Throughout several early drafts, this was a much longer scene and Yang was in one of the “pods.” Eventually the script corrected itself. As far as I know, Yang and Whitehouse only overlap in two lives (so far), and Whitehouse has only regressed into one of them to date. The method by which Yang “inserts” into Whitehouse’s regressions hasn’t made itself clear yet, though commonality is definitely a requirement.

Yang persisted through several drafts, his appearance cropping up later and later in the script until he was finally shoehorned out the other end. This is ultimately Jason’s trip – best to keep it a single-player headscrew. Heck, the fact he’s bootstrapped himself into it via a liberal application of hallucinogens is doubtless screwing with Yang’s “broadcast” capability in some fashion.

I’ve said this a few times on IRC and in meatspace, though I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly mentioned it here: way back in the day, a good-sized chunk of humanity was “sampled” from Earth. Life out there began here. It’s kind of a Plot Thing, which is why I haven’t said much about it in page metadata until now.

On a related note, the next page is going to be a real pisser. Higher panel count, much more line art, a lot more dialogue, and another one-off CG environment. And I haven’t even split the page file into panels yet. Between work-work and some illustration work I’ve been ignoring for almost two weeks, it’s probably gonna be awhile. Hopefully not a repeat of the month-plus gap between 4.11 and 4.12.

Also – first page of the back half of the chapter. While I’d love to say this page and the previous were intentionally placed, I will say that their placement turned out to be pretty spiffy.