Comic #4331: a-proposal-3
Description
Here’s the detailed transcription of the comic text:
Panel 1: The most common factor that prevents human happiness during dates is the intrusion of awkward silences.
Panel 2: 98% of awkward silence is caused by the fact that we are all boring hairless apes with nothing interesting to relate.
Panel 3: How else do you explain how two people who’ve never met can’t find anything to say during a date, despite decades of experiences?
Panel 4: We might be able to fix this by just accepting the peace of silence amidst a world of gab, or we could use physics.
Panel 5: I am attempting to gather funding for a new device. The relativistic de-awkwardizer.
Panel 6: Consider Alice and Bob. Bob is about to finish a boring anecdote about a sinus infection, and then the conversation will have no way to move forward. Bob: "I think I'm more vulnerable to nasal infection than average, however…"
Panel 7: Before he finishes speaking, Bob is shunted into an "acceleration tube." The level of noise was apparently typical of that sort…
Panel 8: In the tube, Bob approaches light speed, experiencing far less time than Alice.
Panel 9: Bob is kept at high speed until Alice comes up with the next topic of conversation. Alice: "I enjoy various kinds of music."
Panel 10: Bob is decelerated and returned to the conversation where, from his perspective, he has just finished his awful, meandering story at a normal pace. Bob: "…and if you want to talk, we can."
Panel 11: The only potential downside, if you can call it that, is that boring people will probably be dead or quite old before the conversation ends. Skeleton: "It turned out to be a certainty…"
Panel 12: Given that the relativistic de-awkwardizer would most directly benefit the people most knowledgeable about physics, we expect completion within one year of funding, with the lone snag being that it’d require most energy in the universe.
Panel 13: This is not a demonstration! I’m just staying here until you leave!
Panel 14: [Three spectators looking concerned.]
This transcription provides detailed text from the comic, capturing the dialogue and narrative without assuming context or inferring further meaning.