Grrl Power – Dabbler’s Science Corner #2
Unplanned bonus comic! Except not really. This is an old vote incentive I did, and when I swapped it out with a new one, I never posted this anywhere, so I though posting it now right after a Harem heavy page would be good since anytime she shows up there are lots of questions about the particulars of her powers. There will be a regular Thursday page as well.
The other big trick Harem can do involving teleporting has to do with distance. She can always teleport to herself, meaning under the right conditions, her range is effectively unlimited. For example, if one of her is on the West Coast and one of her is on the East Coast, she can travel the distance. It that case she’s kind of not really teleporting, she’s un-teleporting in one location, and re-teleporting that version of her next to herself. Of course she couldn’t teleport back without herself as an anchor, but considering there’s up to 5 of her, she could keep herself in 4 different cities and pop the 5th back and forth between them.
There are still plenty more questions to be answered about Harem so maybe there’s enough material for another Science corner featuring her.
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If you cause pain to one of her clones and that clone disappears, does she still feel it?
I would say not. DaveB confirmed, in a previous comment about Harem, that when her bodies come out of storage they are in exactly the same state as when they went in. Wounds would not have healed, nor will she be any hungrier. Which means that whilst the body is stored (or not in existence, depending how you view it) time is not affecting it. Which means it will not be sensing pain. No body in existence, no pain.
Although there could be residual effects, such as shock in the other bodies. If that had already been brought on, then it will not disappear with the pain. Shock is more likely from, and heightened by, pain so we know that is a factor, that will be diminished. But there is also a psychological element over and above the physiological side. Likewise mental trauma, disorientation, stress and other effects could persist in the same manner.
And, of course, there is the anticipation to consider. Let us suppose that the body was re-absorbed because it was mortally wounded. Freezing it in time would prevent that body dying, and allow preparations to be made, such as getting to an emergency room, in a hospital. Or a specialist intensive care unit (such as a burns unit). Allowing optimum emergency treatment or resuscitation attempts. But the rest of Harem, the bodies outside of storage, will both still remember the pain, and know that it will return, in full-force, the instant that the body is returned*.
Rather like anticipating a visit to the dentist. Except that she will know there will be no chance of anaesthetic, before the pain hits. Even if it can be applied immediately, it always takes time to kick in.
* Unless the body was unconscious, when it went in to storage. But then she gets to discover the answer to an interesting philosophical question. Would she be aware of the pain from an unconscious body? The reason why we do not, when unconscious, is not necessarily because an unconscious body does not suffer pain. But simply because we are not aware of it, by virtue of having blacked out. Logically Harem will not have that luxury.
One of the drawbacks of experiencing sensory data from other bodies. She had better hope that none of her bodies gets stuck in a teleport-proof torture chamber**. If that happened, she would need all of her bodies to go unconscious to escape the pain.
** Possibly un-teleporting could escape such, as we have no idea how Harem does this, so an anti-teleport effect might not block that. But, equally, it might.
Couldn’t she just do a series of teleport hops and get there faster than a cab?
Especially if there was traffic.
She could. But the biggest problem with that is if she is travelling to somewhere she is unfamiliar with. It would be very easy to loose her bearings with such a series of jumps. Just think how disorienting it can be walking around a strange town if you take a wrong turn. Unless you retrace your steps precisely, to get back to a point you recognise, you can get hopelessly lost.
But, if you teleport, the ‘familiar point’ might be half way to the horizon and look totally different from here to what it looked like from there. Plus the number of possible spots it is (say similar looking buildings) is vastly more for a jumping teleporter, than it is for a pedestrian.
Typically, if you want to travel faster than a cab, you would need to port from high vantage point to high point, so that you can see the maximum distance. If you keep to street height, your field of view is severely restricted. Plus you have to follow whatever route the road takes. And anything blocking your field of view limits the range of your jump. But if you stay high, you cannot read the street names on signs. So navigation is much more complicated.
Teleporting to the tops of buildings can be risky. Who knows if one of them is condemned or not? One crumbly ledge and you can be taking a tumble down. If you keep momentum when teleporting that could be fatal, even if you try porting to a safe spot.
Likewise porting around at street height has a bunch of hazards in a city environment. The further you are trying to go the more likely there is something out of sight, such a speeding car, which could pose an unseen threat. And it would be very easy to mis-judge and arrive on a bit of road, rather than a pavement, if trying to jump to the far end of the visible street.
Taking the cab might be slower, but it is a lot easier. And safer.
About that keeping momentum bit:
If she teleports backwards -say, she was falling face down, and she teleports face up- then she can counteract the force of momentum quite easily. You gotta think with portals.
Damit, now I lost The Game
assuming teleports that cover 20 m are not more exhausting than walking that distance (if not significantly less or none at all), would it not be possible for her to teleport at very short range, allowing her to update her bearings as if she was running but checking the environment occasionally, while still going at a higher speed than actual running (assuming 1 second for teleportation, that’s 20 m/s, pretty darn fast). That way she could practically run NEXT TO a highway, and follow it to get where she was going.
That said, she’s working for Archon, and I assume that while she doesn’t have a “black card” like maxima does, she still is far from short on money (judging by the later revealed payscale), so I guess lazyness won out over embarassment
She does also have five bodies to house, feed, and entertain, so unless she gets essentially five times as much of a salary as Math or Anvil or Leon (or whoever might be at her paygrade), she would have a certain difficulty in living with the same ease as the others. I can think of arguments for and against Archon giving her 3 or 4 or 5 x salaries
I have to wonder if the ability to carry stuff through teleports and unteleport copies could, theoretically, give Harem access to Hammerspace.
It’s already been well established that when she unteleports a body all the clothes and items it’s got are “stored” together in stasis and that the combined mass affects her carry limit, which is why in the previous comic she stated that she should take off her boots then deteleport that one of herself.
I would say that although she could deteleport while holding something a bit more significant than the clothes on her back, she likely couldn’t summon the item without reteleporting that version of herself completely. Singling out items she has stored with a clone would effectively allow her to teleport inividual items between her clones and I don’t think she can do that, Dave B would have to confirm. But it does sound like definate power upgrade potential.
So I would say yes and no. Harem doesn’t have access to traditional Hammerspace, but she does have what functionially acts like Hammerspace, much in the same way that Dabbler’s teleporter in her arm does for her weapons.
I should have made it a little clearer I meant that this would be something she’d need to “learn” to do (ie; a power upgrade).
By the way – HUGE fan of this comic! I look forward to all the updates!
I am a little confused with the math here though.
Let’s say that she has no instances of herself out. That means that all her “power” is in the main instance. We will put this at her normal state and call her power at 100%. If her power is shared, when she has one instance out, they both would have 50% of the power, right? If this is true (even power spread) then when all 4 copies are out (making 5 Harems), each one has 20% of the power. If one were to go away, that 20% would be spread over the 4 remaining, boosting them each by 5% of the total power. That would not allow for her to be “twice as strong” when going between 5 instances and 4 instances. And when there are no copies, she would only be 5x as strong as when there are 5 instances.
Am I missing something?
Power increases for multiple boddies are not necessarily linear. Furthermore the rating scale is very decidedly not linear. Hopefully that helps answer your question.
Well, according to the comic, it’s
1x 1x 1x 1x 1x
2x 2x 2x 2x
4x 4x 4x
8x 8x
16x
Working backwards, that’s 100% with no dupes. 50% each with one, 25% each with two, 12.5% each with three, and 6.25% with all four.
Why it works this way and not the way you describe, I dunno. But it jives with the way the teleporting strength is described.
Let’s say she’s 100 lbs when there are five of her. Each can ‘port 25% of her weight, i.e. 25 lbs.
When there’s just one of her, she weighs 200 lbs and can ‘port 50 lbs.
So, at 4, 3, and 2, she’s 125, 150, and 175, and can port 31.25, 37.5, and 43.75 lbs.
So, as she reduces in number, her total physical strength increases, her individual ‘port capacity increases, but her total ‘port capacity decreases.
Strength…Weight………..’Port Capacity
5×1 = 5…..5×100 = 500…5×25 = 125
4×2 = 8…..4×125 = 500…4×31.25 = 125
3×4 = 12…3×150 = 450…3×37.5 = 111.5
2×8 = 16…2×175 = 350…2×43.75 = 87.5
1×16 = 16..1×200 = 200..1×50 = 50
This creates a lot of interesting dynamics, like if she were clearing rubble, how many dupes she wanted would depend on the average weight of the rubble, for both strength and/or port capacity, etc.
For “why” it says the energy is distributed not the strength. There’s a lot of energy in 80kg of matter.
That still leaves why the energy is converted to muscle strength but that seems to be a common thing with superheros in this universe.
Nice page, Dave! I was curious about Harem, and this cleared up some of my questions. But there’s still more to explore, like you said.
One particular question I have is, can she use an object (like a sword or knife) to ‘telefrag’ someone? Like, teleport next to someone and have the blade poof into their guts. Might be a tactic she only uses on robots or monsters–if it turns out she can even do it in the first place.
It’s mentioned later that she can ‘feel’ if space is empty enough to teleport into but it sounded vague enough that it might be all or nothing so aiming so none of her ends up merged might not be possible.
Why would harem ever need to take a cab (though, admittedly this may be simply for demonstration purposes). We saw how quickly she can port in the comic where she undressed the guys, couldn’t she just chain-port in a line (as fast or faster than any vehicle) to get to where she wanted to go? Is there some limit to how often she can port or how long she needs to study a place that she can see before she can port there?
That’s assuming she actually knows where the place she wants to go is – If you are lost or looking for a specific location in a place you don’t know having someone drive you there will help. Chain teleporting assumes she knows the location well enough to teleport closer each time, and to recognize the location once it’s inside visual range.
Also, ‘visual range’ is quite limited in a city – a car might actually be faster than trying to teleport along a busy sidewalk.
Am I the only one who noticed the Doctor Who reference?? LOVE GRRL POWER!!
logopolitan block transfer calculus?
That would be the one!
I’m bothered by the whole inverse exponential strength gain relative to number of clones out.
I think it should be linear. First of all, because it makes more instinctive sense, but secondly, because it poaches less on Anvil’s territory. Girl could use some more uniqueness
lol, logopolitan block transfer calculus. In that case, it’s a wonder Dabbler bothers to hang around on Earth, when all of time and space can be her playground.
I suspect that Dabber is here on Earth as part of an assignment, or something along those lines. If I were to guess at Dabbler’s origins, my guess would be that she was some kind of law enforcement agent, sent to Earth to make sure that Earth was not some kind of power vacuum for less scrupulous individuals to move in on and take over.
Earth, I would think, is just about at the point where we could be worth taking over, if travel is relatively cheap (if only for our raw materials), but probably cannot defend ourselves. Since any alien invaders would be largely uninterested in anything else, we’d probably kick them out, sooner or later, but the damage done in the meantime could be immense…and if they decide to use a couple of bio-weapons to kill all humans, we might simply go extinct. We are, in other words, just about at the stage of being ready to wage a new kind of war (to quote an awesome movie), but not yet ready to do so on anything larger than a one-on-one scale.
Dabbler, and other agents like her, would thus be something like a cross between the agents for the Indian Affairs people back in the Wild West, an ambassador, a missionary, and a DEA agent (or something similar), only with a LOT more supervision than any of those would normally have. She would get dispatched, I would think, to a world that is just beginning to enter the Information Age, where she would serve as their first line of defense against bottom-feeders and trouble-makers. Eventually, she’d help to push them over into the category of “races that are too advanced to pick on easily,” at which point, her job is probably done, and she can go elsewhere should she so desire, probably in two or three hundred years or so. Since she’s a sufficiently advanced alien, she can do that. In the meantime, she’s likely been recruited from among the best and the brightest, and all that jazz, and probably has a hyper-net implant hooked directly to her nervous system, just to facilitate information retrieval, and whatnot.
If I’m guessing correctly, normally Dabbler’s agency would push for scientific and technological advancement–sort of pick a group or a state that can lead the world into a new era, and quietly back them. This makes sense, when you think about it–any society that relies mainly on supers for its advancement is going to advance very slowly, if at all, because nobody will really UNDERSTAND anything. Those worlds that do start showing signs of super-activity would be handled differently from most tech-based worlds, and those worlds that use bio-tech, and those worlds…well, you get the idea. Earth, I suspect, is acting kind of weird: we’re advancing by means of technology, but for some reason, the conditions necessary for widespread supers are starting to appear as well. Hence, Dabbler would be currently “working” for the US government, as part of the tech-based strategy, in creating a solid and trustworthy team of supers to keep the peace, as part of a supers-based strategy. Sort of a blended strategy, but probably without much in the way of precedent (otherwise, they would have sent in supers to help lead the group, not what is essentially an undercover agent).
The only other alternative I can think of for why she’s be on Earth is because she’s a Lady Adventurer, and is hoping to have a rollicking good time down here. Which she likely will, but such an individual would not be a person to be recruited into ARCHON, because she would most likely be somewhat unreliable–she’s here for fun, not to keep the peace.
One assumes her boyfriend(s) appreciate her abilities.
(Thanks for the plug for my kid brother’s Honor Harrington books, BTW.)
So, if I understand the limitations correctly: in order to teleport someplace, Dabbler essentially needs a precise set of co-ordinates that gives her the position of her destination relative to herself. Since she always knows where SHE is, that means that she needs to know where the destination is, either because she can see it, or because she knows that whole area pretty well. Essentially, she needs to get a map into her head well enough to be able to give good directions, down to the last foot or so. So if she can see a location, and, presumably, pull up a map giving her rough coordinates, she can teleport just about anywhere…sort of, anyway. But mostly, she has to have been there, and either been there several times, or know the area really well.
I suspect that she had ARCHON bookmarked, as well as her home, and a few other places. I also have to wonder how many copies she actually can make–if I had Harem’s powers, I would admit to having one less copy than I actually had, just so that I could leave one in storage, together with any useful equipment I might want to either use on a regular basis, or just to keep out of somebody else’s reach.
So I’m working out the math here. It seems to me that the power each of instance of Harem has is a logarithmic function of how many there are out. It’s been a long time since I’ve dealt with logarithms by hand, so I can’t write out a spigot formula, but I can describe how to calculate the power.
So the comic says at full strength, when there’s only one Harem currently in existence, that she’s 16 times the strength of a girl in her late teens. So we’ll use 16 as the base power, here after represented as b.
With 5 harems, each one is as strong as 1 teenage girl, so b / b. Ok, that’s all fine and dandy.
Next, it says that all of them double in strength every time one of them is “put in storage”. So… Here’s how it works out…
5 Harems = 1 Girl in strength each
4 Harems = 2 Girls in strength each
3 Harems = 4 Girls in strength each
2 Harems = 8 Girls in strength each
1 Harem = 16 girls in strength
The formula is basically 16 girls in strength, and then divide by 2 for each additional Harem.
This means that if she were to be able to push the limit, barring a doubling of her power, a 6th one would make her half a girl in strength. A 7th would place her at quarter. Anything beyond that and she probably wouldn’t even be able to stand.
Keep in mind, she’d be a STRONG 19 year old girl. In shape and all that.
If we assume she’s stronger than your average teenager, but not as strong as, say, a teenage weightlifter (even accounting for superheroics), we can say…200-250 pounds.
Meaning that Harem alone can lift about 4000 pounds.
Four of her can lift 500 pounds.
3 of her can lift 1000
2 can lift a ton.
And without dupes she can lift 2 tons. I’d hazard Anvil sits around 5-10 before a significant kinetic energy buildup (I imagine just walking keeps her from ever being at a true baseline).
So, to use the search and rescue thing from before, chances are good she wants no more than 4, and possibly even just 3 of her helping to clear rubble. Anything more in terms of strength is probably redundant (if you’ve got Maxima and Anvil helping, you’ll likely want MORE hands helping, not STRONGER)
The simple solution to the issue is to have one Harem stay where she is, and have one teleport. Since she can ‘see’ both places at once, since Quantum entanglement ignores physical distance.
It might mean that the physical body that’s doing the teleporting has to be able to see the destination.
I believe TheBaron was suggesting a solution to Harem having to take a taxi home.
If you check out the author’s blog, above, you will find that this is actually a valid solution
The reason why is explained by TheBaron‘s line:
Can she unteleport all of her?
Not wise unless she was fed up with life. There would be no one to bring her back. Harem does not experience any passage of time, when in storage. Without that there is no consciousness to make the decision or activate the power.
Was Harem’s teleportation inspired by Steven Gould’s 1992 novel, “Jumper”? The abilities and limitations are almost exactly the same (although the book’s protagonist doesn’t have “other selves” to anchor a jump to).
Really good book, by the way (and equally good sequel, “Reflex”). Skip the 2008 film of the same name that was “based on” the book but had almost no story in common.
I haven’t read those books/seen that movie, so no. I think the limitations of line of sight and/or familiarity with a location/within a certain range is fairly common for most teleporters.
On revisiting this page after a couple years, it occurs to me that Harem actually would have a “cheat” for getting back from the farm. Whichever one went home for a visit can just “unteleport”, then split back off in Denver or wherever one of her “sisters” are.
Or not. DaveB, any thoughts?
Right, she can always pop out an unteleported body near herself. The only way the last panel would happen is if none of her are near the destination she’s trying to get back to.
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