We’re nearing the end of the first act – by lucky coinc…uh, I mean, by shrewd planning on my part, the break between the acts will line up nicely with the Halloween special next week.
But we still need to have a little update on Busty at the end of the act – the protagonists just realized she was missing, and reacted with an appropriate amount of panic, so the rules of B-movie scripting now require that the dangers she’s currently faced with need to be laid out in greater detail. At the moment, that danger mostly revolves around getting her prepared for being shipped to Uranus – mysterious home planet of her even more mysterious and doubtlessly very malicious captors.
In innocent days past, getting somebody ready for such an interstellar trip would have involved a strenuous physical examination and centrifuge training, as well as having an elaborate space suit made to size. Nowadays, the median procedure for getting space-ready involves being immersed in some unnaturally glowing liquid in a skin-tight wetsuit. Plus robotic tentacles. I blame Japanese SF for shifting the average so far into that direction so quickly. Singlehandedly. ._. So I guess the take-away is this: if you’re interested in a career in astrophysics, the Japanese Space Agency’s space program might be worth a look. A look of sheer, umitigated horror.
But then, as Dr. Kobras is pointing out helpfully in the last panel, there’s really no longer any way to escape that sort of invasive procedure, even if you’re not an anime character. The TSA isn’t yet employing robotic tentacles, as far as I’m aware, but it’s probably only a matter of time.
More on Thursday.