Gavotte’s making economical use of her energy. Hovering in place takes less energy than flying around (of course, she could be even more economical and land on the seat, but that would be to risk getting swatted by another passenger).
Or did Gavotte just buzz “Throwing us off will be more trouble than it’s worth”, and the driver looked her and Dr. Lee over and shrugged and said “So sit, and don’t make trouble”?
If I were the driver, and I saw a woman drenched in blood, holding what appears to be a human brain, and surrounded by a swarm of bees, I would probably be the one who didn’t want to cause any trouble.
I wouldn’t want to know how she got that way. Whether she handed me a ticket or not, I’d say just three words – “Where to, lady?” – and motion her to the back.
I’m now seeing the driver as a bit like the driver of the Night Bus to Sto Lat in Unseen Academicals, who “had the quiet, friendly air about him of someone who had found the best way to get through life was never to give much of a stuff about anything”.
I suspect that Greyhound drivers have ways of reporting threats and dangers (frex: agitated person with a firearm), if only so that there is a record of what happened in the case of their deaths.
Driver: Dispatch, I would like to report that an Asian woman got on wearing hospital scrubs, covered with some sort of red stuff, carrying what looks like a human brain in aspic, and accompanied by a large swarm of bees. I didn’t ask for a fare.
Dispatch: Copy that. Do you want police intervention at the next town you stop at?
Driver: Negative. You did hear me say “bees”, right? I can’t think of anything the police could do that wouldn’t make things worse. Right now, the passenger and her bees are sitting quietly, with the brain, not making trouble.
That’s assuming the driver wasn’t reality blind. But if he didn’t see her, he wouldn’t have stopped and let her on in the first place.
I’m not the world’s best grifter, but I’m pretty sure that if I were wearing scrubs and holding a human brain I could concoct some kind of story that would get me onto a greyhound bus.
I’m really bothered about Nick’s brain at this point – how long since the protective gel came off? How long since it was oxygenated? I know that this is all humor and perhaps, like Mystery Science Theater, I should just relax and not worry about he breathes (eats probably isn’t an issue as yet), but frankly at this point I’m getting anxious enough that the “they’re all still in VR” theory is less worrysome than the notion that Lee is getting Nick to a life support system by _bus_.
I think the protective casing is still there. It’s probably just hard to draw/color, so it’s appeared to be absent.
If Dr. Lee thinks that Nick could survive in biowaste slurry, he can probably survive being shlepped by hand for a while. She is presumably the expert here.
The casing is there–it’s just almost completely transparent. You can barely make it out in most of the panels where she’s talking to Ira, but it seems to be holding form at that point. So at this distance, it’s probably just pretty much invisible.
In Narbonic, Dave was zapped back to zombiehood after being dead for a week, reduced to just a head for a day or two, and was just a brain, pickled in alcohol driving a giant robot for several hours, before being reinstalled into a cloned body. Granted, there were at least two mad scientists involved with all of that, but this is clearly a universe where that sort of thing can be fixed.
“Well, it just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. Now, all dead… well, with all dead, there’s usually only one thing that you can do.”
“What’s that?”
“Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”
Of course, with Nick, that last line really doesn’t apply.
I ride the “Tall Dog” myself sometimes, mostly a few miles south, Mexico, Guatemala, etc. You know, where the waiter LOOKS at YOU while putting implements and food available. If you ate in US, the waitperson looked at the table, followed the regulations and where to place such THINGS. Mostly they’ve memorized a map.
When you want ATTENTION from a human, take a Southern Trip across the line.
I’ve stopped worrying about Nick. Virginia allowed the Grating Green Ween to LIVE, but then, she breaks MY rules all the time.
It’s probably been reduced to spare parts by now, and while better for whatever Dr. Lee is cooking up, it would require too much time in a hostile environment to assemble. Best to retreat with the vital part to a safe lab where she can take her time.
We saw Dr. Lee in the helicopter, and it looked whole. But other things of critical import might have been removed besides Nick’s brain.
Also, they would need a cooperative ground crew to get the helicopter out of the hangar, which is unlikely.
Virginia and Gavotte might have been able to take Mr. Green hostage so as to get Nick installed and the aircraft made flight-ready and released from the hangar. But Gavotte didn’t seem to want to approach Mr. Green, perhaps wisely anticipating that he had bee-countermeasures.
While reality blindness has increased by a large amount, it still isn’t 100% of the population, as evidenced by Dr. Lee herself, as well as Mr. Green, Tip, Chris, Marcie, Jonah, Nera, Dr. Jones, other mad scientists, and other henchpersons and assorted minions and associates.
Those who are not reality blind might well choose to travel by bus for various reasons.
Other readers of Skin Horse might be interested. Dirk Tiede started a web comic story ‘Paradigm Shift’ back when Narbonic was not yet finished. He had to stop because of health problems & has now continued it, & revised the parts he did earlier. http://www.paradigmshiftmanga.com/archive
The three of them got on a Greyhound bus to…where? Where are they going? Anasigma and Anasigma-associated offices are no doubt now offlimits. And Annex One has walked off to look for them.
Meant to bring it up yesterday, but a crowded schedule kept me from getting back…but isn’t this the second time they’ve been on or around a bus in this storyline? Dr. Lee and Nick and Gavotte aren’t going to merge with these strangers and become one character, are they?
But the other bus was definitely in VR. This one seems fairly certainly in the real world.
Of course, there’s also the whack theory that everything we’ve seen since the beginning of Skin Horse was all Virtual Reality, so the VR worlds we’ve encountered would actually have been worlds within worlds.
Well, if someone’s (it’s been posed by a few people over the past several days) theory turns out to be correct – that the brain she found isn’t Nick – then Nick (wherever he may be) will be even more jealous that someone else was in her lap. Not that the brain in question gets to enjoy the experience anyway, but still…
Looked like Andrew had something in his mouth, but now I think it’s a bee flying in front of him.
Economical use of panels or they’re in some kind of warp where time stands still.
Gavotte’s making economical use of her energy. Hovering in place takes less energy than flying around (of course, she could be even more economical and land on the seat, but that would be to risk getting swatted by another passenger).
I’ve ridden Greyhound. Time pretty much stands still.
word
Truth.
It’s just a jump to the left …
And then a step to the Right… ^_^
How did she pay the fare?
Did she grab a wallet from a felled doctor/goon, or does Gavotte still recall working credit card numbers that function for Skin Horse petty cash?
Or did Gavotte just buzz “Throwing us off will be more trouble than it’s worth”, and the driver looked her and Dr. Lee over and shrugged and said “So sit, and don’t make trouble”?
[Later, on seeing Annex One stomping towards them in the distance]
Gavotte: Ah, driver, it will now be less trouble to stop and let us off than to continue onwards.
Driver: *shrug* So leave, and don’t make trouble.
If I were the driver, and I saw a woman drenched in blood, holding what appears to be a human brain, and surrounded by a swarm of bees, I would probably be the one who didn’t want to cause any trouble.
I wouldn’t want to know how she got that way. Whether she handed me a ticket or not, I’d say just three words – “Where to, lady?” – and motion her to the back.
It’s a Greyhound bus driver, not a normal one. They’re not even the scariest thing he’s seen today.
I’m now seeing the driver as a bit like the driver of the Night Bus to Sto Lat in Unseen Academicals, who “had the quiet, friendly air about him of someone who had found the best way to get through life was never to give much of a stuff about anything”.
They might not even be the weirdest and/or scariest thing currently on the bus.
I also wouldn’t rule out that their Greyhound bus driver is a literal greyhound.
I suspect that Greyhound drivers have ways of reporting threats and dangers (frex: agitated person with a firearm), if only so that there is a record of what happened in the case of their deaths.
Driver: Dispatch, I would like to report that an Asian woman got on wearing hospital scrubs, covered with some sort of red stuff, carrying what looks like a human brain in aspic, and accompanied by a large swarm of bees. I didn’t ask for a fare.
Dispatch: Copy that. Do you want police intervention at the next town you stop at?
Driver: Negative. You did hear me say “bees”, right? I can’t think of anything the police could do that wouldn’t make things worse. Right now, the passenger and her bees are sitting quietly, with the brain, not making trouble.
That’s assuming the driver wasn’t reality blind. But if he didn’t see her, he wouldn’t have stopped and let her on in the first place.
Dave’s Reality Blind relatives could see him, they just rationalized away all the things about him that didn’t make sense.
I’m not the world’s best grifter, but I’m pretty sure that if I were wearing scrubs and holding a human brain I could concoct some kind of story that would get me onto a greyhound bus.
you forgot the covered in sewage part.
Also, how does Gavotte have any experience at all with riding in a Greyhound?
Or is it just her omniscience pulling forth knowledge of such things from the aether?
She might have heard about it secondhand.
Why assume she doesn’t do this all the time?
Surely she can’t travel by plane.
I’m really bothered about Nick’s brain at this point – how long since the protective gel came off? How long since it was oxygenated? I know that this is all humor and perhaps, like Mystery Science Theater, I should just relax and not worry about he breathes (eats probably isn’t an issue as yet), but frankly at this point I’m getting anxious enough that the “they’re all still in VR” theory is less worrysome than the notion that Lee is getting Nick to a life support system by _bus_.
I think the protective casing is still there. It’s probably just hard to draw/color, so it’s appeared to be absent.
If Dr. Lee thinks that Nick could survive in biowaste slurry, he can probably survive being shlepped by hand for a while. She is presumably the expert here.
The casing is there–it’s just almost completely transparent. You can barely make it out in most of the panels where she’s talking to Ira, but it seems to be holding form at that point. So at this distance, it’s probably just pretty much invisible.
In Narbonic, Dave was zapped back to zombiehood after being dead for a week, reduced to just a head for a day or two, and was just a brain, pickled in alcohol driving a giant robot for several hours, before being reinstalled into a cloned body. Granted, there were at least two mad scientists involved with all of that, but this is clearly a universe where that sort of thing can be fixed.
I was thinking of The Princess Bride…
Of course, with Nick, that last line really doesn’t apply.
Greyhound – They don’t call it “flogging the dog” for nothing…
I ride the “Tall Dog” myself sometimes, mostly a few miles south, Mexico, Guatemala, etc. You know, where the waiter LOOKS at YOU while putting implements and food available. If you ate in US, the waitperson looked at the table, followed the regulations and where to place such THINGS. Mostly they’ve memorized a map.
When you want ATTENTION from a human, take a Southern Trip across the line.
I’ve stopped worrying about Nick. Virginia allowed the Grating Green Ween to LIVE, but then, she breaks MY rules all the time.
Really shoulda gone back for the helicopter.
It’s probably been reduced to spare parts by now, and while better for whatever Dr. Lee is cooking up, it would require too much time in a hostile environment to assemble. Best to retreat with the vital part to a safe lab where she can take her time.
We saw Dr. Lee in the helicopter, and it looked whole. But other things of critical import might have been removed besides Nick’s brain.
Also, they would need a cooperative ground crew to get the helicopter out of the hangar, which is unlikely.
Virginia and Gavotte might have been able to take Mr. Green hostage so as to get Nick installed and the aircraft made flight-ready and released from the hangar. But Gavotte didn’t seem to want to approach Mr. Green, perhaps wisely anticipating that he had bee-countermeasures.
I imagine that Dres Lee and Jones between them can come up with a new, cooler body for Nick.
’82 Trans Am?
Cool, but not cooler than an Osprey.
One wonders what else takes the Greyhound bus that this would be normal. @_@
There was the time that Helen left Dave’s head in a box … but that was on Muni as I recall.
Let’s just say that hospital scrubs covered in sewage qualify as semi-formal attire on the Greyhound.
Definitely not Greyhound, since the seats faced sideways. (Oct 15, 2001)
This joke doesn’t make any sense, because Virginia should be well aware that everyone actually IS reality blind!
Seriously, has she somehow forgotten the whole reality blindness mass epidemic that erupted mysteriously? It was a major recent plot detail!
While reality blindness has increased by a large amount, it still isn’t 100% of the population, as evidenced by Dr. Lee herself, as well as Mr. Green, Tip, Chris, Marcie, Jonah, Nera, Dr. Jones, other mad scientists, and other henchpersons and assorted minions and associates.
Those who are not reality blind might well choose to travel by bus for various reasons.
Getting their kicks on Route 66.
Did they buy one ticket, two, or three including Nick?
I think Ginny and the others get a reasonably free ride this trip.
Other readers of Skin Horse might be interested. Dirk Tiede started a web comic story ‘Paradigm Shift’ back when Narbonic was not yet finished. He had to stop because of health problems & has now continued it, & revised the parts he did earlier.
http://www.paradigmshiftmanga.com/archive
Paradigm Shift is back? Excellent!
The three of them got on a Greyhound bus to…where? Where are they going? Anasigma and Anasigma-associated offices are no doubt now offlimits. And Annex One has walked off to look for them.
“Anywhere but here” comes to mind, but probably off to see General Sal and her crew to get Nick into some sort of craft.
Gavotte foresaw (or was informed via temporal loop or similar) that three fusion engines would power a giant robot.
Pointing Dr. Lee in the direction she needs to go to meet that giant robot is probably well within her wheelhouse.
Hmmm, those folks in the background on the left look familiar.
Meant to bring it up yesterday, but a crowded schedule kept me from getting back…but isn’t this the second time they’ve been on or around a bus in this storyline? Dr. Lee and Nick and Gavotte aren’t going to merge with these strangers and become one character, are they?
But the other bus was definitely in VR. This one seems fairly certainly in the real world.
Of course, there’s also the whack theory that everything we’ve seen since the beginning of Skin Horse was all Virtual Reality, so the VR worlds we’ve encountered would actually have been worlds within worlds.
Will Nick be jealous when he realizes he’s been on Ginny’s lap, and next to her breasts, while in the jello?
Well, if someone’s (it’s been posed by a few people over the past several days) theory turns out to be correct – that the brain she found isn’t Nick – then Nick (wherever he may be) will be even more jealous that someone else was in her lap. Not that the brain in question gets to enjoy the experience anyway, but still…
The bees would be the most worrying things. A person in medical scrubs with a loose organ wouldn’t even register as odd.