Annotated 19-20
The difference between Phil versus me and HR versus Carol is that no matter how mad Phil–er, either of us got or how trapped either of us felt, ours was a relationship of equals. Either of us could have walked away from the project–not painlessly, but not with career-ending consequences.
HR has kind of liked to pretend that he and Carol are equal behind closed doors, and Carol’s certainly enjoyed that pretense and the perks it’s conferred on her. But this scene exposes the sham. Carol works for him, she has entered into criminal operations for him, and in their clandestine, unsupervised operation, he can treat her however well or poorly he wants to without repercussions. She is basically running one of the most successful media companies on Earth in his stead, yet she has no power at all over him, which means she arguably has no power at all, period. They will go back to pretending after this, but we know the truth.
I can thankfully say that neither Phil nor I ever fell into HR’s role here. But both of us would come to know people who had fallen into Carol’s.
I think that, before this chapter, it was possible to argue that HR was doing this from a position of “Oh, crap. I need to save these people!” Like, ok, sure, there was other stuff in there too, but it seemed like he was chiefly concerned with trying to save them. Possibly just because of potential legal issues, but it seemed like it was at least partially the moral ones.
Here is also where his pretending about that falls away and, like we saw with Taro much, much later, what he really wants is power and control over everything.
I agree. HR’s morality of delving into strange magiks up to this point seemed to be that he was trying to get the Tube-ers back to our world. But here is what felt like the turning point (for me) that it became more about HR’s power being thwarted.
hehe get it, because a tuber is a vegetable.
The interesting thing about HR for me is that I think he did start out with genuinely good intentions. I read him as really wanting to get the Five out of the tubes and back to their reality, but eventually being corrupted by his own frustrations and lust for power. Then again, one could argue that it was all about the power from the beginning, with the rest just a thin layer of rationalization. Either way, it makes him more complex than most wannabe-gods you see in media.
“she has entered into criminal operations for him”
What criminal operations? Sure, exposure at this point would be very bad for both HR and Carol personally, as well as the company they have created together. However, I don’t see what specific criminal charged anyone could hope to bring against them. The five people entered the tubes voluntarily, and signed paperwork before doing so (at least NDAs, presumably also waivers or release forms of some kind) which means kidnapping or abduction aren’t applicable; although HR has had some technical difficulties, he can’t really be accused of negligence in trying to get them out; and testing user interfaces for computer games isn’t regulated (even if the hardware is a bit unconventional) so it’s not like HR needed to file a research plan or anything.
While I am not a lawyer, I would not want to be one who had just been informed “your next job is to argue in court that the people who have been in tubes for months with their location being kept secret from everyone except the C.E.O of Hurricane and his personal assistant, have not legally been kidnapped, because they signed a waiver.”
There are limits to what anyone can legally consent to, and H.R., if he didn’t blow right past that boundary knowingly the second they stepped into the tubes, has certainly left it far behind by now.
I would agree.
There are limits to informed consent and waivers. You could sign a waiver authorizing someone to murder you, if they go with it they will still be charged and found guilty of murder. Well, the charge may be lessened to manslaughter, or even failure to provide assistance to someone in harm’s way, or in the more extreme cases like a physician helping a patient to die at their demand, no jail time will be given, but still.
In addition, if it could be shown that what the Five are experiencing goes beyond what they signed for… And that is obviously the case, they didn’t sign for that long time or that deep an immersion.
There is also the medical angle. When an employee breaks a leg at work, the employer is supposed to call in an ambulance. That HR is doing is trying to splint the leg himself, and he is not a physician. He may be a warlock cum gearhead genius, but he is not legally qualified to take care of the physical and mental well-being of human beings.
At this point in the story, are the one’s inside the tubes already dead?
Their Sepia bodies are (probably*) dead. Their Arkherran selves are still perfectly healthy and shitting up HR’s plan without even realizing it.
* I don’t think it was ever actually established when they died, was it?
I would probably think that the tube bodies became non functional after the TPK, and Best’s fate at the temple. That’s my theory.
In the previous comic, Carol states that “The Five continue to live”, although from context it’s primarily about their in-game avatars. However, one wonders if Carol wouldn’t try to deter HR from entering a tube if it was clear to her at this moment that The Five were not alive anymore.
The shit HR pulls on Carol in panel 4 is called “forced teaming”. HR is entirely responsible for the fine mess that he’s gotten himself into. Carol should walk away from it and HR gaslights her into co-operation.
I’m pretty sure it was never established for sure, but there’s an interesting implication that I didn’t notice the first time around, and this time I have.
Near the end of the comic, Carol tries to defend herself from Shana and Whatsizname (Penk’s out-of-game avatar) by showing the five’s brainwave patterns to prove they were still fine. Not-Penk replied that the papers weren’t showing brainwave patterns. Well, not that long ago in this re-broadcast, HR showed Carol brainwave patterns that allegedly came from the five, possibly the same ones Carol tried to use later. This is a pretty strong implication that HR was lying from the start and that they were dead for most or maybe even all of the story.