Strip 18: Glitching

There are some important details that Roger’s providing about Prosthetic Personal Assistants and how they fit into the Cyktan obsession with thinking machines. The reason why he’s allowed to think and feel and say pretty much anything he wants is because he’s basically an extension of a human being. Even though he was never part of the Robot Revolution, he still lacks most of the behavior locks that Treya and Dy-Gar have mentioned in the past. Of course, because a PPA is an extension of a human being, any glitches or deviations in programming are extremely dangerous to the user (think late 90s horror comedy Idle Hands, or, on second thought, don’t). It’s an issue born of a very reasonable fear, much like the behavior locks on robots were born of the very reasonable fear of machine revolt. And look how well that went...

It’s worth noting that Dy-Gar snaps out of his creepy memory/vision much easier than he did last time. This is partially because Roger’s scream grabbed his attention, and partially because he’s becoming accustomed to it. Also, it’s significant that his trishula was not only spearing the woman in the ad, but the robot as well.

- J.S. Conner

April 30th 2015