Questions for the cast!

[Nyamaza]

Dear Cal and Amanda:

Welcome to UH2, nice to see the pair of you also coming into the new comic.

On to the actual question, Cal's immediate responce upon seeing an attractive, male stranger at the door would seem to indicate that certain... tendencies showing in UH1 haven't died out over time. Thus I'm driven to ask, What would you say is the most intriguing "toy" you've gotten ni the intervening years? I'd imagine the pair of you together are capable of being incredibly inventive.

Oh, and do you still have the leather gimp suit from Dr. Pegasus' senior project?

[Allan_ecker]

Dear Cal and Amanda:

Welcome to UH2, nice to see the pair of you also coming into the new comic.

Well, I don't actually get on-panel until next week, but thank you!

On to the actual question, Cal's immediate responce upon seeing an attractive, male stranger at the door would seem to indicate that certain... tendencies showing in UH1 haven't died out over time. Thus I'm driven to ask, What would you say is the most intriguing "toy" you've gotten ni the intervening years? I'd imagine the pair of you together are capable of being incredibly inventive.

Hmm... Miranda.

Oh yeah. Miranda. Definitely. I mean, how often do you find a hot bisexual catgirl who just wants to be tied up and molested by an older married couple?

...

Oh crap, there's no Saundra in that relationship to stop them from talking.

Oh, and do you still have the leather gimp suit from Dr. Pegasus' senior project?

Fft, DUH.

[The_Fox]

Dear Doctor Richard Hundecoph,

It has been demonstrated that ASCII has sexuality, and that he seems to show a marked preference for women. I have to wonder, did you design him to be straight, or simply activate him without preference and see what happened? It might be a little strange to bring up the nature vs. nurture argument here, but I think you might agree this is a special case, and thus causes some curiousity.

Sincerely,
Jarylan

Dear ASCII,

I was thinking back to your encounter with Eliza, and it got me thinking. First off, I would assume your impaired systems have been repaired? Second, being non-biological in nature, just what sort of things can you do? You have shown marked resilience to fatal injury. I am thankful you were not biological, else Eliza's attack may very well have been fatal, given what I saw. (I imagine the attack was made knowing it was unlikely to kill you, however.) So, what can you do that a normal person cannot? I can speculate, such as possible vacuum operations, enhanced speed and strength, possible gravity manipulation (flight) or even built in weaponry. But without confirmation, it's a bit of a rough endeavor.

Also, forgive me for asking, but...erm...just how functional are you? I would suspect the answer to be fully, given Doctor Hundecoph's own previous body. But given your recent romantic adventures, I was curious if you could raise a family. Perhaps that is too personal though, so feel free to skip it.

Finally, since I just thought of this question, how good are your learning capabilities? Could you simply download new information into your mind, similar to the Matrix movies? Or do you merely have near perfect and infinite memory? Or are you just struggling along like the rest of us? =^.^=

Sincerely,
Jarylan

[Allan_ecker]

Dear Doctor Richard Hundecoph,

It has been demonstrated that ASCII has sexuality, and that he seems to show a marked preference for women. I have to wonder, did you design him to be straight, or simply activate him without preference and see what happened? It might be a little strange to bring up the nature vs. nurture argument here, but I think you might agree this is a special case, and thus causes some curiousity.

Sincerely,
Jarylan

ASCII has been explicitly made heterosexual. This is of course not quite how it works in the real world, where nature and nurture both have significant impact. (Although in many cases no amount of nurture can overcome basic hormonal reality.)

This was done for fairly obvious reasons, if one thinks about it.

Dear ASCII,

I was thinking back to your encounter with Eliza, and it got me thinking. First off, I would assume your impaired systems have been repaired? Second, being non-biological in nature, just what sort of things can you do? You have shown marked resilience to fatal injury. I am thankful you were not biological, else Eliza's attack may very well have been fatal, given what I saw. (I imagine the attack was made knowing it was unlikely to kill you, however.) So, what can you do that a normal person cannot? I can speculate, such as possible vacuum operations, enhanced speed and strength, possible gravity manipulation (flight) or even built in weaponry. But without confirmation, it's a bit of a rough endeavor.

The system repairs were fairly standard. Although naturally I don't "breathe" quite the same as normal people and I don't have to eat at all, my musculature is about the same "shape" as human muscles and so a few things had to be reweaved and stitched over. I have no built-in weaponry aside from my quite superhuman strength and speed, and as you say my resistance to injury.

I can operate at atmospheric pressures quite far outside human capacity, ranging from hard vacuum to oceanic depths that would put most humans at risk. I have no gravity manipulation capacity at all at present, although I'm not explicitly incapable of it any more than a human would be.

Also, forgive me for asking, but...erm...just how functional are you? I would suspect the answer to be fully, given Doctor Hundecoph's own previous body. But given your recent romantic adventures, I was curious if you could raise a family. Perhaps that is too personal though, so feel free to skip it.

The real question there would be, whose genome would I pass on? Since, as can be, uh, gathered from recent in-comic events, I do in fact have testicles, I could theoretically carry and deliver genetic material, but whose would I carry? I don't have any of my own, of course.

Finally, since I just thought of this question, how good are your learning capabilities? Could you simply download new information into your mind, similar to the Matrix movies? Or do you merely have near perfect and infinite memory? Or are you just struggling along like the rest of us? =^.^=

Sincerely,
Jarylan

Originally I really was just struggling like the rest of you. I've made a number of modifications to myself which have more or less corrected this. I'm still closer to being human than either description you gave -my memory's no more infinite than yours- but I have made great strides towards rapid recall and rapid memory absorbtion. Many of these technologies are compatible with human wetware, as we shall see later.

[GreatLimmick]

ASCII has been explicitly made heterosexual. This is of course not quite how it works in the real world, where nature and nurture both have significant impact. (Although in many cases no amount of nurture can overcome basic hormonal reality.)

This was done for fairly obvious reasons, if one thinks about it.

Dear Rick,
I hope you don't mind follow-up questions...

Anyway, considering how accepting society in your time seems to be of "alternative lifestyles", the biggest reason I can think of to have specifically made ASCII a heterosexual male would be in order to prevent an Oedipal/Elektra complex-- considerably more important when your offspring emerges, fully adult, directly from your brain. Is this essentially accurate, or am I waaay off the mark?

The real question there would be, whose genome would I pass on? Since, as can be, uh, gathered from recent in-comic events, I do in fact have testicles, I could theoretically carry and deliver genetic material, but whose would I carry? I don't have any of my own, of course.

Dear ASCII,
You seem a little... apathetic about the idea of biological reproduction. Do you think you would feel differently about adoption, or building an android? Do you think you would ever want to be a father, or that it simply isn't the right time at the moment?

[Allan_ecker]

Dear Rick,
I hope you don't mind follow-up questions...

Anyway, considering how accepting society in your time seems to be of "alternative lifestyles", the biggest reason I can think of to have specifically made ASCII a heterosexual male would be in order to prevent an Oedipal/Elektra complex-- considerably more important when your offspring emerges, fully adult, directly from your brain. Is this essentially accurate, or am I waaay off the mark?

I wasn't aware there were other interpretations.

Dear ASCII,
You seem a little... apathetic about the idea of biological reproduction. Do you think you would feel differently about adoption, or building an android? Do you think you would ever want to be a father, or that it simply isn't the right time at the moment?

Not apathetic, merely quite fully aware of reality. I'm not intrinsically capable of passing on some genetic description of myself, since there IS no genetic description of me.

I hope you have seen from recent events of course that my ambitions lie along a path of having a VERY important legacy to leave mankind.

[Nyamaza]

To Rick or ASCII

As the topic of ASCII's ability to procreate has been brought up, a related field of question comes to mind, that of mortality. I imagine it would be rather hard to kill ASCII, especially in a way that would not be reparable *specifically extensive damage would need to occur to non-redundant areas in the neural net). However baring severe trauma, is there anything to keep ASCII from being more or less immortal, assuming that ways to generate energy beyond the heat death of this universe are discovered?

[Allan_ecker]

To Rick or ASCII

As the topic of ASCII's ability to procreate has been brought up, a related field of question comes to mind, that of mortality. I imagine it would be rather hard to kill ASCII, especially in a way that would not be reparable *specifically extensive damage would need to occur to non-redundant areas in the neural net). However baring severe trauma, is there anything to keep ASCII from being more or less immortal, assuming that ways to generate energy beyond the heat death of this universe are discovered?

Well, ASCII doesn't have any of the natural built-in self-destruct mechanisms most humans are born with, so in that regard he's quite safe. As to the heat death of the universe, Saundra's already working on it.

[Schol-R-LEA]

Schol-R: Saundra, given what you've already said about inter-dimensional travel, I was wondering if you've had any visitors coming in your direction. Clearly it's possible to transmit across the barriers (as we are doing now), but are there any possible issues that might be involved in transit? I have a few different means at my disposal, and can if necessary shield myself against any physical incompatibilities (points to PRG on belt), but I wouldn't want to cause any disruptions. While I might be able to enter your dimension through Springfield (most universes have at least one nexus of the city), that would leave me to my own devices once I'm there. Speaking of which...

Reunion: Do you have any idea if the Change Plague is still virulent? If we came to visit, it would be as either myself or Geddy, if only to avoid the questions that people would have about an unmodified human in their midst, but I wouldn't want to spread it to anyone when I got...

Morgan: interrupting Ok, teddybear, get yr polka-dotted arse outta here. What I wanna know is, did Rick ever patent the gender-bender ray?

Anne: impatiently I've told you before, darling, we can handle that for you if you need us to...

Morgan: Sod off, I'm talkin' here, shabi. I get enough merda about that from you f**kers already. Anyway, ah, scrooit, I'm outta here.

Schol-R: sigh Don't mind her, she's been like that, well, always. Don't let Morgan know that I told you, but she doesn't really know much Portuguese except curses - she never really knew her father, so it wasn't like she learned it as a child - and frankly I wonder if she really speaks Mandarin all that well either, since she grew up in the US and only moved back as an adult. Whatever. I do have one last question for The Masked Retriever, related to my earlier ones: does, ah, 'Indeterminate Advanced Technology' work in that dimension? If not, I'll make sure that I (or whichever of us goes there) leave the occult stuff behind. Well, I'll probably hold on to the Warlock's wheels, those are if anything even more useful in low-magic realms.

Morgan: reads what Schol-R just wrote What in 'Bob's name...? Hey! Grr... F**ck your mother, Schol-R!

Schol-R: I don't have a mother, remember?

Amber: Sure you do! Her name's Merry!

Jay: That's my mother.

Anne: That's right. Jay is our mother. Or creator, at least.

Jay: looks vaguely embarrassed, then notices the inter-lingual pun and blushes even more

Pope Ulvoh: While we're on the topic of clones and parents, would Rick and Jake mind telling my readers how Rhonda was born?

Schol-R: I think we've asked enough questions already, this post is getting much too long.

Amber: But I, like, had a question for Pierce about cheerleading!

Anne: Save it for another time, my dear.

[Allan_ecker]

Schol-R: Saundra, given what you've already said about inter-dimensional travel, I was wondering if you've had any visitors coming in your direction. Clearly it's possible to transmit across the barriers (as we are doing now), but are there any possible issues that might be involved in transit? I have a few different means at my disposal, and can if necessary shield myself against any physical incompatibilities (points to PRG on belt), but I wouldn't want to cause any disruptions. While I might be able to enter your dimension through Springfield (most universes have at least one nexus of the city), that would leave me to my own devices once I'm there. Speaking of which...

Not since the initial incident. Thus far replication of the original experiment has been limited at best. We can barely manage two-way radio, let alone whole-person transmission.

: Do you have any idea if the Change Plague is still virulent? If we came to visit, it would be as either myself or Geddy, if only to avoid the questions that people would have about an unmodified human in their midst, but I wouldn't want to spread it to anyone when I got...

Quite burnt out, actually. One could probably re-construct it from the markers it left in the junk DNA, but well, there hasn't been much call for such a thing...

interrupting Ok, teddybear, get yr polka-dotted arse outta here. What I wanna know is, did Rick ever patent the gender-bender ray?

More sort of open-sourced along the lines of the GNU. I felt it was too important to the transsexuals of the world to let something like that become an overpriced commodity. Thanks to the GBR, SRS is a thing of the past, and re-assignment is often the FIRST thing tried in these cases rather than the last.

sigh Don't mind her, she's been like that, well, always. Don't let Morgan know that I told you, but she doesn't really know much Portuguese except curses - she never really knew her father, so it wasn't like she learned it as a child - and frankly I wonder if she really speaks Mandarin all that well either, since she grew up in the US and only moved back as an adult. Whatever. I do have one last question for The Masked Retriever, related to my earlier ones: does, ah, 'Indeterminate Advanced Technology' work in that dimension? If not, I'll make sure that I (or whichever of us goes there) leave the occult stuff behind. Well, I'll probably hold on to the Warlock's wheels, those are if anything even more useful in low-magic realms.

Technology based on Thaumaturgy, in the strictist sense, won't work here. However as we shall soon see, a lot of technology looks a lot like magic at first glance...

While we're on the topic of clones and parents, would Rick and Jake mind telling my readers how Rhonda was born?

There've been a lot of jokes about me carrying Rhonda to term via abdominal pregnancy but in all honesty, she was decanted like something outta Brave New World.

Like I said, thing of no woman born.

[E_voyager]

Dear Rick and Jake

Whom do you believe Rhonda takes more after in your family? it's obvious that she seems to lack Jake's panic gene ... well that of she has it under very tight control. that was it "miller" panic gene is something powerful and if it could be harness you could disable entire population in minutes by send them into acute panic. ... er forget that last part


one more question.

Dear Volair. have you ever at any time after graduation had an apprentice?

[Tetramorpheus]

Dear Rick,
If it's not too personal, I've always kinda wondered what was going through your mind here: http://umlauthouse.comicgenesis.com/d/20010703.html
Specifically when saying "Ah" you seemed to be giving a subtle glance beyond the fourth wall. And, while you did an excellent job of cutting to the chase, I wondered if there was anything more to your thoughts at that time, especially given the subsequent comic.

Card: No thaumaturgy!? How do you live!?

Tetramorpheus: Quiet you. You can talk when your own comic's up and running- you'd probably turn human in their dimension anyways.

Card::grumble::

[Allan_ecker]

Dear Rick and Jake

Whom do you believe Rhonda takes more after in your family? it's obvious that she seems to lack Jake's panic gene ... well that of she has it under very tight control. that was it "miller" panic gene is something powerful and if it could be harness you could disable entire population in minutes by send them into acute panic. ... er forget that last part

Thus far she's shown more than her fair share of enthusiasm for chaos, which definitely runs on my side of the family more than Jake's.

However, I wouldn't discount the panic gene yet. It gets worse with age, you know...

one more question.

Dear Volair. have you ever at any time after graduation had an apprentice?

Eliza. I'm her martial arts instructor. I've also tried to coach her on keeping her base emotions in check but thus far she's had little luck. Fortunately she also is pretty capable of distancing herself from these experiences once she's away from the stimulus that's causing them. I don't think she knows it, but that alone is a sign she's capable of rising above this.

[Allan_ecker]

Dear Rick,
If it's not too personal, I've always kinda wondered what was going through your mind here: http://umlauthouse.comicgenesis.com/d/20010703.html
Specifically when saying "Ah" you seemed to be giving a subtle glance beyond the fourth wall. And, while you did an excellent job of cutting to the chase, I wondered if there was anything more to your thoughts at that time, especially given the subsequent comic.

I think if you were to get a thought baloon for that panel it'd read "This is crazy this is crazy I'm being stuipd stupid stupid..."

I was scared. But I was in love. And I really wanted Jake to stop being worried really badly. Something obvious. I wasn't even entertaining the possibility that being with Jake could actually help me-- honestly I was more concerned with the effect I'd have on him. My love life to that point was... troubled.

In the end, my silly heart won out just long enough to give one of the more potent mixed signals in the history of mixed signals. Luckily Jake was patient. And just as in love.

That is so ungodly adorible I think I have no choice but to tear off all of your clothes.

Oh my! *giggle*

[Tetramorpheus]

Dear UH2 Volair, Saundra, Rick and Jake,
How to ask this discreetly?
::cough::
http://umlauthouse.comicgenesis.com/d/20030304.html
::cough:: "yet" ::cough::

::breaks into a coughing fit that conveniently allows him to hide in a couch fort and raise a white flag::

[Tetramorpheus]

Card walks out, unfolds a piece of paper, and reads:
Volair,
In response to a previous question, you wrote that, "history since the Change Plague is generally a bit more pleasant than your version..." Why is this? Given the inbuilt capacity for discrimination in the human-

Rom, without moving away from the computer:
Waitaminute, Card, ask him-

Card:
discrimination in the human condition, one can view this as easily translating into inter-species violence once a change had taken place. (It certainly did in my cosm, if present theories-

Rom:
Hey, Card!

Card:
if present theories about the nature of ectothaumic force are correct. But then, in my cosm the entire history of the world was affected, including time itself.) In sum: When did the Change Plague hit, in your cosm, and what happened as a result?

Rom:
Card, ask him if he has any tips for picking up girls.

Card:
...you needed help?

[Allan_ecker]

Dear UH2 Volair, Saundra, Rick and Jake,
How to ask this discreetly?
::cough::
http://umlauthouse.comicgenesis.com/d/20030304.html
::cough:: "yet" ::cough::

::breaks into a coughing fit that conveniently allows him to hide in a couch fort and raise a white flag::

Oh no you DIDN'T.

They do know I'm about on level with Detail Bear in terms of gayness, right?

[Allan_ecker]

Card walks out, unfolds a piece of paper, and reads:
Volair,
In response to a previous question, you wrote that, "history since the Change Plague is generally a bit more pleasant than your version..." Why is this? Given the inbuilt capacity for discrimination in the human-

Well, discrimination's inevitable and universal, but it doesn't quite work the same way when people from the same continent can be bonded to animals more different from one another than their counterparts on entirely different continents.

Basically the myth of European Supremacy carried vastly less weight in our continuity.

[The_Fox]

Dear Masked Retriever or any character with sufficient historical background,

Due to the fact that mating outside your species gives little chance for children, especially for equally fertile children, how did your dimension's Terra deal with expansion and discovery of new continents and areas? I'd guess that colonialism was not such a big thing, given what Volair mentioned about supremacy. But it's odd to conceive that if you travel too far, you might not find anyone you could mate with and produce children.

While unimportant from a love stand point, I can see how this might have caused population difficulties. Did this happen at any points in history?

- Jarylan Blackwell

Dear Richard Hundecoph,

I guess I should have asked this later, but do you have any objections to me borrowing your last name? At times, I have used your last name instead of my own "Blackwell" for various iterations of my character. (I.E. Jarylan Hundecoph is an RPG character I use in one game.) I hope you do not mind, but if you do, of course I can stop. I have mentioned where the name came from, and given you and the comic a bit of advertising, of course.

- Jarylan Blackwell

[Allan_ecker]

Dear Masked Retriever or any character with sufficient historical background,

Due to the fact that mating outside your species gives little chance for children, especially for equally fertile children, how did your dimension's Terra deal with expansion and discovery of new continents and areas? I'd guess that colonialism was not such a big thing, given what Volair mentioned about supremacy. But it's odd to conceive that if you travel too far, you might not find anyone you could mate with and produce children.

While unimportant from a love stand point, I can see how this might have caused population difficulties. Did this happen at any points in history?

- Jarylan Blackwell

As you surmise, perhaps the greatest impact on the divergeant history of this universe is the impact biology has had on colonialism, which is to say it more or less killed it. Our dear author will be seen largely trying not to speak of the past in this comic, as it is ill-defined for him and as such, most readily dealt with by the answer "it's just a show".

Dear Richard Hundecoph,

I guess I should have asked this later, but do you have any objections to me borrowing your last name? At times, I have used your last name instead of my own "Blackwell" for various iterations of my character. (I.E. Jarylan Hundecoph is an RPG character I use in one game.) I hope you do not mind, but if you do, of course I can stop. I have mentioned where the name came from, and given you and the comic a bit of advertising, of course.

- Jarylan Blackwell

My last name is "Miller" at this point, naturally. My, ah, MAIDEN name was a mouthful of bastardized German with an inexplicably French "e" tossed in, and so I really can't say I'd complain.