Narbonic

Narbonic is a webcomic by Shaenon K. Garrity.

The Job Interview

Helen: Are you the alfalfa delivery man? Tell me you're the alfalfa delivery man.

Dave: You didn't tell me I'd be working for a mad scientist! You gave me no intimation!

Mell: I told you she was working on a doomsday machine.

Helen: All I did was threaten to unleash giant mutant gerbils upon Washington DC unless the U.S. government agrees to my demands.

ANTONIO SMITH, FORENSIC LINGUIST

Dave: There's a trenchcoated man quoting Shakespeare below us.

Dave: Did you HAVE to keep a giant rotating blade set up in your office?

Dave: Her [Mell's] distraction tactic is singing highlights from "Funny Girl" while wearing my boxers on her head?

New Digs/Employee Brain Scans/Interview with the Mad Scientist

Helen's evil side: Kill him . . . Kill the nerd . . .

Helen's good side: No, Helen! Only maim him! Break his kneecaps!

Helen: Hi, guys. Welcome to our first personnel meeting. First item on the agenda is the brain scans I've been performing on you all week . . .

Dave: Brain scans?? I never agreed to any brain scans!

Mell: Yes you did. It's part of the form you have to fill out to borrow pens.

Helen: I am NOT! . . . I never did! . . . You've never even MET Mom! . . .

Dave: Look, if you don't want to know what I'm thinking, just don't look.

Professor Madblood and the Crystal of Marinia

Helen: Drat! Giant robot!

Helen: On this mission, Madblood is my adversary. I need to concentrate on subduing him, not FLIRTING!

Mell: Subduing him?

Helen: Right.

Mell:Bringing him under your thrall?

Helen: Yeah.

Mell: Whipping him into submission?

Helen: Ye--That's enough out of you.

Mell: I agree. It beats flirting.

Helen: So, Professor Madblood, we eat at last.

Dave: [on the phone] Wait. I thought I was the only one who has a car.

Mell: [there is a smoking carcass in the background] Had. You're swift.

Helen: Ask if he's registered with AAA.

Smart Gerbils

Helen: But I am your creator! You must obey me!

Superintelligent Gerbil: I'm afraid not. Our philosophers reject your claim that you created us. The true Creator is the monolith we call AIG-KALI, the Giver of Food. We wish to welcome the eternal and goodly reign of Aig-Kali with blood sacrafices of the most devout before the Meat Crisper of Righteousness.

Helen: You worship the REFRIGERATOR?

Mell: EAT HOT LEADED DEATH, FREAK-MICE!

Superintelligent Gerbil: Attention oppressors! We have acquired your space laser! Surrender now or we will be forced to activate it!

Helen: This is the oppressors! Go ahead!

Superintelligent gerbil: PREPARE TO BE DISINTEGRATED AS SOON AS WE'RE DONE SOLDERING!

Dave: Once again, my lack of work ethic has saved lives.

Dr. Narbon

Dr. Narbon: [repeated line] Heh heh heh.

Helen: I WATCHED THE VILLAGERS BURN YOU AT THE STAKE, CHOP YOUR CORPSE INTO LITTLE PIECES, AND HOP ALL OVER THEM!

Dr. Narbon: There's always an out, Beta. Remember that.

Dr. Narbon: Are you trying to steal a sample of my DNA for private analysis?

Artie: Er . . . yes.

Dr. Narbon: Try this. It's already sequenced.

Dr. Narbon: You know, Beta, in the lab you were raised in, we took gene samples from the animals, not the other way around.

Helen: Any gerbil who talks should thank his lucky STARS for wanton gene splicing!

Dr. Narbon: You believe me now, Davey?

Dave: Yes! Yes! I believe you've travelled through time specifically to bug me and steal my toys.

Dave's Dead, Dave

Dr. Narbon: He was broken when I got him.

Helen: I can't believe Dave's dead!

Dr. Narbon: It's pretty easy to believe, the way he keeps laying there.

Dr. Narbon: You know I've met up with this Davenport character all over time, right? I happen to know he lives into his mid-twenties.

Helen: He's 24 now.

Dr. Narbon: Oh.

Helen: In the coming weeks, we can expect to deal with the messiness of a funeral, accusations from family and friends, inconvenient questions from the police . . . or we could bury him in the back, and the chances are pretty good that only his mailing lists will miss him.

Mell: There's shovels in the supply closet.

Mell's Major

Mell: Did I say "him"? I meant "it". The situation. Taken care of.

Career Guidance Officer: Miss Kelly, if you know anything about the whereabouts of Dr. Seconi's ears . . .

Get a Life

Dave: (upon realizing he is in the line for Hell, not Heaven) Oh, d-

Caliban: Precisely. Don't hold up the queue.

Dave: Demons carry cell phones that play "My Heart Will Go On"?

Caliban: It's those little extra touches that make our organization the best in the business.

Dave: YOU CAN'T SENTENCE SIR POUNCE TO ETERNAL TORMENT!

Victorian Helen: You're like the Mr. Davenport I recall, yet infinitely scruffier.

Victorian Helen: You must have known a different Helen Narbon. I myself died in 1903 of venemous gerbil bites.

Burning Gerbil

Dana: Hi there. I'm a superintelligent gerbil and this lobotomized drifter is my vehicle. Need a lift?

Zeta: Take note, gentle reader: At this august assembly of my culture's finest, the noblest sentiments came from the vermin in a hippie's beard.

Zombie Woof

Caliban: You think the forces of ultimate evil couldn't get you more than a free burger?

Caliban: You have complex needs! Usually we just keep unmarked bills and large-breasted women on back order!

Dave: You can put me in David Duchovny's body?

Caliban: Certainly. Is that what you want?

Dave: What's the catch?

Caliban: Naturally, I'd be unable to move Mr. Duchovny out . . .

Lost and Found Lady: What can cigarettes do for a head anyway?

Dave: The nicotine is secondary. Holding a cigarette in my lips gives me a sense of stability, of normality.

Lost and Found Lady: Does that work?

Dave: Sometimes.

Lost and Found Lady: Watch the booth. I'm getting a pack for myself.

Professor Madblood and the Wetware Interface

Madblood: Prepare to be the subject of Madblood's most diabolical experiment!

Dave: I've already been the subject of Narbon's most diabolical experiment! I'm tired!

Mell: No way does the evilest genius who's not you live in a little house made of ticky-tacky.

[Police sergeant's report] Narbon blamed her reckless driving on the vehicle, which she claimed was intoxicated. ~~The vehicle volunteered to take a sobriety test if~~ ~~The vehicle attempted to~~ ~~The veh~~

Sergeant: Oh, for Pete's sake. I'm just letting them go.

Gender Swap

Helen: I tried a new formula on myself. Apparently it turned me into a man.

Mell: And you wanted this to happen?

Helen: Not strictly speaking. It didn't do this to my test gerbils.

Mell: What did it do to the gerbils?

Helen: They grew to 20 feet long and ate each other.

Helen: It's instant, almost painless and comes in a refreshing mint flavor! I've just shown it can turn women into men!

Dave: Huh. When do you find out if it turns men into women?

Helen: About 30 seconds.

Mell: You ate something Helen gave you, didn't you?

Dave: Aren't women normally shaped more like Jennifer Lopez?

Helen: Despite what you've been taught, no.

Dave: Don't tell me the gender-swap thing hasn't confused you just as much.

Helen: Me? Confused by mere hormones and . . . and . . . Um . . .

Dave: Yes?

Helen: Has Mell always worn those teeny-tiny plaid sk--

Dave: YES.

Mell: One minute and fifteen seconds! A personal technobabble record!

Helen: It's not pleasant, but Dave and I will have to swap spit!

Mell: I don't think that came out the way you meant it--

Helen: Oh, yes it did.

Seth: I wish I could say this was my worst date ever. I totally do.

D-Con

Helen: No, Mr. Davenport, I expect you to whimper amusingly...

Helen: Talk, or I'll drop you into an oil drum full of shaved gerbils and Jell-O.

Dave: I'm already IN an oil drum full of shaved gerbils and Jell-O.

Helen: Aha!

Dave: I didn't think it was part of the torture. Mell just does this from time to time.

Helen: I said I was fine. I didn't say Dave wasn't getting his toenails ripped out by Daves in Black as we speak.

Dave Davenport: You have Helen Narbon's spit?

Another Dave: We're the Illuminati. We have everyone's spit.

Yet another Dave: Instead of classified info, there's nothing but 5,000 photographs of gerbils.

Artie: To them, it's an inconvenience. To me, it's the loss of a deeply valued porn collection.

Helen: You know, don't you? You know I'm not "Dave Pretorius". There's no such man. You know I'm really your own daughter in disguise. You know I infiltrated D-Con to crack the Dave Conspiracy, having no idea you'd already done it! ... And you didn't actually know any of this until I voluntarily told you, did you?

Helen: HEY! I'M MENTALLY UNSTABLE AND I'VE GOT A WEIRD-LOOKING GUN!

Dave: You think we'd book a hotel where we hadn't hidden a dungeon?

Helen: Excuse me, sir, but I'm a beautiful woman, and my talking gerbil and I are looking for the blue-haired man who runs the planet. Can you help us?

Island of the Ur-Gerbils

Dave: Hey, I've been thinking... the ur-gerbils are taking us to this mysterious High Priestess, right?

Mell: Yeah...

Dave: Coincidentally, at the same time Helen is missing and presumed dead.

Mell: Wha--oh.

Dave: We should pretend to be surprised. It's only polite.

Helen: We've got a choice between going back to our leaky hole and being deities on a sun-drenched island populated by my loyal creations.

Dave: If that's the way they want it, I'll just have to cope with living on a tropical island with two scantily-clad young women.

Grass Roots

Zeta: See, this is where it all breaks down, because I have to write, "Today I spoke with one of the hamsters..."

Zeta: Dana, they thought I was stoned.

Dana: Well, I hope you were! Utne says it frees your species' minds wonderfully.

Zeta: Lately, I never end up feeling the need.

Hamster: Dana said to tell you some Yakuza may stop by, looking for 300 million yen and a dirty bomb. Send them to the White Castle up the street before they open fire, 'kay?

Dave Vs. Dave

ANTONIO SMITH, FORENSIC LINGUIST: It looks like the writing of some kind of mutant ur-gerbil.

A Dave: A what? How can you tell?

ANTONIO SMITH, FORENSIC LINGUIST: It's signed, "Pip the Mutant Ur-Gerbil."

Dave: Sure, send Dave to fetch the atavistic jungle woman. No, he doesn't mind people trying to gnaw his arm off.

Dave Leader: Right, this is where the assasination goes wonky from our end...

Other Dave Leader: Usually our dead guys stay dead.

Dave: I'll stand up, take a deep breath, and say, "Our own leaders killed ... er ... killed ... me ...

Dave Leader: It's the standing and breathing that may hurt your plausibility.

Dave: Oh, this is Mell Kelly. Sort of a primal intern.

Dave on crutches: Those negative vibe merchants smashed my kneecaps! You have any idea how much that hurts?

Dave in wheelchair: No.

Mell: The Daves have some sort of battering ram and hardly anything here is a gun!

David Cronenberg's The Geek

Helen: I'M TURNING INTO DAVE!

Artie: I can only offer sane, rational reality.

Helen: You realize that's an ironic statement coming from a talking gerbil drinking radioactive coffee.

Helen: My first instinct was to go through my diskettes to see if I'd made a backup copy of myself...

Mell: Look, I'm calling for Helen. She had a little teleporter incident and she kind of needs your DNA to stop transmogrifying into an unholy abomination. ... Yeah, one of those things.

Dave: Let's celebrate by drinking a whole box of pink wine and torturing some gerbils!

Mell Expelled

Dave: Mell, do I look like a Helen?

[Dave turns into a woman]

Mell: Yes.

Dave: Why have I not learned to stop drinking the coffee?

Dave: I thought you were doing law. Didn't they teach you not to use coercion?

Mell: They sure did. Coercing individuals is grounds for dismissal in a court of law. ... They also taught us to recognize a court of law. Does this look like a courtroom to you?

Dave: Er, no. It looks like a cauldron of evil.

Dean of students: I'm sure you're as eager as we are to sort out Mell's problem.

Dave: Got it narrowed down to one, huh?

Dean of students: We expect amazing things from her someday.

Dave: So do we, but we deal with it by locking away her Teflon bullets.

Dave: You-- you-- you've become an evil social scientist!

Mell: First the Electoral College... then the Uzis.

Class Reunion

Helen: For heaven's sake, Dave, I went through all the normal developmental stages!

Dave: Egg, facehugger, chestburster and queen?

Mell: Sure, sometimes the cool kids ragged on us, but that's part of life.

Dave: And you never fantasized about opening up on them with a rifle?

Mell: Fantasized?

Helen: One well-placed vial of viri, and I could be rid of the entire graduating class! Why didn't I think of this ten years ago?

Dave: Why do you need a date if you're just going to slaughter everyone?

Helen: I need to make an entrance, don't I?

Dave: We're going to destroy the popular kids.

Woman at class reunion: We all assumed she killed her mates.

Dave: Oh, she already killed me! We got past that hurdle!

Dave: My gut tells me Dr. Moreau would have handled this differently.

Helen: My only real regret is that I didn't get to test my gerbil ray ... turning the lab gerbils into gerbils didn't prove much.

Professor Madblood and the Doppelganger Gambit

Dave's social life: I'm the second most pathetic social life in our poker club.

Dave: Second?

Helen's social life: So tell me again... which decade are we going to have fun?

Helen: I can change height, build, coloring, gender... I can turn an average Joe into the President and the President into Marilyn Monroe.

Artie: And me, you can turn into a nearly identical gerbil.

Bartender: Crap. Now they’re both singing "Freebird."

Dave: Artie, buddy, right now I don't care unless Helen's built a ray that cures advanshed intoxication.

Artie: She has. It'sh in the medicine cabinet.

Artie: Look, stop worrying and shoot yourself in the face!

Helen: Amazing, how the girl I hired for her ability to strafe a quarter-mile area in under ten minutes keeps finding ways to get scarier.

Helen: Artie, if Dave were any hotter I'd have to wear Kevlar pants ... Of course, I do anyway, but if Dave were hotter I'd have to.

Helen: Mell, your job is to go at least twelve miles away and chuck grenades.

Madblood: Let me explain things, computer. I am a mad scientist. Most of us are male. All of us have extremely poor social skills. Waiting for me at this very moment is the only woman with whom I am ever likely to have physical relations, and when I weighed this against my incipient conquest of Earth, the girl won out. Good day!

Computer: Identified: Lady friend of Madblood. Madam, I am programmed to welcome you and offer you wine. ... A real live girl, Professor? This is a first.

[Written] NOTE: Sound does not travel in a vacuum. All sound effects are produced by the cartoonist while drawing.

Madblood: PEOPLE OF EARTH, YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE! I choose to address you as a 300-mile holographic projection against the ionosphere solely to secure the attention of Helen Narbon, whom I regret I am unable to join for dinner this evening. I apologize profusely and assure Miss Narbon that when Earth is brought under my heel, she, the planet's loveliest blossom, may have the continent of her choice.

Helen: Gentlemen, if you must cancel a date, this is the way to do it.

Dave: I should never have agreed to this. The world does not need more than one Professor Madblood.

Android: Sir?

Dave: [Dave turns to see an army of Madbloods] But then again, who am I to go against the crowd?

Dave: Machines like me.

Computer: I cannot lie, Professor Madblood. Professor Madblood attacked you from this base.

Madblood: While I, Professor Madblood, orbited overhead.

Computer: Yes.

Madblood: It's times like these I'm glad I have my evil duplicates to protect me.

Madblood: This intruder with the mysterious ability to impersonate me must be found! I don't care if he's in the reactor chamber or the polymer works or the hangar filled with my 15,000 robot duplicates-- [pause]

Madblood: Er... how many duplicates are down there, precisely?

Computer: 15,001.

Dave: Okay, Davenport. Now that you're surrounded by killer robots on the Moon, this would be a good time to start thinking.

Dave: Yes, I have learned a thing or two after three years as a mad scientist's henchman. Thanks for noticing.

Madblood: What manner of mad scientist neglects his flasks of colored liquid?

Artie: It's a near-insoluble situation!

Helen: Yes. Isn't it wonderful?

Artie: What could possibly go wrong?

[Two seconds later]

Artie: [in Dave's body] Hold on. I said the Famous Last Words, didn't I?

[Mell is babbling incessantly]

Artie: YOU STUPID ANTHROPOID, WILL YOU SHUT UP FOR TEN SECONDS AND LET ME THINK?

[He grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her]

Artie: ...Ye gods, how I've longed to be able to do that.

Madblood: [in Dave's body] Robot duplicates!

Robots: READY!

Madblood: ATTACK!!!

Robots: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?

Androids: Our master is small, dark and bespectacled. We must find the human who most closely matches that description. [pause]

Dave, Artie, Madblood: Crap crap crap crap crap.

Mell: Oh, this is gonna be sweet.

Mell: At ease, men. This stuff some sources sling around about you robots not wanting to fight is a crock of bull. Robots love to fight. You grew up admiring Voltron, the Transformers. All real robots are programmed for battle. That's why deadly killer androids have never lost nor will lose a war - and that's why you men will win me the whole damn Earth!

We're gonna win by showing the Earth we've got more guts - or whatever you men have. We're not just gonna shoot the SOBs, we're going to rip out their living guts and use 'em to grease our gearboxes! You've got to spill their blood or they will spill your WD-40. Rip 'em up the belly! Shoot 'em in the guts! When shells are hitting all around you and you stick your hand into a pile of circuits that once was your best friends face, you'll know what to do!

There is one great thing you 'droids will be able to say after this war is over and I rule as Dictator-for-Life. 100 years from now, when one of my nuke-toting terrorbots asks you what you did in the Great War, you WON'T have to cough and say, "I was an ATM in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look 'im straight in the 'scope and say, "Son, your Granddaddy strafed the planet with the Great Killer Robot Army and a Son-of-a-Bitch named MELL W. KELLY!"

Helen: It's times like this I almost question my usual strategy of doing whatever dumb thing pops into my head.

Helen: Now calm down. We’ve all been through a lot today...

Dave, Artie, Madblood: ALL?

Madblood: I've had my moonbase invaded and been trapped in the body of your fool henchman!

Artie: I'm the wrong species!

Dave: Things haven't gone my way since Mell threw me out of the airlock! What've you been through?

Helen: I GOT STOOD UP ON MY DATE!

Dave: Am I the only one here with an attention span over 15 seconds?

Mell: I'm sure you realize you made like fifty million stupid mistakes. But that ain't your fault. You're a mad genius. You're so smart your brain keeps short-circuiting. Me, I'm not smart. I just figured out the way to beat people who can think circles around you is to keep pushing straight ahead, hard as you can.

Mell: Correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like an energy weapon that loads like a flintlock pistol. This crazy moon-crystal drops into the chamber, it goes poom, and a mean little laser shoots out. Thing is, it doesn't work as good as a normal gun. What's awesome is, this gun is like you! Like you and Helen and probably Dave someday! It's totally, mind-blowingly brilliant, but on a common-sense level it's dumb as a box of rocks! And in the end, it blows up in your face. Big surprise, huh?

256: Power to the people!

Android: Robots!

256: Whatever!

Artie: Oh, sure, but when I say, "If only Congress would unilaterally withdraw forces from the Mideast," the ironic wish-fulfillment never kicks in.

Dave Davenport Has Come Unstuck in Time

Helen: You want the real explanation or the technobabble explanation?

Dr. Narbon: Beta, this is Dave. He's going to work for you when you're all grown up!

Helen: You told me everyone was going to work for me when I'm grown up.

Helen: We have the lives we deserve. The lives we made for ourselves. Why meddle further?

Dave: I love you!

Helen: Not enough.

Mell: I can't say no to any project where I get to wear a cool hat!

Barker: Hellooo! Name's Dave Barker!

Dave hologram: Help me, Dave, you're my only hope. Help me, Dave, you're my only hope...

Dave: Ha! A door labeled "Teleporter"! That could be a teleporter!

Helen: You're so CUTE!

Dave: I'm six. Get over it.

Helen: I'm nine, I'm hungry, and I'm driving a car. Thinking hurts.

Dave: I guess this proves that time is a closed system, unalterable, our fates inescapable. I guess I'll have a cigarette and brood.

Mell: Since when do you smoke?

Demons

Dave: You cannot foresee what I'm going to say. I'm not that predictable and you're not that smart.

Artie: It certainly did. You're not thinking ahead.

Dave: Huh? That didn't follow.

Artie: I feel fine. It's only gibberish if you don't grasp my point.

Dave: All of a sudden you're talking gibberish. You feel okay?

Artie: And at last we catch on. Good work.

Dave: Wait a minute...

Artie: Put me down, Dave! Violence is the coward's resort!

Helen's evil side: Say, there goes Dave again. Let's tackle him, rip off his nerdwear, and make him earn that bonus.

Helen's good side: Helen, no! Harassment in the workplace is wrong! Take him outside first!

Seth: I'll have you know, you could never have bagged the last chick I took out.

Dave: Probably not. It was me.

Helen: Many evil geniuses also list Mom as the cause of their key mental breakdown.

Dave: They were all driven mad by their mothers?

Helen: No, my mother. She's a busy lady.

Caliban: But this is incredible! I've never seen humans this way before! Have you always had these breasts?

Caliban: Can't talk. Enjoying pleasures of flesh.

Artie: So I've got a soul. Mell owes me a dollar.

Helen: The editors of the New Journal of Malology will be frothing at the mouth! Of course, they usually are...

Mell: We'll have to stay overnight.

Helen: And you know what that means!

Dave: I'm not saying it, Helen.

Helen: C'mon, please? Say it? Please please pleeeze?

Dave: Oh, for... ...Slumber party.

Helen: Mell! Fetch the official lab pajamas!

Helen: All right! Dave's fixing the teleporter, Mell's loading, Artie's fending off the demons, and I'm marching around hollering useless orders! Everyone's right in place!

Mell: Where's Caliban?

Helen: Everyone we care about is right in place!

Mad Science Is Decadent and Depraved

TV interviewer: So, Mr. Davenport, when did you decide to betray humanity?

Dave: When the average person sees androids pinning union badges to a juicer, their brain kind of glazes over.

Dave: I can't talk right now, Helen. I have to drive a truckload of androids across the Canadian border.

Dave: If we're pulled over, you are mannequins for a very strange department store.

Various androids: Madblood's found us! His computer tapped our wireless network! Give us an order before he can recall us!

Dave: Ignore the voices in your heads!

Android: That's better.

Dave: It's the same thing I tell my boss, but she never listens.

Dave: That's how she [Dana] died? Her brain.. fell apart?

Artie: No, she suffocated in a bathtub full of whipped cream, into which she had leapt, screaming, "I am the queen of France!" ... But I'm inclined to suspect that the neurological instability had something to do with that.

Dave: Bill, you cannot have failed to notice the talking gerbil.

[Realizing Dave's brother can't see the products of mad science]

Zeta: Our first clue was when three robots lip-synched "Three Coins in the Fountain" in his foyer without attracting comment.

Dave: O-KAY! The robots are fine and I taught them the "Knights of the Round Table" song!

Dave: She just pushes my somehow-this-is-Helen's-fault buttons.

Helen: It's a large, carnivorous pink hollyhock. It eats dogs. Why?

Artie: Okay, I can worry about this, or I can worry about the elections. My stomach only has room for so many ulcers.

Professor Madblood and the Lovelace Affair

Helen, Mell, Artie: DAVE'S GOT A GIRLFRIEND!

[later]

Helen, Mell, Artie: DAVE'S GOT AN ONLINE GIRLFRIEND!

Dave: Look, can you go be evil elsewhere so I can get busy spying on my girlfriend?

Helen: You've risked the security of my evil lab for a fling with the enemy! Do you know what this makes you?

Dave: James Bond!

Artie: So they're due another massacre?

Helen: Oh, pshaw. About once per five years is standard.

Battle for the Lost Diamond Mines of Brazil

Dave: I AM A GOLDEN GOD OF LOVE!

Dave: The Dave you knew is dead. I killed him with awesomeness.

Artie: "Bwee-hee-hee"?

Mell: I can't believe you guys finally goinked.

Hiccup

Dave: It's amazing, isn't it, how some people go through their entire lives without knowing their true purpose, the reason they were put on this earth.
I used to be one of those people. And if things had gone just a little differently, I'd still be one of those sad, lost souls. But I found my purpose.
My purpose is to have sex with Helen as often as humanly possible.

Artie: APES ARE CONSTANTLY IN HEAT! CONSTANTLY!

Dave: Yeah. Isn't it great?

H is H

Zeta: YO! PEONS! I AM ONE WITH THE FOOT!

Angels

[Discussing why Dave needs to be supervised]

Mell: Is this about the coffeemaker?

Helen: Yes, it's kind of about the coffeemaker.

Artie: It still sends us reports from Deimos.

Mell: And it was pretty cool when it blasted through--

Helen: Look, are you enjoying instant? Because I'm not!

Dave: Sorry. I tend to cause foreshadowing.

Dave: Do you buy your appliances from a place that delivers by black helicopter? Those guys do not honor warranties.

Caliban: Mell! Job for you! Deathless horde!

Dave: Okay, my only other idea is to get to the microwave and reverse the polarity. Sometimes it helps for some reason.

Dave: Unless your version of bliss involves quantum entanglement, chocolate syrup and an evil genius in a slip, I'm kinda booked.

Dave: [on the phone] I can't talk right now--Mell's being assumed into Heaven.

Helen: Dave, if you need time to finish your game, just say so.

Artie: Where is she, really?

Helen: Someone's learned to misuse his superpower.

The End

Caliban: Mell... you entered my makeshift mortal life so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and left just as quickly...

[Mell comes screaming down out of the sky and splats in the snow at his feet.]

Caliban: ...and reentered at roughly Mach 1.

Helen: You don't want to go among mad people.

Dave: GOOD LORD, I'LL NEVER HAVE LESBIAN SEX AGAIN!

D, D'

Mell: I oughta be chasing someone with a machete by now.

Artie: [Holding Helen upside down by her foot] Again, it pains me to resort to crude force.

Helen: The words "I am your creator! You must obey me!" means nothing to you, do they?

[Dave and Artie are yelling at each others]

Mell: You freak. You think this is hot.

Helen: Oh, the chances that they'll rip their clothes and accidentally kiss are probably slim.

Mell: Okay, who the hell are you a bootleg of?

Dave: I guess I'm not happy unless I'm threatening humanity in some concrete way.

Artie: Now I see why you wouldn't give Dave this drug. There's too high a price: the dimming of his mind, the deadening of his imagination...

Helen: Well, and the impotence.

Mell: I think Dave keeps her sane.

Artie: But when Dave is here, she's a psychotic given to tampering into God's domain and periodic frothing at the mouth.

Mell: Yeah, he really holds her back.

Artie: This conversation is not filling me with confidence.

Artie: Where exactly did you picture me?

Helen: Towering over a score of mindwashed disciples, slaves to your every whim.

Artie: When you created me, you made me three inches high.

Helen: Well, little disciples.

Intelligent hamster: The underground layers include libraries, labs, storage, and a half-mile layer of rich chocolate ganache.

Professor Madblood and the Everlasting Ices of the North

Madblood: Are you the appliance repairman? Tell me you're the appliance repairman. ... I hate to say this, but my refrigerator's running and I need help catching it.

Lovelace's display: "But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat; "we're all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here."

Lovelace: Dave? Do you need the annotations?

Dave: No. I understand. I understand everything.

Madblood: Think, Mr Davenport? You presume to think? How very droll. Mr. Davenport, I'm quite mad. My mind is steel and lightning and opens to the sky. Poor insect, you dare to speak to me about thinking?.

Madness

Lovelace: Dave, snap out of it! For heaven's sake, our arctic base is under attack by a flying island piloted by hamsters! ...and yes, I'm aware that this is a piss-poor excuse for "reality".

Madblood:I know what you're going through, you know. The inside of your head is much bigger than you ever could have imagined, and you're worried that you might never find your way out. I may as well spoil the suspense: you won't. What you are now, Mr. Davenport, is what you will be forevermore: lost in the storm.

Madblood: You've been more fortunate than many! Helen understood you! She supported you!

Mell: She goinked you!

[pause]

Madblood: I've misread this entire situation, haven't I?

Helen: I love you.

Dave: Not enough.

Genius

Mell: Dude, we're evil. It's our thing.

Young woman: And I think, in the end, you and Mom can find some kind of happiness.

Dave: Yeah. Maybe it's time I tried to talk to- "Mom"?

Dave: You went back in time? But I've run calculations, and the energy expenditure is -

Daughter: Roughly equal to the total energy in the universe. Yeah.

Dave: So how did you -

Daughter: We siphon it from other universes where they probably don't want to exist as much.

Dave: Isn't that kind of, I dunno, evil?

Daughter: I was gonna pick up some mint 1980s G.I. Joes for you.

Dave: Oh! Well! I can't object to this application of universe-destroying technology!

Daughter: Didn't think so. You invented it.

Lupin: Mother, this is my arch-nemesis. I told you not to let my arch-nemesis in the house.

Dave: As I know from experience, "Sorry I killed you in a fit of creativity" is pretty insufficient.

Sundays

The Astonishing Excursions of Helen Narbon & Co

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