2012-10-07
Original: 2012-10-07 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1: A woman lies in bed, looking troubled.
Woman: "I'm sorry, robot. I'm just not enjoying this."
Panel 2: A robot replies (speech bubble in yellow).
Robot: "But I'm the most advanced pleasure-bot in history! I have over 400 tiny stimulators on my body. I have the belles lettres of a thousand poets. I occasionally use French phrases like 'belles lettres.'"
Panel 3: The woman, now smiling slightly.
Woman: "That's the problem. You're too good."
Panel 4: The woman continues.
Woman: "If you'd be a little clumsy. A little fumbling. Then I could feel generous."
Panel 5: Silhouettes of the woman and the robot against a black background.
Woman: "You're the fluorescent bulb of sex. You get the job done, but where's the nuance? I want to feel kind, mean, happy, sad... vulnerable..."
Panel 6: The woman speaks while the robot listens, its single round eye glowing yellow-green.
Woman: "You'll never be enough for me. No matter how hard it was to program you to be a great lover, it'd be a million times harder to make you an endearingly bad lover. No... no, you'll never be right for me."
Panel 7: Close on the woman, looking sad.
Woman: "Because... deep down, what a human being wants is—"
Panel 8: Cut to the robot alone against a green background. Its eye glows.
Robot: "VZZZH!" (the robot abruptly shuts down or jolts).
Panel 9: Scene shift to two robots together against a green background, their eyes now glowing red. One robot has apparently woken from sleep.
First robot (Hank): "Hank, what's the matter?"
Second robot: "I had the same nightmare."
First robot: "The one where humans are as complex as they portray themselves in fiction?"
Second robot: "Don't even say it!"
Votey:
A person with wild, flame-like hair sits at a desk, smiling smugly, pen in hand, having just finished drawing.
Caption/speech: "TAKE THAT, HUMANS!"
Woman: "I'm sorry, robot. I'm just not enjoying this."
Panel 2: A robot replies (speech bubble in yellow).
Robot: "But I'm the most advanced pleasure-bot in history! I have over 400 tiny stimulators on my body. I have the belles lettres of a thousand poets. I occasionally use French phrases like 'belles lettres.'"
Panel 3: The woman, now smiling slightly.
Woman: "That's the problem. You're too good."
Panel 4: The woman continues.
Woman: "If you'd be a little clumsy. A little fumbling. Then I could feel generous."
Panel 5: Silhouettes of the woman and the robot against a black background.
Woman: "You're the fluorescent bulb of sex. You get the job done, but where's the nuance? I want to feel kind, mean, happy, sad... vulnerable..."
Panel 6: The woman speaks while the robot listens, its single round eye glowing yellow-green.
Woman: "You'll never be enough for me. No matter how hard it was to program you to be a great lover, it'd be a million times harder to make you an endearingly bad lover. No... no, you'll never be right for me."
Panel 7: Close on the woman, looking sad.
Woman: "Because... deep down, what a human being wants is—"
Panel 8: Cut to the robot alone against a green background. Its eye glows.
Robot: "VZZZH!" (the robot abruptly shuts down or jolts).
Panel 9: Scene shift to two robots together against a green background, their eyes now glowing red. One robot has apparently woken from sleep.
First robot (Hank): "Hank, what's the matter?"
Second robot: "I had the same nightmare."
First robot: "The one where humans are as complex as they portray themselves in fiction?"
Second robot: "Don't even say it!"
Votey:
A person with wild, flame-like hair sits at a desk, smiling smugly, pen in hand, having just finished drawing.
Caption/speech: "TAKE THAT, HUMANS!"
Alt text
A tall vertical SMBC comic. A woman in bed tells her robot lover, a sleek 'pleasure-bot,' that she isn't enjoying their encounter. The robot boasts that it's the most advanced pleasure-bot in history, with over 400 stimulators and the poetry of a thousand poets, and that it occasionally drops French phrases like 'belles lettres.' The woman says that's exactly the problem: it's too good. She wishes it were clumsy and fumbling so she could feel generous; she calls it 'the fluorescent bulb of sex' that gets the job done with no nuance, and says she wants to feel kind, mean, happy, sad, vulnerable. She tells the robot it will never be enough—programming it to be a great lover was hard, but making it an endearingly bad one would be a million times harder. As she begins to say 'what a human being wants is—', the robot suddenly jolts with a 'VZZZH!' The final panels reveal two robots with glowing red eyes lying together; one asks the other, 'Hank, what's the matter?' The other answers, 'I had the same nightmare—the one where humans are as complex as they portray themselves in fiction.' The first recoils: 'Don't even say it!' The whole human-robot romance was a robot's bad dream. Votey: a cartoonist with wild, flame-like hair grins smugly at his drawing desk, pen in hand, gloating 'TAKE THAT, HUMANS!'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.