Nuts And Bolts
the mystery quadrant...
Comments (111)
Well, no pink hair, so we know the spy isn't Evan.
Does Clare not like trees? I feel like I missed something.
Marten is being sarcastic :)
I hear Jan Micheal Vincent has a number of ideas on quadrants.
Sex quadrant
the first rule about the 4th quadrant is we don't talk about the 4th quadrant, wait , there's a 4th quadrant? *points at the rules*
same peeker in two frames. Gonna be important later. Chekov's voyeur
Whoever they are they must be pretty agile to get from the rooftop in panel 1 to the street in panel 6. Intriguing! (actually it's just Emmett)
The fourth quadrant's name is Bruno, and as you know, we don't talk about Bruno.
Possible meanings: https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/ABS
Now we know what happened to the DashCon ball pit.
RIP
I first thought the short lab-coat wearing sapient looking at their phone had instead falling on their knees in pray/adulation as Moray passed by them.
Clare and Marten being wide-eyed tourists. He’s eyeing the abs boy @ Nuts n Bolts, She’s goggling the person or ai(?) With the long hair and and bag. Surprised he didn't get smacked. Love the background detail Jeph puts in
I love that 'ABS' written on one's torso is a throwback joke and apparently a common fetish amongst the AI population. So I wonder now if there is another venue in the commercial quadrant for bread enthusiasts? Nightly shows of sandwich making? Breaking bread burlesque? Speed dating with thrown toast?
Maybe the fourth quadrant is like Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth?
Oxford Dictionary: crèche /kreɪʃ,krɛʃ/ noun noun: crèche; plural noun: crèches 1. BRITISH a nursery where babies and young children are cared for during the working day. 2. NORTH AMERICAN a representation of the nativity scene. I wonder which interpretation Jeph means. In my head canon is a Nativity Scene from the ocean (ie an Aquarium) because of all the water Cube Town displaces.
As an "AI creche" I would assume the first definition, a nursery or day care for robot babies* or newly created or emergent AIs. * Have Jeremy and Seven started on their million robot babies yet?
There's a street near me called "Tetragona Quadrant". It's the most Star Trek name I've ever heard. I want to move there.
Perhaps the fourth quadrant is where the trees are? (Later, the Lorax shows up and runs for city council on a platform of making Q4 a conservation easement with a few nature trails and a modest environmental education centre at the primary trailhead. They eventually win a seat, mostly due to mobilization of the Ent-AI vote.)
Did someone say - Ball Pit? https://youtu.be/jJSP-fGZ1Q4
The Fourth Quadrant is Sanctuary, where you can achieve Renewal after Carousel.
How many people here do you think are old enough to actually get a Logan’s Run reference?
Perhaps the real fourth quadrant was the friends we made along the way.
Tsst!
clearly the fourth quadrant should be the Quadrant Prototyping Quadrant, where they make test versions of all the different kinds of quadrants that could eventually replace it
Is one of those test versions a mini QPQ? That kind of recursion would be on-brand for Cubetown.
The Ball-Bearing Pit Quadrant will be a goldmine of slapstick comedy!
Never a good sign when the librarian hisses at you.
I get the feeling they're gonna hire Claire. But also hire Marten to a slightly better position.
perhaps better in a stress sense, but hopefully not in a paygrade sense…
I love the text jokes at the bottom of each pic.
Wait what's the third quadrant
should panel 3 be the "residential quadrant" instead of the "residential apartment"?
That or the bulk of the population lives in one building, kind of like Whittier, Alaska.
We call it the Delta quadrant because it's always changing.
I love this!
The fourth quadrant is the Perpetuity Wing.
Is that guy blatantly showing off his ABS on the sidewalk a long callback? Don't let Roko see him. https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3700
As long as it's his abs, and not his buns, she'll be fine.
Guess that last panel answers the question of if someone was watching them from the roof in panel one.
"and 'The Ball-Quadrant' is misleading on enough levels to be disqualifying as a name."
Why was Claire hissing at Martin?
I thought maybe it was kind of like when you're buying a house and you don't want to seem too eager.
paint ball battle field
The founders of cubetown were big on sim city
Did they include a control for spawning Godzilla?
Boorin Bro(s?) Fine Haberdashery
Wonder why Claire was trying to hush him there.
I'm guessing he was being sarcastic about the trees
I approve of the ballpit quadrant.
“Why are they called ‘apartments’ if they’re all stuck together?”
holy cow Marie you are on FIRE today
Municipal zoning drama, realistically portrayed.
Is the third panel supposed to read "residential quadrant" instead of "residential apartment"?
The fourth quadrant is where they make all the red flags
Or the red flags are yeeted into the black hole that governs the quadrant.
As a Red Vox fan might say, "Vomit in the ball pit"
man this convo is full of red flags but on the other hand, think of the hijinks
Hear me out: how about a water slide quadrant?
it'd prob scan better if you said residential quadrant rather than residential apartment
lol, Marten just doesn't quit.
employee of the month gets an extra hour in the ballpit quadrant
employee of the month gets the hour right after the weekly deep-cleaning of the ball pit.
ABS
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene
ANY TIME that a ballpit is mentioned, my mind immediately jumps to: https://xkcd.com/150/ And my brain apologizes for NOTHING. :-P
It doesn't need to; it's totally true. We just forget it, sometimes.
Wait it's a cube shouldn't there be 8?
Octants?
Wonder who that is peaking in the top of panel 1?
“Some people”, I guess. 🤷🏼♀️
Ballpit? Yeah, nobody's getting me with THAT one again. Last time I was in one everyone else was wearing pants! And then the cops got there and it became a little more fun, then a lot less fun real quick. Now the holding cell at County? THAT was a ballpit...
Marten already angling for the new job. No wait
Red light district.
I think you missed the sign “Nuts and Bolts Live AI Revue”… I mean, that’s just part of the commercial district, ya?
Obviously the last quadrent is going to be the new library.
The fourth quadrant is their version of the Bermuda triangle?
Perhaps it’s been a Bermuda quadrangle all along?
I support Marten's idea!!
I'm with marten here. Ai designed vallpits are probably super sweet, with anti-microbial coatings on the balls.
As a rule, I never ask about anti-microbial coatings on the first date.
Telling a librarian "we don't talk about X" will only motivate them to want to find out about X and put up displays about it in the library lobby.
I definitely don’t talk about my X.
"That's where the [intolerant_group_we_want_to_mock] are. They think they're the only ones here."
I'm picturing Claire starting an *actual* library in the 4th quadrant. With books and everything. Because I don't recall seeing one of those here yet.
*as* the fourth quadrant!
BØØRIN
I thought this was a criticism of the page until I blew it up enough to see the sign for the haberdashery.
"Ballpit Caucus" is Pintsize's new synthpunk grungecore ska-house band
ABS
Antilock Brake System
Dog park
Hey! We don't talk about that! Don't look at the fourth quadrant and you'll be fine! Move along, nothing to see here. Literally nothing.
MORAY: "We don't talk about the fourth quadrant." CLAIRE: "Wh-why?" MORAY: "It was my wedding day..." MARTEN: "It was your wedding day?" MORAY: "We were getting ready and there wasn't a cloud in the sky..."
We don't talk about quatro, no, no, no
The fourth quadrant is where Franz Hopper is
Does it have Borgs in it?
Unfortunately, they have cybernetic hybrid porgs.
"I advocated for the Sphere Hole in Cube Town. It's very popular."
They should put a bike shed in the fourth quadrant
And spend the next decade arguing over what color to paint it?
Quadrants you say...
<3< <3 <> o8< ?
Is that a Star Trek joke about the mysterious fourth quadrant?
If the Borg are there, we've got bigger problems than job fit
It's all triangles.
Well now with a ballpit mention all I can think of is TumblrCon…
Or Dashcon, as it ended up being called.
"Residential quadrant" rather than "residential apartment", no?
I'm confusable enough to stumble over the idea of a shop for fancy hats v. a fancy shop for ordinary hats.