#593: Voynich Manuscript explain

[Weird root vegetables surround a strange script.]

[Megan holding up book to Cueball.]

Megan: This is the Voynich manuscript— a book, allegedly 500 years old, written in an unrecognized script. It’s some kind of visual encyclopedia of imaginary plants and undeciphered “recipes”.

[Megan points while Cueball opens the book.]

Megan: It could be a hoax, a lost language, a cipher, an alien text, glossolatia — no one knows.

Cueball: No one? But it’s obvious.

[Megan continues to talk. Cueball holds the now closed book.]

Megan: … Obvious? Linguists and cryptographers have been stumped for decades.

Cueball: They forget. Human nature doesn’t change.

[Close up of Megan and Cueball - the book is off panel.]

Cueball: Just imagine someone found a book from our time, full of lists, illustrations, tables, and long, dry descriptions of nonexistent worlds written in an invented language. What have they found?

Megan: …Dear Lord. It is obvious.

[Three people are standing around pawns and a die. One (a Cueball) is holding a sheet of paper, another (another Cueball) is holding a book, the third (Megan) is holding a scythe. At the top of the panel there is a frame with the following text:]

500 Years Earlier:

Person #1: Forsooth! I concoct an elixer of courage.

Person #2: Nae! The source booke sayeth that requires some wolfsbane!

Person #3: Your druid doth lose two points.