Comic Archive

Setting: meeting room.
Heidi: My contact at PMD has managed to narrow down the number of customers who ordered that particular IC around the batch change down to 5.
Alana: Do we have identities?
Heidi: Addresses are all we got. 2 of those can be directly linked to a company name, neither is Quantuple's.

Alana: That leaves the other three.
Heidi: One of the addresses was nearby enough that I could drive there, they don't do anything with A.I.; I do have a phone number for one of the remaining 2.
Max: Let's give them a call.

Max has made the phone call.
Max: Ghostbusters! No, just kidding. Merely embedded systems for power plants. That must mean number 5 must be our target.
Alana: Their total lack of communication channels also seems a big hint.
Zhang: They are not the talkative kind, are they?

Alana: So, we have a very likely candidate for the actual location of the Quantuple company.
Zhang: Thanks to some liberal interpretations of privacy laws…
Max: Well, legal compliance has gone down the drain since the whole Faceworld adventure anyway.

Heidi: It's on the 16th floor of a high-rise office building, a 4-hour drive from here.
Alana: I'm curious enough about this to let you go during office hours, perhaps next week Wednesday. Who volunteers?
Heidi: I would propose the same team as for Faceworld, we know what it's all about.

Alana: Good, but be careful. Whoever is behind this, doesn't seem afraid to take drastic actions.
Max: Maybe it's best if someone waits outside and stays in contact by phone.
Alana: Then Adil should go with you.
Max: I'm not sure whether that makes me feel safer or not…

Setting: the water cooler / coffee machine.
Max: So, Adil, do you feel confident being our safety back-up next week?
Adil: Sure, I do jiujitsu in my spare time!
Max: Not sure how helpful that will be, but okay…

Adil: Hey, I have been practicing my Quake skills, but the single-player mode is a bit boring.
Max: Have you managed to stop falling into the lava?
Adil: Well… mostly. But, I'd like to try an online game. Do people even still play this?

Max: I'm sure people will keep playing Quake even from retirement homes, as long as they can control a mouse and keyboard. It should be easy to find a QuakeWorld server with active players.
Adil: OK, let's try it after work hours.

We see the in-game view of Adil's Quake player character exploding. A message states: “Adil was gibbed by H3llr41ser's rocket.”
Max: Here you go, a random Quake FFA server with 7 players, what could possibly go wrong?
SFX: Whizzz… BOOM SPLOTCH!
Adil: I have barely moved, and I have already exploded…

We see Max and Adil looking at the monitor while Adil's player character explodes again.
Max: You weren't even telefragged, that was a rocket.
SFX: Whoosh BOOM! SPLOTCH gargl…
Adil: Again!

Adil: WTF, I keep instantly 'sploding from rockets or grenades upon spawning!
Max: These players must have been playing these maps for the past 25 years straight. Their brains have become one with the game. They can sense when and where someone will be spawning, hence they proactively launch perfectly timed rockets and grenades at spawn points.
Adil: You geeks truly are weird!