Grrl Power #1009 – Does Sydney have accident insurance?
The title of the page is a joke, but… seriously. Wouldn’t supers probably need to have some sort of insurance fund set up in case they accidentally elbowed someone through a wall, or turned them to stone, or extincted an epoch/era?
As it sometimes happens, speculation from the prior page’s comments could be selectively snipped and used to write this one. The proximity to the Chicxulub crater didn’t escape some of you, and that’s half of this page. I’m not saying that event and the orbs are necessarily related, but it might be a Chekhov’s Extinction Level Event.
If it happens that Sydney was involved in wiping out the dinosaurs, could it be considered retroactive species-level self-defence, given that human civilization probably wouldn’t have gotten very far if we tried to evolve alongside dinosaurs, or that any common ancestors we might have could have been eaten by a disagreeable theropod?
I like the Chekhov’s Gun trope. I don’t necessarily agree with it, because it can make plays/movies/stories incredibly predictable, but I like the idea of it, because I can say “Oh, look, Chekhov’s restaurant.” if I’m planning on eating somewhere later. Seriously though, the idea that every scene or thing that the camera focuses on early in a movie needs to be there in order to pay off later is obnoxious, because if you’re paying attention it’s almost like watching a movie with pop-ups saying “The Main Character is giving the love interest a silver amulet. I wonder if that will come up later in this Were-Vampire movie? What do you think, audience?” Of course, if you have no setup, then stuff happening at the end can feel deus ex machiny, so I guess the balance is to set up too much stuff so the signal gets hidden in the noise? I don’t know. “The Main Character is giving the love interest a silver amulet, and a ring with a cross on it, and a broach made of mysterious metal that came from a meteorite, a lucky charm for her keyring, a flask to keep in her inside jacket pocket, and is taking her to the gun range and teaching her offensive driving, Latin, and how to fly a helicopter. What do you think is going to happen now, smart guy?”
I will say that Archon needs to be a lot better about closing doors and drawing blinds when discussing classified things.
Unrelated, I saw Matrix: Resurrection, and no spoilers, but I’m shocked that it has a 64% on Rotten Tomatoes. I kind of figured the 4th time the movie self-awarely brought up the idea of an unnecessary sequel to a trilogy then said in the movie “Warner Brothers is making us do this.” I assumed it was an apology. I don’t think they tried to make a bad, unnecessary movie that added nothing to the lore (in fact it detracted from the lore, IMO), I just don’t think there was a way to extend that storyline any further.
If the movie had been about the remnants of humanity living in a Matrix-esque world while they traveled to another planet, having abandoned Earth to the machines, that could have extended the universe. Or if it had been about a post-trilogy ground war to take back the Earth like the future bits of the Terminator movies, then that could have been something, but neither of those stories require Keanu, and that’s just not how Hollywood works.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: Getting Proofed!
Still getting proofed. Didn’t make much progress over Xmas break, but I didn’t think the book would be out before the new year anyway. Definitely January though.
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But…we DID evolve alongside dinosaurs, we just call them something else now…
Birds!!!!!
That’s kinda like saying “We’re all apes, we just call ourselves something else now,” isn’t it? Yeah, birds evolved from some types of dinosaurs, but by the time we came along they were just… birds.
Jared Diamond, who knows these things, calls us “The Third Chimpanzee”.
I grok Chekhov’s Gun, in movies, where you are in a visual medium, and have very limited amounts of time. I LOATHE the migration of Chekhov’s Gun to literature. It’s a fucking book, you have no time limits, flesh your world out you lazy bastards, everything should not take place in a white space occupied only by primary characters and plot devices.
Anton Chekov was an author. The law of conservation of detail is even more important in a book, where trying too hard to build an entire world would clog the imagery with details that would just be distracting overall. Then there’s the fact that you DO have time limits with books. You may not have a length limit, but people have a limited attention span. That’s a big chunk of the reason “Crime and Punishment,” and “War and Peace” are not as widely read as they should be.
The Dresden Files are themselves fairly dense books, with a lot of worldbuilding, as a lot of people who read the books aren’t going to know Chicago like a native would. However, Chekov’s Gun plays an important role, as details introduced early in the books always come back to play an important role. Without being able to use Chekov’s Gun as a shorthand writing technique, those climaxes in the story just don’t work.
TL,DR: Chekov’s gun comes FROM literature, not film, and is an important writing technique to help create proper climaxes in said literature.
Chekov was a playwright. He was actually talking about scriptwriting when he formulated Chekov’s gun. Of course he’s also in the running to be one of the best short story authors in history, and short stories usually have to be kept pretty tight due to the limited word count, so it’s more necessary for everything you mention to matter than in a novel.
Or Moby Dick, Take of Two Cities… Gawd, the agony!
Are you familiar woth Lois McMaster Bujold’s (award winning) “Five Gods Universe?” The very first book of that universe was The Curse of Chalion. In it, rge story opens with Castelar dy Cazaril walking from the coast to a place of safety. He has good fortune in a contact with soldiers, but fearing a good beating for their accidental largesse, he hides in a windmill. Inside, he finds a corpse, and it seems obvious that the corpse belongs to someone who has practiced the forbidden “death magic.” Checkov’s Gun #1: Cazaril will later attempt death magic against his greatest enemy, to prevent him from befouling his lady. Checkov’s gun #2: the importance of burning the body of the people involved in a “death miracle,” which is the granting of a petition for justice from The Bastard (one of the 5 gads) is greatly emphasized. Such empty corpses may be possessed by spirits that have not moved on. Ten or Eleven Books later, we see just a possession in Knot of Shadows, the 11th Penric and Desdemona book.
“If a gun is mentioned in the first book, then it has to be used before the end of the series.”
Given the huge number of unclaimed upgrades on the Flight Orb I would not be at all surprised if the bloody things can time travel too.
considering the Aethereum causeway, the most advanced and powerful gate tech known to the current galactic powers was just pip ONE of the branch chain from flight, you may be right, along with multiverse travel, dimension travel, and so on. Or just upgrades to the Aethereum causeway like size, a suction feature, Aethereum teleport instead of portal, ect…
not to mention the as-of-yet-unactivated orb. who knows what that one can do.
It’s the time-travel orb, but since the only active pip on it is “auto-undo” we can only see the single timeline where Halo’s action haven’t caused her to become evil and/or accidently destroyed galactic civilization.
You mean Krona’s save point back at the Wars warehouse wasn’t strictly necessary?
TYPO ALERT: in the last speech bubble, Sydney should say “to do” instead of “do to.”
Man, I really dislike time travel stories. Especially the ones that try to make impossibility of TT into the past a serious thing and those that ignore paradoxes. You have to have a really great story to tell for it to work. “The Technicolor Time Machine” was one of the few that did. Future TT due the relativistic effects approaching light speed is fine, but going backwards. No, just no.
Back to the future and terminator 1 and 2 and sarah connor chronicles did a good job tho.
Stargate Continuum and SG-1 did a pretty good job with it too.
why I prefer the anti-paradox handwave, otherwise you get all these plot holes in the form of paradoxes.
It would be a huge mindfuck was actually the original owner of the orbs and something happened to her during a mission that made her lose her orbs and get lost in time the casualties being the dinosaurs and she more or less stuck in a time loop where she keeps finding the orbs and lpsing them over and over again like in 12 monkeys.
Plus, nice set up for them to go to mexico and deal with sciona 2.0
Ohhhh.
I had forgotten about her!
Speaking of 12 Monkeys: they are finally showing that here and the last episode they had involved both a Time Paradox and Chekhov’s gun
Narrator: “Always ensure your paradox prevention switch is on!”
Kid: “Why are those OPTIONS?!”
(a no-doubt misquote from one of the Cyanide and Happiness Show episodes, which was poking fun at time travel)
‘Kid: “Why are those OPTIONS?!”’
“Because most people don’t think they need them and don’t want to pay for them.”
(I won’t credit a certain un-named aircraft manufacturer which is in a world of pain right now).
1)That title reminded me of something: In 2017, there was a sitcom TV series on NBC called “Powerless” which was about a group of employees working at the R&D Department of Wayne Security(this series took place within the DC Universe, btw).
While the show got canceled before the First Season could finish airing, the initial premise (before it aired) was that the cast was part of an Isurance Company in the DC Universe, with the main character being less interested in Superheroes than most people.
Thought the first season did finish properly
The head of the company was a cousin of Bruce Wayne’s :D
#2 : The last panel should be “to do” instead of “do to”
So, about the insurance thing is has been brought up that damages caused by characters like Thor could be chalked up as “act of god” and not paid out.
How many would that affect? Two? Maybe three characters (if you count Thanos)
Now, now. Never under estimate the insurance companies ability to classify events in a way they do not have to pay out on. Thor was on the team, even if he was elsewhere? Actof God. Deadpool keeps destroying things but won’t die because a God made him immortal? Act of God. They recieved their powers from a god and do it’s bidding? Act of God.
Hmm, Joker went on a rampage and did those horrid acts with hampsters in people pants all over Gothem? Not covered due to how strange it is. Listen the only way we cover deliberate damage, is if either no-one can prove someone specific was involved, or you take legal action against that person and prove it was them in court.
Hello Ms. Potts. I’m your insurance adjuster. So you are saying this damage to the floor, windows and the sign happened during the attack on New York? Unfortunately, that damage is counted as an act of war and is not covered in your policy. The damage to the floor happened before that? When Dr. Banner repeatedly slammed Loki into the floor? So the floor was damaged when Loki hit the floor. Well, then that damage will be considered an Act of god and that is also not covered.
I had to look up Chekhov’s Gun.
thought it was some sort of Star Trek reference.
Nope. Anton Chekhov :)
Well there’s Chekhov’s Gun: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun
and Chekov’s Gun: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/ChekovsGun
Similar, but totally different.
The second one’s basically a Trek joke, because Chekhov carried around his gun but it literally had nothing to do with the story :)
Which made Chekhov’s gun NOT chekhov’s gun hehe.
…and the gun, he found on the ground?
‘Spectre of the Gun’ where he picks up a gun for that planet which recreates the shootout at the OK Corral.
I don’t remember if he picked up the gun from the ground or if they just had the guns on them right away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPRFdoAmGzs
You’re thinking of Chekov’s SUV.
(What? Too soon?)
Little bit…
… is dead. She was a casualty of the Global Slaughter in Requiem, in Day 2 of the Month of Second Sowing, 6564, http://requiem.spiderforest.com/?comic=2021-05-28
Okay, what?
Actually, if we’re talking about characters with the name “Little Bit”, Spike nicknamed Dawn that from time to time on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, as in-
“Fine. I hope you dance ’til you fry. You and the little bit.” (from the episode “Once More With Feeling”)
There’s obviously more than one little bit…
You do have a point, although I confess to almost total ignorance of the Buffy-verse, which while fantastical is not what I consider SF. (My daughter IS a big fan, but she lacks consideration of proper SF.)
“Once More With Feeling”… That was the song and dance episode, yes? We have the CD and it’s not bad entertainment.
Ehh, the Chicxulub crater, having happened ~66 million years ago, is currently ~500 meters underneath the ocean floor, don’t know about the land. As is typical from sunlight requiring coral, Scorpion reef is in shallow water near islands owned by Mexico so it is NOT in international waters, despite the distance from mainland.
And while a bit of erosion is possible 500m of it in any one place would be ridiculous, the K-T event was hot enough to melt stone, shock-metamorph crystals and potentially para-boil the surrounding sea. It was also followed by, best guesses, about 3-6 megatsunamis from instantly boiling seas, collapsing seas, churning seas and rockslides soon after the event. IF an alien spaceship alloy could survive those temperatures and WEREN’T buried underneath the center uplift, they’d become ejecta if fractured and be churned away into the open ocean by tsunami activity if not.
Given all of that, I find a surface dive yielding any Chicxlub related remains directly to be highly improbable. The orbs themselves had yet to have a max speed of mach 7, laughable to space, and the aetherium gateways were not unlocked. The orbs themselves had to have been delivered via spaceship, not delivering themselves. The greyed out Earth from the prior locations tab of the fly ball could indicate a warp failure or a crash landing, but thats speculation.
While the neutron star within Fracture Station would certainly have the lonjevity to be that old, the station shell surrounding it would have to have an incredible bout of luck, genius and intergalactic cooperation to have survived that long in the galactic political climate. Even if other sentient species could have a far more stable sort of culture than we do, that wouldn’t include all aliens with access to it. And the orb display of Fracture hadn’t much changed from the reality either, which would probably not be the case for any extremely old base of the nature.
So I’d say, while not impossible in this scenario, the fact of fracture station being the last destination of the orbs, plus the ocean floor level of the potential wreck, points to a far more recent crash. Geologically speaking in general terms, probably would have to be less than a million years per 10 meters of any potential sediment deposit erosion.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GC006143
Which doesn’t rule much out. Plus, there’s been increasing debate towards the large igneous province formed by basalt flow volcanism n India, Deccan Traps, to be the greater **long term** impact on worldwide climate than the K-T impactor. But, yeah, put my vote towards that all being at least circumstancial rather than originating.
Unless there is a PPO upgrade that is more powerful than a meteor strike…….. And the previous user was to stupid to know about “Safe minimum distance”.
Of course, the simplest answer is that sea levels have changed (The British Isles and Europe used to be connected a few thousand years ago, like less than 20,000 years). Then continental drift and erosion. Also, there is no guarantee that Sydney found the orbs in the same location as they were originally left (ocean currents probably moved them a bit.)
Really, there is no way to know exactly what Earth looked like 65million years ago without a time machine. Our best guesses are probably a decent way off.
As for “why they weren’t buried under then molten crust”. The orbs might have a “Orb Survival/Recovery” feature that prevents them from being lost like that. Maybe they float on magma, or have a basic ability to head towards the surface.
They are “Nth” tech after all. Like the “Heisenberg compensator” from Star Trek to justify how Transporters work, Technobabble solves many plot holes.
yeah one of the rampant speculation betting pool options *if the intel was allowed to leave the room* would probably be the KT Boundary event being caused by a sapient saurian who found the orbs before *Nth tech, no telling how long ago or recent it was, even 3rd tier *Ascended tech* has a habit of lasting millions of years and still being (mostly) functional, go to Ascended + and chances are the tech was made to LAST,
anywho sapient saurian aims fully charged *or decently stronger* PPO down while floating at what they thought was a safe distance only to cause a massive crater and be killed by debris, the orbs get ejected high into the air and don’t come down until late enough to end up on the surface…which is still a stretch.
the possible betting pool options would probably need two categors *related to KT Boundary event* and *came later*
KT side stuff like components of bio-ship that crashed, saurain super self destruct, battle between old user and something else, ect…
Not KT side, alien tourists checking out reef left it there (and numerous variations on the specifics there from swiss army knife too old components of a control device ejected for new ones to be installed, too a child’s toy…
(honestly some of this could even depend on how Ascended +, mean if a high third tier like Valeen or some of the First Ones in Babylon 5 it would most likely be crashed ship or lost components from something else. But if talking closer to Q *genuine 4th or 5th tier civilization* might be put there on purpose to test humanity or something…but a few higher dimension beings storylines with things that exist in different laws of physics (Ben 10 the higher dimension beings episode with the shapechanging unstoppable *toy*, or something the Celestial Sapiens made)…or the insane 7th or higher (universe and multiverse makers, write their own laws of physics…chances are any given universe or set them may only know one…imagine a “space” where Azathoth is taking a nap, while the Lord of Nightmares is contemplating (also note Slayers was a fantasy world, but the Lord of Nightmares made tech in Lost Universe *instead of elder gods they were ancient ultra tech ships*,; and the Chousin from Tenchi Muyo (who also made various tech or things other species could only identify as tech or magic like the Juraian trees, Ryo-Ohki, and the distorted space base and guardians of Tokimi.
to use better known anime examples, sure go through enough sci-fi books and plenty more examples show up.
I’m up for the KT event being the sftermath of of the nth tech battle that deestroyed the the planet that used to be where the asteroid belt is now, and gave earth its moon.
The K-T event did not create the asteroid belt, nor did it create the Earth’s moon.
You’re thinking of Theia, which is a hypothesized ancient planet which collided with Earth at juuuuuuuuuuuust the right angle to not destroy Earth completely, but enough to break off enough of it that it formed an unusually large moon around Earth, given Earth’s size.
As for the asteroid belt, that was never actually a planet. It was just planetesimals that had too much orbital energy to accrete into a planet like the rest of the dust and rocks that formed the other planets, but were close enough to the Sun to not lose orbit around it. Basically the asteroid belt are leftover pieces. :)
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and caused the K-T event most likely came from the Oort Cloud (a second asteroid belt about a 100,000 AU (4.6 trillion miles) from the sun (Sol). The asteroid belt is only about 2.2 AU from the sun (Sol). For comparison, Earth is 1 AU from the sun (91.41 million miles).
I keep seeing people say that “Certain features of the orbs were not yet unlocked” yada-yada-yada…
Sure, they haven’t been unlocked for “Syndey”. I think it’s entirely probable that these things unlock on a per-user basis. If a new user was suddenly interlinked with all this functionality like Aetherium Tunnels and PPO super-boomy-settings, they would almost certainly destroy both themselves and anyone around them.
As far as the orbs causing the K-T Event, I find it more probable that the Orb user at the time may have been attempting to defend the biosphere from the impact, rather than causing it, but failed. (Perhaps betrayal, perhaps self-sacrifice, who knows).
Orbs then go into default non-user standby mode which includes a function that forces them to extrude through solid objects away from a gravity source, until a new user is registered, at which time it goes back into user-mode, and all the functions have to be unlocked again, if the user was not previously registered.
That, or the pips “decay” as time passes without a valid user. Or even both, we really don’t know enough to do more than speculate. Though obviously if the FTL portals had an existing “travel history” then it was unlocked at SOME POINT and subsequently locked again in the intervening time.
Heck, the “skill tree” might even be made up specifically for Sydney’s benefit, pulling up imagery she has familiarity with. Although it would be concerning if the orbs have sufficient access to her memories to do that…
And don’t forget that every Upgrade Syddles has been under pressure of some kind, not least getting to (say, Maxi) for advice on which to choose as well as a crowd of admirers all telling her different options they think she should choose.
There’s also the possibility that the orbs were losing skill points during the time they were unclaimed, could be they were maxed out when they were dropped on Earth, and are at their current level due to the time span.
I just assumed the orbs “reset” to a default state when the previous owner died, and they give you new skill points when you master enough of their current functions to be considered reasonably proficient. Sydney got her first skill point when she first really have the Pew Pew orb a workout, becoming confident enough it its use to easily override the “safety” system built in. She got another point when she made use of the new function she’d bought (The Lightbee teleport) and more when she used it and the fly orb in combat, and so on.
If the Gateway hadn’t been previously unlocked at some point, how did it have both Fracture and Dirt entered into it’s database?
“… Scorpion reef is in shallow water near islands owned by Mexico so it is NOT in international waters, despite the distance from mainland. ”
Well, “near” is indeed relative. The nearest “islands” to Scorpion Reef are centered about 101 miles west by south from the reef, about 118 miles NW from Progreso. These consist of 5 “lumps”, only one of which actually breaks water, and all are (as far as Google is concerned) unnamed.
The next “nearest” are a collection of widely separated “lumps”and shallows about 112 miles Nor’West by west from Campeche, and — again — none have been named according to Google.
However, all these features ARE within Mexico’s 200 mile maritime economic zone, which would be important if Syddles was or is conducting a business extracting wealth from (in this case) Scorpion Reef. Which she is not.
… it’s not like the concept _requires_ time travel. Doesn’t mean_Sydney_ was the Orb Wielder who created the Chicxullub Crater, it could have been her predecessor who was texting and driving/Made a wrong turn at Albuquerque
Or Chicxulub could be what the orbs did when their previous owner was killed. It’s not like they’d be the first bit of hardware to have a “self-destruct” to make sure they don’t fall into the hands of the enemy. Blowing the enemy into smithereens is just a strategic bonus, and most of the extant biosphere of the planet where it happens is just collateral damage.
Which, if people discover it, might make them re-consider the use of Syd as a strategic asset. Because they certainly wouldn’t want her killed by some *random* person in that case.
A self-destruct to make sure they don’t fall into the hands of the enemy doesn’t fit when you consider that the orbs are still here, and did in fact all into the hands of Sydney (who, while not an enemy, is not exactly an ally either).
I think they’re blowing this out of proportion. This is high-level army levels of classified. In that sphere they’re more concerned about people knowing which international laws they break, rather than breaking international law, or even people knowing that they break international laws on paper, without an example. Keep it classified, and this will go smoothly. Even if she had directly stolen it from someone in Mexico, with much violence, it’s not like they would tell Mexican officials about it.
This was also by no means salvage from a Mexican citizen or a Mexican natural resource, it just happened to fall there when some alien abandoned/gave them through an (assumed) error. Hell, a time-travelling Sydney might even have done it specifically to help herself. All I’m saying is, if Mexico even starts shit, they’ll get a swift “haha lol nope”.
It’s not like they’ve much room to criticize her in any case. That was long before her public debut of her power orbs when she was a complete civilian and like she points out she can’t (so far as she knows at least) transfer them to anyone else and certainly can’t remain in Mexico just because she found some stuff she took home as very clingy souvenirs.
I mean an entire chekov’s armory can probably make plenty of sense for any character that’s expected to be at severe risk.
Bond doesn’t need to use every single gadget he’s given, and would probably appreciate a standardized set of goodies to keep him alive when he’s not in precisely the right circumstance to use his niche gadgets.
The Orbs could not have caused the K-T Event. The characteristic “signal” that led to the Alvarez’ asteroid impact hypothesis was the elevated level of Iridium in the layer of sediment that marks the K-T boundary. Since Iridium does not appear naturally on earth except in association with meteorites, and considering the total amount of Iridium in the K-T boundary sediment worldwide, that meant that it had to have been a truly massive impact (the Chicxulub asteroid’s estimated diameter, had it been a sphere, was 10km). It is hard to imagine any sort of spacecraft that large, and if it had been a spaceship, it would have had to have been considerably bigger than 10km, if there were crew spaces in it.
Unless the PPO has a “Meteor Strike” upgrade…….. Or the previous user tried to wipe-out all life on Earth for some reason and towed an asteroid to throw at Earth.
yeah but when you look at the specific details and then have to start adding what-ifs, it just breaks it apart further.
because one understandable event through accident or malice suddenly has a dozen extra moving parts, some of which tend to end up self defeating like…the original idea as direct as it is would work, but this piece of evicence suggests another cause; but then add *what if the perpetrator did this as well to cover up their tracks*, you can end up with…the first thing would have already covered up their tracks, the second thing would have just been extra and not even needed them.
imagine claiming a pyrokinetic set fire to someone’s truck.
but then find out that a storm blew over a telephone pole that landed on the truck, cracking the fuel tank which leaked and a spark from the wires ignited the fuel.
so then to try and keep the blame on the Pyrokinetic you claim they went out during the storm and pushed the telephone pole over onto the truck to cover their tracks.
Perhaps the Orbs’ prior user needed a truly large non-nuclear explosion for something and was familiar with the K-T Event – quick hop into Time Travel mode and there we go! The orbs don’t need to have been the cause to have had reason to be present.
difficult to imagine a spaceship that large…by the standard of the Skylark series, a ship that size is tiny. iirc, Seaton’s yacht is the size of a planet. Note also Weber’s Dahak series, in which the moon is a starship with a thin layer of camouflage. Then we reach Taurus publication’s Andromeda series, in which warships are multiple light years long, and Clarke’s Childhood’s End, in which civilization’s warship — we never see it — is a star cluster.
we’ve already seen a ship that big in the comic and the Aliens on it attacked Syd on sight of the orbs
You prowill haven, Sydney. You prowill haven.
I finally got to use time travel grammar! Yay!
Sydney Scoville will-on haven when destroy the Earth.
I personally think an attack against the Orb wielder was what created the crater. It might just have been big enough to pop through Sydney’s shield.
imagining previous orb wielder fighting Overlord Laharl who uses Meteor Impact to finish them off.
FATALITY!!!!!!!
Next event Global fight with Sub-Zero
Could it be more like the Abin Sur incident? The orb wielder is attacked while travelling near a back-water solar system and tries to made a controlled landing on a habitable planet but loses it due to his/her/its injuries and crashes in the water instead, fatally injuring him/her/it. The shooting star and tsunami freaks out the Maya in the area as they thought their calendar should predict all the celestial events, but not this one. Unlike a power ring, which goes out looking for a fearless one, the orbs wait a thousand years for their next compatible consciousness to come along. Dolphins don’t count because they can’t hold the orbs.
Let the rampant speculation continue. Heh,
if this wasn’t confined to one room could probably get another Archon betting pool (like Varia’s origin, probably one for origin of the Orbs too, so a new betting pool of
*Were the Orbs related to the KT Boundary Event?
a column for ways it could be, and a column for the location is coincidence and various other ways they got there.
imagine column 2 would just be the same ideas for how they got in the Florida Keys only switched over Yucatan scorpion reef.
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Won’t give money to that scum sucking rat’s patiootie under any circumstances.
Why does it seem that most people commenting think if the orbs were involved in the extinction of the dinosaurs that Sydney was also it might have just been them arriving at earth either traveling really fast on their own or piloted by their original owner going to fast takes a left at mars and bam runs straight into the earth, honest officer the planet just jumped out of nowhere.
Eh. Come on. If Scoville wanted to cause the K-T event — or for that matter stage a reenactment – she could do it with no PPO required. She could even have done it with the orbs in the configuration they had when she found them.
Shield+Fly, alternating with Shield+Air — take a long trip into space. (Pre-flyball upgrade this is going to take at least weeks, but it’s do-able.) Find a 10-km rock. Shieldball+airball alternating with shieldball+tentacleball: shove the rock. If Tentacleball can lift about 16 tons under earth gravity, she can exert about 156800 newtons of force.
Back-of-the napkin calculations say that a 10km sphere masses around 5e15 kg. So with that amount of force she gets 3.136e-11 m/s acceleration. Which isn’t much, but if she pushes for a couple of weeks she can change its vector by four one hundredths of a millimeter per second.
And believe it or not, that really is all it takes, if having the thing hit Earth is your goal. You just have to wait a couple hundred years before it hits.
But she has to make sure it will hit in exactly the right spot. That takes a lot more cipherin’
Or alternatively just go out into space turn around and hit the earth with the shield up it is not like there is an identifiable big rock left at the bottom of the crater as it is so what is really the difference between a big rock hitting the earth at thousands of mph and a smaller impenetrable shield hitting at 5 or 10 times that or however fast it would need to be to cause that level of explosion.
There isn’t a single identifiable chunk of rock in the crater, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be detected. Others on this page have mentioned the worldwide Iridium deposits traced to the parts of the rock that evaporated on its way through the atmosphere and in the heat of the impact. I know that in some other impact craters much of the impactor material can still be detected underground – the impact melted the impactor and the target, but they re-solidified while still distinguishably different in composition. I’m not sure whether the geography around Chicxulub is amenable to those measurements, whether they’ve been tried yet if so, and if so what the result was.
Love the implication that maybe the crater wasn’t caused by a meteor but possibly a globally catastrophic battle involving the previous orbs wielder or a fight for the orbs that ended in mutual destruction.
the squidwards. the orbital bonbardment nuke thing that nuked the shield almost. original owner didnt have the extra pip in shield health. but was able to take down the capital or somthing and thus astroid impact was possibly squidwards ship or one of their capital ships. thus why squidwards freaked out over the orbs. the “the guy that killed grandpa is back!” reaction
Anyone else feel like this is gonna tie in with Sciona real soon?
There are two sides to Chekhov’s Gun (or barrels if you want to pun).
On the one hand, it’s a warning against deus ex machina – if you’re going to rely on something to resolve the plot, you should generally establish that thing in advance in some way, in order to make it a satisfying ending.
On the other hand, it’s an appeal to parsimony – if you’re going to draw attention to something early in the story, then it should have some payoff or resolution later. For example, in the movie Free Guy, at one point a big thing is made of Guy jumping to grab a wrecking ball, missing, and falling. It turns out, that was just a throwaway gag and never comes up again, despite having been the perfect setup to later show how far he’s come by letting him repeat a similar stunt, but this time catch the ball and swing to safety. Having elements that are given a lot of attention early, making them seem important, but then are never seen again, makes it seem like the author forgot their plans – assuming the audience notices – and then didn’t go back to change the earlier portion.
Of course, too strict adherence to both barrels of Chekhov’s Gun does mean that a savvy audience can anticipate what’s coming, simply by noticing what’s given attention, and what’s not, but that’s still better than having, say, Superman suddenly swoop in and fix everything to wrap up a story that hasn’t even hinted at being set in the DC Universe.
Exactly. And at the time he wrote this European theater in general and Russian in particular was given to wretched excess
“What do you think is going to happen now, smart guy?”
Sounds like sequels are already in the works…
Also, birds are NOT dinosaurs, they just evolved from one branch of the dinosaurs.
They are defined, as Dinosaurs!!!
They evolved from dinosaurs, therefore they are dinosaurs. That’s how clades work.
being a branch of dinosaurs makes them dinosaurs.
that is like saying primates are not mammals they just evolved from a branch of mammals.
Antiques Roadshow – Chekhov’s Gun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOvv_b9TpY
At this point, I expect to find out that Deus started a “Save the reefs!” campaign several months ago, and one of the initial test sites was the Scorpion Reef. Just because Archon forgot to get details doesn’t mean he didn’t do research and figure it out. And now they’ll need to partner with him as he’s looking over the entire expanse but they can now pinpoint it.
basic research, check credit history, oh…in the time frame they went to the Yucatan….
best part if he didn’t know the Florida Keys part because THAT had been kept top secret so he thought he knew something they also knew but didn’t tell him, but he really knew something they didn’t know because Sidney didn’t tell them.
I’d been assuming basic research, check credit history, oh…. in the time frame they went to the Florida Keys and rented a boat…..
It would be interesting if Arc Dark actually did look it up but was ordered to keep quiet already for national security reasons and/or a test to see how long till Sidney comes clean or Arc-Swat figures it out.
I can definitely see this happening, we already know Deus did extensive research on Max’s background so it’s safe to assume he’s done it for all notable supers he might someday hire or compete with. Money really is the best superpower.
Fun fact, Hero Insurance does exist in real life. Kinda. Good Samaritan Laws means that you cannot be sued for accidental damage caused while trying to save someone’s life.
Also, Arianna would make EXTRA SURE that ARC and all of its divisions get coverage for every employee. Military, civilian, and otherwise. No chances taken whatsoever.
You know, I bet there may be some one that can scan past events of an area to see what may have happened there
the look on everyone’s face at the last panel: you could have something to do with it, we just don’t know yet.
Personally its not like Mexico would be able to do anything anyway other then whine that they didn’t get it or know about it, since she found them off the coast of that place it should count as legal salvage, I mean its not really going to matter since she can’t get them off and she is a US citizen. As for the dinosaur bit, maybe that crater is from a ship crashing not from a meteor.
Why not both? If you had orbs that mimic the effects of a space ship why would you bother actually building or buying one? Just use whatever chunk of rock is easily acquired or lightly defended, toss a shield up around it, turn on some atmosphere and causeway away. The ship is the asteroid that crashed, possibly through a temporal error or something, but that would also explain why there was no visible alien ship wreckage. Just more space rock.
I suggested that mainly because how could you carry cargo, rescue populations, Explore a new-“ish” galaxy, etc… with the serious limitations a single user could do alone. even as powerful a nth tech person could be some things require space to do or contain things that we just don’t know of or imagine. For all we know the orbs could be used by a single person or been “plugged in” a command console.
Hmm both comments above offer good points and insights that make sense.
with a bunch of Supers and aliens it probably would not be hard for then to reexamine the site and no one even know they were there.
Personally, when I saw the Chekov’s Gun definition, my mind thought they should have a Chekov’s Trailer. Chekov’s trailer is basically a scene in the trailer of a movie which sets up the person or prop in another movie or series. Effectively, what the MCU is doing with the White Widow in the Black Widow movie and the first season of Hawkeye.
And NOW we know what happens using the Aetherium Causeway blind. It also explains why no similar artifacts are known… 65 million years on a backwater could EASILY make them the last of their kind anywhere.
WOW… if I’m right, those things are DURABLE…
Why are they worried about freaking Mexico of all nations? Seriously they couldn’t do a damn thing even if they wanted to in regards to the Orbs if they wanted them back unless they want to remember Uncle Sam slapping them in the face.
CALLED IT!!
Kind of surprised of all the theories being grabbed on we aren’t seeing more of the “Washu’s Crater” type of theory
(context, mad scientist Washu blew up a nice sized crated in a ring world due to an experiment)
so rather than something crashing into Earth or a battler, there was an outpost on Earth, maybe some civilization studying the orbs alongside other dangerous items they found from precursor civilizations, something went wrong and the lab exploded scattering the more durable artifacts and spreading iridium all over the Earth due to the lab’s structure and fuel supply.
Why to have a Physical Ship,
In addition to the Orbs
The Orbs look to shut down when the User Sleeps
Bulk Cargo, Passengers
A Place to Keep Your Stuff ;)
Yeah, Sydney and the Chicxulub Crater. I can totally see that.
The Telepresence/Truesight/Teleport Orb
Sucks as a Comm Function
It is far more suitable for First Contact and Away Missions
In the second panel Sydney says she can’t make the orbs “de-orbit her” but she kept them in a tube when we first met her. They didn’t orbit her in the conference room debriefing until she touched them to reactivate them. Since she knew what most of the orbs did, she was clearly experimenting with them beforehand. It seems that she can turn off the orbiting and put them into a kind of “sleep mode”.
Implicitly by “De-Orbit”
She meant disconnect sufficiently to walk away from them,
She Can Control where they are within the allowed range Currently…
Default Seems to be Orbiting,
But I suspect that is A Subconscious Issue from Sydney
How Much control She had That First Day….
Is Another Issue
Regarding how much her subconscious controls the Orbs:
She’s a gamer. D&D.
Ioun Stones orbit the head. The Orbs orbit her head.
Ioun Stone Users can grab their stones and store them on their bodies, but they don’t work then. Just like the Orbs.
Ioun Stones resist others moving them. See above.
Sydney is basically treating them as Ioun Stones, so they act like Ioun Stones.