2012-11-15
Original: 2012-11-15 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Doctor (woman in lab coat): You only have a few days to live.
Patient (man with reddish/orange hair, in a hospital gown): WHAT?! But I'm not ready!
Panel 2:
Doctor: I recommend a new method of death. Put on these virtual reality goggles.
Patient: Okay. (They connect to a helicopter with a gun.)
Panel 3 (caption / doctor narration):
Now you can see your body from the helicopter. Lift the goggles and leave you with the assumption that you always see from your own body. Now you'll see this body as foreign.
Panel 4:
Doctor: You'll look on your body as a creepy doppelganger. Let the disgust and anger wash over you.
(The patient, now in the helicopter gunner's seat, sees his own body marked with targeting reticles.)
Panel 5:
Doctor: Go ahead. Kill it. Kill the body. It's the one that made you sick. It's the one that's killing you. KILL IT FIRST!
(Targeting reticles on the body.)
Panel 6:
The patient fires the helicopter gun.
Sound effect: BANG!
Panel 7:
Patient (elated): Oh! Oh! I'm so got you! Oh my God I got you!
Panel 8:
Patient: So I'm not gonna die?
Doctor: No. No. No.
Panel 9:
Doctor: Not for a few days, no.
Votey:
Patient: Could I have some morphine?
Doctor: I don't believe in euthanasia, sir.
Doctor (woman in lab coat): You only have a few days to live.
Patient (man with reddish/orange hair, in a hospital gown): WHAT?! But I'm not ready!
Panel 2:
Doctor: I recommend a new method of death. Put on these virtual reality goggles.
Patient: Okay. (They connect to a helicopter with a gun.)
Panel 3 (caption / doctor narration):
Now you can see your body from the helicopter. Lift the goggles and leave you with the assumption that you always see from your own body. Now you'll see this body as foreign.
Panel 4:
Doctor: You'll look on your body as a creepy doppelganger. Let the disgust and anger wash over you.
(The patient, now in the helicopter gunner's seat, sees his own body marked with targeting reticles.)
Panel 5:
Doctor: Go ahead. Kill it. Kill the body. It's the one that made you sick. It's the one that's killing you. KILL IT FIRST!
(Targeting reticles on the body.)
Panel 6:
The patient fires the helicopter gun.
Sound effect: BANG!
Panel 7:
Patient (elated): Oh! Oh! I'm so got you! Oh my God I got you!
Panel 8:
Patient: So I'm not gonna die?
Doctor: No. No. No.
Panel 9:
Doctor: Not for a few days, no.
Votey:
Patient: Could I have some morphine?
Doctor: I don't believe in euthanasia, sir.
Alt text
A nine-panel SMBC comic in muted color. A doctor in a lab coat tells a reddish-haired patient in a hospital gown that he only has a few days to live; he panics ("WHAT?! But I'm not ready!"). She offers a "new method of death": virtual-reality goggles wired to a helicopter-mounted gun. Through the goggles the patient now sees his own body from the helicopter's vantage as a strange external thing; the doctor coaches him to view it as a "creepy doppelganger" and to let disgust and anger wash over him. His real body appears below, marked with green targeting reticles. She urges, "Go ahead. Kill it. It's the one that's killing you. KILL IT FIRST!" He fires (a comic-book "BANG!" sound effect) and celebrates, shouting that he got it. He then asks, "So I'm not gonna die?" and the doctor calmly answers, "No. No. No... not for a few days, no." The joke: the VR exercise was pure catharsis and changed nothing about his prognosis. Votey (a black-and-white extra panel): the patient asks, "Could I have some morphine?" and the doctor replies, "I don't believe in euthanasia, sir."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.