The Homo Sapien is extinct. Neo humanity and its counterparts have inherited the stars. Their population numbers in the trillions. 99.997% of the people live in perpetual peace and in perfect harmony with their machines. This story is not about the perfect worlds...
Serix is a Science Fiction webcomic created by Jolly Johnny/Nubly.
In the distant future, the descendants of mankind have spread throughout the universe, united by the Intergalactic Union and divided by the various factions therein. While almost all people live in a state of Utopia, nothing is ever perfect - and there's been a surprising number of problems recently.
The Mol-Comm colony vessel just crashed onto the fourth moon of Tarvis, killing all 10,336 passengers. Despite leading minds saying that there's no way the crash could have been accidental, official channels are insisting that it was caused by a freak anomaly. The incident has caught the attention of various investigators, treasure hunters, and salvagers both official and non, all rushing to be the first to take advantage of the situation.
Not long afterwards, hundreds of colonists long thought dead wake up after a 150 year sleep all across the planet Ulyphus for unknown reasons. One of these colonists, Dr. Caleb Chelsea Jordan, emerges from a stasis pod with the mission to find the missing members of their crew. Given the danger posed by the planet they found themselves on however, Caleb and the other survivors can only shelter in place while calling for help from a universe they no longer recognize.
In political news, Chairman Fa Zheng of the Intergalactic Union's Justice Board has unexpectedly announced that after 200 years of service, they no longer wish to live. The Board is currently looking for a replacement.
Meanwhile, a citizen of The Colonial Federation of Serix by the name of Rees Sparks decides she's bored of living entirely online and convinces five of her friends to co-fund a physical body so they can experience the "real world." She signs up for the Frontier Voluntary Labour Corps to meet new people and work on droids, and is assigned to work with a crew of maintenance workers on a backwater desert planet called Risol. Rees lives a happy if relatively boring life, until one day when a large portion of their territory is claimed in a hostile takeover by the better-funded Aksia Star Faction. Rees and her crew are left scrambling to make up for lost resources, try to get their property back, and figure out why Aksia would even bother to steal such seemingly unimportant land in the first place.
Serix can be found on Webtoons
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Serix provides examples of the following tropes:
- Alien Blood: Bodily fluids come in a variety of colors. Even the characters closer to "normal" humans can have this trait as a reminder of the various body modifications they might have. For example, Rees is shown to have blue tears and Avery's blood is green.
- All Hail the Great God Mickey!: Two of the religions included in the "United Faiths Front" are the Church of Santa and the Sect of Orthodox Gamers.
- The Alternet: The Mindnet.
- Ambiguous Gender: Dr. Caleb Chelsea Jordan is wearing a full-body spacesuit, never speaks, and is only referred to with they/them pronouns. While there are other characters who are officially non-binary or genderless, Caleb just seems to be mysterious enough that nobody really knows the details.
- Artificial Limbs: Some characters have them, but it's mentioned that replacing lost limbs is cheap and easy enough that the only reason to get a mechanical one is for the benefit of technological enhancement. Alexis has robot legs that allow for Wall Running and boosted jumping abilities, and Avery decides to try out a mechanical arm for a while after he loses one in a fight.
- Big Eater: Rees, to the point that when she gets the chance to have multiple bodies active at once to multiply her productivity, she just sends one of them to a buffet. For several months straight.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Kitt is only shown speaking Korean, but her co-workers seem able to communicate with her just fine.
- Binary Suns: Risol
- Body Backup Drive: Widely used in the future.
- Born as an Adult: Many humans in the setting are created this way, being rapidly grown to adulthood while mentally hooked up to learning programs. Rees, for example, is not even four years old at the beginning of the story.
- Brain/Computer Interface: Some like Rees can access the Mindnet wirelessly, but others like Chairman Zheng and Rachel have to connect wires to ports in their heads.
- Brain in a Jar: Mentioned as the state a large portion of humanity are in. It seems to be voluntary, since they can still use the Mindnet and can transfer their consciousness into robotic or organic bodies whenever they want to interact with the real world.
- Chameleon Camouflage: Caleb's suit can change colors to hide better in various environments.
- Clingy Costume: Caleb's space suit is apparently partially fused to their skin. It's not clarified whether this was intentionally done or if it was a consequence of their botched mission.
- Cuteness Proximity: Rees has this reaction to any and all droids.
- Deadly Game: These are shown to be widely popular forms of entertainment in the future.
- Death World: Risol and Ulyphus are both inhospitable desert worlds with dangerous wildlife. Ulyphus especially, as it also has a toxic atmosphere and acid storms, not to mention many dangerous tribes and scavenger gangs.
- Designer Babies: Rees's character sheet states that her personality was designed by "civil planning algorithms" to generate consumption and economic growth.
- Dirty Cop: Sheriff Ludo, which surprises the other characters since "the last crooked cop died three centuries ago in the Cop Wars."
- Empty Shell: Rees's body is briefly left in this state when she and all her Mindnet friends leave it for a job until she remembers to come back and set it to auto-pilot.
- Finger Firearms: After losing an arm, Avery decides to try out a mechanical one because it's advertised as having this feature. He's a bit disappointed when it turns out to use his own finger as the projectile.
- Friend in the Black Market: Alexis knows a couple of illegal weapons dealers named Jose and Datu.
- Friend to All Living Things: Rees. She refuses to eat food made of any living thing, makes the effort to grow plants, fish, and nematodes at her home, and has a habit of repairing damaged and discarded droids entirely because she thinks they're cute.
- Future Food Is Artificial: Something called "plasti-food" exists, which Rees eats exclusively out of a desire to not hurt real animals or plants. It's apparently not very healthy. An In-Universe commercial shows other types of "meat" being grown from plants, created on an assembly line, or being harvested from giant disembodied tumors.
- Gender-Blender Name: Dr. Caleb Chelsea Jordan.
- Gonk: Rosco is an shriveled looking old man, noted even In-Universe to be very ugly. Considering how cosmetic procedures and body mods are both fairly cheap and widely available in the setting, it's implied that he only still looks this way because he is The Scrooge.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: After Rees calls Caleb a "perfect sweet child," there is an unusually detailed panel showing that their spacesuit is covered in stains and attracting flies.
- Handy Feet: Kitt is able to use her feet just as much as her hands while salvaging parts out of broken-down droids.
- Hive Mind: Those who can afford to keep multiple backup bodies running at once can have several active at a time. Rees takes advantage of her work keeping spares around during a dangerous situation to achieve this effect.
- Huge Holographic Head: A courtroom moderators at the Adanon International Space Port is one of these, known only as "The Great Head."
- Human Popsicle: One of the big events at the start of the series is hundreds of Serix colonists coming out of a 150 year stasis across Ulyphus.
- Human Subspecies: By the time the comic starts, humans have been genetically modifying themselves to adapt to new environments for so many generations that baseline Homo Sapiens are considered extinct. Various subspecies exist, such as Homo Ulyphos.
- If My Calculations Are Correct: Isaac uses this from time to time.
- Incredibly Lame Fun: The Jeroshimo Canyon crew like to spend their free time at Cassie's Cliff Top Bar betting on what number will show up on a random number generator. Also, Caleb's only source of entertainment when sheltering from an acid storm is playing Pong alone.
- Insufferable Genius: Doctor Seven is officially considered a "super scientist" who has enough official pull to walk right up to members of the Intergalactic Union's council and invite them on an investigation. They are also an arrogant jerk who nobody actually likes in person.
- Interfaith Smoothie: The Festival of Stars on Ulyphus is organized by the "United Faiths Front," which includes Zoroastrians, the Gandryn Caretakers, the Church of Santa, the Chaos Culters, and the Sect of Orthodox Gamers.
- Large Ham: The Great Head.
- Organic Technology: Seems to be the standard. Upgrading an AI is shown to involve hormones and nerve fluids, and Rees's synthetic bodies have wires in them.
- Pointless Band-Aid: Rees has a "protective nose brace" that seems to be part of her actual body, considering her backup bodies have them despite wearing no other clothing.
- Projected Man: Seen all over the place, and a good amount of people in the setting exist mainly or solely in this form.
- Mama Bear: Rees goes into this mode around broken-down droids, willing to fight Kitt for "killing" one or running out into a war zone because she saw one that was "suffering." She starts acting this way about Caleb eventually as well, angrily admonishing some of the Ulyphus group because "this perfect sweet child" was left alone and almost got stabbed by a bounty hunter.
- Man Bites Man: When May is being held captive by the Aksia faction, she bites the arm of the large woman restraining her in order to escape. Notably, her bite goes straight through her captor's bracer and tears out a chunk of flesh nearly halfway through the wrist, leaving the woman visibly shocked at the amount of damage done.
- MegaCorp: Quite a few.
- Neural Implanting: Brain mods and learning programs seem to be the preferred method for most people to learn any skill in the future, and using them is so quick and convenient that May is able to download Gun Fu skills off the Mindnet in the middle of a firefight.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: The higher-ups in the Aksia Star Faction wear opaque triangular sunglasses.
- The Scrooge: Rosco is a miser sent by Serix to the Jeroshimo Canyon crew in order to keep costs down.
- Sharing a Body: Rees's body is technically co-owned by six individuals who can swap in and out at will, though Rees is usually in control as the others spend most of their time on the Mindnet. Apparently this is not an uncommon arrangement.
- Shout-Out: Among the group of robots here, one is a CL4P-TP unit and another is wearing a belt with Ace's smiley symbol on it.
- Silent Snarker: Caleb.
- The Slacker: Despite her work being entirely voluntary, Rees doesn't actually enjoy doing her job outside of working with droids and goofing around with her crew. Her first appearance on the clock shows her napping and taking the first opportunity she finds to leave early.
- Spare Body Parts: The specs for Rees's synthetic bodies list her as having four lungs, four hearts, and three stomachs. Sheriff Ludo also boasts about having thirty-seven hearts after getting a hole blown through his torso.
- Smug Snake: Zander Kamaran.
- Stout Strength: Rees is overweight but is shown to still be very strong, possibly due to her body being built for industrial work. May does complain about Rees's body not being able to run fast after piloting it during a battle, though.
- Temporary Bulk Change: Since Rees's heavyset appearance comes from overeating rather than being the way her synthetic bodies are designed, she is visibly thinner after being killed in battle and transferred to a backup. She regains the weight by the time the next chapter starts.
- Testosterone Poisoning: Sargent Muscles
- Those Two Guys: Dwite and Avery.
- Transhumanism: A major theme of the comic. By the time the series starts, humanity has already embraced transhumanism to such an extent that vanilla Homo Sapiens no longer exist. Even the most normal-looking characters are actually disembodied consciousnesses projected into enhanced artificial clone bodies, and that's before you get into the weird stuff.
- Vengeful Vending Machine: Rees runs into trouble while trying to buy a hot dog from a vending machine. First it says it's out of condiments. Then it says it's out of hot dogs. Then it says it's out of buns. Then she punches a hole in the machine.
- The Voiceless: Caleb.
- Wall Run: Alexis is shown performing (and calling) this maneuver to get out of work.
- War for Fun and Profit: Wars between corporations are treated like exciting spectator sports and the combatants are hired last minute from whoever happens to be close enough and accepting jobs, none of whom take the whole affair very seriously. Justified by everyone involved having backup bodies.
- We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: While droids exist that can do most if not all menial work in the setting, the Colonial Federation of Serix also has a "Frontier Voluntary Labour Corps" program that exists both to keep operating costs low and to give bored citizens something to do.
- Weight Woe: Rees doesn't take kindly to jokes made about her weight, and her friends awkwardly saying they didn't want her piloting their newly-renovated clone bodies because "everything [she touches] gets kind of fat" is enough to get her crying.
- Worldbuilding: The comic occasionally pauses to show In-Universe ads for products or events.
- You Are Number 6: Doctor Seven. The series intro also briefly shows an individual named "Citizen #00279145."
