As fans of XKCD know, Randall is fond of every now and then producing special occasion comics which strain the limits of the medium in a unique, and often nerdy, way. It seems something like this is happening again, as the current comic, time, consists of nothing but a single frame of two people sitting in a landscape. But the frame has been subtly changing, every half hour or so—the pictures are catalogued in order at the ‘explain XKCD’-wiki, and also in this post at the XKCD forums (which currently is one picture ahead of the wiki). Also, the forum features an interesting discussion about the technicalities of how the updating works.
But the way this is going, I fear it might not be: the girl’s lying down in the grass now, and the boy has stood up and seems to be leaving. Given that Randall’s blogged about his then-fiancée (now wife) having breast cancer, I really really hope I’m reading too much into this and at the end just look like an overly worrisome gossip…
I swear the latest one I just saw that the wiki had him sitting back down with her after looking down at the water, but now I just get a 500 error when I try to view it.
I think that the message is just that time spent with a loved one, doing something unexciting like sitting quietly at the beach, is still time well-spent.
The girl shakes her head because she was laying on the sand, to get it out of her hair. I’m definitely thinking they’re on a beach, and sandcastles are on the way. I’m excited for more.
Someone at the XKCD’s forum link mentioned above has posted a capture of all of them together so far. Note the comic count in the upper left and the slower/faster option in the upper right.
