I wonder if Jadis is going to try hooking Alison up to the Machine. Wasn’t there some story in the lord about Aesma looking at the shape of the universe and then blowing it off? Echoes of Zaphod Beeblebrox and the Total Perspective Vortex.
Yeah, IIRC Zaphod was physically present at the machine, but his mind was in a VR simulation of the universe with basically 1:1 accuracy, and since he was experiencing the virtual universe’s version of the Total Perspective Vortex, and this virtual universe was built for the purpose of Zaphod surviving the TPV, it just showed him what he always knew, that he was the most important thing in the universe.
There were 2, though I can’t remember specifics. One where YISUN turns the wheel on its side, and it blinds her and ruins her(probably a lot like the way Jadis was). In another, I think Aesma just gets real huge, then looks at the wheel and goes “The universe is a wheel”(which is wrong).
I don’t remember where the first one comes from either, but I do know that the second one happens during the first “Aesma and the Three Masters” story. She does get really big and sees that the universe is “somewhat wheel-shaped.” When she tells Yisun that later (in the third story), Yisun says “Surely, but only from one angle.”
It’s a good thing, narratively, that Allison is so weak. Otherwise she’d be throttling Jadis right now. Please Allison, don’t murder the nice lady until we find out what’s going on!
I think it’s 4 technically? Incubus’ crybaby backstory was only told to Maya’s apprentice if I remember correctly. And Gog-Agog doesn’t HAVE one? I mean. Unless you want to count being a worm(s)
According to the author’s words in Tumbler, she actually has, being “a walking tragedy” of sorts; moreover, she even had some kind of close person or persons back than. We just haven’t learn the story yet.
Yep. But more knowing what she will think ahead of time than actually “hearing” her thoughts. If Allison ever goes of the cosmic script then that distinction will matter.
Very much so… now imagine being aware of EVERYTHING on that level of minutiae. Heck, for Jadis this is probably broad strokes as she only mentions the atomic level once.
I’m pretty sure what Allison is thinking right now is:
“They built a machine that can see the shape of the universe, but they couldn’t build a chair without squeaky wheels?”
The Red God’s armies have laid waste to the vast majority of my ice-harvesting worlds. Rayuba has either been destroyed or is in the middle of an active civil war, and the biggest contract I’d ever gotten is permanently in default.
At present I’ve taken in a crab-like Servant with a massive sound projection organ on her back, one who claims to have been a survivor of Rayuba who got in over her head and who managed to find a way off the planet before leaving it to its fate. She’s an excellent musician, and seems to have taken to the use of the ice-flute for marketing incredibly well. But I can’t help but feel we both had greater ambitions cut short by this goddamn Demiurge war.
At some point soon I’m going to be reduced to purely dealing soul ice. Not that there isn’t profit in giving devils their version of ice cubes, and my mastery of the Red Art for supercooling even soul flames is nigh unmatched, but it’s not exactly pleasant.
All things have their season. You are an Icemonger, the Red God is a Warmonger. A season of ice has ended, a season of war begins. Hopefully we will live through this season to see things cool, and the ice return. Or so I tell myself each morning as I flagellate myself for waking when I know those less fortunate do not.
Alas, for merchants like ourselves this is more bitter than tea made from bug wings. I myself discovered I was over invested in coin minted from dreams. A secure investment, because they were hard to steal, but not a valuable one when the masses value their next bowl of rice over esoteric currencies.
When all the chaos of war has ordered itself, and the flickering flame of life has stilled, then so does the age of ice rise. A time of stillness and frost will eventually take even the Throne, as all must end. Fear not the present, and embrace change knowing that even if it takes a hundred thousand millennia your way of life shall return.
The burden of your pain is shared, friend!
A horde of the brigands swept through our excavation site less than a fortnight ago; only those of us closest to the aarvyle mounts we had on standby managed to make it out with our lives, I’m afraid. Our sponsors will not be pleased.
The burden of your pain is shared, friend!
A horde of the brigands swept through our excavation site less than a fortnight ago and cleared the entire place out; only those of us closest to the aarvyle mounts we had on standby managed to make it out with our lives, I fear. Pray for me as I retreat to Throne to inform our sponsors of what has transpired.
She didn’t pay full attention the first time she saw the shape of the universe. Next time, YISUN showed her and it flayed her flesh and burned out her eyeballs.
Welp…. That’s one fancy observatory.
But with events, observing them changes the potential result. I wonder if the mere act of being observed this close to such a device accidentalied the rest of said family.
To prescriptivists comprehendable is a misspelling of comprehensible, shaving off some of the Latin tail. To descriptivists it is an up-and-coming new word.
Philosophically we might use them for subtly different understandings: some things are impossible to understand because of their own inscrutable nature, other things are impossible to understand because there is no actual being able to understand them (but there could in principle exist such beings). We may use comprehensible for the first kind and comprehendable for the second kind – maybe there are no human minds that can understand all of space-time, but maybe one can remodel one with the help of the machine to become such a being.
Is every demiurge except Incubus just full of regret for the life choices they’ve made? Call me crazy but I don’t think this godhood business is all it’s cranked up to be.
Honestly Gog seems to be the only antagonist who has absolutely no regrets, she’s living as the kids say her best life, although it just happens that that consists of being an insane and nigh invincible mass of worms that dresses in clown costumes and runs the multiversal equivalent of Disney.
Is anyone else curious about how oddly … corporate … this last room looks? It seems a lot like a company cafeteria, only with a giant honking wall of machinery on one side.
Here we are again, the start of the end, but there’s more…
SO GLAD to see KSBD back! But I’m trying to discern if Alison is truly in her present condition, or as another reader commented, whether this is all happening in the realm of the mind (or minds).
I expected to see a cyborg-ish Alison, but it’s entirely possible for Jadis & Co. to grow her back. Anything is possible. And as awkward a conversationalist as Jadis is, I don’t see any advantage for her to lie about it being three years, the present state of affairs, etc.
We’ll just have to keep reading. And remember, there’s always more!
I wonder if Jadis can show others how badly things can go, and how, as a way to make them think about what to do next. That way no one gets truly hurt…. Right ?
Dude, the Chinaman stole her rug. See that big space? That rug really tied the room together. Worst thing is she knew it would happen and couldn’t change a damn thing. Eventually Jadis finally manages to mumble a few lines to one of her adepts, and you know what he tells her? That Chinaman is not the preferred term. Asian-Thronian is!
Well, I said it was the worst, but there’s something even worse, she obviously knew that as a longtime Asian-Thronian and didn’t have to be omniscient for that knowledge either. “He just really wants his rug back,” Jadis finally whispers to the adept. He looks overwhelmed and mystified as he shuffles away to throw an orb into the data cores. Now unmoving, encased in crystal, Jadis continues watching an existential comedy unfold far away on an uncontacted world and sheds a single lonely tear.
I wonder if Jadis is going to try hooking Alison up to the Machine. Wasn’t there some story in the lord about Aesma looking at the shape of the universe and then blowing it off? Echoes of Zaphod Beeblebrox and the Total Perspective Vortex.
iirc zaphod didn’t actually get to see the real deal
Yeah, IIRC Zaphod was physically present at the machine, but his mind was in a VR simulation of the universe with basically 1:1 accuracy, and since he was experiencing the virtual universe’s version of the Total Perspective Vortex, and this virtual universe was built for the purpose of Zaphod surviving the TPV, it just showed him what he always knew, that he was the most important thing in the universe.
All-Yisun is just a really cool girl, yanno?
Aesma did indeed perceive the shape of the universe, and was punished mightily for it.
Nah that was for knowing the name of God
She saw the shape of the universe and remarked simply that it looked like a wheel.
There were 2, though I can’t remember specifics. One where YISUN turns the wheel on its side, and it blinds her and ruins her(probably a lot like the way Jadis was). In another, I think Aesma just gets real huge, then looks at the wheel and goes “The universe is a wheel”(which is wrong).
I don’t remember where the first one comes from either, but I do know that the second one happens during the first “Aesma and the Three Masters” story. She does get really big and sees that the universe is “somewhat wheel-shaped.” When she tells Yisun that later (in the third story), Yisun says “Surely, but only from one angle.”
It’s actually in the shape of “I”, it just looks like a wheel from the side.
But that’s just to say that all is one and one is all.
To be a rock and not to roll?
I is O, and O is I. To be able to comprehend the true nature of reality while not losing one’s sense of self, that is CHIM.
Oh wait, wrong universe.
I wonder if Jadis *is* the machine.
Allison about to try and throw hands
In the state she’s in, if she throws too hard, they’ll probably fall off.
Wasted Years???
Blinded by the lights
Dizzy new heights
Grand sites
Dreadful plights
Sleepless nights
Can’t end the blights
And yet it’s her rights
to win all fights
The cinch is tight
Ready the wight
Heart fills with might
Rip, claw and bite
Inspire or ignite,
some unteathered kite.
You gotta fight for your right to party.
Can it run Crysis?
Straight up like a deuce, another runner in the night!
Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun
being weak and emaciated in this context isn’t sounding too good for her rn not gonna lie.
It’s a good thing, narratively, that Allison is so weak. Otherwise she’d be throttling Jadis right now. Please Allison, don’t murder the nice lady until we find out what’s going on!
“Nice.”
I mean, she IS being civil right now…
Nice does not mean good. Learning such is often painful.
well, incubus was “nice” until he wasn’t
and then he slashed dear cio to tiny shreds
you can’t trust anyone, especially a Demiurge
Allison looks like she’s just SO done with this- “heard 6 other tragic backstories already, heard them all”.
I think it’s 4 technically? Incubus’ crybaby backstory was only told to Maya’s apprentice if I remember correctly. And Gog-Agog doesn’t HAVE one? I mean. Unless you want to count being a worm(s)
According to the author’s words in Tumbler, she actually has, being “a walking tragedy” of sorts; moreover, she even had some kind of close person or persons back than. We just haven’t learn the story yet.
Ok, fair point, but Allison has been around a few other melodramatic drama-queens, too, like Cio.
Is the alt text Jadis’s perception of Alison? Hearing snippets of her thoughts, knowing her most minute movements?
Yep. But more knowing what she will think ahead of time than actually “hearing” her thoughts. If Allison ever goes of the cosmic script then that distinction will matter.
Very much so… now imagine being aware of EVERYTHING on that level of minutiae. Heck, for Jadis this is probably broad strokes as she only mentions the atomic level once.
I’m pretty sure what Allison is thinking right now is:
“They built a machine that can see the shape of the universe, but they couldn’t build a chair without squeaky wheels?”
How can I see the alt text?
If you’re on PC hover the cursor over the comic for a sec. Then go back through the archives and do so for all the others 😛
Welp.
The Red God’s armies have laid waste to the vast majority of my ice-harvesting worlds. Rayuba has either been destroyed or is in the middle of an active civil war, and the biggest contract I’d ever gotten is permanently in default.
At present I’ve taken in a crab-like Servant with a massive sound projection organ on her back, one who claims to have been a survivor of Rayuba who got in over her head and who managed to find a way off the planet before leaving it to its fate. She’s an excellent musician, and seems to have taken to the use of the ice-flute for marketing incredibly well. But I can’t help but feel we both had greater ambitions cut short by this goddamn Demiurge war.
At some point soon I’m going to be reduced to purely dealing soul ice. Not that there isn’t profit in giving devils their version of ice cubes, and my mastery of the Red Art for supercooling even soul flames is nigh unmatched, but it’s not exactly pleasant.
I want to wake up.
All things have their season. You are an Icemonger, the Red God is a Warmonger. A season of ice has ended, a season of war begins. Hopefully we will live through this season to see things cool, and the ice return. Or so I tell myself each morning as I flagellate myself for waking when I know those less fortunate do not.
Alas, for merchants like ourselves this is more bitter than tea made from bug wings. I myself discovered I was over invested in coin minted from dreams. A secure investment, because they were hard to steal, but not a valuable one when the masses value their next bowl of rice over esoteric currencies.
Craft new wars. Trade in blood. Gold for steel.
All things change. So will we. So will trade.
Will ice thaw? Will time flow? We will see.
When all the chaos of war has ordered itself, and the flickering flame of life has stilled, then so does the age of ice rise. A time of stillness and frost will eventually take even the Throne, as all must end. Fear not the present, and embrace change knowing that even if it takes a hundred thousand millennia your way of life shall return.
The burden of your pain is shared, friend!
A horde of the brigands swept through our excavation site less than a fortnight ago; only those of us closest to the aarvyle mounts we had on standby managed to make it out with our lives, I’m afraid. Our sponsors will not be pleased.
The burden of your pain is shared, friend!
A horde of the brigands swept through our excavation site less than a fortnight ago and cleared the entire place out; only those of us closest to the aarvyle mounts we had on standby managed to make it out with our lives, I fear. Pray for me as I retreat to Throne to inform our sponsors of what has transpired.
This view of a generations old heirloom machine built to perceive the Shape of Existence goes hard.
Panopticon ?
Maybe. But then, as Aesma realized, the only way to see the outside of something you are within is to leave it.
Unfortunately, she also blinked, so the true shape of the universe is unknown to her.
She didn’t pay full attention the first time she saw the shape of the universe. Next time, YISUN showed her and it flayed her flesh and burned out her eyeballs.
Ah, so this is the true origin of MONIST-1…
Oh yo there’s the plants, it is nice.
It really is quite nice. Breakfast will probably be good too.
i smell time travel stuff
Yeah but the unpredictability of the universe is the fun part, don’t spoil it!
Also, I hope your wife gets well soon.
Welp…. That’s one fancy observatory.
But with events, observing them changes the potential result. I wonder if the mere act of being observed this close to such a device accidentalied the rest of said family.
I love the comic and am a huge fan, but is comprehendable a real word? I always thought it was comprehensible.
To prescriptivists comprehendable is a misspelling of comprehensible, shaving off some of the Latin tail. To descriptivists it is an up-and-coming new word.
Philosophically we might use them for subtly different understandings: some things are impossible to understand because of their own inscrutable nature, other things are impossible to understand because there is no actual being able to understand them (but there could in principle exist such beings). We may use comprehensible for the first kind and comprehendable for the second kind – maybe there are no human minds that can understand all of space-time, but maybe one can remodel one with the help of the machine to become such a being.
No.
Damn the permissive descriptivists.
Is every demiurge except Incubus just full of regret for the life choices they’ve made? Call me crazy but I don’t think this godhood business is all it’s cranked up to be.
achieve heaven trought violence
it is pretty clear what you are getting from the start, not that that would be enough of a warning to some.
Gog seems pretty delighted, really.
Honestly Gog seems to be the only antagonist who has absolutely no regrets, she’s living as the kids say her best life, although it just happens that that consists of being an insane and nigh invincible mass of worms that dresses in clown costumes and runs the multiversal equivalent of Disney.
Be wary, children, not of when a machine is haunted by nightmares: For all great things are.
Be in awe, weep, and sing terror instead, when a machine DREAMS.
“What we see here on the display is apparently a view of some kind of woolly animal simulacrum…”
All that sight, yet unable to become what she saw.
Poor Alison, awakening from a multi-year death nap to be met with a mountain of exposition. Poor Jadis, so socially awkward when hosting guests.
At least she was honest about that part. There really are plants.
Is anyone else curious about how oddly … corporate … this last room looks? It seems a lot like a company cafeteria, only with a giant honking wall of machinery on one side.
I was more getting swanky mega-corp CEO office vibes but I see your point. You know the kind? Room large enough to store an jet and then one table?
A litte girl once asked YISUN to tell her his real name.
He replied with “I, no more and no less”.
She ran off while screaning, “You are lying and I hate you.”
Here we are again, the start of the end, but there’s more…
SO GLAD to see KSBD back! But I’m trying to discern if Alison is truly in her present condition, or as another reader commented, whether this is all happening in the realm of the mind (or minds).
I expected to see a cyborg-ish Alison, but it’s entirely possible for Jadis & Co. to grow her back. Anything is possible. And as awkward a conversationalist as Jadis is, I don’t see any advantage for her to lie about it being three years, the present state of affairs, etc.
We’ll just have to keep reading. And remember, there’s always more!
I wonder if Jadis can show others how badly things can go, and how, as a way to make them think about what to do next. That way no one gets truly hurt…. Right ?
Is it just me, or is anyone else kinda disappointed with those plants? They just don’t tie the room together.
Dude, the Chinaman stole her rug. See that big space? That rug really tied the room together. Worst thing is she knew it would happen and couldn’t change a damn thing. Eventually Jadis finally manages to mumble a few lines to one of her adepts, and you know what he tells her? That Chinaman is not the preferred term. Asian-Thronian is!
Well, I said it was the worst, but there’s something even worse, she obviously knew that as a longtime Asian-Thronian and didn’t have to be omniscient for that knowledge either. “He just really wants his rug back,” Jadis finally whispers to the adept. He looks overwhelmed and mystified as he shuffles away to throw an orb into the data cores. Now unmoving, encased in crystal, Jadis continues watching an existential comedy unfold far away on an uncontacted world and sheds a single lonely tear.