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Triangle and Robert #1021 Automata! / Hide behind me. I can pass for a small building. / Error detected: building <87.5% of optimal size. / Move! There'll be a construction crew along!
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1021
Triangle and Robert #1022 Metageometric arbiter of reality detected: ACTIVATE PHILOSOPHY TEAM... / Cube! Triangle! Mr Disease! Run! / Philosophy team? / They're totalitarian constructivists. I'll keep them busy here with the strip focus while you explore the launch site. / Launch site? / I thought you were going to respond "Totalitarian constructivists?". / Excess punctuation detected!
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1022
Triangle and Robert #1023 Okay, so what are... / Mathematical constructivists believe that if something can't be proven to exist it doesn't exist, right? / That's not totally accurate, but okay... / Totalitarian constructivists believe that if something can't be proven to exist, then it shouldn't exist. / They have a very elegant proof that smoking piles of rubble exist and are fond of invoking it.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1023
Triangle and Robert #1024 The philosopher automata of Tetris were constructed more to get grant money than to solve any actual problem. They resolved several interesting philosophical dilemmas, but had to be deactivated because of their brutal / methodology after they started to reify consciousness. They were kept intact for the same reason as most of Tetris: just in case. / I present a more compelling philosophical issue than you, so as long as you stay out of the strip they shouldn't try to prove you.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1024
Triangle and Robert #1025 [[The Cartoonist is under attack from the philosopher automata of Tetris.]] / Well. You're the philosophy team. I think I should first point out that you can't hurt me. The only reason I'm not just letting you attack is to protect the others. / You can't prove that I exist. You have no access to the world in which I have form. Thus, you will attack unless I can show that an attack is unnecessary. / To this end, I intend to prove to you that I do not exist, and thus do not need to be destroyed.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1025
 
Triangle and Robert #1026 [[The Cartoonist is under attack by the philosopher automata of Tetris.]] / ...therefore, either I cease to exist between strips, which implies a contradiction as previously demonstrated, or time is discrete and I am therefore unchanging, which I have shown untrue. / Elegant, but flawed. If you exist and your existence is unprovable, the syllogism of branch 2 breaks and no contradiction exists. Therefore, you have only shown that your existence cannot be proven. / But you're constructivists. Unprovable existence is no existence. / Constructivism is a meta-logical interpretation, not an axiom. It cannot be invoked as part of a proof.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1026
Triangle and Robert #1027 [[The Cartoonist is under attack by the philosopher automata of Tetris.]] / So I can't prove I exist, I can't prove I don't exist, you can't stop me from existing, I can't prove you can't stop me from existing, and Prozac the Bear just had an interesting thought a few corridors away. / If you'd proven constructivism, you could use it in a proof. Since you're not allowing it in proofs, you haven't proven it, and so you must destroy your own constructivist programming! I'm Prozac the Bear! / As much as I hate the self-destruct cliche, he's got a point. / Constructivism can exist as a belief without necessarily being true.... Can't it? Self-destruct in 0x0A... 0x09... 0x08...
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1027
Triangle and Robert #1028 If it explodes it'll flood Tetris just as surely as if it attacked! / 0x07... / I'm not worried, I'm an illogical positivist! / Do something! / 0x06... / Wait... um... no, I can't prove the validity of constructivism in six seconds. / Hi! I'm still Prozac the Bear! / 0x05... 0x04...
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1028
Triangle and Robert #1029 Use your magic, Prozac. / Magic? Ferrets? ... Ducks! / 0x04... / What? / Thanks! / 0x03... / Oh no. No! You're not going to do this. Not now! / 0x02...
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1029
Triangle and Robert #1030 As your cartoonist, I order you not to explode! / 0x01... / That's it then, you've forced my hand. Copout power activate! / 0x00... / It is now safe to turn off your philosophy automaton. / I feel dirty.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1030
 
Triangle and Robert #1031 You're all okay? You didn't encounter any other philosophers? / Actually we did, but we all gave proof of our existence and they left us alone. / Then it's a really good thing Robert didn't come. / Yeah, you know how he hates having his Lebesgue measured. / Hi! I'm Prozac the walking Banach-Tarski paradox!
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1031
Triangle and Robert #1032 This is where Prozac's directions led. / It looks like everywhere else! / Not entirely. I'm pretty sure that rectangular structure there is an observatory and this one here is a communications center. I think the open area where you're standing is a launch pad. / Then we're bound to find astronomical data somewhere. / More than that. If I'm not mistaken there'll be a launch record for the Oval probe.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1032
Triangle and Robert #1033 Back on dry land, at the office of Triangle and Robert Wacky Scheme Consultants... / You're early. The giant ant farm hasn't fallen over yet. / It's not necessarily going to fall over. / Then what was the point to building it out of porcelain? / Well, if you went to all that trouble I suppose it can fall over. / So, how giant are these ants at the moment? / How should I know? It's not like I can see inside.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1033
Triangle and Robert #1034 These documents are well-preserved. / They're too technical for me to translate. / Let's each take as many papers as we can carry back to the beetle. / Any preference? / Diagrams. Photographs if there are any. Anything that might be a memo or summary. Charts. / How about comics?
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1034
Triangle and Robert #1035 Comics? / Cheaply-printed full-color comic books, to be exact. / Ah! These were for distribution to elementary schools. These might be just the level we need. / Our science can't be that far behind the Fourth Race. / Behind, no, but different. The scientific paradigms of man differed greatly from our own. We need to relearn their concepts from the ground up before we can translate them to our own.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1035
 
Triangle and Robert #1036 You might want to cancel the ant-escape idea. Triangle et cetera are on their way back. / I've already abandoned it. / That sounds ominous. / If giant insects start overrunning the city someone's bound to mention the square-cube law, and I don't want to have to hear the subsequent puns. / So what are you doing with the insects you already have? / Protein drinks.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1036
Triangle and Robert #1037 Hi! I'm Prozac the character you cut to when you can't figure out what to write! / Yes. Indeed you are. / What did you need to come to Tetris for? I'm still unclear on your role in this. / Me too! / Oh. In that case I'll let you get back to whatever you were doing.... / I'm not doing it yet. The flow of time has grown goofy.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1037
Triangle and Robert #1038 You're back! / Don't mention it. / What? / My back. / ... don't mention your back? Why not? / Never mind. Yes, we're back and ready to leave. / Why doesn't he want me to mention his back? / It's in the strip somewhere.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1038
Triangle and Robert #1039 Aw, we're going back already? / We? You can return separately under your own power. / But I'm lonely! / [[Mr Disease leaves]]
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1039
Triangle and Robert #1040 From the sunken city of blocks and right angles the beetle swam landward, shortly followed by Prozac the Bear, who had again taken the semblance of a submersible vessel. / Yours truly, who has been reading a rather excessive quantity of the writing of Fritz Leiber, found himself irresistably compelled to describe this scene most verbosely and thus, not entirely incidentally, occupy an entire strip with naught but words. / To learn more about Fritz Leiber, visit your local library.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1040
 
Triangle and Robert #1041 You're back! What did you bring me? What did you bring me? / Oh... here, have a comic book. / Hey! This is educational! / You can understand it? / Of course I can understand... / Oh yeah. I wasn't looking at the words. I have no idea what it says, it just looks educational. / You do understand comics, don't you....
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1041
Triangle and Robert #1042 If you get the chance try to... "read"... as much of that comic book as you can. We know our own comic metaphors are similar to those of humans. / So while Cube translates the text I can come up with an interpretation for the pictures? / Exactly. You're being very lucid. / He's coming down from a wackiness binge. / (Please don't tell Triangle about the you-know-what-phids.)
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1042
Triangle and Robert #1043 How can it keep switching back and forth between four and five dimensions? This theory makes no sense! / Back to the comic book again, see if I can decipher the lettering... why did it have to be hand-lettered? They could have at least had a typewritten "fun facts" page at the back.... / Find anything yet? / Tons of confirmation, but nothing new. The Fourth Race had three different systems of physics, only somewhat interchangeable. / So, like diet plans?
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1043
Triangle and Robert #1044 I don't know, look this over. It needs another pair of... no, I mean two heads are better... no, I don't know. I've been spending too much time with human idioms. / Hm... ah. Time as well as space is composed of pudding and thus has the potential to be lumpy. / What? Hey, that could be what it's saying, and if so that actually sense. I didn't know you were good with physics. / I'm not. I just recognised the equations for pudding.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1044
Triangle and Robert #1045 A lump of that scale can't be stable. It'd have collapsed into a star long ago. / You're not an astronomer. / True. There's been one in the strip already, I'll bring the problem to her. / I'll escort you. / The protestors seem likely to get violent. / Ah, so that's what you're doing here. / Yes, guarding.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1045
 
Triangle and Robert #1046 The tone is optimistic. The creators of this book either believed that the Fourth Race could overcome the doom / of the previous three, or they wished to forestall panic. After a brief description of... whatever the thing is in space that it's describing... it goes into moderate / detail about the Oval mission. / If I'd known you had that much to say I'd have stood off-panel so you could fit it in better.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1046
Triangle and Robert #1047 I'm in the strip again! I can tell because I suddenly can't think of what my name is. / I'm sorry, I'm horrible with names. / The Cartoonist! / Cube's coming with some documents... eh, I don't need to tell you, you read this thing daily. / It's an honor, sir. / Don't... don't address me like that unless it's sarcasm. / Is your low self-esteem that critical to the strip? / No, I just have trouble writing anything good about myself, and when I have trouble writing I end up bringing in Prozac the Bear.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1047
Triangle and Robert #1048 ...and as you see here, the... diagram vanished. / Sorry, I'll come back. / ...and as you see here, the Oval was never intended to return. I think. / That seems a reasonable interpretation. / I'm still not done with the whiteboard. / You can move it off-panel to see it. I think I should be here.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1048
Triangle and Robert #1049 So a spatial lump collapses into a star as it moves through time, and a temporal lump collapses as it moves through space. / Yes, that's how the symmetries work out. / Then how can a lump be stable? / One lump can't, but a temporal lump can stop an object from moving through time just as a spatial lump can block spatial motion. / So? / Pudding is sticky. Lumps adhere. / Right. So?
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1049
Triangle and Robert #1050 Okay, I admit I'm going out on a limb, but it looks to me like the anomaly the Oval was sent to investigate is a dual space-time pudding lump. / And that would mean? / About such a binary lump, time would fail to advance and would instead sort of circle around. / So when the Earth nears the lump history starts over? / In a sense, exactly. / Can you combine "in a sense" with "exactly"? It sounds wrong.
http://tr.froup.com/tr.pl?1050
 

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