2014-04-22

A six-panel comic. A green one-eyed cartoon alien bursts in, arms raised, warning a calm human man that the "evil universe" is pushing into theirs and must be stopped. The man asks what the evil universe is. The alien explains it's a universe where everything happens purely as the result of mathematical law, a place of "hideous perfection" where justice, compassion, love, and souls aren't written into the physics. It calls it a cosmos of "horrid automations" that evolved from protoplasm into computing machines, dragging along the cruelty and sadism that helped their ancestors survive, and insists they must be deactivated. The man stammers awkwardly, and the alien suddenly realizes the man is from that very universe, fumbling an embarrassed "hi, hello." The man says, "This must be awkward for you," and the alien replies that mostly it's just weird how a sack of atoms can talk. The joke reverses the usual framing: the materialist human is the one being described as the soulless, cruelty-evolved monster. In the votey aftercomic, the alien backpedals further, peering at the man and adding, "Well, it can make noises that sound like talk."