Part 01 – Page 101
A reminder about the elections thing. And you can see there the three candidates, each one from one foundation: Shape, Plus and Nevol.
See you next Friday, when a new page will be published.
Pencils and inks below. Click to stress yourself with something you do for free.
Un recordatorio sobre lo de las elecciones. Y puedes ver a los tres candidatos, cada uno de una fundación: Shape, Plus y Nevol.
Nos vemos el próximo Viernes, cuando una nueva página será publicada.
Lápiz y tinta debajo. Cliqueálas para estresarte con algo que haces gratis.
2 Comments
Son of a… Well that’s not good.
Slimy as it is, I can’t help but be impressed. He managed to turn the attacks from a liability into an asset by using them to demonstrate his apparent strength and control of the situation. Of course, it could backfire like hell if the arrests don’t do anything to curb the attacks… but in 2 days, that won’t matter much.
Also, the main political parties are Robotics, Biotech, and Genetics? That’s an interesting political division. From what we were told earlier, my guess is that the city systems are sufficiently complex that an unaugmented human is incapable of running them. So people must be voting on what type of enhanced leadership they want. Given that people don’t know about the AI’s being kept in check by the Sentinel program, Shape would feel like the most ‘natural’ choice. He’s an apparently ordinary human being who just uses automated systems to help out.
The Genetics candidate is suffering in the polls, which is interesting as well. Genetic augmentation is something which seems like it could run headlong into the law of unintended consequences. With other methods, you have the option of giving up on a flawed design. With genetic engineering, you ARE the flawed design.
In a way, this is why I love your comic. You have a trick of dropping vast amounts of information about your world in a casual, offhand way.
The city is indeed ruled by a weird form of technocracy. Each foundation controls one aspect of what we globally know as high-tech, and not only acts and researches independently, but competes with each other both technologically and politically. This was the direct result of the Jupiter conflict. The Jupiter organization was a mega-organization that ruled both technologically and politically. Getting control of it was key for the success of the rebellion, hence the name given to the uprising.
The three foundations (there’s in fact four, but those are out of the power scheme, basically a bunch of hippies
) are in fact fractions of the old Jupiter organization, each one with its own head and agenda. This was mainly done in order to lessen the odds of victory of further coup d’etats.
Political manifestos are substituted here by technological philosophies. As a citizen, your vote would decide which technology branch gets more funding and has the last word on key issues. Shape’s philosophy is based on unhenhaced humans supported by (dumb) robots, Plus on technologically enhanced humans, and Nevol on biologically enhanced ones. Each philosophy has traditionally attracted different kinds of population groups, and Shape has always been the one that hits the wide middle.
As you can see, this is just too complex for Robomeks, so I’ve just hinted about it here and there so far. In fact, as soon as Diogenes was introduced, back in chapter 3 of volume 00, and, before that, in chapter 2, where you can see Diogenes’ campaign ad and have a glimpse of a bunch of citizens, each one with a technology of choice. Anyway, this was a good opportunity to introduce the whole basics, as I needed you to understand who Shape is and what are the reasons behind those two creeps, and the elections needed to be mentioned again in this part.
There’s even more to this toy politics thing, but I’ll explain it in another moment. Probably in the “Database”, a new section I’m planning to eventually open.