2013-11-22
Original: 2013-11-22 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Narration (caption): When we discovered how to live in virtual worlds, we escaped to fantasies as often as possible.
Narration (caption): As society became more affluent and automated, it took less and less real-world labor to earn each hour of virtuality.
Narration (caption): As machines became more adapted to our brains, it became cheaper to double perception of time than to double productivity per laborer.
Narration (caption): Time may be a real quantity, but to a human mind a minute of terror really is a billion times longer than a night of sleep.
Narration (caption): We soon discovered a way to give the sensation of infinite time.
Narration (caption): At which point, there was a simple decision to make: Why spend a short life in the real world of sadness and absurdity when you could live forever in paradise?
Narration (caption): Dear traveler: please don't think ill of us. We are the last generation.
(A monument/obelisk stands in the desert with an inscribed plaque; the small plaque text is not legible at this resolution.)
Narration (caption): And we are immortal.
Votey:
Text (header): LIKE WHOAAA
A wild-eyed, frazzled-looking creature/person reclines blissfully, mouth open in awe.
Narration (caption): As society became more affluent and automated, it took less and less real-world labor to earn each hour of virtuality.
Narration (caption): As machines became more adapted to our brains, it became cheaper to double perception of time than to double productivity per laborer.
Narration (caption): Time may be a real quantity, but to a human mind a minute of terror really is a billion times longer than a night of sleep.
Narration (caption): We soon discovered a way to give the sensation of infinite time.
Narration (caption): At which point, there was a simple decision to make: Why spend a short life in the real world of sadness and absurdity when you could live forever in paradise?
Narration (caption): Dear traveler: please don't think ill of us. We are the last generation.
(A monument/obelisk stands in the desert with an inscribed plaque; the small plaque text is not legible at this resolution.)
Narration (caption): And we are immortal.
Votey:
Text (header): LIKE WHOAAA
A wild-eyed, frazzled-looking creature/person reclines blissfully, mouth open in awe.
Alt text
A tall, mostly wordless SMBC comic told through narration captions over a desolate, sun-bleached desert landscape with distant dunes and a few sparse human figures and structures. The captions tell a story: humanity discovered how to live in virtual worlds and escaped into fantasy as often as possible; as society grew more affluent and automated, less real-world labor was needed to buy hours of virtuality; it became cheaper to double the perception of time than to double a worker's productivity, because a minute of terror feels a billion times longer than a night of sleep to a human mind. Eventually a way was found to give the sensation of infinite time, posing a simple choice: why spend a short life in a real world of sadness when you could live forever in paradise? In the later panels a lone monument or obelisk with an inscribed plaque stands in the empty desert. The final captions read: 'Dear traveler: please don't think ill of us. We are the last generation. And we are immortal.' The implication is that everyone uploaded into endless virtual time and abandoned the physical world. Votey panel: titled 'LIKE WHOAAA,' a wild-eyed, frazzled creature reclines with its mouth open in blissed-out awe, mocking the ecstatic high of infinite virtual time.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.