Phew! This feels so good to finally be able to post this strip. I’m excited to be able to finally share the twist of the story with you.
And just to make it clear before the conspiracy theories begin in the comment section. 🙂 This is a straightforward truthful explanation he is giving, in the story this is what actually happened. There’s only about 8 strips left, it is winding up, and I will not be taking the story down any “double bluff” in regards to this.
Regarding printing “Anna Galactic” as a book, I am pretty sure this will happen. Hopefully I’ll have news for you on Wednesday. Just waiting to hear back from printers.
Yeah, I suspected as much. He always did have that “looks like a straightforward bad guy but actually has valid reasons” sort of vibe. Though I have to admit, the explanation had to be pretty thorough to cover all the points of suspicion.
“Well how do you explain the mysterious disappearance of Johnny Whistleblower and his friends??”
“Johnny Whistleblower and his friends spontaneously combusted due to an alien virus. We created a vaccine and gave it to everyone while you were gone.”
“Well how about all those babies you threw into the engine as fuel??”
“Those babies were actually alien shapeshifters that kidnapped the real babies and took their place. We uncovered their plot and found that they make a perfect fuel source. The real babies have all been recovered, they’re over by the banquet table.”
“Well what about that transmission we intercepted in which you demand a million Universe Dollars from Earth because you’re really holding us hostage??”
“We had to impersonate our doppelgangers from a parallel universe as part of an elaborate sting operation. We managed to draw out our evil doubles, and now they’re all in the brig.”
“Well what about that laser gun in your hand which you’re using to shoot me in the head right at this second??”
“This is the Combustion Virus vaccine, administered in laser form. It has to be applied through the brain.”
“Well what about you’re a jerk??”
“Just to you. I’m a lot nicer around everyone else.”
Ah, for fun.
aaaaand now the Lauridium is back in their vicinity. I smell disaster.
Welp. Now I’m gonna have to go binge-read Little Dee to recover from that revelation.
…damn Absolute Xenophobes, always harshing our mellow…
And we would have got away with it if not for YOU, Anna! You’ve doomed us all! Go to your room!
So the “Giant Space Goat” has eaten all the Human colonies, without any of the passengers hearing a thing.
Yup! Nailed it! (unless they do show up and take this group out too. 🙂 )
“Fortunately, our scientists have determined that there is a species on this planet so adept at battle, we believe it can take out the Leengras. We’ve had preliminary contact with it, it uses a highly evolved color based form of communication. We have scheduled a meeting with this Kthauwk tomorrow.”
@Herandar, hahahahaha! Oh, that would’ve been too perfect. 🙂
So, next comes the quest to dump tbe lauridium in the deepest ocean trench.
This explanation doesn’t seem at all contrived and is quite logical. Well done.
Wonder if these Leengras destroy any race that exhibits a tendency for high technology and thus might oppose them sometime, or if they just hate humans.
@GnarlyDoug, who knows why beings do this. Fear? Hatred? Greed? The Tahnrahs probably didn’t know either.
Well… That’s cheerful.
Wow, I Don’t know how to feel (or what to think)
We’re always compelled to think that people in charge (government for instance) are lying to us just to preserve their power (or their secret agendas) and continue taking advantage from us.
So, we think people like foxglove and others are doing right following their convictions…
But what happens when, as it is in this case, they’re wrong and people in charge was right?
Wow, yeah… hmmm. Thanks Christopher, brings to mind several stories from the old great science fiction writers where humans weren’t the be-all and end-all of nature.
Chris, you’re about to rip our hearts out again…. aren’t you.
@0Z79, no! I swear! There’ll be some emotional stuff, but overall I’m playing nice with this project!
Shutting the ship down isn’t enough, it needs to be buried or dismantled. I’m reminded of a near earth asteroid that was detected a few years back in a strange earth/sun swapping orbit. Spectral analysis resulted in “hang on, titanium dioxide? That’s paint!”. Turned out it was one of the S-IVB boosters from the Apollo moon shots (we know which one, but I’ve forgotten). It had gone into a solar orbit and we’d lost track of it, but it came back for a while.
The point is that materials themselves can be a tell tale, even from considerable distance.
This is a straightforward explanation. Conflict resolved. Peace and friendship resumes.
Too bad Christopher had to kill off almost all of humanity to make it work. Oh well, so long and thanks for all the Ktauwks.
@Christopher,
… no! I swear! There’ll be some emotional stuff, but overall I’m playing nice with this project!
For extremely low values of “nice”.
Oh. One way part two.
Man, this might be the highest body count of any comic I’ve ever read. Is there something you need to get off your chest, with back to back comics where almost everyone dies?
(Seriously, though, all off-screen humans dying isn’t nearly as unhappy a story for the reader as the One-Way scenario was)
And good thing now that Dilvan et al have made great friends with the local NEBS; that ought to make living there really swell.
Swell. A colony of humans looking forward to the next thousand years of subsistence-level lifestyles because to create any kind of advanced technology will bring the monsters down on them.
@TB
Don’t forget the requirement for a totalitarian religious regime in order to prevent humanity from ever developing or using taboo technology or science ever again. Humanity’s future will be the stuff of nightmares.
None oft the heroes died.
That’s good.
Well ok, humanity died instead, but hey, nobody’s perfect
🙂
All this and now it’s like the start of David Weber’s Safehold series.