Comic Archive

Setting: silhouettes of the team looking from outside a door into a dark hallway full of boxes.
Alana: This must be it, look at all those boxes, it's like stuff keeps being delivered and never used?
Steve: And again, where are the guards? Security? This is all too easy. Where is… anyone, actually?

Again view of OIB-A271 in the real world
Heidi (voice): OIB-A271, do you have the ability to locate persons in our surroundings?
OIB-A271: Not directly, I am still trying to fight through the firewall, for lack of a better word. But, indirect cues may be usable. Give me a moment.

Adil: These boxes are food, alright. Proper food, not with an “A” VomiScore! But, most of it has expired? Makes no sense. Is the government on a strict diet?
Zhang: Maybe it is intentional… Wait long enough, and the VomiScore will improve!
Adil: You are becoming scarily accustomed to this world.

OIB-A271 (voice from phone): Heidi, I have detected many humanoid shapes in a large room, with furniture arrangement that seems consistent with people holding a meeting.
Alana: They are all together? Excellent. Let's barge in and crash this party.
Heidi: You are right, we do not have time for subtlety.

Voice from a TV screen showing the face of the “supreme leader”: Halt, strangers! You are trespassing. Return, or you will be punished.
Steve: The same face as on the posters! Looks strange though, gives me Max Headroom vibes.

Adil: What does Max have to do with this?
Steve: I guess that's from before your time. I just mean… it seems animated… synthetic. OIB-A271, any activity?
OIB-A271: Nothing seems to be moving…
Steve: Then let's just head onward.

A brick lies on the floor next to a broken window, together with some other dirt and leaves.
Max: Well, well, it seems even the government is not immune against their own brick squads…

Heidi: Look at all the dirt, and water damage, this has happened long ago.
Max: You're right, don't they care about their own buildings? Or has the budget dried up?
Heidi: Either that, or… I am starting to get a really bad feeling about this.

The team stands in front of a set of large doors marked with a label “Arsembly room.”
Zhang: Is this bad humor, the usual poor spelling, or were they afraid to write “ass-embly?” That would be opposite to what happened to the brand names though…
Alana: Let's just enter, and we can ask them. Although I am pretty sure we have more important questions first.

A view from inside the meeting room, with the team in the doorway. The foreground shows skeletons and mummified people sitting around and bent forward onto a table.
Steve: Oh crap.
Alana: Oh my. I don't think we will be getting many answers from them.

Heidi: Little to no signs of a death struggle. Something killed them very quickly.
Zhang: A nerve agent of some kind? Seems more likely than food with a lethal VomiScore… It obviously happened long ago, given the state of decay.

Max: It explains the expired food and non-repaired damage. This here must be what remains of the supreme leader… But, how can nobody have noticed the entire government suddenly disappearing?
Adil: Maybe they were so useless that the country started running better without them!