Buck Godot Online Comics

Thursday, March 19, 2009
Buck Godot Online Comics

THE HERODOTUS COMPLEX: NOTES BY P'OILGOF LIVY

Chapter 8; Empires within Empires:

The Gallimaufry is only one of a number of trading and communication foci maintained by the Prime Movers. There are almost a hundred such within our galaxy alone.

What makes it rather confusing at first is that these organizations do not have any fixed boundaries and, indeed, there are some trading centers that have dozens of separate trading centers nestled deep within their sphere of influence.

This paradox is resolved when we remember that these are primarily organizations dedicated to promoting communications, and the vast majority of sentients cannot directly communicate with each other. Some species operate on different time lines, or are out of phase with the four dimensions we can perceive, are too small or too large or, if they had to acknowledge us, they would have to kill us. So even when an atomic matrix life form that feeds off the microwave hum left over from the Big Bang and excretes time lines is in the same solar system with your typical silicon-based life form that eats rocks and excretes hydrogen, communication between the two may be close to impossible.

Luckily it's not really a problem, because they usually don't have anything to talk about. Or so it appears, right up until said atomic matrix life form begins a simple operation to make the local sun go nova in order to harvest neutrinos and, to their surprise, are vigorously opposed by those gritty little creatures clinging to the orbiting rocks who have had to start throwing anti-matter around to get their attention. Things usually deteriorate from there. Thus one of the most important functions of the Prime Movers is to coordinate operations between these various races.

This helps prevent unscheduled supernovas, black holes, inversions, atomic shift rifts, shiftspace collapse, chrono-synclastic infundibula and quasars.

Nota Bene:

This is it: the final chapter of the Gallimaufry. we hope you've been enjoying the story! Issue 8 was released in black and white comic book form back in 1998. The last page of Chapter 8 will be posted on June 20. At that point, we will have finished the rather daunting job of coloring it for the Web. (Thanks, Cheyenne! We never thought it would really happen!) After that, we will begin the preparation of the long-awaited color print collection. We're very excited about that.

Thank you for reading!

Phil & Kaja Foglio