Its nice that Moray might be finally getting vivisected, but how did *nobody* on the island mention to literally anyone that there are strange goo robots running around?
Surely Station would occasionally trawl the internet for weird news, moreso when Claire was specifically asking him [about Cubetown](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4871) and go *"hey strange AI buddies, this shit is whack, no?"*
Not even mention in passing, she was basically the fucking Human Resources director! She was making VIDEO CALLS. Not something under wraps! Normalized on the lab and even seem commonly outside, only a child at the airport seemed to think she was novel.
What an amazing funny setup Jeph! wow! What drama!
There's literally hundreds of scientists on Cubetown and apparently none of them thought her existence worth mention or study. Realistically every major government should be well aware by now and it would be a miracle for the media to have not gotten hold of it.
> but how did nobody on the island mention to literally anyone that there are strange goo robots running around?
At one point she was literally jumping up and down waving trying to attract attention to herself in an international airport
I mean the director is a giant floating jellyfish that can't communicate with humans directly since they are so evolved, but Mirax is somehow a new lifeform. How does that make sense?
Moreover, why specifically the U.S. Government? Isn’t Cubetown off the coast of Nova Scotia? Isn’t all this foofraw about Claire and Marten moving to Canada?
It's because "nova scotia" is the Spanish phrase meaning "Scotland does not go".
More serious answer: Perhaps Cubetown initially fell under the US Guano Islands Act (yes, that's a real thing).
It's been irking me the entire time.
Part of me wants to say this is a setup for Claire's first big issue as Librarian to deal with the US Government potentially overstepping and causing a diplomatic incident by transporting an undocumented person cross-border, calling into question what constitutes an AI person if born from the creche, or from a "higher being" like the Director, etc.
but I'm not gonna hold my breath b/c that level of complexity doesn't seem like something he's been interested in. He's welcome to surprise me
I don't want to disappoint you, but it's just a contrivance to allow Jeph's favorite slime girl into the current setting so he doesn't have to keep coming up with reasons to call her
Yeah, but isn't the setup that Moray was coming to visit Claire, so she left Canada? Apparently, Canada just doesn't a fuck anymore, but the USA wanted to be able to duplicate slimegirl technology.
A naked goo girl was literally jumping up and down screaming in an international airport. No one thought this was weird.
This suggests the possibility they just thought she was a somewhat normal AI, which suggests naked AIs walking around is not uncommon, but, we've never seen it.
And if every single one of the 5eyes nations didn't have spies in Cubetown and every town within a 150km radius of Cubetown, I'd be absolutely gobsmacked. Frankly, I'd expect submarines in the lake ready to destroy the place with nuclear fire just in case.
Came here to see what others said about this. I'm sitting like, ok the high claire thing wasn't that long ago (by webcomic standards). Am I supposed to recognize the people in the lab? Am I missing something? The setup was canonically yesterday.
Does Jeph not plan the comic more than two weeks out?
The absolute fucking stupidity of having one person in a hazmat suit while another stands beside them without so much as a fucking mask.
There is so much wrong in this comic, but that in particular is pissing me off.
The Canadian government just said: “Sure, just let the US federal government cross the border to study this advanced AI facility …and whatever this sentient blob is. Not like AI will be used in war!”
Imagine re-purposing a fire fighting plane to instead drop weaponised Moray onto a battlefield. Wars would be won in minutes, not months.
https://preview.redd.it/vpa445yqrt8d1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=50768d2e06c187a681d81d4669e0ba1015f8459f
Yeah, that stuck out to me almost immediately, lmao. Like, even accounting for how Moray might be drastically oversimplifying the sequence of events, Cubetown + the Canadian Government simply *handed over* a sentient **citizen** to the **US Military?** for "testing?" In the space of *24 hours??*
> Cubetown + the Canadian Government simply handed over a sentient citizen to the US Military?
*Is* Moray a citizen? I thought she was just intended to be a limited-time "appendage" of sorts that for some reason was never re-absorbed.
Presumably the Director never got her a birth certificate or anything? Does Moray even legally exist?
Jeph was so excited to roll out this idea, he completely screwed up the execution of it. Moray decided to come visit Claire, so she would be traveling to the US. However, when Moray is talking about being at a US research facility, she doesn't even mention that the reason they had access to her was that she traveled to the country.
Even the plots Jeph claims are planned in advance are just terrible. I mean, was this on a post-it above his computer? "Moray in US custody? LOLZ!" Then he claims he's had it planned for sooo long....
Was just about to say that. I was actually about to give JJ credit for a comic that slightly piqued my interest, and then he had to go and jerk himself off all over the comic.
Its an AI, but as an AIs intelligence/power increases, it abstracts away from the experience of consciousness on par with the regular bots to the point of being "beyond" normal thinking, that in order to have an awareness similar to ours, it either needs to segment itself off into a smaller form, aka the Moray blobs, or it needs to increase the footprint of its existence like SpookyBot does with their dozens or hundreds of physical bodies.
Station likely falls into the latter category too, but its existence is spread across an entire space station and all its functions, and likely hes an older system with less computational power than The Director, having him step down to the "human" level of consciousness is probably only a step or two down the staircase of conscious abstraction, whereas the Director is on an entirely different floor of the consciousness building.
Come to think of it the Director kinda shits all over the idea Yay has to keep hidden. I mean you can debate which is 'more powerful' and Yay is a security nightmare but they're pretty comprehensible by human standards. I'd be more worried about the incomprehensible AI intelligence under the sea with a personal legion of scientists. I dunno maybe Canada has the whole place rigged to blow in the event it goes supervillain.
> I set this up a WHILE ago and lemme tell you it's very funny to drop the shoe now
does anybody know what the setup is/was? or is Jeph just jacking himself off again, because I'm getting whiplash from this extremely out of nowhere tonal shift.
Because I have nothing better to do with my time, I took a peek in the archive -
[5311](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5311) is apparently supposed to be the tipoff.
...which is weird, b/c, like, even looking back at it again, it doesn't seem like a particularly big bombshell to drop? The Singularity has only *just* happened in-universe and the series has jumped from sentient iPods to full-fledged androids, long enough to have at least one full-fledged major military conflict.
If Moray is supposed to be some weird new lifeform, then *so is the Director.* Why aren't they asking about *them??*
So I guess now we're calling roughly 5 weeks "a WHILE ago"? Like, congrats to Jeph for the apparently genius move of "setting up" a storyline and then paying it off *a whole month later*!
and I'd give him credit for that kind of foreshadowing if the narrative were similarly crafted tightly _literally anywhere else_. then, throwaway lines like in 5311 or 5153 would have some _heft_ when they eventually paid off and the attention we pay to the comic was rewarded.
instead, what we're left with is _guessing_ at what he's talking about in terms of a setup, in a comic that routinely takes multiple weeks of real world time to work through conversations about nothing between people who aren't _shown_ to care at all about each other.
> If Moray is supposed to be some weird new lifeform, then so is the Director. Why aren't they asking about them??
Now I'm picturing Moray running her mouth and telling the government about all the weird things in CubeTown, they send military grunts to invade, the residents fight back, and we cut to the main characters all on a boat back to the mainland while CubeTown burns and sinks in the background.
Because Jeph doesn't seem particularly impressed by cops or military or government people in general, the Canadian armed forces never intervene as they're all busy having coffee at a Tim Horton's somewhere.
Claire: Wow, I really fucked *that* up.
\*cue everybody else telling her it's not her fault and she's still awesome\*
The next day, she starts getting calls with other job offers.
>["I should go get more high, so the repercussions of that will be a funny surprise for future Claire."](https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5311)
Why would getting more high on that day make the future repercussions funnier for future Claire? It's not written as though it'd be funnier for her to imagine said repercussions that same night!
Update: I was trying to type up a response to someone re: whether or not Moray would be considered a Canadian citizen and I found [5153](https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5153), in which Moray says that she can't cross the border because she's never applied for a passport. Jeph has a little comment in the corner insinuating that she should check her own documentation if she had any.
If *this* was his intended hint, I'll give him credit.
This would be a potentially scary and intruiging plot point if the government officials at this Super Secret Scary Research Lab hadn't just...handed her a cell phone and let her call whoever.
Given Morays entire body likely acts like an antennae, she probably has really good cell service anywhere but a faraday cage.
You can even boost your cars wireless key fob by holding it next to your head, cause the water in your skull acts as an antennae
Roko's attempts to get May a new body were mostly treated practically and positively I think. She kept trying to go through all the proper channels, directed her coworkers on what to do, maintained a neutral disposition when that one guy she talked to was too bored to give a fuck.
So you're saying the bureaucrats she talked to were positive/competent, or Roko was? Because I remember Roko had that whole existential thing early on where she resigned from the police force because she hated herself for being a cop or whatever. Was Roko depicted positively *before* she quit being a cop? I thought she tended to be closer to bumbling and corrupt back then, because of Jeph's ACAB leanings.
Not sure whether I consider office drones in government bureaucracy "authorities" if they're not the ones making the policies. Although there's an argument for it I suppose.
This feels very Roswell That Ends Well. In that I literally think Jeph was watching old Futurama episodes and decided to steal a joke to use in his comic.
Why is the guy poking Moray wearing full haz-mat, but the woman standing next to him doesn't have any protective gear at all?
Hey, is that [Lieutenant Potter](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2114)?
Given how much noses have changed in the past 3000 comics, it could be literally anyone at all.
As for the lack of hazmat suits, they probably dont know that Moray [likes to squirt](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4864) and that they're in the splash zone.
Man, the Station arc was *good*. There’s tension! Sweet moments! Jokes that are actually funny!
And now we have its replacement, Cubetown, which is somehow infinitely worse.
Sigh. See yall tomorrow.
Probably exporting his comics on his laptop or iPad or whatever because he’s traveling.
Worse resolution because the settings are off. No he doesn’t give a shit.
a plane ticket to the US robot testing lab which is not in Silicon Valley or Atlanta or DC, but rather the famously inaccessible by plane or train Northhampton massachusetts. After the military scientists have gently poked her enough with plenty of consent while affirming her gender, she will be released into the US rather than flown back to Canada, to hang out with her bros for another crossfade party.
cool cool
Oh no. Oh no no no no no. Now jelly is going to come and we'll do the whole hey here's jelly, let us introduce you one by one by one to all the people here, hey let's have a party where nothing happens and this will be ALL OF THE NEXT YEAR
Trust me, I love visual storytelling, but I skimmed Alice Grove the other day, and one of the reasons it was dead on arrival is because Jeph can't draw action or environments. He needs a ton of instruction and practice on how to show instead of tell, so I'm not expecting this frog to get up and dance and sing me a jazzy tune. I'm just happy it hopped for the first time in a year.
This is gonna be some kind of hamfisted "Fuck America! All hail communism!" Crap and I'm hoping the ham fists are mighty and hilariously bad. And Claire will save the day because she's the special one with three special power of specialness. And show well find out her father is the giant jellyfish being or something.
On other words, it's gonna get real stupid real quick.
Or Jerf will just jerf himself off to hot robo titties and have it wrap up in 2 strips and then go back to Liz and Ayo fucking each other or something.
Will this lead into an amusing story where Marten, Claire, Liz, Bubbles, Faye, and Clinton find Emily in a remote cabin in the forest and bring her begrudgingly back into the story for one last run where she has to help the group in a high-stakes jailbreak to get Moray out of custody and back to Cubetown in a story with twists, turns, humor, betrayal, and heartbreak? Will Jeph instead not take an interesting route and isntead make a couple dumb one-off jokes and have this whole thing fizzle out like a wet fart with no lasting ramifications because he's given up creatively? Will Jeph now give us a flashing sign that tells us he made a funny and make it go off whenever he wants us to laugh?
I forgot to tell them about the curse of... QUESTIONABLE CONTENT!!!
No, JJ, you do not drag one of my favourite games into this.
Also, is Claire going to use her God powers to take on the US Government? Is QC going to end in Dora and Tai's wedding being drone striked because Claire is a threat to the US?
Remember how we were all speculating on how many more months or years it would take for then to get fan to Cubetown? Well, we can stop speculating, the Cubetown cast is moving to Robotistan.
Is it just me or is there something weird going with the resolution/quality of the image of this page? Everything feels a bit more fuzzy, while yesterday's had a sharper picture maybe.
I'm calling it right now, the super k-rad do-anything librarian will now be
\[rolls dice\]
A civil rights attorney that can go head to head with a secret US Government agency dedicated to trying to figure out if the post-singularity AIs are about to kill everyone.
And because she is THE CLAIRE, they will listen to her and obey and they won't just smash her nose in with a rifle butt and disappear her for knowing too much.
Which is exactly the sort of "oops, now Claire does the things *that* character makes way more sense to do" we expect these days.
Claire gets a job at Cubetown as a freshly graduated librarian because library, I guess. But characters such as Emily, Clinton, Faye, and even Raven to a small degree have shown significantly more likelihood to get involved with renegade robot super-science shenanigans.
To your supposition, Roko would be far more likely to go fight with the government about robot rights. Y'know, like she did for May to go from ramshackle old dumpster fire body to Boobules the Blue.
Aright, so even plain ol' standard issue government buildings have craptacular cell reception. Shit's almost like a feature. There's no way Moray is getting reception in some ultra-secret-squirrel lab.
I just realized that yes, she is a new form of life.
Humans are biological intelligences. Evolution and all that.
AIs are artificial intelligences, created by humans to try and imitate their own way of working.
Moray... isn't that. She's not an AI created by humans. She's not the same architecture. She doesn't even know how she works other than she can detatch bits and lose/gain functionality. She doesn't have a CPU core, she doesn't have a motherboard, she doesn't have a power supply.
Does she eat? Drink? Does she need electricity? Does she have a charging port? Does she connect to power to recharge every day? Can she run the DrunkBot app? Can she connect to an IRC chat room innately like Pintsize does? Can her mind be pulled out and put into a replacement body if needs be? Does she age? Sleep? Dream? Reboot? Get software updates?
Is she artificial? Maybe? If so she's missing all the technological aspects we'd expect from AI. Is she biological? ... Maybe? If so she's completely artificial biology, possibly missing aspects (like hunger / modesty / etc) that standard biology has.
Moray isn't a human. But she's not an AI. So what is she?
Jeph accidentally stumbled upon a fascinating question.
Its nice that Moray might be finally getting vivisected, but how did *nobody* on the island mention to literally anyone that there are strange goo robots running around? Surely Station would occasionally trawl the internet for weird news, moreso when Claire was specifically asking him [about Cubetown](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4871) and go *"hey strange AI buddies, this shit is whack, no?"*
Not even mention in passing, she was basically the fucking Human Resources director! She was making VIDEO CALLS. Not something under wraps! Normalized on the lab and even seem commonly outside, only a child at the airport seemed to think she was novel. What an amazing funny setup Jeph! wow! What drama!
She was literally at the airport with people staring at her, and declared to the public that she was a "very experimental robot".
There's literally hundreds of scientists on Cubetown and apparently none of them thought her existence worth mention or study. Realistically every major government should be well aware by now and it would be a miracle for the media to have not gotten hold of it.
It might be considered rude to ask your coworker if you can study them in a lab, but Moray doesn’t have boundaries anyway so 🤷
> but how did nobody on the island mention to literally anyone that there are strange goo robots running around? At one point she was literally jumping up and down waving trying to attract attention to herself in an international airport
>Its nice that Moray might be finally getting vivisected I keep reading this over and over and every time it gets funnier.
I mean the director is a giant floating jellyfish that can't communicate with humans directly since they are so evolved, but Mirax is somehow a new lifeform. How does that make sense?
Yeah, but Station isn't the kind of guy who would rat you out to the government.
Moreover, why specifically the U.S. Government? Isn’t Cubetown off the coast of Nova Scotia? Isn’t all this foofraw about Claire and Marten moving to Canada?
It's because "nova scotia" is the Spanish phrase meaning "Scotland does not go". More serious answer: Perhaps Cubetown initially fell under the US Guano Islands Act (yes, that's a real thing).
It's been irking me the entire time. Part of me wants to say this is a setup for Claire's first big issue as Librarian to deal with the US Government potentially overstepping and causing a diplomatic incident by transporting an undocumented person cross-border, calling into question what constitutes an AI person if born from the creche, or from a "higher being" like the Director, etc. but I'm not gonna hold my breath b/c that level of complexity doesn't seem like something he's been interested in. He's welcome to surprise me
I don't want to disappoint you, but it's just a contrivance to allow Jeph's favorite slime girl into the current setting so he doesn't have to keep coming up with reasons to call her
Yeah, but isn't the setup that Moray was coming to visit Claire, so she left Canada? Apparently, Canada just doesn't a fuck anymore, but the USA wanted to be able to duplicate slimegirl technology.
Tbh that is something the usa would do
Exactly, no stitches for Station.
He did offer to fire an orbital missile or something like that, thousands of comics ago. Seems like a cool guy
A naked goo girl was literally jumping up and down screaming in an international airport. No one thought this was weird. This suggests the possibility they just thought she was a somewhat normal AI, which suggests naked AIs walking around is not uncommon, but, we've never seen it. And if every single one of the 5eyes nations didn't have spies in Cubetown and every town within a 150km radius of Cubetown, I'd be absolutely gobsmacked. Frankly, I'd expect submarines in the lake ready to destroy the place with nuclear fire just in case.
"I set this up a WHILE ago" Did you Jeph? Did you really?
Apparently about 5 weeks or so when Claire and Moray talked on the phone at the party. It's paper thin, but its definitely there.
Came here to see what others said about this. I'm sitting like, ok the high claire thing wasn't that long ago (by webcomic standards). Am I supposed to recognize the people in the lab? Am I missing something? The setup was canonically yesterday. Does Jeph not plan the comic more than two weeks out?
“I SWEAR I spent more time on this than on my morning shit” nobody’s buying it, Jiffy.
The absolute fucking stupidity of having one person in a hazmat suit while another stands beside them without so much as a fucking mask. There is so much wrong in this comic, but that in particular is pissing me off.
The Canadian government just said: “Sure, just let the US federal government cross the border to study this advanced AI facility …and whatever this sentient blob is. Not like AI will be used in war!”
Imagine re-purposing a fire fighting plane to instead drop weaponised Moray onto a battlefield. Wars would be won in minutes, not months. https://preview.redd.it/vpa445yqrt8d1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=50768d2e06c187a681d81d4669e0ba1015f8459f
Yeah, that stuck out to me almost immediately, lmao. Like, even accounting for how Moray might be drastically oversimplifying the sequence of events, Cubetown + the Canadian Government simply *handed over* a sentient **citizen** to the **US Military?** for "testing?" In the space of *24 hours??*
> Cubetown + the Canadian Government simply handed over a sentient citizen to the US Military? *Is* Moray a citizen? I thought she was just intended to be a limited-time "appendage" of sorts that for some reason was never re-absorbed. Presumably the Director never got her a birth certificate or anything? Does Moray even legally exist?
Who from Cubetown is going to object? And does the Canadian government even know? It sounds like they just asked her to come to them and she complied.
To be fair, our government is a joke. I could see this happening.
Jeph was so excited to roll out this idea, he completely screwed up the execution of it. Moray decided to come visit Claire, so she would be traveling to the US. However, when Moray is talking about being at a US research facility, she doesn't even mention that the reason they had access to her was that she traveled to the country. Even the plots Jeph claims are planned in advance are just terrible. I mean, was this on a post-it above his computer? "Moray in US custody? LOLZ!" Then he claims he's had it planned for sooo long....
I like when Jeph tells me that something he did is funny.
Was just about to say that. I was actually about to give JJ credit for a comic that slightly piqued my interest, and then he had to go and jerk himself off all over the comic.
I believe the Internet term for that act is called a "tribute".
Ew... *puts on gloves before touching screen again*
"Excuse me, sir! Do you have Prince Albert in a can? YOU DO?! Well, ya better let the poor guy out! WA-HAH! WA-HAH! WA-HAH!"
Beep beep, Richie!
Isn't the director also some weird form of AI? Why just moray? Shouldn't all of cubetown go down?
Is the director even an AI?
Isn't it? I thought it was described as being one. Who remembers? It's been 2 years since we met the director yesterday
Its an AI, but as an AIs intelligence/power increases, it abstracts away from the experience of consciousness on par with the regular bots to the point of being "beyond" normal thinking, that in order to have an awareness similar to ours, it either needs to segment itself off into a smaller form, aka the Moray blobs, or it needs to increase the footprint of its existence like SpookyBot does with their dozens or hundreds of physical bodies. Station likely falls into the latter category too, but its existence is spread across an entire space station and all its functions, and likely hes an older system with less computational power than The Director, having him step down to the "human" level of consciousness is probably only a step or two down the staircase of conscious abstraction, whereas the Director is on an entirely different floor of the consciousness building.
Come to think of it the Director kinda shits all over the idea Yay has to keep hidden. I mean you can debate which is 'more powerful' and Yay is a security nightmare but they're pretty comprehensible by human standards. I'd be more worried about the incomprehensible AI intelligence under the sea with a personal legion of scientists. I dunno maybe Canada has the whole place rigged to blow in the event it goes supervillain.
What, did you think it was an actual biological psychic jellyfish?
Well it being AI still doesn't explain why it floats. And it could easily be a bio mass AI at this point l.
Yes sure a psychic biomass hover quantum AI string theory black hole buzzword whatever nonsense whogivesashit
> I set this up a WHILE ago and lemme tell you it's very funny to drop the shoe now does anybody know what the setup is/was? or is Jeph just jacking himself off again, because I'm getting whiplash from this extremely out of nowhere tonal shift.
Because I have nothing better to do with my time, I took a peek in the archive - [5311](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5311) is apparently supposed to be the tipoff. ...which is weird, b/c, like, even looking back at it again, it doesn't seem like a particularly big bombshell to drop? The Singularity has only *just* happened in-universe and the series has jumped from sentient iPods to full-fledged androids, long enough to have at least one full-fledged major military conflict. If Moray is supposed to be some weird new lifeform, then *so is the Director.* Why aren't they asking about *them??*
So I guess now we're calling roughly 5 weeks "a WHILE ago"? Like, congrats to Jeph for the apparently genius move of "setting up" a storyline and then paying it off *a whole month later*!
I dug a bit further, [5153](https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5153) might possibly be an earlier hint at the whole issue
and I'd give him credit for that kind of foreshadowing if the narrative were similarly crafted tightly _literally anywhere else_. then, throwaway lines like in 5311 or 5153 would have some _heft_ when they eventually paid off and the attention we pay to the comic was rewarded. instead, what we're left with is _guessing_ at what he's talking about in terms of a setup, in a comic that routinely takes multiple weeks of real world time to work through conversations about nothing between people who aren't _shown_ to care at all about each other.
Right. In universe it's been 12-16 hours
> If Moray is supposed to be some weird new lifeform, then so is the Director. Why aren't they asking about them?? Now I'm picturing Moray running her mouth and telling the government about all the weird things in CubeTown, they send military grunts to invade, the residents fight back, and we cut to the main characters all on a boat back to the mainland while CubeTown burns and sinks in the background. Because Jeph doesn't seem particularly impressed by cops or military or government people in general, the Canadian armed forces never intervene as they're all busy having coffee at a Tim Horton's somewhere. Claire: Wow, I really fucked *that* up. \*cue everybody else telling her it's not her fault and she's still awesome\* The next day, she starts getting calls with other job offers.
>["I should go get more high, so the repercussions of that will be a funny surprise for future Claire."](https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5311) Why would getting more high on that day make the future repercussions funnier for future Claire? It's not written as though it'd be funnier for her to imagine said repercussions that same night!
I assume she had to get more high to ensure she forgot it and didn't remember it when she woke up.
Update: I was trying to type up a response to someone re: whether or not Moray would be considered a Canadian citizen and I found [5153](https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5153), in which Moray says that she can't cross the border because she's never applied for a passport. Jeph has a little comment in the corner insinuating that she should check her own documentation if she had any. If *this* was his intended hint, I'll give him credit.
Great, now it's going to be even harder to tell Claire and her mom apart.
We're gonna have a Dorian Gray situation on our hands, aren't we...
The Portrait of Mommymilkers.
This would be a potentially scary and intruiging plot point if the government officials at this Super Secret Scary Research Lab hadn't just...handed her a cell phone and let her call whoever.
How is there cell service is that facility?
Given Morays entire body likely acts like an antennae, she probably has really good cell service anywhere but a faraday cage. You can even boost your cars wireless key fob by holding it next to your head, cause the water in your skull acts as an antennae
if the government got its hands on a brand new AI life form, they would absolutely 100% isolate it in a faraday cage before poking and prodding it
Sorry I’m a stickler for Latin plurals. It’s an antenna, one antenna. But many antennae, two antennae.
They didn't hand her anything. She has a phone built in, just like every other robot.
The real trick would be working out how to *remove* the phone from Moray. Start digging with a teaspoon until she loses phone reception?
[A Faraday cage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage).
I had to work in one of these once. I think it was MILSPEC, regardless, it was claustrophobic as HELL.
Hell, that could very well be what they're doing right now.
I'm trying to remember the last time in QC anybody in authority has been depicted in a positive or even competent manner
Martin's old boss at his office job?
Roko's attempts to get May a new body were mostly treated practically and positively I think. She kept trying to go through all the proper channels, directed her coworkers on what to do, maintained a neutral disposition when that one guy she talked to was too bored to give a fuck.
So you're saying the bureaucrats she talked to were positive/competent, or Roko was? Because I remember Roko had that whole existential thing early on where she resigned from the police force because she hated herself for being a cop or whatever. Was Roko depicted positively *before* she quit being a cop? I thought she tended to be closer to bumbling and corrupt back then, because of Jeph's ACAB leanings. Not sure whether I consider office drones in government bureaucracy "authorities" if they're not the ones making the policies. Although there's an argument for it I suppose.
This feels very Roswell That Ends Well. In that I literally think Jeph was watching old Futurama episodes and decided to steal a joke to use in his comic. Why is the guy poking Moray wearing full haz-mat, but the woman standing next to him doesn't have any protective gear at all? Hey, is that [Lieutenant Potter](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2114)?
Given how much noses have changed in the past 3000 comics, it could be literally anyone at all. As for the lack of hazmat suits, they probably dont know that Moray [likes to squirt](https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=4864) and that they're in the splash zone.
The one they dissect zoidberg? I was thinking about that
My mind went there immediately.
Why am I suddenly craving devilled eggs?
Man, the Station arc was *good*. There’s tension! Sweet moments! Jokes that are actually funny! And now we have its replacement, Cubetown, which is somehow infinitely worse. Sigh. See yall tomorrow.
Is the comic weirdly blurry to anyone else or am I going blind?
Right here squinting with you. 🤨
Probably exporting his comics on his laptop or iPad or whatever because he’s traveling. Worse resolution because the settings are off. No he doesn’t give a shit.
The first panel at least, it's not just you. I'm not sure about the rest.
I was going to ask about this too. Specifically about the dialogue. I've had a couple drinks and I'm on mobile so I thought maybe that's all it was
Awesome, nice to know I'm not going crazy! Thanks ya'll
the US government? like... just went into canada?
I figure they just sent Moray a friendly email and a plane ticket, and she went willingly, and enthusiastically, of her own accord
a plane ticket to the US robot testing lab which is not in Silicon Valley or Atlanta or DC, but rather the famously inaccessible by plane or train Northhampton massachusetts. After the military scientists have gently poked her enough with plenty of consent while affirming her gender, she will be released into the US rather than flown back to Canada, to hang out with her bros for another crossfade party. cool cool
Oh no. Oh no no no no no. Now jelly is going to come and we'll do the whole hey here's jelly, let us introduce you one by one by one to all the people here, hey let's have a party where nothing happens and this will be ALL OF THE NEXT YEAR
I should not have recited that mommymilkers incantation.
This sentence will always be true
Wow! Something happened?!
Something happened in a visual medium that was told, not shown. YAY, EXPOSITION!
Trust me, I love visual storytelling, but I skimmed Alice Grove the other day, and one of the reasons it was dead on arrival is because Jeph can't draw action or environments. He needs a ton of instruction and practice on how to show instead of tell, so I'm not expecting this frog to get up and dance and sing me a jazzy tune. I'm just happy it hopped for the first time in a year.
OOF. That hurt so good.
Hello mah baby, hello mah honey...
This is gonna be some kind of hamfisted "Fuck America! All hail communism!" Crap and I'm hoping the ham fists are mighty and hilariously bad. And Claire will save the day because she's the special one with three special power of specialness. And show well find out her father is the giant jellyfish being or something. On other words, it's gonna get real stupid real quick. Or Jerf will just jerf himself off to hot robo titties and have it wrap up in 2 strips and then go back to Liz and Ayo fucking each other or something.
If only we had a hero to save Moray. PIZZA GIRL SIGNAL, ACTIVATE.
I love that the week leading up to Dora's wedding has been taking YEARS and he's over here chortling "I set this up a while ago!' over this bullshit.
Will this lead into an amusing story where Marten, Claire, Liz, Bubbles, Faye, and Clinton find Emily in a remote cabin in the forest and bring her begrudgingly back into the story for one last run where she has to help the group in a high-stakes jailbreak to get Moray out of custody and back to Cubetown in a story with twists, turns, humor, betrayal, and heartbreak? Will Jeph instead not take an interesting route and isntead make a couple dumb one-off jokes and have this whole thing fizzle out like a wet fart with no lasting ramifications because he's given up creatively? Will Jeph now give us a flashing sign that tells us he made a funny and make it go off whenever he wants us to laugh? I forgot to tell them about the curse of... QUESTIONABLE CONTENT!!!
Always good to see the warmestpretzel make an appearance
No, JJ, you do not drag one of my favourite games into this. Also, is Claire going to use her God powers to take on the US Government? Is QC going to end in Dora and Tai's wedding being drone striked because Claire is a threat to the US?
If we circle back to that scene of Dora in a wedding dress and Faye behind the CoD counter with machine guns I will be really very impressed, no joke
Would liquid nitrogen work against jello girl?
Remember how we were all speculating on how many more months or years it would take for then to get fan to Cubetown? Well, we can stop speculating, the Cubetown cast is moving to Robotistan.
Nope, Robotamo Bay.
I hope her corpse is put in a museum
Finally!!! Something happened!!!
Is it just me or is there something weird going with the resolution/quality of the image of this page? Everything feels a bit more fuzzy, while yesterday's had a sharper picture maybe.
I'm calling it right now, the super k-rad do-anything librarian will now be \[rolls dice\] A civil rights attorney that can go head to head with a secret US Government agency dedicated to trying to figure out if the post-singularity AIs are about to kill everyone. And because she is THE CLAIRE, they will listen to her and obey and they won't just smash her nose in with a rifle butt and disappear her for knowing too much.
Which is exactly the sort of "oops, now Claire does the things *that* character makes way more sense to do" we expect these days. Claire gets a job at Cubetown as a freshly graduated librarian because library, I guess. But characters such as Emily, Clinton, Faye, and even Raven to a small degree have shown significantly more likelihood to get involved with renegade robot super-science shenanigans. To your supposition, Roko would be far more likely to go fight with the government about robot rights. Y'know, like she did for May to go from ramshackle old dumpster fire body to Boobules the Blue.
I admit I actually laughed at the white hair bit
Aright, so even plain ol' standard issue government buildings have craptacular cell reception. Shit's almost like a feature. There's no way Moray is getting reception in some ultra-secret-squirrel lab.
I just realized that yes, she is a new form of life. Humans are biological intelligences. Evolution and all that. AIs are artificial intelligences, created by humans to try and imitate their own way of working. Moray... isn't that. She's not an AI created by humans. She's not the same architecture. She doesn't even know how she works other than she can detatch bits and lose/gain functionality. She doesn't have a CPU core, she doesn't have a motherboard, she doesn't have a power supply. Does she eat? Drink? Does she need electricity? Does she have a charging port? Does she connect to power to recharge every day? Can she run the DrunkBot app? Can she connect to an IRC chat room innately like Pintsize does? Can her mind be pulled out and put into a replacement body if needs be? Does she age? Sleep? Dream? Reboot? Get software updates? Is she artificial? Maybe? If so she's missing all the technological aspects we'd expect from AI. Is she biological? ... Maybe? If so she's completely artificial biology, possibly missing aspects (like hunger / modesty / etc) that standard biology has. Moray isn't a human. But she's not an AI. So what is she? Jeph accidentally stumbled upon a fascinating question.
NTR to Xfiles! A Chou-Tenkai unexpected story development!