About

This comic is a little bit unusual in that it has several related stories presented on the same page. Each one is drawn in a different color palette. It makes a bit more sense when you look at the archives, where you can scroll horizontally through entire chapters.

Decrypting Rita is a PG-13 science fiction comic by Egypt Urnash, produced almost entirely in Adobe Illustrator. Update frequency is currently “attempt to post two pages a week, don’t stress when life makes that impossible”.

Safety tip: Rita is a highly modified cyborg/AI/upload with tons of training and an onboard system that plots out spectacularly death-defying routes for her; you are not! Don’t try any of this at home, kids.

The Characters.

  • Rita: A woman of few words. She prefers to let her incredibly graceful chassis speak for her; life is a dance, and she has the choreography backed up to the cloud.
  • Rita: A woman of the here and now. She used to be a dancer. Now she’s just drifting in a smoky cloud. Improvising, even. Sometimes she tells truths the other Ritas must keep hidden.
  • Rita: Speaking of smoke… Rar.
  • Barrett: He doesn’t seem to be a very nice man. Maybe he’s just busy? If he was a furry, his fursona would totally be a squid.
  • Barrett: He’s kind of a jerk sometimes but Rita seems to like him a lot. He’s got some baggage he’s carrying around. If he was a furry, his fursona would totally be an octopus.
  • Barrett: He’s a snarky dark elf who worships a spider goddess. If he was a furry, his fursona would totally be a tentacled horror from beyond the stars.
  • Carol: Netrunner extrordinaire, Theora to Rita’s Edison. And maybe more, if she has her way.
  • Carol: ???NULL POINTER EXCEPTION
  • Carol: ???NULL POINTER EXCEPTION
  • Tom: ???NULL POINTER EXCEPTION
  • Tom: He has good hookups and throws fun parties, but his day job is eating him alive.
  • Tom: ???NULL POINTER EXCEPTION
  • Kim: l337 hacker. Or at least less of a n00b than everyone around her. She seems to like Barrett more than he wants to acknowledge – at least on the job.
  • Kim: She stared the Matrix delusion down one too many times and decided to find out what’s after GAME OVER.
  • Kim: A high elf with a taste for the monstrous. If you met her in a club in this world you might call her a “perkygoth”.
  • The Panopticon: ???FILE NOT FOUND
  • Setting: One hundred and twenty minutes into the future – humanity’s mechanical children are largely accepted as full members of the society, the asteroid belt is a thriving frontier.
  • Setting: The here and now.
  • Setting: Greyhawk The Forgotten Realms Your teenage brother’s AD&D campaign.

Glossary.

Beep: A contraction of “Biological Person”. A human who is inhabiting a mostly-biological body.
Espie: A contraction of “Software Person”. A human who is inhabiting a machine body.
Gongoozler: One of several competing hyperdrives. Even before the discovery of the DeMoyle-Kirteen effect, gongoozling was generally considered to make you a little crazy. It’s also the fastest, of course.
Hat Ladies/Men: A semi-immortal school of wizards. Prone to whimsey, foppishness, and distraction, they are able to return from the brink of death several times over their extended lifespans. yes they are totally my fanfic gallifreyans shut up

The Artist.

Egypt Urnash lives in Seattle, where she draws comics and occasionally gets up on stage to shake her booty for money. She was born in New Orleans in 1971, and spent the later half of her twenties in the Hollywood animation industry. She refuses to comment on how many of the Ritas are Mary Sues.