The wavy things in the middle-middle panel are an aircar's "breaks", jets of air used to slow the 'car down. Extreamly hot air, hence the condensation and the wavy lines.

Conversely, the skree noise is the sound an aircar's breaks make when they fail. The jets are attached to a feild generator. Aircars have a number of these, one as a support, and several more as stabalizers. When something goes wrong with the feild generators (usually due to improper mantience) the breaking jets don't work, as the hot air/gasses are exaust from the fuel system (an enviromentally friendly blend of hydrogen, oxygen and physics). No forward stabalizers, no breaking jets. This design failure doesn't happen often, and a backup system would reqire high powered gas jets that don't conflict with any other major system. Designers discovered that when the stablizer fails, The nose end of the car will hit the pavement, producing a rather loud sound, while the rear stabalizers and jets continue to function, pushing the car along the road. The computer that runs the system usually corrects for this by shutting down the propulsion jets and reorganizing the support feilds to allow the friction from the front bumper scraping the ground to slow the car to a stop. However, in one of the newer models of 'cars, a careless technition had an AI from an exparamental design installed in the new production line by mistake. The new AI assumes that the breaking jets have a backup, and doesn't automatically shut off the propultion jets.

This model of car will probably be recalled in a few months. This accident is the third this month involving this failure. Like most accident spawned recalls, this and the other accidents will result in mass litigation, class action lawsuits and new regulations on how 'cars are designed and how 'car AIs are programed. All in all, the process will take about three years of investigation, finger pointing and judicial system manovering. And of course, by then, this story will be over (note: that's three years story-time)

Other News: New vote site! This one not only does the ranking/more traffic for yours truely...thing...it also runs a contest with a lil cash prize. And yeah, every little bit helps down here...

... THAT IS NOT A HINT! If ya'll want to support the comic, right now MORAL support is much more important to me than financial support. GO. USE. THE. FORUM. There certainly is enough of you guys to start using the rusty thing...

...anyway, as one of the sites seems to have died, and the cash thingy's nice, we've added it to the other three.

And...yeah, that's about it, other than another blatant plug for reader participation (AKA positive feedback. I'm human. I get discouraged easy. Moral support means you'll have me working my brains out to make everybody happy)

See ya'll next week! - Chelsea Gaither