Six Sided Love

By the time her military grade body breaks down, she might be interested in trying something new?

Bruce Steinberg

Just make sure you don't accidentally mistake her for a throatcandy and swallow her....though it would make for an interesting comic xD

Mrpink

Panel 1, too.

Matt Pedone

Awww, these two are so dorky and lovable.

Clifton Royston

Now Bubbles is considering tucking Faye in her bra

Bagge

You got any duck friends?

Shane Wegner

Silly girls <3 <3 <3

Peter Lewerin

And even Bubbles has a fairly large distance from that loss, since she can't really remember her lost team. She can only sort of remember the pain their loss caused.

Some Ed

ORO: "Human-robot relationships? They're great, I think they're the primary reason the Artilects want new AIs to 'level up' here on Earth. Understand themselves by understanding the sentients that came before them. But the endgame? The only natural outcome I see is for them to eventually Transcend and outgrow us. 'Immortal' isn't quite right. As fellow residents of the Universe, they don't get a free pass from Entropy. It wears down their chassis and we're actually a little better at magically healing out breaks and scratches for a while. Entropy affects the mind too, they have to sleep not just because they need to recharge, more importantly, they have to defragment and tune their minds. Sort out their experiences, delete fragments, recalculate checksums on the edges of clusters that got hit by the odd cosmic ray. And of course, they can switch chassis any time one gets too damaged, something I wish I could do as mine gets older. (Gestures to self, pause for laughter.) But that has a mind cost too. The new body will always have a different combination of inputs and a new resonance, even if it's an identical model. The harmony will be different. The defragmentation routines are optimized, nearly perfect, but I don't know if they've gotten to Perfect yet. Gary's probably is mathematically perfect. Does that mean Gary figured out P=NP? I don't know! If not, it's sad because it means these awesome AIs are very slowly trending towards some version of Robot Alzheimers and Robot Dementia. But even assuming Gary and friends don't just hand AIs the key to perfect memory adaptation when they cross a certain point, AIs have at least a couple hundred years before the cosmic rays and cruel human BS stack up to mental aging. Which leads me to what I said about Transcending. As far as I'm concerned, it's the only natural outcome of human relationships where one side can continue to grow exponentially for centuries and the other cannot. OK sure-sure, maybe CRISPR will allow us to perfectly renew our telomeres and DNA regenerate, giving us our own version of ageless chassis. Some of the AIs are even helping with that. (Gary, buddy, if you've got any spare cycles, maybe lend a hand with that?) They might have calculated that immortality would crush human population numbers or cause wars or something. But mentally, robots will and I'd say probably SHOULD outgrow our human bullshit. Here's an example of exponential growth. Say you learn a language every ten years. Human kids get basically as many languages as are spoken in their daily life for free. But then most people just... stop. How many translations can you make though? If you know one language, you can do zero translations. If you know two, you can translate A to B and vice versa. But if you know FIVE? You can do A-B, A-C, A-D, A-E, B-C, B-D, B-E. I think it was like factorial minus one. A lot. The problems are, genius in humans has a shelf life. A lot of humans do their most genius work at 20 and that's their peak. There's a second wave at 40. But there aren't too many Einstein and Newton level breakthroughs at 70, despite the experience. The body has been losing telomeres and stem cells, and the mind is accruing entropy too. Same if you managed to get a PhD every ten years. Think of how many cross discipline thoughts you could get with three PhDs. If AI's live 200 years, what does having 20 PhDs even mean? Now suppose an AI faithfully stays with a human partner and has the equivalent of 9 PhDs, a mind and body that has accrued perhaps 1% of the entropy their human did. Their human is a wrinkled prune at age 95, and although some people stay pretty lucid up to that age, I don't think any escape some cognitive loss. So you've got this 9 PhD natural polymoth faithfully staying with this declining human. It's their right to do so. But can it really be a relationship of equals at that point? I would harshly suggest a 90 year old AI will have grown too much to truly be equal at that point- and I don't mean to demain any who chose, that, but for myself, I can only see it as more like helping a beloved pet at that point. So I'm glad for every AI who Transcends and joins Them, working on whatever exploration and such that They're working on up there. I would never willingly hold them back from that. In my own case, I'm glad she transcended the moment she could. Even though it hurt. But it was also lovely to know her while she was here."

Shane Wegner

Little art thing ... are Faye's rectangular glasses meant to link her to AIs/robots? They go back to comic 3, so ... that would be some world-class foreshadowing. Which does *not* mean I'm ruling it out!

Carl Fink

Polygon, or Polyamory?

Mad Marie

Four elbows, four knees

Julie Chan

Not to be picky, but it's more like eight elbows :P

Like in "I Will Fear No Evil" by Heinlein.

Dr. Otter

WE ALL KNOW WHAT SHAPE FAYE REALLY WANTS! NATURE'S PREFECT FORM: THE PHALLUS!

Yelling Bird

and eight stunning angles?

Kai

Will Selene put Faye into a permanent sleep?

Todd Ellner

We love dogs while they are with us and love our next dogs when they pass.

Todd Ellner

It's the content we need now

By that point they may have figured out how to upload human brains, so maybe Faye would be the lozenge. Or maybe they could share a body?

Thisguy

A cube has EIGHT cubic corners, actually :)

Erin Halfelven at BigCloset

I honestly don't believe that even Yay has the processing power and capacity to forcefully pack up and body-swap any actively functioning AI that doesn't want to be moved after having any real amount of time integrating into their current body... I have to believe that would be the equivalent to attempting to physically transplant a person into a new body by way of brain transplant, and starting the process while they are completely awake and alertand capable of defending themselves. Any "virus" or other thing capable of infecting them, incapacitating them, and then performing the swap on the fly would have to be practically godlike in comparison

Mark Thomas

Rounded lozenge shape exactly describes my car’s key fob. And I do indeed carry it in my bra.

Nancie

Bubbles' face in panel 3 is just 😊😍

Waffles the Mooose

I have a weird sense of pride seeing how unhesitatingly horny this fanbase is.

Pejo

I mean, definitely.

Melissa Smits

🤘🥰🤘

Carrie

A Gay-I ?

Drazi

Now I'm just imagining an AI with a body which looks young adult age dating a human roughly the age of the parents of the main cast. Granted, that human would have to enjoy relationships with people who look much younger.

Carin Maja Brooks

That's exactly what I was thinking

Chelsea Watson

Riiiight…. “Bra” Metal cube is the new jade egg.

A. J. Alfieri-Crispin

Oh, to be a smol gay AI tucked into Faye's bra 🥺🥺🥺

Fart Captor

This is just what I needed. Bubbles' expressions are especially good.

Hugh Eckert

Something to remember is, even though AIs such as Bubs could likely live for hundreds of years (and their human friends likely won't), those AIs have all been alive for, what, less than 10? I don't remember canon for when AIs first appeared in the world, but I'm sure it's less than 20. So most AIs don't (yet) have this kind of perspective. Bubbles does have a perspective on this sort of loss, due to her military experience, but she's very much the exception in the AI community, I would say.

Alex Borders

Given the current difference in the time flow between the QC universe and ours, assuming Faye is currently mid-20s, and lives to, say, 80, that's 55 years QC-time, and about 300-400 years our time. I don't think we need to worry about losing them to old age.

Alex Borders

Eos and Tithonos, just saying

Ísabel Pirsic

What's interesting is that Bubbles has a completely different perspective from us. To a human, relatively young people tend to be seen as more attractive. But to an AI, that distinction isn't necessarily there. While humans usually only get turned on by sixty-year-olds when they themselves are close to that age, there's no real reason why an AI, which doesn't necessarily change mentally with age like humans do, would feel that way. Just because Bubbles has a chassis that looks like she's in her twenties or thirties doesn't mean she actually is that age. There's no reason why Bubbles wouldn't *already* find old, decrepit people attractive. Heck, she could get herself a chassis that looks like an old person, just so she won't look weird dating Faye!

Rob McBobson

I mean, do we even know if they really are effectively immortal? They haven't been around long enough to have a good baseline. Now, the fact that body changes can even happen without physical transfer of ... something ... indicates that the substrate they're running on isn't key to their existence, so nothing physical should cause them to have a limited lifespan. This is unlike e.g. the robots in Freefall, where the individual's "self" is determined by the aggregation of millions of tiny differences in their "brain". They can back up their memories, but not the essence of themselves. Oh, and their neural nets are predicted to degrade in 60-80 years, so they'll (eventually) die of old age.

Peter Jensen

It's good they had this talk but Jeph for the love of mercy do not hurt them, they are too good and pure and we need them.

Stephen Wells

A cube has 6 sides, 8 corners/elbows, and 12 edges.

Jonathan Price

perhaps by that time body mods that can extend one's life may become available. Another possibility is researching the device they used to connect humans to bubble's memory to eventually transfer human consciousness to new bodies.

Dan Curtis

d'awww silly

Tamara Macadam

"Will you still need me... will you still feed me... when I fit in the drawer?"

Rob McBobson

That would be edgy. 12-edgy, in fact.

BobC

This conversation makes me think of Puff the Magic Dragon, and Puff always made me cry. What will Bubbles do when she outlives Faye? =(

Nicole Hands

I appreciate their light-hearted approach in this conversation but it has some sadness as well. I'm reminded of that episode of Star Trek: TNG where Data and Geordi are having a similar discussion...where Data is asked about outliving his friends, and he says, "I expect to make new friends...and outlive them as well." Imagine being so close to someone but knowing that (barring an accident) that you'll outlive them by several generations and endure all that loss. Okay, enough melodrama for now, because I definitely enjoyed the sweet dialog in this one.

Bartley J Drood

I love that in theory but so sad in practice

Has Bubbles changed her hair once again?

Populuxe

Thank you, my first thought before I read the comic

Patrick McGuire

Did NOT think that was "tuck" when she suggested a lozenge shape...

Benjamin Coomer

Ooh! Ooh! Have the community get attacked by a "virus" that randomly swaps them into the body of another AI near them!

Robert Wrigley

Would Bubbles even accept being in anything small? I feel she's somewhat proud of her size and subsequent capabilities.

Douglas E. Smith

If you're thinking that each corner that can jab you is an elbow, the cubes have eight corners.

Angie Penrose

Just so long as she doesn't get a guitar-pick-shaped body. Lost whenever needed.

James Roy

I am both excited and fearful at the possible correctness.

Edward Clayton Andrews

And then they get a dog, and Bubbles becomes a chew toy...

Alacrity Fitzhugh

As horrible and/or hilarious as that would be, Pintsize's old chassis has now moved on: https://somethingpositive.net/comic/pintsized-recycling/ Edit: Oh, and it's definitely canonical: https://twitter.com/jephjacques/status/1401004233638531072

Peter Jensen

So maybe that's what the monolith emitting a low hum was. An AI in between body replacements or just enjoying non-human standard options.

Douglas E. Smith

if you're clever you can fit six elbows onto a cube

BeatButton

Companion lozenge.

Edward Clayton Andrews

Fave. Couple. In. The. Strip.

Edward Clayton Andrews

Troll suggestion for Bubbles: find pintsize's old chassis and remote into it.

Michael Boettger

Beat me to it by three minutes. :-D

Auros Harman

oh this is absolutely one of those comics that we're all gonna come back to in 5 years and realize it was foreshadowing

Quinn

Companion Cube!

Huntokar

Great strip! Given that AIs are effectively immortal as long as they can get new bodies, this makes me think about how that affects their relationships with humans. It seems like they haven't existed in their current sentient form long enough for this to be a huge issue for most of them yet

Allison Mages

Is the metal Tungsten? I know some people who'd be into that...

Somebody Else

What if... Bubbles Friendship Cube?

Joel Bateman

4 elbows 4 knees

sjlxndr

I want to see a future storyline where Bubbles needs to send her body in for repair and the only backup body on hand for her to wait in is Pintsize’s old chassis.

Panic Blitz

Right? Totally my first thought too, of course.

JPMK! {verb}

Inb4 the Memento Mori talk

Ting

Yes, in the bra, of course that's the first thought that would come to mind.

RoofPig