21st December 2006, 7:07 PM
Not really ABF. It's more of a self deception. He's CONVINCING himself it's a game. He is refusing to even humor the idea that he may have been deceived. He... MUST... find out how to play it. It IS a game, it MUST be, but how do you play it? The missing panel is him locked in a room, "bedazzled" with formulas and strange broken logic, in a vain attempt to stitch together a method for playing it. The 5th is him somehow actually succeeding and driving the OTHER character mad with wonder as he becomes a WEATHER GOD, affecting reality. It's not "stupid humor" so much as "insanity humor", and I love that kind.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)