2008.10.22

Concluding chapter of Young Astronauts in Love!

You can see the whole thing on one page at kirk.is/astro.

It's funny, I had been thinking that the original single panel comic had been inspired by the Lisa Nowak "stalker astronaut" story, except the original panel was 2002 and Nowak made news in 2007. (Heh, I had forgotten I made a commemorative Young Astronauts in Love Nowak cartoon then.)

Young Astronauts in Love

chapter 4	but just then the robot incident had left us a bit shaken
and quite a bit turned on	i kept making "robot buddies", but kept them dumb-ish, below the critical synaptic threshold
and lydia's research was deeper than ever.	for her birthday, i made her a robot pet UFO
i think she liked it	a lot. it followed her constantly!
her birthday gift to me was kind of harder to explain...	it was kind of a combination anomaly/holo of the two of us
it's unique, in a strict use of that word. i'm not sure you could make it anywhere besides the anomaly obverse!	during minibreaks, she showed me how to enjoy the planetside... nature stuff i'd never really looked at
at these times, i was happiest.	as far as i can tell, so was she.
but nothing gold can stay	she got her orders. assignment at tylon academy. the big leagues!
we took one last trip to the city	at the sodashop, we had a talk
"i don't know, jake... maybe it's the difference between you and everyone else."	"...the astronaut thing is so temporary for them..."
	now, we still write and holo sometimes. she hasn't found anyone new.
so there's still a little hope. not a ton.	she left, but deployments in the federation are funny things, and the anomaly still has some unplumbed depths.
i'll say this, i learned more from lydia than all the other lab-scouts put together.