Ah, time to start introducing some new characters. Jacob doesn’t seem too phased by them so far…
↓ Transcript
Jacob: So how many layers of muscle are between me and Fumiaki?
Fumiaki: Just this last one -- over here! Jacob, it's such a pleasure to meet you. It really is. You're not here to kill me, are you? No? A pleasure, then.
Jacob: Killing you would be a challenge, Doctor. What with all these brutes, animal-men...what's her deal?
Sally: I was born without legs. Is that a big enough miracle for you, Murder Man?
Fumiaki: That's enough, Sally. Let's show our guests around...
Fumiaki: Just this last one -- over here! Jacob, it's such a pleasure to meet you. It really is. You're not here to kill me, are you? No? A pleasure, then.
Jacob: Killing you would be a challenge, Doctor. What with all these brutes, animal-men...what's her deal?
Sally: I was born without legs. Is that a big enough miracle for you, Murder Man?
Fumiaki: That's enough, Sally. Let's show our guests around...
Somehow my squick-meter pings higher on human-to-human brain transplants than human-fetus-to-slocow. At least, assuming she didn’t just get a new pair of legs (seems a bit simple for Fumiaki, really).
I was assuming regenerative therapy, a la “The Arm of the Starfish”
Looking at the rhino-man and the turtle-man in panel 1, all I can see is Rocksteady and Raphael preparing for a duel.
I agree with Dave, watch out for the Turtle, it probably knows ninjitsu.
Come on, if you can create anthromorphic turtles, why not?
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to finding out Fukami’s motives – cool creatures, but why?
I think he may want to change the law regarding the playing of God. I mean, he clearly disagrees with a lot of rules on genetic engineering, seeing as he’s created animal creatures with enough intelligence to wear clothes and stand intimidatingly, which is at least PE teacher level intellect.
The doctor designs nice legs,
and if his petting zoo can talk, that’s pretty impressive vocal design.
“I’m not here to kill you, but no guarantees it won’t happen anyway.”
…and I recognize the doctor. It’s Erwin Schrödinger. His cat must have lived. Can’t wait to see what it looks like now.
(I’m still LOLing about the parakeet hunchback. “Quasi-molt-o”? 🙂 )
She was born without legs and now wears a suit that shows off her legs very well. Nice and subtle idea.
Well obviously she’s not going to waste a good set of legs, after not having any.
And wow, she’s one of the few people able to intimidate Jacob, of the entire cast! Even if it was only for a second during the last panel. 😉
Hmm, got to thinking about that successor to IP. OK, you know how it takes minutes to get a signal to Mars? Well normally, a packet has both a destination and source that’s equivalent to a physical address (since it’s a unique device ID). A broadcast method where you need no acknowledgement and automatically speculate on when to resend packets, would be more resilient for relatively long distances. It would also make it possible to send a packet and reduce the amount of traffic analysis, if there was some kind of cryptographic signing and a geographic hint (say, Lunar base or a satellite number – in other words, a broadcast location) instead of a plain IP address. With a little collusion between users, it would also be possible to make it buffered by a device that’s previously seen your shared key. Add as many cryptographic hashes (or even a regular IP address for partial backwords compatibility) as you like for each group that has a private key. Not feasible using today’s networking hardware, but hey, look at the AntMiner USB devices… You could use something like that chip to do fast hashes in real time.
An interesting aspect of that is that short of RF jamming or generating a LOT of fake traffic, it’s very hard to block and the sender pays for the packet just like with normal IP but the recipient doesn’t pay a 3rd-party, just for their own hardware.