2010-10-18
Original: 2010-10-18 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (titled "SCARY"):
A female doctor with red hair, glasses, and a white coat stands at the bedside of an elderly woman lying in a hospital bed connected to a monitor. An elderly bald man is seen in profile in the foreground (the patient's visitor).
Doctor: "Well, there isn't really a good definition of death. We could say 'end of consciousness is death,' but consciousness doesn't have a strict location in the brain."
Panel 2 (titled "REALLY SCARY"):
Two orange, rounded particle-like shapes face each other against a dark background.
First particle: "Hey, Proton #1217243865291... did the woman we were in just die?"
Second particle: "What's 'die?' Hey, you wanna go be part of a rock?"
First particle: "YES."
Votey (titled "REALLY REALLY SCARY"):
A stark black-and-white scene of a jagged mountain landscape under a sky.
Voice 1: "Hey wavefunction, where are you?"
Voice 2 (the wavefunction): "Everywhere. Maybe."
A female doctor with red hair, glasses, and a white coat stands at the bedside of an elderly woman lying in a hospital bed connected to a monitor. An elderly bald man is seen in profile in the foreground (the patient's visitor).
Doctor: "Well, there isn't really a good definition of death. We could say 'end of consciousness is death,' but consciousness doesn't have a strict location in the brain."
Panel 2 (titled "REALLY SCARY"):
Two orange, rounded particle-like shapes face each other against a dark background.
First particle: "Hey, Proton #1217243865291... did the woman we were in just die?"
Second particle: "What's 'die?' Hey, you wanna go be part of a rock?"
First particle: "YES."
Votey (titled "REALLY REALLY SCARY"):
A stark black-and-white scene of a jagged mountain landscape under a sky.
Voice 1: "Hey wavefunction, where are you?"
Voice 2 (the wavefunction): "Everywhere. Maybe."
Alt text
A three-part SMBC comic about death at progressively smaller scales of physics, with escalating title banners. Panel 1, titled SCARY: a red-haired doctor in a white coat stands beside an elderly woman in a hospital bed with a monitor, while a bald man watches in the foreground. The doctor says there isn't really a good definition of death; she suggests 'end of consciousness is death,' but notes consciousness doesn't have a strict location in the brain. Panel 2, titled REALLY SCARY: two orange particle-like blobs on a dark background represent protons that were part of the woman's body. One asks, 'Hey, Proton #1217243865291... did the woman we were in just die?' The other replies, 'What's die? Hey, you wanna go be part of a rock?' The first answers, 'YES.' The joke: at the particle level, death is meaningless and the particles just casually move on to being a rock. Votey panel, titled REALLY REALLY SCARY: a black-and-white jagged mountain landscape. A voice calls, 'Hey wavefunction, where are you?' and the wavefunction answers, 'Everywhere. Maybe.' The final beat pushes the dissolution of identity down to quantum uncertainty, where location and existence become smeared and indefinite.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.