Comic Archive

Zhang: You mean touch screens now need to be bashed for them to respond? That's just stupid.
Alfred: It is supposed to be good for the ecomonomy.
Max: “Economy.” I see… it makes the things break sooner, this is taking planned obsolescence* to the next level.

They stand before the museum, which is labeled with a misspelled _“Histry Museum”._
Zhang: If the spelling error is any indication, maybe we should not expect too much from this.
Heidi: Let's try it anyway and see if there is any explanation for the sorry state of this future.

Alana: You are coming along, Alfred?
Alfred: Yes, I can be your… guide, it is called, right?
Alana: That would be nice. Do we need to pay to enter?
Alfred: No. Even less people would visit if it would cost money…

Setting: the team and Alfred have entered the museum, in the entrance hall they are greeted by a video display which is a regular widescreen TV, but tilted 30 degrees to the left from a portrait orientation, yet the text and images are rendered upright.
Voice from display: Welcome to the History Museum, where you will learn historical stuff. Like, really cool shit.
Steve: A diagonal display? That's original. Maybe a tad too artistic for a museum like this, though.

In a hall next to the main hall, they encounter more diagonal displays.
Steve: What? All screens are tilted?
Alana: If it would be artistic, I would expect variation, but they are all turned the same. And, videos have been recorded at this same angle. Alfred, what's the point of this?
Alfred: I don't understand. You don't hold your phone like this?

We see Alfred holding his smartphone in the same orientation as the screens, tilted to the left. Next to a date “Uctomber 12 2007,” the screen also displays an ad for a brand “BARFFF,” and all text is tilted to compensate for the 30° angle.
Steve: OMG, vertical video evolved into something even worse — diagonal video. I am speechless.
Max: This world keeps on delivering. I can't tell whether this is driven by laziness or stupidity.
Steve: I guess both.
Alfred: ?

Alfred: You sure act strange. Where are you from exactly?
Heidi: Errm… Belgium.
Alfred: I have read stories about that. They don't have punch screens and diagonal video there?
Heidi: Not really. Alfred, is there a section about more recent history than dinosaurs?

Alfred: Sure, we can go to the section about The Event.
Adil: The event? That sounds vague.
Alfred: Yes it does. It is my favorite part of history… maybe because it is so mysterious.

Zhang (whispering): Belgium? Seriously? Where did you get that idea?
Heidi: Well, many do not consider it a real country anyway… hence it seemed like the best evasive answer I could come up with.

A sign reads: “old 21st centry.”
Max: Aha, “old 21st century,” with obligatory spelling error.
Alfred: The last period we know much about from before the event. They stopped putting everything on those shiny disks afterwards. It was hard to fix the machines that play them, but some of our smartest people could do it.

We see Steve facepalming while Alfred does his explanation.
Heidi: Look… Mythbusters, Futurama.
Alfred: Truly strange documentaries. People had weird ideas back then. But, we managed to build many of them, because we believe those people surely were very smart.

Heidi: They must have studied those things in detail, down to the melon baller from that Futurama movie.
Adil: It is thanks to a goofy animated series that my eyes nearly got scooped out?
Max: I'm sure Matt Groening would deeply appreciate the irony in that.