the-last-one
Original: the-last-one on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A bald man in a robe: Oh wow! Welcome! You're here. The last one!
Panel 2:
A man with a beard: Yeah. The clock's about to run out. In a few seconds, a new mutation will allow humanity to harness our brains with computers, creating a vast unified human consciousness after that, the moment of death will be meaningless.
Panel 3:
A third man: That's right! Humanity will be free for the remainder of the life of the universe!
Panel 4:
A man: We set it up so during their first agony, human minds remain whole. Whole? Various organic bodies that decay become through a cosmic instant.
Another man: And you're one of those!
Panel 5:
A bearded man: Well, at least I tried to heaven.
Another man: Oh wow. You can keep your foot in a few more minutes.
Votey:
A man's face looks down.
Speech bubble (off-panel): Hell?
Speech bubble (off-panel): What's that?
A bald man in a robe: Oh wow! Welcome! You're here. The last one!
Panel 2:
A man with a beard: Yeah. The clock's about to run out. In a few seconds, a new mutation will allow humanity to harness our brains with computers, creating a vast unified human consciousness after that, the moment of death will be meaningless.
Panel 3:
A third man: That's right! Humanity will be free for the remainder of the life of the universe!
Panel 4:
A man: We set it up so during their first agony, human minds remain whole. Whole? Various organic bodies that decay become through a cosmic instant.
Another man: And you're one of those!
Panel 5:
A bearded man: Well, at least I tried to heaven.
Another man: Oh wow. You can keep your foot in a few more minutes.
Votey:
A man's face looks down.
Speech bubble (off-panel): Hell?
Speech bubble (off-panel): What's that?
Alt text
A five-panel SMBC comic drawn in a sketchy style with robed, mostly-bald figures gathered as if at a momentous gathering. A man welcomes a newcomer as "the last one," explaining that in a few seconds a new mutation will let humanity merge their brains with computers into a single unified human consciousness, after which the moment of death will be meaningless and humanity will live for the rest of the life of the universe. The newcomer realizes he has just barely missed being included in this immortal upload. The joke is the cosmic bad luck of being the very last person to die before humanity becomes immortal. In the black-and-white votey aftercomic, a worried face hears disembodied voices ask "Hell?" and "What's that?", implying the lone left-behind soul ends up somewhere the uploaded collective no longer even has a concept for.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.