S.O.N.A.I.S. Comic Archive

Zhang: The doors are barricaded. Well, the good news is, this must mean at least someone is still alive inside.
Max: The bad news is that we'll soon be bot-food if we can't get in.

Max bangs on the doors.
Max: Anyone there? Please let us in!
Voice from inside: Just a moment!

The doors are opened by someone with a computer case on their head.
Crew member: Come inside. Thank goodness you got our message after all.
Heidi: I think you have some explaining to do.
Max: We “need to know” a few things indeed. Nice disguise, by the way.

Crew member: We're only a crew of 3. We were supposed to do a first test of the autonomous robots. We never got to see the robots before they were released into the park, only their video feeds.
Max: Let me guess: “need to know?”

Crew member: Yeah, someone higher up really likes that concept. Anyhow, the bots were supposed to automatically take photos of visitor's faces. The first flaw we discovered was that they are unable to discern between real faces and photos on billboards, but that soon proved to be the least of our problems…

Crew member: Then we noticed the bots weren't equipped with cameras, but guns. Don't know how that happened. There must have been a mix-up with the military themed attraction. For some reason, the bots did not respond to a shutdown command. When they started aiming for the board on the roof, I used an open mail window to send an SOS.
Heidi: … and that mail got sent to us.

Crew member: Yeah, sorry that we have put you in danger, but it was the only option; we had only a few seconds before the antennas were destroyed. From then on, we had no chance to control the bots in any way or see what they were doing, so we barricaded the doors and hoped someone would come. We also had the disguises idea, but didn't trust it to be safe enough.

Max: How on earth did the bots get miniguns instead of cameras? Did someone misinterpret the phrase “shoot a picture?”
Zhang: I wonder why they call them ‘miniguns.’ There's nothing mini about something that fires dozens of high-caliber rounds in a single second.
Heidi: It's historical. Compared to predecessors, they are “mini.”

Crew member: The military provided one of the attractions, but how the guns ended up in the visitor greeting bots, is beyond me.
Zhang: Man, the QA in this place leaves a lot to be desired…
Max: This situation is so messed up, it sounds like it comes straight from a weird webcomic storyline!

Heidi: I have some more bad news: the hovercraft pilot who brought us here, has been shot.
Crew member 1: Oh no, there goes our attempt at avoiding casualties…
Crew member 2: We must shut down the bots ASAP. There may be a way to restore the link, but we must first ensure that the control will work. However, we are not A.I. specialists.

Max: You were lucky with your SOS roulette, sending it to the company that knows the control system for the bots.
Crew member 2: The machines are over here.
Heidi: That is some funky looking stuff.

Heidi: Interesting, I have never seen anything like this.
Crew member 2: The hardware was provided by one of the contractors, called Quantuple.
Heidi: Never heard of them. These are some weird components, almost looks like quantum computing units. Seems overkill for running our tools.