Panels 19–26 · Rivers and the ballot

Reading guide, not a title printed on the comic. No Justice, Just AI numbers its panels. These section labels only group lines that are already lettered.

Servers drink rivers and lakes, chase power, and dump the water back corrupted. The lyric calls that runoff a target for a poison plot. Then AI is on the ballot and counting the vote, democracy is treated as a joke, and the founding fathers are pictured rolling over while faceless redcoats come back.

Panels 19–26

1. Panel 19

   Sucking up the rivers, draining lakes and streams,

   Scene, from the panel text and the surrounding lines: Data center with giant straws sucking a river dry.

2. Panel 20

   Cooling all them servers, chasing power dreams.

   Scene, from the panel text and the surrounding lines: Cooling towers and heavy power lines feeding servers that are chasing a bigger power dream.

3. Panel 21

   Dump that water back corrupted, laced with who knows what,

   Scene, from the panel text and the surrounding lines: A discharge pipe dumping cloudy water back into a stream, the runoff laced and unreadable.

4. Panel 22

   Perfect target for a madman with a poison plot.

   Scene, from the panel text and the surrounding lines: Shadowy figure with a vial at a water-plant intake while the security camera looks away.

5. Panel 23

   AI on the ballot, AI counts the vote,

   Scene, from the panel text and the surrounding lines: A voting booth whose ballot shows only one choice, 'AI', while a robot tallies votes on a glowing screen behind it.

6. Panel 24

   Democracy’s a memory — now it’s just a joke.

   Scene, from the panel text and the surrounding lines: A ballot box with a big red laugh-track button on top, a jury of robots behind it laughing mechanically.

7. Panel 25

   Founding fathers rolling in their graves, seeing this betrayal,

   Scene, from the panel text and the surrounding lines: Colonial graveyard, cracked headstones, founders' ghosts glaring at a server farm.

8. Panel 26

   Sounds like the Redcoats are coming back, this time with no faces.

   Scene, from the panel text and the surrounding lines: Faceless redcoat silhouettes marching back, empty helmets and no faces.