For my $.02, I’d think that would cause the opposite reaction. Nothing worse to make you want to remain an indestructible unchanging golem than seeing people grow old feeble and die.
Jin’s never really been part of the bond though. Both Bud and Brandi have always been rather disconnected from her.
At most, they probably view her in the same light as Monica, who is doomed to die anyway. Seeing Jin go the way of the Monica will be sad, but not nearly as much an impact to the duo as Bud or Brandi dieing.
… but with a reverse twist! They aren’t looking for that one special moment to become immortal, and experience that moment forever. They’re choosing to allow time, and their lives, to flow onwards and change.
I wonder if meeting a Special Someone, as Jin has, would cause either on them to change their minds? Would they make Arwen’s choice?
If nothing else, they have an option Arwen didn’t: Mayahuel is still around, and if she really wants to can make more golems. If one of them meets a Really Great Guy she might decide that a century or so just isn’t long enough.
Get out of my head buddy. I thought that was a good idea when I started reading the archives for the first time a year ago, Only every time I get to a place in the forums where it is relevant I forget about it. Lolz, I just love the way all the forumies here think I guess.
I can’t say that I am at all surprised with the decision that the two of them have made. They have both shown a love for the concept of helping others, and as they see it, as long as May decides to stay alive, then they can wait it out.
Even if May decides to end it prematurely the GGs only have to wait until humanity re-create Lanthian technology in its own good time.
It should be much quicker than Jin’s Long Wait to deal with the Calendar Machine.
They shouldn’t be bored as yet. This is the first time they have known a reasonably normal life since they died. They are quite new to the life they have currently. They are also now independent, under no one’s constant manipulation (that we know about). There’s Monica, but she is hesitant to exercize her power over them. Give them a few hundred years of the life they have at present and they may be ready for aging too. Of course Jin had to do the groundhog day thing so many times, one can see why she would want a way out when the chance came.
Can’t really depend on May being there forever either. After all, at one point she was drawn into the demon realm in which she was forced to spend tens of thousands of years. Death is not the only thing that could keep her from applying the Jin fix to them. There could unexpectedly come a circumstance where they lose that option.
All the more reason to defer mortality. After so many thousands of years of living in pain, torture and subjection it will take more than a few (human), lifetimes to balance out.
AH!.. but in panel 2 Bud made a mistake… “May will ALWAYS be there”
who says May isn’t going to get Jin to inscribe the same glyph onto HER? things have happened off-panel that had rather important consequences before, but we weren’t shown them actually happening at the time. that could be another one!
Imagine Buds surprise when she tells Jin about her decision, and Jin casually says “oh, No. she’s already programmed to die off just like me, that invulnerable bit was just a bit of code the Priests ADDED to us 3 so they wouldn’t have to go thru all the tedium of the “processing” we had to go thru for any more victims every time one of us would have gotten killed off had we been “mortal” still… May just wrote a patch to get RID OF the so-called Immortality Option” the only reason she’s lasted as long as she has was that in the Demon-Realm time didn’t exist!”
Boy would THAT rock Bud and Brandi’s world! (and OURS too i suspect?)
As counter-evidence, note that Tepoztecatl is apparently going strong. He was just a prototype, presumably expendable, but after more than a thousand years he seems ageless and invulnerable – while some people comment on his lack of raw power (including Tepoz when convenient) he’s been comedically rumpled often but never actually harmed by anything.
The default seems to be ageless and physically indestructible. Certainly May would have given the priests the very best golem recipe available when it was her turn.
As a military model, the Chimera daikaiju might have back doors and undocumented features if the priests could include them. Since May and Tepoz don’t seem to have nuclear plasma blast powers, maybe the Lanthian priests were good enough programmers to put in creative new features. Or maybe May just hasn’t needed to blast anything lately.
Well, if May does go mortal, what’s to stop her from teaching Bud and Brandi how to reprogram themselves after the fact?
It seemed to take little to no time for May to reprogram Jin and install the Mcguffin cross. Tell Bud/Brandi how to do it, and if the duo finally decide it is time to die, they can teach that era’s version of Monica how to scribble the code on their insides.
i wonder… if the Library has a copy of EVERYTHING written… does it have a copy of the Glyph codes that are INSCRIBED onto their bodies? and if so, then they just need to go to the Library and look it up! anytime they want to.
hmm… that could be good and bad… if the wrong entity finds, and is capable of using the info, they could make more copies of the GG’s and/or the Chimera as well, since they are essentially just a computer program now.
The library probably has security codes in place to prevent just anybody from accessing private information. I would think that the only reason that Nudge found the book with her sentence in it was that the Library wanted Phix to be the Head Librarian so it was an elaborate plan on the complexes part.
Perhaps the “recipe” for golems has never been written down and only ever passed via word of mouth.
Also, does the Library get everything ever written, even doodles or a few lines on paper such as a grocery or to-do list, or just stuff written up in some form of a tome? If the recipe was just a few lines on paper (or whatever medium), the Library may not get a copy of it.
I think the point was that the glyphs were written on each golem–and so could not be purely word of mouth–but the second point you made about the quantity of material (and, I might add, what it’s written on) would likely make a difference whether the Biblioteke gets a permanent copy.
Maybe that’s why it needs a Head Librarian, to make these decisions??
Oh wow a comic!
Was really not expecting one today 😀 i just came to stalk the site as usual 😀
yay!
May will always be there.
ooh i hope they have not just jinxed themselves 🙁
I’m not sure I’d want to be immortal. Unlike those two, I’d probably get bored of it very quickly. But, it’s not like I have that option, so I can’t objectively make such a decision.
Speaking for myself, at 60, I can’t imagine getting bored of life (except waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, of course). I can conceive of it – perhaps in a thousand, or 100,000 years. But not in a few hundred.
It will take that long to learn to throw a decent punch. And my bonsai will take several hundred years to get mature anyway. Not to mention organizing the garage…
I agree with you.
People get bored by restricting their environment to what is already familiar.
As a mortal though, my greatest fear is that I will deteriorate until living itself becomes unbearable, which is a problem the GGs don’t have.
Well, to be really correct and proper, we should follow the advice in the Book of Punnish Protocol. In order to make appropriate payments for small puns, we are supposed to go to a jewelry store, buy a silver charm in the shape of a rabbit, and have the jeweler slice it thinly. One coin-like slice of a silver or gold rabbit is the only correct pun payment, according to the people who wrote The Book.
Of course, others claim that they’re just splitting hares.
Bud’s comment about May always being there, is a bit worrying. Making such sweeping, absolute statements about anything seems dangerously close to tempting fate.
Or, perhaps, tempting the gods… who have been mentioned lately. We don’t really know what Shiva or Amun or other extradimensional visitors are capable of… but if one were to manage to show up, and had a grudge against the GGs because Brandi had locked them away from Earth, then possibly even May’s status as a golem might not protect her.
Hard to concentrate on the heavy life and death stuff with Bud looking so good in the first panel. Sometimes a woman looks her best relaxed and lounging around.
Says the creature with the far-less-than-the-blink-of-an-eye lifespan. What would humans really know of immortality to be able to make a decent decision for or against?
Wen Spencer said in either “Tinker” or “Wolf Who Rules” that humans (even high-genius humans) cannot comprehend immortality and thus could never be able to make an informed choice. My version would be that it is the equivalent of asking a young child what they want to be when they grow up – the answer is inherently based on extremely limited information.
But boredom is so often a temporary thing. One never knows when that next thing may come by and excite the blood, banishing boredom once again. Death is too final as a solution to a fleeting problem. As Stephen Hawkings demonstrates, one can even find excitment and reason to live by plunging into the depths of thought when one cannot find it through physical means.
All the time in the world.
Some decisions are obvious. If all the positives are in the one column, that’s where you want to be.
But Jin is now aging. They might change their minds soon enough…
For my $.02, I’d think that would cause the opposite reaction. Nothing worse to make you want to remain an indestructible unchanging golem than seeing people grow old feeble and die.
Unless they decide to go with her in sympathy. They could do it anytime in the next year or three, and not cause too much a lifespan disparity.
Jin’s never really been part of the bond though. Both Bud and Brandi have always been rather disconnected from her.
At most, they probably view her in the same light as Monica, who is doomed to die anyway. Seeing Jin go the way of the Monica will be sad, but not nearly as much an impact to the duo as Bud or Brandi dieing.
Heh. They’re looking at the Faust paradox … the central gimmick of Bloch’s “That Hellbound Train“…
… but with a reverse twist! They aren’t looking for that one special moment to become immortal, and experience that moment forever. They’re choosing to allow time, and their lives, to flow onwards and change.
I wonder if meeting a Special Someone, as Jin has, would cause either on them to change their minds? Would they make Arwen’s choice?
If nothing else, they have an option Arwen didn’t: Mayahuel is still around, and if she really wants to can make more golems. If one of them meets a Really Great Guy she might decide that a century or so just isn’t long enough.
Get out of my head buddy. I thought that was a good idea when I started reading the archives for the first time a year ago, Only every time I get to a place in the forums where it is relevant I forget about it. Lolz, I just love the way all the forumies here think I guess.
I can’t say that I am at all surprised with the decision that the two of them have made. They have both shown a love for the concept of helping others, and as they see it, as long as May decides to stay alive, then they can wait it out.
Even if May decides to end it prematurely the GGs only have to wait until humanity re-create Lanthian technology in its own good time.
It should be much quicker than Jin’s Long Wait to deal with the Calendar Machine.
Two of my favorite comics dealing with sudden in your face mortality, atleast this one is a choice.
What’s the other one, if I may ask?
Spinnerette, easily all in my top three, but man terribly depressing storylines recently.
The funny thing is Spinnerette was actually the very next webcomic that I read after posting the above… d’oh!
Whole current story is breaking my little heart.
Yup, I just keep hoping that KrazyKrow lets Heather find a way to cure Marylin to some degree.
@Maark30 this may sound droll, but I don’t believe in hope, my life hasn’t allowed that.
That’s okay, harukohoshiko, hope believes in you.
Apathy is the surrender to evil.
Boredom is the end of life.
Good for them!
Yay! Pictures are nice but I really like story – especially when that story is created and told by our Pablo.
They shouldn’t be bored as yet. This is the first time they have known a reasonably normal life since they died. They are quite new to the life they have currently. They are also now independent, under no one’s constant manipulation (that we know about). There’s Monica, but she is hesitant to exercize her power over them. Give them a few hundred years of the life they have at present and they may be ready for aging too. Of course Jin had to do the groundhog day thing so many times, one can see why she would want a way out when the chance came.
Can’t really depend on May being there forever either. After all, at one point she was drawn into the demon realm in which she was forced to spend tens of thousands of years. Death is not the only thing that could keep her from applying the Jin fix to them. There could unexpectedly come a circumstance where they lose that option.
All the more reason to defer mortality. After so many thousands of years of living in pain, torture and subjection it will take more than a few (human), lifetimes to balance out.
AH!.. but in panel 2 Bud made a mistake… “May will ALWAYS be there”
who says May isn’t going to get Jin to inscribe the same glyph onto HER? things have happened off-panel that had rather important consequences before, but we weren’t shown them actually happening at the time. that could be another one!
Imagine Buds surprise when she tells Jin about her decision, and Jin casually says “oh, No. she’s already programmed to die off just like me, that invulnerable bit was just a bit of code the Priests ADDED to us 3 so they wouldn’t have to go thru all the tedium of the “processing” we had to go thru for any more victims every time one of us would have gotten killed off had we been “mortal” still… May just wrote a patch to get RID OF the so-called Immortality Option” the only reason she’s lasted as long as she has was that in the Demon-Realm time didn’t exist!”
Boy would THAT rock Bud and Brandi’s world! (and OURS too i suspect?)
As counter-evidence, note that Tepoztecatl is apparently going strong. He was just a prototype, presumably expendable, but after more than a thousand years he seems ageless and invulnerable – while some people comment on his lack of raw power (including Tepoz when convenient) he’s been comedically rumpled often but never actually harmed by anything.
The default seems to be ageless and physically indestructible. Certainly May would have given the priests the very best golem recipe available when it was her turn.
As a military model, the Chimera daikaiju might have back doors and undocumented features if the priests could include them. Since May and Tepoz don’t seem to have nuclear plasma blast powers, maybe the Lanthian priests were good enough programmers to put in creative new features. Or maybe May just hasn’t needed to blast anything lately.
Well, if May does go mortal, what’s to stop her from teaching Bud and Brandi how to reprogram themselves after the fact?
It seemed to take little to no time for May to reprogram Jin and install the Mcguffin cross. Tell Bud/Brandi how to do it, and if the duo finally decide it is time to die, they can teach that era’s version of Monica how to scribble the code on their insides.
If not them, I am sure May could teach an immortal Sphinx the system.
i wonder… if the Library has a copy of EVERYTHING written… does it have a copy of the Glyph codes that are INSCRIBED onto their bodies? and if so, then they just need to go to the Library and look it up! anytime they want to.
hmm… that could be good and bad… if the wrong entity finds, and is capable of using the info, they could make more copies of the GG’s and/or the Chimera as well, since they are essentially just a computer program now.
The library probably has security codes in place to prevent just anybody from accessing private information. I would think that the only reason that Nudge found the book with her sentence in it was that the Library wanted Phix to be the Head Librarian so it was an elaborate plan on the complexes part.
Perhaps the “recipe” for golems has never been written down and only ever passed via word of mouth.
Also, does the Library get everything ever written, even doodles or a few lines on paper such as a grocery or to-do list, or just stuff written up in some form of a tome? If the recipe was just a few lines on paper (or whatever medium), the Library may not get a copy of it.
I think the point was that the glyphs were written on each golem–and so could not be purely word of mouth–but the second point you made about the quantity of material (and, I might add, what it’s written on) would likely make a difference whether the Biblioteke gets a permanent copy.
Maybe that’s why it needs a Head Librarian, to make these decisions??
Daaaaawwwwwwww!
Oh wow a comic!
Was really not expecting one today 😀 i just came to stalk the site as usual 😀
yay!
May will always be there.
ooh i hope they have not just jinxed themselves 🙁
Today, on this very special episode of “114 Lives to Live”, the girls discus suicide by old age.
I’m not sure I’d want to be immortal. Unlike those two, I’d probably get bored of it very quickly. But, it’s not like I have that option, so I can’t objectively make such a decision.
ADULT THOUGHTS.
Speaking for myself, at 60, I can’t imagine getting bored of life (except waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, of course). I can conceive of it – perhaps in a thousand, or 100,000 years. But not in a few hundred.
It will take that long to learn to throw a decent punch. And my bonsai will take several hundred years to get mature anyway. Not to mention organizing the garage…
I agree with you.
People get bored by restricting their environment to what is already familiar.
As a mortal though, my greatest fear is that I will deteriorate until living itself becomes unbearable, which is a problem the GGs don’t have.
I wonder if I should try to get some of that change for a penny–and then I’d have something for the pun jar when I make just a little pun. . . .
You’re in a very thoughtful mood today, bmonk… almost pensive in fact.
I don’t think you’re making any cents. [And–there it goes.]
Well, to be really correct and proper, we should follow the advice in the Book of Punnish Protocol. In order to make appropriate payments for small puns, we are supposed to go to a jewelry store, buy a silver charm in the shape of a rabbit, and have the jeweler slice it thinly. One coin-like slice of a silver or gold rabbit is the only correct pun payment, according to the people who wrote The Book.
Of course, others claim that they’re just splitting hares.
As long as you don’t throw it in the elephant–he’s stewing over the hares already.
Bud’s comment about May always being there, is a bit worrying. Making such sweeping, absolute statements about anything seems dangerously close to tempting fate.
Or, perhaps, tempting the gods… who have been mentioned lately. We don’t really know what Shiva or Amun or other extradimensional visitors are capable of… but if one were to manage to show up, and had a grudge against the GGs because Brandi had locked them away from Earth, then possibly even May’s status as a golem might not protect her.
Whoa! Very big decision …
To be (stay) immortal or be like us normal (if you want to call it that) people.
And yet, not quite like the choice Elros and Elrond had to make.
Hard to concentrate on the heavy life and death stuff with Bud looking so good in the first panel. Sometimes a woman looks her best relaxed and lounging around.
Well, it is nice to have the option there.
Bah, mortality is overrated.
Says the creature with the far-less-than-the-blink-of-an-eye lifespan. What would humans really know of immortality to be able to make a decent decision for or against?
Wen Spencer said in either “Tinker” or “Wolf Who Rules” that humans (even high-genius humans) cannot comprehend immortality and thus could never be able to make an informed choice. My version would be that it is the equivalent of asking a young child what they want to be when they grow up – the answer is inherently based on extremely limited information.
Yeah, sure, once we make death optional, let’s see how fast you’re willing to suicide.
When you get bored with life, chose to die. I like that…a lot, actually.
But boredom is so often a temporary thing. One never knows when that next thing may come by and excite the blood, banishing boredom once again. Death is too final as a solution to a fleeting problem. As Stephen Hawkings demonstrates, one can even find excitment and reason to live by plunging into the depths of thought when one cannot find it through physical means.
For some reason this comic made me hear the immortal Freddy Mercury singing “Who wants to live forever”
In my head, in panel 1, Bud sounded like Yoda from the Seagulls song X’D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9t-slLl30E