Army @ Love: the Art of War #5 - Vertigo

I think this book is fantastic. Rich Veitch is exploring every option he can with this book, and he pushes every stereotype to the it's limits. Since the first incarnation of this book, we've heard about temporal imaging. Supposedly it's a way for the future to send a message back from the future. Apparently the Army was looking in to it hoping that it'll give them an advantage if they can warn their troops about stuff ahead of time. Stelaphane got a message that he thinks is from the future, last issue. However, the reality of it is even more bizarre than we expected. Here's how the message explains things to them, "As you know, the military operates a quantum encryption system as part of Big Finger. It's an unbreakable code that protects our classified information and provides a keen technological edge over our competitors. Quantum physics defines our actual universe as existing in a near infinite sea of potential universes. The system stores information by placing a complete copy of the actual universe inside these pocket dimensions. Each copy runs along merrily, with all it's pseudo-denizens believing that theirs is the actual universe. But of course quantum physics specifies only one reality. The rest are just a mix of possibilities and stored data. If you are viewing this, it means that your reality is not real at all. It's just one of bazillions of copies we made over the years. Which wouldn't be a problem except . . . we relied on the system a little too much. Who'd have thought the near infinite number of possible universes would turn out not to be enough to hold all our classified information? So it's time to clear up our act a little bit. To that end a purging program has been introduced into all copies of Big Finger . . encoded as malware in both Little Speedboat and Gimme Gimme. Which I thought was a nice touch." So they're all standing around inside of Stelaphanes vehicle watching this video over and over again. It turns out they're all being hypnotized. But we don't find out to what end. Between the wiccan charm lady and the she-beast that's transformed by sexual energy, they're going to try to extract the information they need to sort through all of this. The problem is . . . Magoon is the only one that has it. And he's dead. Like I said, just when you can't think of this book getting any more 'out there' . . . the next issue comes out and it outdoes itself completely. I love this book . . if for nothing else, the way that it's explores these outlandish ideas and is always pushing the envelope. Rick Veitch is a genius.