i think he’ll choose to go back to being a helicopter. Being given a human body will make the choice more meaningful- he isnt just making the best of the situation, he really is transhuman
But VR-Nick wasn’t being conditioned to think he was a helicopter; he was being conditioned to think that he was a human controlling a helicopter!
I don’t think the military cared whether Nick thought he was a helicopter or not; they wanted an autopiloting helicopter that would be obedient regardless of how it thought of itself.
Wasn’t their strategy to slowly replace Nick’s human self-image with the copter? Wings instead of arms, landing gears for legs, etc…? I don’t know if brainwashing is exactly the right term, since they weren’t changing the way he thought about things like morality, but they were definitely planning to use the VR program to change how he thought about himself. I seem to remember that it was the fact that they were looking for someone they could disappear (no close relations) and that was adaptable (to being turned into a helicopter) caused them to overlook the fact that he was otherwise totally ill-suited to the situation they were trying to force him into.
@mahlernut: That did sound familiar, so I finally found the strip from “I Can Fly” where Dr. Lee says that:
http://skin-horse.com/comic/being-a-woman-he/
But I don’t think that was anywhere near complete, from what Dr. Lee says. It was the ultimate goal, not where they thought they were at the time.
When old man Dr. Lee shows up in Nick’s VR house at the beginning of the story, the tech “he” brings is a retinal camera — so maybe something to integrate Nick’s visual system with the helicopter’s various sensors? Presumably, Nick would have tested and used the retinal camera for a while before the next piece of tech was delivered. But Goldbug came and crashed things before Nick could even try out the retinal camera.
@Owlmirror: And the comic you cited is precisely why I said what I did in my comment above. The process was nowhere near complete, but it had been running long enough to have a definite effect on his thinking.
@awgiedawgie: The thing is, Dr. Lee is right there when Nick says the helicopter is his body, and she doesn’t say, “Huh, that’s the expected end result of the Homunculus program.”
I think a distinction can be highlighted between “feeling like controlling the helicopter is like controlling your own body” (the Homunculus goal), and “feeling like the helicopter is your body” (Nick’s claim). Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference, or something for cognitive philosophers to clarify.
Anyway, the data in this instance are ambiguous.
As one more datum, this strip — note the screen in the third panel:
http://skin-horse.com/comic/adjust-to-the-dim/
which sure looks like it reads something like:
execve homunculus_full.And also the exclamation in the fourth panel, of which the above fourth panel is a mirror.
@Owlmirror: Actually, the data is fairly clear.
Nick had been in the VR with the Homunculus program running for at least three weeks before Goldbug crashed the system (when old-fat-guy Dr. Lee showed up with the high-density retinal camera, (s)he said (s)he hadn’t been there in three weeks, which means that Nick had been in VR for at least that long). There was no indication given for how long the Homunculus was supposed to run, which is really the only ambiguous part of the whole thing. So while it is unclear how close it was to finishing, the brainwashing had quite definitely been begun.
As for the third panel in the 2008-09-20 strip, Goldbug was merely showing Nick the command that was currently running, just before he shut it down, leaving Nick in stunning darkness.
She didn’t say “Huh, that’s the expected end result of the Homunculus program”, because it wasn’t the expected end result. She had already pointed out to Nick that had the program run its course, he would have been programmed with flight protocols, so there was more to it than simply replacing his human self-image with that of the craft.
This is going to be really strange for him for a while.
And I’m so glad Virginia was Nick’s first sight upon awakening!
+1
+2
+3
+4. ^_^
+5. Although it’s not clear whether it’s even registered with him yet that she’s in the room. But she was his first sight, which is absolutely as it should be, so +5.
+6. It could have been Tip.
Okay I gotta ask – because this comic is also syndicated by GoComics and they DIDN’T censor it, does this make yours the first comic strip to appear in national syndication to use that particular swear?
“Mothball-farming”? Most likely. 🙂
I’d have to go back and start at the beginning, but I seem to recall Endtown having some choice words that weren’t censored out.
This is the first time I can recall Skin Horse not being censored for the GoComics version.
Holy shit, he can fucking curse again!
Nah, he self-identifies as a transport/cargo VTOL. He preferred death to becoming an attack helicopter, or any sort of weapons platform. But, yeah, the memery is nice to have. 😀
…if you really want to keep the meme description for drawing in the newbies, he LITERALLY identifies as a “conscientious objector attack helicopter.” Which might be even better, now that I think about it.
daaaaangit, I am not replying to the right threading, even when I THINK I’ve re-enabled javascript in enough places. Supposed to be a follow up to edddddthemadgenius , but misplaced.
I think the clone-o-matic assembles an android around his brain rather than growing a clone. Clones don’t grow that fast, and you’d need to replace the brain. The latter would not be a problem for Dr Lee, but I see no scars around the skull.
Which still leaves the question open about what the body is assembled from. Probably the same raw materials that Dr Lee’s brain dispenser uses.
I think the truth may be closer to having the clone-o-matic grow out specialized cells that are then assembled in the preferred configuration.
That way it can build brains that are perfectly acceptable to zombies and can just as easily assemble a new body around Nick’s original brain.
Sadly, it’s not the key to immortality, but at least it could mightily improve quality of life.
Like I said before, since the Clone-o-mat (and would people please quit calling it the “clone-o-matic”) was built by Tigerlily on full Mojo, there’s theoretically no limit to how fast it might be able to produce a full clone, and it could theoretically grow the clone both from and around Nick’s brain simultaneously, thereby eliminating any need to transfer his mind to a new brain, or to install his brain into an empty head.
Remember, Mad Science is not limited by the possible.
The Recovery of One Lost. Ultimate Literary Satisfaction.
Nick reverting to a sexual being again will certainly aid his relationship with Ginny. I just hope his little journey of discovery also helped him to grow out from being a bitter, self-loathing jew with mommy issues.
Was Nick *ever* a sexual being though? I thought he was an angry virgin cellar dweller before he became a helicopter. Which is one reason Dr. Lee appeared as an old man in the VR.
He may well have wanted sex and regularly taken matters into his own hands.
Well, he certainly can now.
So long as he hasn’t lost something else. Lift the sheet, Nick, and take a leak…er, take a look.
I’m having Caliban flashbacks
As happy as I am for Nick and Ginny, I find Dr. Jones’s exuberant triumph delightful as well! (one can almost hear echoes of “It’s ALIVE!” ringing from the welkin…)
Dr. Jones had a similar reaction when Nick was rescued by Skin Horse…
You meant Dr. Lee.
I feel the need to point out Tigerlily’s purple-spangled surgical gloves.
I’ve gone through the comic’s archive in three days, and it’s been a fabulous ride!!! I love the characters and zany plots. And I’m glad Nick is okay.
HAHAHA Nick’s problems have only begun.
Heh heh heh heh heh…
If you’d gone MWAHAHA I’d really be worried for Nick.
heh heh heh is the really worrying laugh.
Being the Favorite of one’s Creator – what could *possibly* go wrong?
Mind if that laugh sounds like Helen Carbon senior in my mind?
Narbon. Stupid Spell Chick.
I just hope he isn’t still leaking.
Reading this brings me so much joy.
Don’t say anything, but Panel Four isn’t yet censored on GoComics.
I am going to miss the filter. It was pretty hilarious.
Further to my notion above that Nick is still a cyborg — the filter might be there, but is only active on output from the transceivers. So meat-Nick can swear all he wants, but if he’s using his implants to communicate, the swears will be
trout-polishingredacted.Embrace the power of “why not both?”.
Maybe.
I hope this doesn’t permanently lower the flag on the “both of them as brains in tanks” ending.
I mean, that’s probably how I’d react if I woke up naked on an operating table with Tigerlilly Jones and Dr. Lee over me.