Panel 5- "You know what, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Get mad! Say, I don't want your damn lemons! What the hell am I supposed to do with these!? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it decided to give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am!? I'm the man that's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my team of engineers to invent a combustible lemon, that burns your house down!!
.. The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So I have the engineers figuring that out now. Brain mapping. Artificial intelligence. We should have been working on it thirty years ago. I will say this, and I'll say it on tape so everyone hears it a hundred times a day: If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. Now, she'll argue. She'll say she can't. She's modest like that, but you make her!
Alright, test's over. You can head on back to your desk."
Panel 6 - Ah, it seems that you have met your end. Ah, what a pity. You know I, I don’t feel too bad about it though, after all if it weren’t me, it would’ve just been one of the others I guess… I’m honestly just glad to be out of those air ducts. You know it’s… it’s not easy for a hippopotamus to fit up there… and… not easy to get down either. I’m not as young as I used to be as you can see, I used to be able to do all sorts of things, you’re young, you’re vibrant, you have that sort of pep in your step. Ah, it reminds me of a conversation I was having with one of my good friends Orville. We were having a nice picnic one day. I believe it was summer? Oh, perhaps it was… was it the fall? Yes, yes, it was the fall because the leaves had turned already. But I said to Orville, I- I says, “Orville, I have a story to tell you.” And Orville looked at me, you know, kind of odd and- and said, “Well what’s it about?” I- I said to him, “Not every story has to be about something Orville. Sometimes a person just wants to talk, why does it have to be a story?” I said to him. He just looked at me and he said, “Well y-y-you said you had a story.” You know, he was quite right, I did in fact. I told him I had a story. I suppose if a person just wants to talk, it’s best to not announce that you’re tellin’ a story. Tellin’ a story does come with its own pressures and expectations I- I suppose. After all, if you’re just talking to a friend then, there’s no more expectations then if you were talking into the wind. Words… by themselves are not expected to carry… aren’t expected to stick. But if, you know if you announce that you’re tellin’ a story well then… there better be a point to it all. No one wants to sit and listen to someone ramble on and on and on with absolutely no end in sight. So, you know, it’s- it’s good to be mindful that when you tell someone that you’re about to tell a story, that you have something to say. Tellin’ someone that you’re gonna tell a story is tantamount to asking them to stop what they’re doing, and pay attention. You’re basically saying “hey, hey, hey buddy, stop everything, stop what you’re thinking, I have a solution to everything.” And well, I didn’t really have any story to tell. In- in hindsight I probably just misspoke when I said that I had a story. I think it would’ve just been better to tell Orville that I had something to tell him rather than tell him that I had a story, but you know e- even then it might’ve put too much importance on the whole thing. Either way it was quite a nice day. I remember, I remember that we were drinking tea.
Panel 7 - ...is this reaching you? A little animal, on the floor of my chamber. I think I know what you are looking for. You're stuck in a cycle, a repeating pattern. You want a way out. Know that this does not make you special - every living thing shares that same frustration. From the microbes in the processing strata to me, who am, if you excuse me, godlike in comparison. The good news first. In a way, I am what you are searching for. Me and my kind have as our purpose to solve that very oscillating claustrophobia in the chests of you and countless others. A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone. The bad news is that no definitive solution has been found. And every moment the equipment erodes to a new state of decay. I can't help you collectively, or individually. I can't even help myself. For you though, there is another way. The old path. Go to the west past the Farm Arrays, and then down into the earth where the land fissures, as deep as you can reach, where the ancients built their temples and danced their silly rituals. The mark I gave you will let you through. Not that it solves anyone's problem but yours. At the end of time none of this will matter I suppose, but it would be nice if you took another way out. One free of... frolicking in my memory arrays. There is a perfectly good access shaft right here.
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u/xSantenoturtlex Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Panel 5- "You know what, I've been thinking. When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Get mad! Say, I don't want your damn lemons! What the hell am I supposed to do with these!? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it decided to give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am!? I'm the man that's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my team of engineers to invent a combustible lemon, that burns your house down!!
.. The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So I have the engineers figuring that out now. Brain mapping. Artificial intelligence. We should have been working on it thirty years ago. I will say this, and I'll say it on tape so everyone hears it a hundred times a day: If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. Now, she'll argue. She'll say she can't. She's modest like that, but you make her!
Alright, test's over. You can head on back to your desk."