Endtown by Aaron Neathery for March 28, 2016

Nothing like getting a little help from your friends.

Is that a husband coming home? Another monster soon to be on the loose…

We can sure see the scene being set now for Holly’s trauma.

Well, we’re starting this week off with a bang!What do you mean? This is a product demo and we’re not sticking around?

Turning into a snake can be quite DISARMING for the unsuspecting.

How horrific for Holly.

So she could "feel’ her arms, kind of like an amputated limb. It would have been nice if Holly had at least tried to help, but I don’t think the BuddiBombs can be stopped once they’re primed.

There really isn’t much Holly COULD do. Nothing’s really known about mutants so far, and all she’s seen directly up to this point was the eyes and fangs monster that tried to kill Lyn (ignoring the possible mutation that caused the plane crash that injured her.) It’s not likely that she’d expect her “primary health provider” to be able to reverse engineer a talking snake back into a human. And on top of this, the news, Apex and government authorities have been framing the mutations as being the work of outside terrorists.It’d be like watching the police bang down the door of a close neighbor who turned out to be a closet member of the Communist Party during the Red Scare. Automatic guilt through association. You want to be as far away from the “source of contagion” as you possibly could be.

The real question now is, “how fast are the mutations going to start happening?” Is this the cusp of the mutation wave, or is Ethel an outlier and Holly has to wait a few more weeks before The End triggers?

One more thing, regarding contagion: If mutation is contagious, shouldn’t Lyn have been infected when he came into close physical contact with the cop-monster? And then by extension, Holly as well?

Oh this made me cry! Holly went to help a friend and still had those dang Buddibombs in her purse.

I would have freaked out too! She didn’t really know that much about “people changing”. She saw a monster, but had no idea she would find Ethel had become a huge snake. Ethel did look menacing, for sure.Fear of snakes is instinctual I believe. Even Chimps and monkeys have a built in fear of snakes.

There is no way Holly could have done anything about the Buddibombs, they ripped out of her purse.

But to see them get on her friend, knowing they were menacing and who knows what, I would have been afraid to go and start pulling them off too.

This would tear me up inside every time I thought about it. No wonder she feels suicidal. This alone is enough.

When Ethel said “I can’t move my arms” shows she was still unclear about what had happened to her. She probably was Not accepting that the was a snake. That was the saddest part.

What would you guys do? Run out? Try to pull them off? A least talk to Ethel?I really am not sure, what I would have done, if this happened to me.Go visit a friend and find she was a huge snake? I think I would have run out the door 1st thing. or maybe would have talked to Ethel once she was obvious that she was still really Ethel. Of course Holly fell and sitting helpless, as it were.

If they hadn’t given her the Buddibombs, Ethel would still be OK, and we all had bad vibes about them giving them to her. Either they were working for Apex, or More likely Just have all bought into “If it’s Apex, It Has to be Good! Satisfaction guaranteed!”

I think Holly purposely brought the buddibombs. She was worried by Ethel’s urgency… But didn’t know that SHE would be the “threat”.

I’d probably end up doing the same thing as Holly. I’m not heroic like Veteran and would probably freak out at the site of a large talking snake in my friend’s house. Once the buddibombs got loose and I understood what was happening, I’d run.

Looking at the decor, seems that Holly is native to Arizona, or perhaps Sonora, Mexico.

Of course, part of the namesake of these defence items is the word “bomb.”

I guess you could say Ethel has been disarmed. Can’t really say the same for the Buddibombs.

Ethel still can’t put a finger on her problem.But help is on the way….hubby is home……..I wonder what the blast radius is..??

Ethel is looking at the b-bombs on her body, but apparently doesn’t realize what she is. Even though Holly probably hasn’t deployed her own bombs, advertisimg (like the buddibomb jingle) would probably tell how they work—like how long it takes between fastening onto a “bad” and exploding. It should be quick enough to prevent a “bad” from removing them. Maybe Holly knows there’s no time to help Ethel before they explode.

If that is Ethel’s husband, and he’s heard Ethel shout, he might not recognize Ethel’s voice. Holly didn’t. If he doesn’t walk in on the blasts and get killed with Ethel, he could either find remains of something not human, or a big mess that he will assume is Ethel and blame Holly for Ethel’s death. Holly has had a Really Bad Time…and the big apocolypse hasn’t even happened yet.

If I remember correctly, the mutant plague is some kind of virus. The topsiders wear their decom suits so they don’t have to breathe the air…

“I can’t move my arms”… Ethel was either mentally fuzzy or mentally broken in the wake of the transformation. Either way, it looks like she’s about to be vivisected by those things.

Aaron is a master of building suspense and tension. You know what’s going to happen, but he takes you up to that moment in a slow, deliberate manner.

So thats Ethels husband coming home?In any case it certainly is a bit creepy to think about that situation. But starting to wonder just how big the explosion is going to be – you got 12 of those things on her.

Morning sickness?

I still believe that Holly kept the B-bombs with her because her husband would have gotten rid of them the first chance he got his hands on them.if I was in Holly’s position… May God forgive me, but I would have done the same thing. I would need to be a safe distance away from the situation to think about how to deal with it.

As mentioned last week, shaped charges only exert a portion of their energy into the high velocity cutting or piercing jet that made them famous. But with clever fusing, the non-jet part of the blast can be diffused enough to to be a limited risk to non-target stuff. That Holly fled before the buddybombs went off means she might not have gotten her infection from Ethel- And Arron will continue to torture us.

The houses have antennas. I guess it’s more practical to distribute media wirelessly instead of installing cable throughout the megastructure.

Holly has already survived a close encounter with a vicious toothed mutant. Then, some time later, within days (or in one day?) She has been clipped out of the air by a crashing airliner, survived an aircar crash, regained consciousness (possibly still with conscussion) found her friend turned into a snake (which is worse if all snakes terrify her)and has seen that friend covered by ambulatory explosive devices that talk. She’s already been pushed hard enough to lose sense.

Coyoty- maybe, but only to a point. My WAG is that the things have a rather limited individual yield, and to be effective on a target yet present limited risk to the protected owner, a well-fused shaped charge would be the way to go. To make the device much more flexible in effect would also mean a larger charge and more limited safety envelope. The minimal yeild version could include a non-shaped charge option, but the unfocused blast would be only marginally effective. The grabby function would insure that a minimal shaped charge would be be properly aimed for effect.

Whelp, now we know why Holly’s such an absolute mess. Execution of a former friend by buddy bomb, followed by karmic revenge in becoming prey for the very thing you fled. Surviving that would be horrible, and your grip on wanting to stay alive might be rather manic.

Tell me when the bad part’s over (hiding eyes).

I expected them to start ripping great bloody bits of her out with blood flowing out of from where they spit out the bloody pieces times 12. It would become quite messy and lethal Fast!so maybe they don’t blow up, but bore into the victim, biting at blur speed.

My guess is that the buddibombs aren’t bombs at all. I think maybe they clamp onto the victim then electrocute – like a taser. That way, innocent bystanders won’t be blasted, and if the victim/mutant is still intact Apex will have a nice corpse to experiment on. Gross, I know.

And yes, bystanders better not be holding onto the victim when they get electrocuted. But no-one’s going to hold onto a weird, potentially infected mutant creature that suddenly appears, are they?

And I don’t blame Holly for scarpering – her first instinct is probably to protect her baby, but I’m sure she is torn about abandoning a friend.

I’m wondering if there’s any connection between the fact that many snakes eat rodents and the fact that Holly became an anthropomorphic mouse?Also, I wonder why this memory is playing and who’s actually watching it?It looks like the dittos are “playing back” Holly’s memory, but why? And where is present-day Holly while all these memories are playing? Is she merged with ditto-Holly atm? and somehow forced to act out her memories?

“I can’t move my arms.” What arms?

Wabbit, I think Gilded Tongue is referring yo the cacti decorations br the front door.

Poor Ethel. Her mental ‘body map’ is still set to Human, so she’s trying to move arms she no longer has. She doesn’t know she’s now a snake, so the buddibombs weren’t frightening, at first. Now she’s starting to get alarmed that they’re climbing all over her because they’re only supposed to go after ‘threats.’ Only Apex classes all mutations, not just the monstrous ones, as threats. Running is Holly’s only option since I doubt those bomb would let go. That must be Ethel’s husband just arriving home, since he’s walking toward the front door. He’s in for an awful surprise.

Whether human, koala, cat, mouse, lizard or bird, they all have the same basic body plan: 2 lower limbs, 2 upper limbs, one head with dual eyes/ears, a nose and mouth. Transforming from human to one of those anthros wouldn’t be that far outside of the human’s mental body map. Walking, running and using their hands would still be do-able since the number of body parts was the same. (The koala’s double thumb might be a little confusing at first, though.) Not too surprising they can get up and go right after transforming. That would be a great survival trait, too, since some of the transformees were rather monstrous and cannibalistic right off. I wonder if what people transformed into reflected their basic personality? That might explain the monsters and shapeless transformed. Insane people would have distorted self-images and infants would have no self-image, per se, just hunger and needs. (That would explain the flashback a long time ago when the ‘father/husband’ came home and found his ‘child’ had transformed and eaten his wife.)

Bad Buddy Boom.

I think it’s likely that Mallard did change his name so he wouldn’t be identified. I think he would be infamous if anyone knew his real name. He knows a disturbing amount about the End and the technology around it.