As Strong Bad showed us, ultron_x is committing acts of MS Paint art inspired by the interests of the Sages of Chaos.

( Here's what he did to me. )

My stars and garters, I have been neglecting these questions, haven't I?

Describe the best 24 hours you ever had

Probably the time I persuaded dear Jeremiah to come with me to Ibiza. For one glorious day, the most aberrated of novas were the majority, unashamed of their tentacles and colored skin. For 1436.0667 minutes, it seemed the One Race was fulfilling its evolutionary destiny. For 86164 seconds (the actual length of a sidereal day), it looked to me like I was doing the right thing.

Who would you like to see get their final comeuppance? Who is it and just what would you do with them?

The person (and I use the word loosely) whom I would most like to see get her final comeuppance already got it, though I didn't get to see it. From what I heard, however, it was everything I could wish.

(I say "already got" although this happened in the 2040s of my own timeline. Remember that I traveled to this point on this timeline — this when, as one of my newest friends would put it — from what I estimate to have been 2122.)

Her real name doesn't matter. She was born in 1939, got her bachelor's degree at 15, and two doctorates (in political science and psychology) at 21. (Her doctoral dissertation was on "The Complex Interplay of Government, Media Representation of Government and the Observing Human Mind".) The Æon Society put her through college, so they were probably disappointed when, instead of coming directly to work for them as they requested, she spent five years with the NSA and roughly three decades drifting through the corporate world. (Unless, of course, she was networking for Æon in secret.)

Be that as it may, in 1998, Æon started up Project Utopia, to make novas the indentured servants of the baselines, building a "better world" (as defined by Æon) whether they wanted to or not. Within days of Utopia's debut, she signed on with its Internal Affairs division. She proposed Utopia's dirty-tricks department, Project Proteus, and was placed at its head under the only name we need to use for her — Director Thetis.

( Her crimes and her punishment. )

What do you have to be thankful for?

Milliways. I believe it was the bar at the end of the universe that drew me off my intended course, brought me to a world without novas, a world where I could learn to be human again. Certainly, I've made a great many friends at Milliways that I doubt I could have met anywhere else — Raphael, Angelo, Moiraine Sedai, the Flash, Ms. White, Strong Bad... most of them unusual in one way or another. It's a place where I can "be myself", whoever that is anymore. A place to retreat from the pressures of pretending to be just a human, and a place with people who've promised to do something about it if I become anything less.

What makes you feel vulnerable and what makes you feel invulnerable, and why?

My powers make me feel invulnerable to most corporeal harm. I don't know if I can objectively say that feeling is entirely justified, but it's certainly justifiable to say the least. Barring a brawl with a pissed-off god (not impossible, if I have a few too many down at my local), I can survive most things.

My greatest vulnerability is probably my emotions. For so long, I tried to distance myself from them, tried to turn them off. Oh, I had passion, but that's not nearly the same thing. Now, living among baselines, living as a baseline for the first time in almost two centuries... they're back. And they scare me. I'm frightened of what I could do if I let myself go.

And in the face of an election which proves that the American people want to make me illegal for being gay, and probably would for being a nova as well, it would be so easy to let myself go.

What would you place in a personal ad if you were making one?

In my new timeline, I'd have to place it discreetly, or somewhere a safe distance from my current residence. "GWM, 34 but looking 24, seeks GM for companionship, discussions of the paranormal. Open mind a plus."

If I somehow wound up back in my own universe, it'd be more open about certain matters: "GMN, 104 but looking 24 and human, seeks same for companionship, apolitical discussion. No Upies, please."

Happy birthday, bastard_john!

Who has had the most influence on your life?

Almost beyond question, Maxwell Anderson Mercer. I idolized him for years before I realized how I really felt about him. It was because I couldn't tell him how I felt that I spent so much time keeping all my other dreams at arm's length. (Yes, that's right; Divis Mal has arms.) If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have gone to London to see Hammersmith's demonstration, and Dr. Primoris (let alone Divis Mal) would never have existed, and I probably wouldn't be anyone you'd bother asking these questions of.

Do you consider yourself to be adventurous?

Not really, though I don't refuse an adventure when it offers the opportunity for me to learn something. I've always considered myself more of a scholar than a hero. I once told the movement that I don't enjoy the role of teacher, and that was true; I'd much rather learn than teach.

Mind you, I suppose any exploration of any real depth involves adventure, but the adventure isn't the point of the exploration, at least not to me.

Do you confront your problems head on, or ignore them until you have to do something? Do you procrastinate?

As a number of commentators have observed, that depends on the size of the problem. The bigger it is, the harder it becomes to face it.

Like telling another man you love him, always have loved him and always will, when you're fairly sure he doesn't and can't return that love, in an age when such love dared not speak its name anyway.

But, for someone as powerful as I am on the quantum level, most purely physical problems aren't very big. It's the mental problems that're the piss-cutters.

How do you handle disappointment?

As with handling problems, that depends on the nature and size of the disappointment. Let me give you an example.

( My gods feed me blood and mangoes; your gods feed you Kool-Aid and white bread. )

What is the most important value you can pass onto [sic] your child?

In the conventional sense, I'm probably the wrong person to answer this, since I'm unlikely ever to become a father. (That I'm aware of, at least — I noticed Sophia Rousseau's resemblance to me. However, since I wasn't there to raise her, I doubt it matters for these purposes.)

But in a larger sense, all novas were my children. Every eximorph who erupted between March 23, 1998, and September 7, 2061, erupted because of my actions, after all.

For five years, I left them to their own devices, keeping an eye on those who seemed to be figuring it out. When Jeremiah told me the time was right, I appeared to them. I gave them a name. I gave them a purpose.

And I taught them the one value nova and baseline alike need most: knowledge of self. Figure out who you are, and who you want to be. If you aren't who you want to be, do your damnedest to become him or her.

(Privately.) I didn't consciously realize it until I came to this universe, but for much of my lifetime, my relationship to Æon was central to who I was — first as Dr. Primoris, devil's advocate in residence, then as Æon's nemesis. That, as much as anything, is the center of the problem — who am I without Æon in my life?

In the 2004 Michael remembers, the Internet had largely given way to the OpNet. But you obviously can't have the OpNet without synthetic-eufiber opticables, and you can't have synthetic eufiber until scientists have a sample of the real thing to study, and they can't have such a sample if neither Anibál Buendia nor any nova like him ever erupts. QED.

But even without the OpNet, this world is becoming more wired. Broadband connections are becoming more and more affordable to the mythical "average man", and something they call "WiFi" has taken the place of wireless OpConnections. It's not as fast as the OpNet, but it's fast enough to make Michael think the OpNet was only an advancement, not an innovation.

Do you believe in an afterlife?

Scientifically speaking, there is no proof that consciousness survives after death. But from a purely thermodynamic standpoint, all that electrical (and telluric) energy has to go somewhere. If it doesn't go into some other plane of existence, it must stay in this universe and seek out a new nervous system to occupy.