Technically . . . coffee is a brown liquid rather than a black liquid, unless it’s brewed burnt and dark. But could Lee be the secret body part thief, in a fugue state?
“My machine needs parts! These are parts! Therefore, my machine needs these!”
Presumably to counter the one she have Ira, I guess. But since she’s a same scientist who already did it once the second one shouldn’t be that big a deal. After all, one difference between Sparks and Sane Geniuses is that same geniuses understand the value of documentation, right?
Only all her notes are on file at A-Sig and unreachable. (I imagine A-Sig is much worse than the US government about taking proprietary information home with you. Extripation at a minimum.)
Sure, to counter the one she accidentally gave to A-Sig… but what does that have to do with the zombies and the near-riot Sweetheart is reporting?
I went back to reread from the beginning of the story, and I’m still lost.
~~~
Goose Girl calls them up asking for help transporting zombies back to Florida – specifically says it’s not an emergency. Tip wonders if it’s safe for the zombies to go home, because of the weather machine A-Sig has (I honestly don’t remember what A-Sig did with their weather machine to make the zombies leave without also affecting standard humans, but I’ll go track that down in a bit I guess.) But Virginia says she designed a weather machine neutralizer, so everything is good.
What I don’t understand is 1) why is Virginia having trouble building this new design, 2) why didn’t they just delay the re-re-location of the zombies until they had the device working, and 3) if there’s some pressing concern of being vulnerable due to a lack of counter-machine, why not get back on the ship?
~~~
They make a big deal out of how this is not a very dangerous mission, and that it’s practically a vacation. The zombies weren’t even ready to go when the team first arrived. No one was in a rush.
Then they start encountering weird dreams, but while that’s spooky, it’s not causing any real problems or putting them on the clock somehow. Virginia even stops working on her weather machine to put Remy’s head in a vise to entertain the possibility of sciencing out his voodoo problems. Clearly still not in a rush.
There is a super bizarre line from Virginia about “If it -is- the spirit of a mad scientist, my weather machine will attract it”, as if that makes any sense at all. Why would she think the mass hauntings are a single mad scientist’s spirit? Why is she even enteraining the idea of a spirit at all? And why does she have any certainty about what will or will not attract such a spirit?
~~~
Then Unity lights herself on fire, which I guess damaged or destroyed the weather machine? So Virginia has to start over on it, which is I guess why she’s struggling?
Then the limb thefts start occuring, which now seems all but confirmed to be the limb-monster Unity made, but that has nothing to do with weather machines, or spirit hauntings, or anything else.
And now we’re told the zombies are on the verge of a riot, except the rioting seemingly has to do with the limb-monster stealing limbs as people suspected all along, and nothing to do with weather machines.
So why is Sweetheart rushing Virginia to finish the weather machine? It won’t do anything to stop the zombie riot.
~~~
This entire chapter feels really confused and disjointed.
Sometimes you don’t know where the river is going. So just ride it out and eventually the destination becomes clear in the end.
But let’s see if we can help you out.
~~~
What did A-Sig do with their weather machine to make the zombies leave without affecting humans? Well, nothing. The hurricane would have affected everyone. But since Skin Horse is only about non-human sapients, they were assisting them, and the normal emergency services would have been helping the humans.
~~~
“There is a super bizarre line from Virginia about “If it -is- the spirit of a mad scientist, my weather machine will attract it”, as if that makes any sense at all.”
Virginia is a Mad scientist, whether she realizes it or not. So she instinctively and subconsciously knows that Mad science attracts Mad scientists. They’re like moths attracted to an unnatural flame.
As for why it would be the work of a single spirit, well, if it is the work of a spirit, as Remy suspects, it’s more likely that it’s only one, rather than several spirits all doing the same thing. Not only that, but it clearly can’t be the spirits of all their creators, since some of them (such as Virginia herself) are still alive.
~~~
I suspect she’s struggling 1) because of several distractions, and 2) because coming up with a weather machine is one thing, but coming up with one that can counteract the first one is even more challenging.
They are close to rioting because of the limb thefts, Sweetheart has suspected the limb thefts are related to the dreams since they happen while the zombies are dreaming (she apparently didn’t think of Unity’s Abomination when the zombie mentioned black liquid), Remy believes the dreams are caused by a spirit, and Virginia believes that her weather machine will attract the spirit, which is why Sweetheart is in a rush for her to finish it.
The whole thing has a bit of an “old lady who swallowed a fly” feel to it, but if you just sit back and embrace the Madness, it all makes perfect sense.
Well, currently the only thing that is keeping Skin Horse here(besides the dreams and missing limbs but that is secondary) is getting the weather machine working for the zombies, and as directly stated a few strips back, unless Skin Horse leaves, things will be messy. Get the machine working and they can leave and there will be no riot. It’s a straight line of logic.
“NOTICE: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot will be shot.”
~ Mark Twain
http://narbonic.com/comic/august-7-12-2006/ It was an internship, true, but as a Mad. Her ability to control two Mads proved she’d made the grade. Is pulling mallets and weapons out of nowhere any less Mad than coathanger teleporters?
Her internship started out as science (biology, specifically), but she had to change it when she switched her major to law. So she never completed her science internship. http://narbonic.com/comic/july-16-21-2001/
As for pulling weapons out of thin air, that doesn’t prove anything. Tip does that too (although he occasionally claims he pulled them from his garter or something), and he’s not Mad.
Nick, where are you? Good boyfriends don’t leave their sweeties doing mad science while sleep-drunk.
(Personally, I find being very, very sleepy sort of like being drunk, including the extremely poor decision-making. I suppose at least it’s not like being _angry_ drunk. Unless someone is stopping you from sleeping).
So maybe it’s just that I need to sleep, but I’m starting to suspect that there might be a second A-Sig spy…
Bear with me, but… Remy shows up conveniently just as things start getting weird, claiming he was pulled there by magic mumbo jumbo spirit stuff, which of course no one can corroborate. Sort of fishy.
Also, the first time we met him, he also sort of just appeared from nowhere conveniently. He was the person they just happened to find in the office of the person they were actually looking for. No credentials, no introduction by anyone who knows him, no corroboration of his story, just his own convenient yarn about being the apprentice to a person who died scant days before.
We know that A-Sig was actively trying to discover the location of the Cypress, and that they had an agent who tried to get information out of Tip through seduction, but who never went through with it. But who is to say they only had the one?
For all we know, Remy is a plant. A-Sig would have known about Skin Horse’s mission to serve the divorce papers, would have known they would seek out Dr. Goodness’ office, and would have known that Skin Horse would have good odds of leading them straight to the Cypress / Venus.
Or even if he wasn’t specifically sent to intercept Skin Horse, it might be he was snooping around looking for information in Dr. Goodness’ files, and Skin Horse just showed up looking for those same files, so he played along to get the chance to go investigate alongside them.
When you’re dealing with a story involving an actual shadow government agency being opposed by a near-omnipresent black budget defense contractor in a universe where mad science and the spirit realm exist, then as long as your causal chain is unbroken there’s no conspiracy theory that’s too paranoid to be true up until the actual truth is revealed.
Not to mention drastically lowering his tolerance for caffiene, first just from only being a brain, then with the fresh body that had never been exposed to it before. Tigerlily’s “enhancements” probably didn’t have that in mind.
Ooh! Very good! I wish I’d thought of it. But tipping over coffee is the hallmark of a Sweetheart rampage – she might be trying to leave a clue for her team even in her possessed state…
The best use of coffee I’ve seen in a while…..
Not since Lt. Eris.
Technically . . . coffee is a brown liquid rather than a black liquid, unless it’s brewed burnt and dark. But could Lee be the secret body part thief, in a fugue state?
“My machine needs parts! These are parts! Therefore, my machine needs these!”
To be fair, the other two other examples of her work nearby also lean heavily on organic components.
I feel called-out.
I’ve lost the thread. Again. What is the reason for Virginia’s building of a weather machine?
Presumably to counter the one she have Ira, I guess. But since she’s a same scientist who already did it once the second one shouldn’t be that big a deal. After all, one difference between Sparks and Sane Geniuses is that same geniuses understand the value of documentation, right?
Only all her notes are on file at A-Sig and unreachable. (I imagine A-Sig is much worse than the US government about taking proprietary information home with you. Extripation at a minimum.)
Sure, to counter the one she accidentally gave to A-Sig… but what does that have to do with the zombies and the near-riot Sweetheart is reporting?
I went back to reread from the beginning of the story, and I’m still lost.
~~~
Goose Girl calls them up asking for help transporting zombies back to Florida – specifically says it’s not an emergency. Tip wonders if it’s safe for the zombies to go home, because of the weather machine A-Sig has (I honestly don’t remember what A-Sig did with their weather machine to make the zombies leave without also affecting standard humans, but I’ll go track that down in a bit I guess.) But Virginia says she designed a weather machine neutralizer, so everything is good.
What I don’t understand is 1) why is Virginia having trouble building this new design, 2) why didn’t they just delay the re-re-location of the zombies until they had the device working, and 3) if there’s some pressing concern of being vulnerable due to a lack of counter-machine, why not get back on the ship?
~~~
They make a big deal out of how this is not a very dangerous mission, and that it’s practically a vacation. The zombies weren’t even ready to go when the team first arrived. No one was in a rush.
Then they start encountering weird dreams, but while that’s spooky, it’s not causing any real problems or putting them on the clock somehow. Virginia even stops working on her weather machine to put Remy’s head in a vise to entertain the possibility of sciencing out his voodoo problems. Clearly still not in a rush.
There is a super bizarre line from Virginia about “If it -is- the spirit of a mad scientist, my weather machine will attract it”, as if that makes any sense at all. Why would she think the mass hauntings are a single mad scientist’s spirit? Why is she even enteraining the idea of a spirit at all? And why does she have any certainty about what will or will not attract such a spirit?
~~~
Then Unity lights herself on fire, which I guess damaged or destroyed the weather machine? So Virginia has to start over on it, which is I guess why she’s struggling?
Then the limb thefts start occuring, which now seems all but confirmed to be the limb-monster Unity made, but that has nothing to do with weather machines, or spirit hauntings, or anything else.
And now we’re told the zombies are on the verge of a riot, except the rioting seemingly has to do with the limb-monster stealing limbs as people suspected all along, and nothing to do with weather machines.
So why is Sweetheart rushing Virginia to finish the weather machine? It won’t do anything to stop the zombie riot.
~~~
This entire chapter feels really confused and disjointed.
“This entire chapter feels really confused and disjointed.”
I suspect the zombies suffering the limb thefts are also feeling somewhat confused and dis-jointed.
Wow. Um… just take a deep breath.
Sometimes you don’t know where the river is going. So just ride it out and eventually the destination becomes clear in the end.
But let’s see if we can help you out.
~~~
What did A-Sig do with their weather machine to make the zombies leave without affecting humans? Well, nothing. The hurricane would have affected everyone. But since Skin Horse is only about non-human sapients, they were assisting them, and the normal emergency services would have been helping the humans.
~~~
“There is a super bizarre line from Virginia about “If it -is- the spirit of a mad scientist, my weather machine will attract it”, as if that makes any sense at all.”
Virginia is a Mad scientist, whether she realizes it or not. So she instinctively and subconsciously knows that Mad science attracts Mad scientists. They’re like moths attracted to an unnatural flame.
As for why it would be the work of a single spirit, well, if it is the work of a spirit, as Remy suspects, it’s more likely that it’s only one, rather than several spirits all doing the same thing. Not only that, but it clearly can’t be the spirits of all their creators, since some of them (such as Virginia herself) are still alive.
~~~
I suspect she’s struggling 1) because of several distractions, and 2) because coming up with a weather machine is one thing, but coming up with one that can counteract the first one is even more challenging.
They are close to rioting because of the limb thefts, Sweetheart has suspected the limb thefts are related to the dreams since they happen while the zombies are dreaming (she apparently didn’t think of Unity’s Abomination when the zombie mentioned black liquid), Remy believes the dreams are caused by a spirit, and Virginia believes that her weather machine will attract the spirit, which is why Sweetheart is in a rush for her to finish it.
The whole thing has a bit of an “old lady who swallowed a fly” feel to it, but if you just sit back and embrace the Madness, it all makes perfect sense.
Thank you, Awgiedawgie. I was getting lost, too!
“sit back and embrace the Madness” pretty much describes the entire Narbonic/Skin Horse experience.
@ awgiedawgie: Ta ever so!
Well, currently the only thing that is keeping Skin Horse here(besides the dreams and missing limbs but that is secondary) is getting the weather machine working for the zombies, and as directly stated a few strips back, unless Skin Horse leaves, things will be messy. Get the machine working and they can leave and there will be no riot. It’s a straight line of logic.
…except the limbs keep getting stolen? The riot will still happen? Skin Horse just won’t be there when it does?
As mz. Garrison quotes on her page:
“NOTICE: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot will be shot.”
~ Mark Twain
In other words, just enjoy the ride.
I hope our two favorite Mads *do* show up! Uh, three, Mel completed her apprenticeship…!
It was an internship, not an apprenticeship, and it was for law school. Mell may be a homicidal maniac, but she’s not Mad.
http://narbonic.com/comic/august-7-12-2006/ It was an internship, true, but as a Mad. Her ability to control two Mads proved she’d made the grade. Is pulling mallets and weapons out of nowhere any less Mad than coathanger teleporters?
Her internship started out as science (biology, specifically), but she had to change it when she switched her major to law. So she never completed her science internship. http://narbonic.com/comic/july-16-21-2001/
As for pulling weapons out of thin air, that doesn’t prove anything. Tip does that too (although he occasionally claims he pulled them from his garter or something), and he’s not Mad.
Is Anasigma upping the game, going from Nightmares to induced Hallucinations?
Coffee: Apply directly to head.
That’s probably the only way to get any value out of it once it’s cold!
What makes you think it’s cold?
Nick, where are you? Good boyfriends don’t leave their sweeties doing mad science while sleep-drunk.
(Personally, I find being very, very sleepy sort of like being drunk, including the extremely poor decision-making. I suppose at least it’s not like being _angry_ drunk. Unless someone is stopping you from sleeping).
It’s possible she took a break from sciencing and wore him out, and now he’s the one who would need a pot of coffee to be awake…
Striker’s Disorder can strike anyone, at any time…
Are you suggesting Virginia has a drinking problem?
See panel 3…
Dang it! You best me to it. I wonder what the twelve step program for treating this looks like.
Giving yourself over to a color safe bleach.
Me during finals
Oh, Ginny. Your heart is in the right place but trust me, the coffee works much better on the inside.
If that’s Virginia’s special coffee, it’ll be plenty effective when absorbed through the skin.
So maybe it’s just that I need to sleep, but I’m starting to suspect that there might be a second A-Sig spy…
Bear with me, but… Remy shows up conveniently just as things start getting weird, claiming he was pulled there by magic mumbo jumbo spirit stuff, which of course no one can corroborate. Sort of fishy.
Also, the first time we met him, he also sort of just appeared from nowhere conveniently. He was the person they just happened to find in the office of the person they were actually looking for. No credentials, no introduction by anyone who knows him, no corroboration of his story, just his own convenient yarn about being the apprentice to a person who died scant days before.
We know that A-Sig was actively trying to discover the location of the Cypress, and that they had an agent who tried to get information out of Tip through seduction, but who never went through with it. But who is to say they only had the one?
For all we know, Remy is a plant. A-Sig would have known about Skin Horse’s mission to serve the divorce papers, would have known they would seek out Dr. Goodness’ office, and would have known that Skin Horse would have good odds of leading them straight to the Cypress / Venus.
Or even if he wasn’t specifically sent to intercept Skin Horse, it might be he was snooping around looking for information in Dr. Goodness’ files, and Skin Horse just showed up looking for those same files, so he played along to get the chance to go investigate alongside them.
That is disturbingly logical.
Fascinating!
When you’re dealing with a story involving an actual shadow government agency being opposed by a near-omnipresent black budget defense contractor in a universe where mad science and the spirit realm exist, then as long as your causal chain is unbroken there’s no conspiracy theory that’s too paranoid to be true up until the actual truth is revealed.
How sure are we that we have not, at some point in the last week or so, begun seeing Sweetheart’s dream?
Had Sweetheart’s dream, and patted Sweetheart on head. Last night.
I suppose it’s the only way to use coffee to keep alert when it’s a pot of decaf…
Indeed. But I can’t imagine Virginia ever making a pot of decaf.
Maybe it’s Nick’s. All that time as the helicopter may have left him forgetful of human customs.
Not to mention drastically lowering his tolerance for caffiene, first just from only being a brain, then with the fresh body that had never been exposed to it before. Tigerlily’s “enhancements” probably didn’t have that in mind.
I had more in mind forgetting that decaf goes in those orange-rimmed glass coffee pots.
Also…”Traces of black liquid were found at the crime scenes.” Coffee?
Ooh! Very good! I wish I’d thought of it. But tipping over coffee is the hallmark of a Sweetheart rampage – she might be trying to leave a clue for her team even in her possessed state…
I like where this is going, but Sweetheart is a latte-tipper, which tend to be beige not black.