Endtown by Aaron Neathery for September 11, 2015

Welp, the dittos certainly are working overtime here!

New colony who has developed robot scouts?

This looks bad. Very bad. Are the dittos somehow keeping them invisible still, or is something even more strange going on?

For the answer, tune in again Monday. Same End-time, same End-channel.

I still believe they’re looking for “Clive.”

I wonder how these things managed not to step on any of Our Heroes…

Holly appears to be a heavy sleeper!

It’s Clive. They’re looking for him. Give it back to them. Not sure why they’re looking for the thing, but I’m guessing at some point the Topsiders realized mutants were stealing Transport brains from transports and put trackers on them.

The MUTTS look like ants from here.Maybe the dittos are bored and trying to mess with us again.

Three legged beasties!

MUTTS….why does it have to be MUTTS. Does it seem that these visitations happen when they are sleeping…but disperse when they are awake? Something going on in the subconscious of one of their party?

Its interesting to see that Kirbee, for all her ditziness had the sense to remain quiet and keep Chic from making noise. My guess is that they’re either looking for Clive or are headed to whatever it is that Wally was looking at in the distance.

It’s a dream. Go back to sleep.

Textbook definition of an “Aw #@%&” moment. ;-)

The Mutts seem to be all moving in the same direction, as if migrating, and just moving around the ‘obstacle’ in their way. Only one is briefly looking back to try and figure out what’s there.

Oh Oh, could that thing in the distance be the white column Wally saw in his dream?

They are probably looking for the AWOL topsiders that left with clive, though it they are able to track some kind of signal from him they should be able to triangulate him that close even if dittos are blocking sight…..that or they are able to locate the dittos, and suspect they are hiding something

I have ideas. But I had most of them typed, and the cat hit refresh, so now I have the opportunity to retype all that I was almost ready to submit. I’ll break it up. Firstly, everyone is awake except Holly. Even Clive’s access ports in the fourth panel look like he is Awake. Kirbee, Chic, Irving, Wally, maybe Clive and the MUTTs are all awake in this scene. So this may be a preface the Holly’s Dream House exposition, where we see more of her backstory, including expository on what she meant when she said she lost the baby, which in-story was just a few days ago. On my profile today, and for a few more days, in the strip that begins the chapter with Wally and Holly at the clock tower just after Holly’s release from the Milk Trial. So if anyone wants to review that part of the story, click my empty avatar to go to my profile, and click on that panel to go to a good starting point. While at my profile, enjoy the view of the voting links for Endtown, DocRat, Kevin&Kell and Hubris in the TopWebComics contest. Endtown and Doc Rat are in the Top100, and on the first page, but are skipping and could use some votes. Thanks for your consideration, JusSayin

By the way, I want to credit Jenner for planting the seed of the idea today that this may be a dream. If this is a dream scenario, I hope it is Holly’s dream, but in last night’s dream, Wally was awake when we had color. Colour for all the Commonwealthy People.

Huh, tall tilted objected sticking out of the ground. Topsiders looking all over the place, literally covering every inch of ground. I wonder if some astronauts came back and the Topsiders benevolently want to help pure humans or want them to experiment to see if they can find what causes the mutations.

Sunday Night marks the beginning of Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, The Feast of the Trumpets, which happens before the next strip is scheduled to be posted. 

So set your calendars. 

To SurfStuff55, ADream4U, James Bailey and Jamie’s friend Mel Brooks and All Who Observe: (From Wikipedia) The Hebrew common greeting on Rosh Hashanah is שָׁנָה טוֹבָה “Shanah Tovah”, which, in Hebrew, means “[have a] good year” or similar greetings. Thus, in Yiddish the greeting is אַ גוט יאָר “a gut yor” (“a good year”) or אַ גוט געבענטשט יאָר “a gut gebentsht yor” (“a good blessed year”). Sephardic Jews traditionally say “tizku l’shanim rabot” or “muchos anyos”, both of which mean “many years”(/Wikipedia Off) 

A Good Blessed Year to Everybody, Even Linda,AKA DirtyOldLady who may be rocking it in the Summerlands. 

JusSayin 

Now let’s see if I got the coding right.

The dittos probably made them look like a rock outcrop, or one of those jutting crystal spikes that emerge from the waste here and there. It has to be Clive that the units are searching for — there’s no other Topsider tech there, with the party. Plus it makes sense that it would be retrievable, like a black box. It’s probably made the Topsiders pretty darned curious — it’s radio signal is present, but they can’t spot or detect the physical unit from the air. Strangely, it’s moving, the same speed and way it would be if it was being carried — and they can track it, but even up right up on top of the signal, on the ground, using a dozen or more Mutts, they can’t find it, or anyone carrying it. The more deeply the Topsiders look into it, the more worrisome this gets for them, and the bigger their next attempt is going to be.

This I was not expecting!

Kirbee isn’t stupid, she is a bit ditsy like me, but she has some smarts about her.

About Unity, Chik didn’t get to say goodbye to his Mother, too bad but sometimes you just have to drop everything, get going, and don’t look back.I hope these mutts don’t discover them coz they are sure outnumbered.I agree that they look like they are going somewhere.Maybe the worst part of war and other conflicts is that many good people get hurt, most of whom don’t want war.It could be that Holly is dreaming this, but why? and there are no colored bits.I wonder what would happen if they nudged Clive out from under the dittos, if they are looking for him maybe they would grab him up and leave.Noot fair to Clive but he was happy being a transporter, so maybe not so bad.

Perception from the Mutts POV think they are continuing on a straight path but actually being guided around the group. Probably a slight guidance question as they “feel” like they are veering away, but the visual input shows an unimpeded direction, so continue on.

Great Cliffhanger!!!

How sweet they are in a herd of Mutts foraging about for their mutt-ness.Topsiders have been busy…..they must have experimented on sheep to make these.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEKKK!!!!!

Nuts to Mutts! Yikes folks this is getting scary. What horrible visions have we have been seeing since the exodus from unity. Perhaps a pillar of salt awaits our intrepid bunch in the end. The Topsiders have been tracking Clive from the start, after all, he was PT jacked. a built in victim of grand theft auto as it were. He is in effect “Stolen Property”.All these manifestations of Topsider activity have been in effort to Triangulate the signal.But the dittoes are doing their job. The Topsiders have essentially found them. The scouters narrowed down the signal and the Mutts tracking beacons now show a pattern with a void in a area where there are no natural features like rocks to cause such a thing.Perhaps the Topsiders will use their own eyes next!It’s the only thing they haven’t done..Yet.After all, seeing is believing..

The design of the Mutts is excellent.

Good thing Holly is still sleeping. I shudder to think what this will do to her damaged-as-it-is psyche.

Bear in mind the previous ship, which showed a Topsider Shuttle pacing them in the sky above. This lends credence to the “Tracking Clive’s Signal” theory, and that when the signal stopped moving, they sent in a squad of Mutts to go over it with their scanners, inch by inch, and find that signal.

I see two possibilities. It could be that the Mutts and the airscouts were all tracking Clive’s signal and are puzzled because the area where the radio signal says he should be is is either empty or a rock outcropping. The other possibility is that they are all looking for something else, presumably related to the leaning towery thing Wally saw in the distance. The airscouts headed in that direction after spending some time looking at the ground in Wally’s area. The mutts look like they may be headed for that area.Another possibility is that the leaning towery thing is a Topsider base of some sort and that the airscout and mutts were based out of it. Wouldn’t it be funny if the Topsiders sent a manned space probe to colonize some distant world and it ended up back on Earth? It would be fun to see the TS exploring the wastes thinking its a new world. Yeah, I know, not likely. The TS would recognize the white powder and would be receiving signals from their home base. It could be a crashed spacecraft and the Mutts, Airscouts could be coming from it or going to it.

I have a feeling that what they have been seeing on the horizon is a different type of colony. Maybe it’s a colony made up of the anthro brains that the Topsiders have been using. Perhaps the colony is sending a beacon to any airscouts, mutts, and transporters in the area.

I’d been thinking that Sarah had signaled the Topsiders to attack Unity, because she’d said they came sooner than she expected, but now I realize she knew Clive was broadcasting all along. Wally wondered why the lizards had packed Clive with the supplies and what value it had to the lizards. Sarah apparently intended for the Topsiders to home in on Clive and kill everyone but her people so she could take over as empress. She probably planned to destroy Clive at the end of the attack so the Topsiders would think everything was destroyed and move on.

Some comments:Remember that PT that Wally hit with a fire hydrant way back when we first met him? The hydrant hit the PT and flipped it over on its side. I’d asked Aaron in an email what was going to happen to it. He replied that at the time PT’s were a dime a dozen and that the TSers wouldn’t bother trying to recover it. Unless something catastrophic happened to the brain case, it’s still trapped in that PT even now, and the Topsiders still haven’t bothered looking for it.There’s supposed to be an “eye in the sky” satellite spying down on the planet now. It may have been tracking the PT Jim and Sarah hijacked and notified the TS base of the rough point that it had stopped moving and the fact that no mutants were detected leaving the outcroppings after that. The Topsiders would know there’s a colony in the outcropping and would set out to destroy it.Jim and Sarah had mentioned that they had learned, through TS research, that there is an edge to The Great Waste, and they took the PT in the direction they thought the edge was. What if they didn’t cover their tracks very well at their TS outpost when they left? Maybe the people left behind at the outpost discovered their online activities and figured out where they were going, and want to set up a “welcome party” to greet then when they arrive later on foot.

Some comments:Remember that PT that Wally hit with a fire hydrant way back when we first met him? The hydrant hit the PT and flipped it over on its side. I’d asked Aaron in an email what was going to happen to it. He replied that at the time PT’s were a dime a dozen and that the TSers wouldn’t bother trying to recover it. Unless something catastrophic happened to the brain case, it’s still trapped in that PT even now, and the Topsiders still haven’t bothered looking for it.There’s supposed to be an “eye in the sky” satellite spying down on the planet now. It may have been tracking the PT Jim and Sarah hijacked and notified the TS base of the rough point that it had stopped moving and the fact that no mutants were detected leaving the outcroppings after that. The Topsiders would know there’s a colony in the outcropping and would set out to destroy it.Jim and Sarah had mentioned that they had learned, through TS research, that there is an edge to The Great Waste, and they took the PT in the direction they thought the edge was. What if they didn’t cover their tracks very well at their TS outpost when they left? Maybe the people left behind at the outpost discovered their online activities and figured out where they were going, and want to set up a “welcome party” to greet then when they arrive later on foot.

So PTs are “a dime a dozen”? That’s another clue that the TS are swimming in resources. Add that to the second rocket and the hordes of drones and I see somebody who has cornered all the stocks of raw materials and has advanced manufacturing facilities of some sort.The GPS comment is intriguing because that means that the TS don’t have just one surveillance satellite but a whole fleet that are also used to create a global positioning network. That, my friends is a serious amount of resources to have after the end of human civilization.

Nebbuk, Only in YOUR imagination.