They keep horses in pens!?! I thought that was what the “bad guys” did, while Happy Hooves provided safe pasture and personal care for the mustangs. But their negligence is on display, as Clayton admits Artemis has broken out of her pen more than once. Sad!

So the trio—as we may refer to them at this point—are safe for the moment. Diana continues to gloat over the misfortunes of Tad Crass and his now-ruined AI data center. It’s ironic both that Diana feels avenged by the destruction of an AI data center by fire and that Rivera injects an accusation about artificial intelligence creating wildfires(panel 3).

When I run a simple online search, I find numerous real-world experiments and studies dedicated to using AI to help predict and fight wildfires. What would be even more ironic (if not absurdly funny) here is if it turned out that Tad’s AI data center was getting ready to start up its own fire detection study. That might be a plot too far.

So, where this storyline goes from here on is a mystery. Will Mark and Diana be arrested for trespass and criminal mischief? Will Mark, Diana, and the magazine empire that Bill Ellis works for be sued for the destruction of the data center? Is this story really about evil AI data centers, rampaging horses, or horse mistreatment? So far, we’ve seen absolutely no evidence for any of this, except for Artemis’s broken pen.