Number nine? It’s 1001 in binary.

This strip was inspired by this couple of buildings in Manchester.

In my day job I put together a magazine and website called New Steel Construction, and in our June edition we did a feature on the buildings, which were part of a redevelopment called The Embankment (click here to read more about it if steel-framed buildings are things that really float your boat).  I liked the numbers that had been put on the top of them, and the fact that they looked like the binary I and 0 that appear on on/off switches. So, as well as being read as 100 and 101 they could be read as 4 and 5. The fact that strip 1000 showed Jones being aware that she is in a comic strip melded with the binary, and we ended up with a series of strips where Jones thought she was in the Matrix.

The colour scheme changes after the last panel of this strip, to reflect the eerie green grading that was used in the Matrix movies. The grainy green background remains until Jones snaps out of it five strips later.