Grrl Power #1094 – Exodon’t
I’ve lived in Texas for 40 years and to this day if someone says “Texas” my first thought is of desert and cactus. Granted, I’m old enough that when I was a kid, there were still cowboy shows on TV. They were mostly syndicated reruns, but you if you were flipping through the 4-6 available channels at the right time, you could watch the Lone Ranger in glorious black and white. I’m not sure where most westerns actually took place, but Texas was often mentioned. Man, I’m glad we’re past the cowboy obsession. I never was or will be a fan of westerns.
And sure, if you drive far enough west through Texas, there’s plenty of desert and cactus, but growing up in a suburb just north of Houston, it was evergreens all the way to the horizon. People joke about whatever place they live only having two seasons. In Houston, it was “Summer” and “two weeks of winter,” but it was an extra kick in the teeth that the leaves didn’t even turn.
Oh wait, I take that back. In addition to evergreens, there were gumball trees. Or technically they’re called Sweetgums, and each and every one of them dropped hundreds of trillions of these caltrop things all over the place. Walking through your yard barefoot was a hazardous prospect to say the least. But at least their leaves turned.
I’m sure a lot of places are just fixed in people’s mind thanks to media representation. If you say “LA” to me, I generally think of people roller skating near the beach, homeless people, and earthquakes. Oh, and also that concrete spillway where the T-1000 chased John Connor, and also the paved over LA River where the shuttle crash landed in The Core, which is one of my favorite dumb disaster movies.
I tried to do “air particles streaking past” to indicate motion in a few panels there, but looking at it now, it does kind of appear as though Sydney flew them through a swarm of locust at about 300 miles per hour, doesn’t it? Well, I’ll dial it in eventually.
The October Vote Incentive is actually up!
Why did it take so long? I couldn’t tell you. Well, I hand drew the lace on Lorlara’s body stocking, so that took about an hour by itself. Anyway, it’s likely the next one will be single character, and hopefully it won’t be so late. Usually with fewer characters I can do more outfit variants but we’ll see.
So I have enough “Blue Babes” to do a theme. Eventually I’ll be able to fill in the whole rainbow of my own characters. I did a rainbow lineup previously for those who hadn’t seen it. I’d love to revisit that one of these days.
Enjoy variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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People are commenting about the orbs running out of power, but I doubt it.
Sydney glassing the desert couldn’t have been that much more demanding than blowing up waves and waves of attack fighters, while flying around at hyper-sonic speeds, after destroying two of Cthulhu’s cousins and tanking mountain-leveling barrages that tax her shield to its limit, and afterwards opening a hyperspace-wormhole-whatever for interstellar travel.
And she took it slow and helped out the damage control brigade for quite a while since then, which is more rest than she (and mainly her Orbs) had until Fracture Station during her stunt in space.
Texting on your phone can’t be that much more demanding than playing video games with the backlight set to full… Yet it does use power, and unless you charged in the intervening time between that, then you can still run out of power… if they need an external energy source to charge from, she hasn’t been charging them…
I think it is because she has not gotten a level up. and she is annoyed by it.
I agree. What she did should have resulted in at least one point. She used the PPO in a clearly different way, and ground on some other stuff.
Or it could be that using the Orbs adapts the user in a measurable way, and it allows options to unlock as it’s less the orbs building up to something, but rather detecting if the user can SUSTAIN a new link with the things (or a reinforced link, for the high-speed travel).
I think the orbs are potentially sensing another orb or orb related technology
Turns out, how you charge them is eating spicey food. And the food in Gatlyn just wasn’t cutting it.
I was going to comment this! Anyone but Sydney would have trouble giving the orbs enough power to even float, but Sydney can glass an entire desert (she might have to go back to fracture station for a full refuel)
Extended use of the Fly ball while carrying extra mass may drain its Capacitor quickly. I presume the orbs, while their power source may be virtually infinite, may have limits on how much they can store at a time and need to refill their internal storage periodically. We saw this kind of effect back when Captain Cthulhu was nuking the shield on the Alari homeworld, where the shield had red indicators on it, probably to show that it had been severely drained, and slowly went back to a solid blue.
You mean it has a capacitor?
Possible.
But then she hasn’t used the fly-orb in a while, as she was being flown by “Disease Carrier”.
Nth tech. There’s no way that flying a couple hundred kilograms takes as much power as the PPO or opening a stargate.
I think she should have a point to spend. She thinks she should have a point to spend. But do the ORBS think she has a point to spend?
It may be Anvil leeching leeching kinetic energy unconciously. It would slow down the bubble, which tells Sydney that the speed is strangely suboptimal compared to the speed dial => “Something’s wrong”.
It could also be a reaaaaally bad thing, since we could have an “overcharged” Anvil, aka “ballistic level threat”…
This sounds very reasonable, but only if we treat anvil’s power to leech kinetic energy a passive skill that she may use without a deliberate intention.
But if that were happening, Anvil would be charging up. And given the amount of power necessary to push a ball that size through the atmosphere at mach 10, she’d have charged up enough to have noticed it in seconds.
That didnt happen on the trip TO Galytn though. Anvil was in the shield during that as well.
Let’s play what if, recharge makes sense, But what if there is reason the previous holder visited earth. Plate tetonics puts senegal near the site the orbs were found. And we know they have been here a while
No, sorry, plate tectonics does not say that… at all… You’d be right if the previous owner died during Pangea, but that was 300-200 million years ago and the previous owner died ~64-66 million years ago. The continents were mostly the same as they are now 64-66 years ago, just slightly but still noticeably slightly closer together, and with more water due to no ice caps.
But remember, she wasn’t in the Flordia keys, but “In the Flordia keys”, and there’s the question of WHY the orbs were there. They may not have been around during Pangea, but something related to them may have been. Also, who’s to say the previous owner wasn’t just a fisherman who fished them up and died in a crashing wave three seconds later?
>and the previous owner died ~64-66 million years ago.
whered you pull that from?
The current assumption is a connection to the K-T event, given the proximity of Halo’s discovery to the Chicxulub crater.
the previous owner died ~64-66 million years ago.
So who is the hidden figure in the first panel?
Good eye! I’m curious now, too
Probably a Tamer: Enhancer cameo. xD
It’s Lara Croft from Tomb Raider.
Human for scale? Or perhaps an origin story in the making.
It’s Sydney. From the future. There can be only one set of Orbs at a time, and she got stuck there due to shenanigans. Now she’s just waiting until the original gets sent back like she was, and the Orbs will ‘snap’ to her.
Tarzan and jane
Appears to be walking on a Tree branch. Tarzan?
Dave lives Texas close to me, in the same town (not going to say which town to preserve his anonymity).
Anywho I used my Patreon account and blown up as far as it will go revealed a tan woman in a khaki tank top and brown shorts, carrying a handgun, except for the skin tone it looks like a Laura Kroft (sp?) homage.
Ding!
Funnily enough me too, but I’m on the south side. XD Wouldn’t exactly call it a “Town” though.
its more of a traffic farm
What about DART?
as with a lot of things. its too small and too many think mass transit is beneath them. they will drive thier dual axle pickup into downtown and complain that the lanes are to narrow, and they can park their ‘little mule’ anywhere.
Truly. A vision impaired friend (no drivers license) Lived in Dallas about 20 years ago. The Dart ran close to his apartment building and had a stop close to his place of work and someplace where he could get groceries. Anything else was get a taxi or walk. It’s a real contrast to someplace like New York where the Subway is often the most convenient way to get around.
I think they’re actually in the right area for George of the Jungle…
Could be wrong, but look kinda like Lara Croft
Dora Bianchi looking for a new Coffee of Doom branch location.
Where?
And today I found out that I have apparently lived pretty close to DaveB since moving to a suburb north of Houston from the UK 11 years ago!
Oh dear, that looks like a problem. It looks like it’s a level up or it a problem with the orbs, if it is, i guess it would be a hell of a plot hook
Maybe it’s because she defeated an omega level super and didn’t get a single point to spend on the orbs?
same thing with Arizona. people just think desert, but the only biome we don’t have that is present in the United States as a whole is tundra. and in fact Arizona is the site of most of the largest ponderosa pine tree forest in the world
We got four seasons in Texas: Wet, Hot, Wet *and* Hot, and February.
East Texas gets the Great Piny Woods, Which gradually sink into bayous the closer you get to the Sabine river, especially southeast Texas along I-10 east of Houston to Beaumont and the Golden Triangle area.
Central Texas is the great plains region everyone is so familiar with, cattle and crops as far as the eye can see, with pumpjacks dotting the landscape discreetly. We call ’em ‘Nodding Donkeys’ ’round these parts.
Parts of West Texas though, get into scrubland and eventually outright desert.
Seriously?
Amarillo isn’t Houston, and the climate is VERY different. And, have you ever heard of the Hill Country? That’s at least a third of Central Texas, and not known for it’s plains.
If you want the scrub from the movies (which, prior to the 90’s, were almost certainly shot in CA or AZ), that’s South Texas & West Texas. Except that there was so much rain for a few years in ST that it messed things up.
As for weather, I liked to explain to folks that in Austin, we _did_ in fact get winter, and it can be pretty rough. It’s usually on a Tuesday.
Girls, girls, you’re both pretty. Can I go home now?
> As for weather, I liked to explain to folks that in Austin, we _did_ in fact get winter, and it can be pretty rough. It’s usually on a Tuesday.
Heh. +1 internet for the very understated humor, good person.
For those not in the know: back in February of 2021, a series of winter storms swept through Texas. They were bad enough that the Texas power grid crashed. (Amusingly, the renewables handled it much better[1] but got most of the blame from conservatives.) Somewhere between 250 and 700 people died as a direct result of the crisis, the large spread depending on what you count as a ‘direct result’.
The problem was exacerbated by the fact that Texas insists on having an isolated power grid so that they aren’t subject to federal regulation. Had this happened elsewhere in the country the power grid would have been able to draw from surrounding states meaning that there would have been fewer blackouts and fewer deaths. (Although likely still some, as some transmission lines would still have been downed.)
It’s a good thing that whole ‘climate change’ thing is a complete hoax. If it were real then the Texas power companies might have needed to address the fact that unusual weather is becoming more common and storms are becoming more severe on average. Oops, I meant to say “would be becoming”, since that whole climate change thing is a myth. Yup. Complete myth put out by Big Science because…uh…reasons? Maybe they want to terk ar guns? Even if it is happening, it definitely has nothing to do with fossil fuels or human activity and there’s no reason that Texas should change anything! I’m sure nothing like this will ever happen again, despite the steadily increasing number of major storms, hurricanes, and wildfires that are sweeping the country.[2]
[1] On Feb 15, 30GW of thermal power (oil, gas, nuclear) were offline and 16GW of renewable power were offline. The next day, 45GW (+50%) of thermal were offline and 18GW (+12.5%) of renewable power were offline. The wind-power component of the renewables would have been less affected had the power companies bothered winterizing their equipment.
[2] Because Poe’s Law is a thing: yes, this is sarcasm. Climate change is absolutely real, and absolutely caused by humans, despite what American conservatives would like to claim.
In Kansas, we don’t joke about two seasons. We have four seasons, they just don’t occur seasonally much. They like to mingle and get frisky. High of 50 one day, overnight freeze, next day it’s 88 and 70 overnight, and so on. We get cold dry air from Canada or warm wet air from the Gulf of Mexico depending on the pressure systems. Of course, when a daddy cold air front really loves a mommy warm air front, sometimes they get together and make baby tornadoes. So, y’know, that’s fun.
Our go-to weather jokes are “If you don’t like the weather, wait fifteen minutes. It’ll change.” and “Sometimes when it rains, both barrels get wet.” (The underlying joke is that rainstorms in Kansas are often so oddly behaved that you could lean a double-barreled shotgun up against a fence and only end up with rain in one barrel after the storm; I have actually watched it rain on my neighbor’s house while I mowed our lawn, which stayed bone dry the whole time.)
Kansas, and the prairies north of Kansas right up to the Arctic circle. Granted, we usually get spring/summer blizzards or golf sized hail more often than tornadoes, but Black Friday (major tornado that went through a large part of Edmonton including a trailer park) has a very different meaning for Edmonton folk over 40 than a series of sales in November. Early July seems to be especially fond of the ‘rain, sun hail, sun, sleet, your dad’s bald head is neon red and going to peel… sort of weather where the temperature will go between 15°C and 30°C in 20-30 minute intervals. An sometimes worse in rural areas.
The power grid crash was a power grid crash. Literally not enough wire to get energy from where it was to where it needed to go. Being controlled from outside the state would not have changed that.
At the moment we have a huge power surplus in the windy northwest of Texas. SO, yes, they did fine, but they were of no use because they’ve been built where they need a huge infrastructure investment to move that power out to where it can be used. They need to build more transmission lines.
There was also something, iirc, about some power generation being offline due to maintenance (?) or unforeseen circumstances. Ah, yes. The 2011 power outage exposed problems in cold weather with production capabilities, and that resulted in recommendations for winterizing much of the equipment, but many of those funds went to bringing on new renewable capacity instead.
That’s not a ding on renewables, per se, it’s just where the government chose to put the money.
The high property damage was largely because it was the longest sub-zero we’ve had in decades (3 to 7 decades depending on where you were in Texas).
I live in the oil patch. I can count about a dozen pump jacks from my front yard. I also live in the windy part of the state and at night I can see the safety beacons on over a hundred wind turbines. They aren’t very pretty but they are the coming thing. They aren’t really a mature technology yet but a big problem is the quality control in the turbines. Over the last decade they have been throwing turbines up as fast as they can go. The ones near the major highways seem to get more maintenance. Recently I drove through rural Knox county and had a look at one of the older windfarms (5-7 years old) About half of the turbines were broke down with stains running all down the tower where the bearing seals on the main shaft had failed. It’s also not unusual to see where one has burned or thrown a blade. I won’t say fraud but there were a lot of state and maybe federal subsidies and I do think a lot of companies jumped on the gravy train. Dal’s point about transmission lines is an important one. The utility companies have been throwing up steel power line towers as fast as they can go but even as of last winter’s freeze there are still a lot of transmission lines, even large ones, that depend on wooden poles. In North Texas we are as likely to get ice as snow and after an ice storm it isn’t unusual to see a lot of wooden poles snapped off. I say all of this in support of the idea that the power grid has to be looked at as a system rather than as points of production.
Sorry, but that is not what happened and not how power grids normally crash. It can, and has, happened that way but it is not the most common reason. Not that power grids fail often nowadays as the engineers have gotten quite good at keeping them running.
The grid needs to carefully balance supply and demand. If the disbalance gets too great the voltage on the powerlines will start to rise (oversupply) or drop (undersupply). The first generally can be easily fixed by the powerplants themselves (though recovering from a forced shutdown may take quite a bit more time).
The second however can cause a lot more problems. A lot of electrical equipment will not handle a low voltage situation well. They may have a circuit in them that trips the equipment off when the voltage too low before it gets so low as to severely damage it.
This is certainly the case for a lot of the equipment involved in transport (like transformers and all the big switching stations). When the voltage drops at some point they will trip a breaker circuit and shut down the equipment the hard way, causing between mild and severe damage in the circuits (a 10,000 volt transformer that is abruptly switched off by a breaker may say damaging discharges, all the way up to fires, from the electricity that suddenly has nowhere to go. The little blue flash you can see in your wall socket writ very large with enough power to supply half a state)
Recovering from such a forced shut down is difficult. Not only must every transformer and every switch and many of the powerlines be inspected for damage and if necessary repaired, you cannot simply switch on these massive powerplants as this will instantly create a situation of extreme over or undersupply (and trip the same breaker circuits that were just repaired).
This is what happened in Texas. The weather, and in particular because the power companies had resisted or outright ignored recommendations that certain equipment had to be winter hardened (against conditions that occured on average every decade in that state) the majority of powerplants were forced to shut down. Nuclear plants could not get enough water too cool the system with their intakes freezing over. Gas plants had certain pumps and nozzles freeze. Coal had trouble with transport as had gas. Solar of course was covered in snow and a lot of the wind turbines that should have been fine and able to supply about half the required electricty could not cope with snow (because the companies wanted to save a few dollars) and had to slow down or shut down entirely as their gear boxes started to freeze.
As a result the supply of electricity dropped dramatically while demand rose to an all time high (everybody switched on their electric heater or the heating circuits on their aircos).
Ercot already had warned well before the storms that demand would peak and supply would likely drop but did not expect the situation to become quite that bad that quickly. When powerplants reported their closer Ercot started ordering load shedding (shutting out first power hungry industries, then residential areas and finally entire counties at a time) staying less than a minute ahead of a forced shutdown of the entire powergrid. What was called rolling blackouts was in reality corporate euphemism for ‘we have lost all control over the grid’.
Had Texas been part of either of the two larger interconnections then it would indeed have been able to receive electricity from parts of the USA not affected by that unusually severe winter storm. There would still have been some problems as a number of high voltage lines were downed in the storm (but not enough to knock out the entire or even meaningful part of the Texas grid), but would indeed at worst have led to a couple of days of rolling blackouts, not the nearly week of complete power loss for most of the state.
Complying with the common sense federal regulations placed on the other two interconnections would also have prevented this disaster, as in that case at least wind and gas would have kept running (and coal plants would have had a bigger reserve to keep running in case of disruption of supply).
Unsurprisingly neither companies nor the state have deigned to learn from 2021. Just as they politely ignored the winter hardening recommendations from very similar disasters in 1989, 2003 and 2011 (well, they did pay the politicians to pass a law that forbids the regulatory agency from issuing binding demands like winter hardening or price controls).
Shneeky got the northern pert of Texas right. The plains end at the Edmund (ton?) Plateau where the hill country starts. East of there is the cross timbers. iirc it’s something like a dozen biozones, and they had the three in the north of Texas correct.
Um, excuse me, in Austin the only seasons we have are Summer, December, January, and February.
Hot is eternal, but wet is really swingy :P
{Shake Shake Shake}
“Outlook uncertain. Ask again later.”
“Also, don’t think about that and look down.”
Yeah I grew up in Maine and most people have know idea that it’s mostly forest with a few towns and small cities around the outside. Fact is it was a major shipbuilding area up until steam power replaced sail. The masts and timber used came directly from these forests. Portland is still an active shipping port and Bath Iron Works builds navy ships. There is even a Navy shipyard.
You think sweetgums are bad to step on, you should try splitting them for firewood. My splitting maul just bounces, I have to use wedges and a sledge hammer, and it’s still a job and a half.
Oak I can split all day. Gum? I split 2-3 chunks and then take a rest.
It is real, I have seen it changing, in my 70+ years!
When Sydney calls for a stop, it’s best to do it. The last thing you need is for the fly ball to suddenly stop working halfway across the Atlantic Ocean.
I think the orbs have a safety that prevents upgrading while in use, just to prevent such a situation. Imagine the mess that would put Sydney in if the orbs decided to upgrade in the middle of the kaiju battle.
Dude…what are you talking about?
Texas is obsessed with the Coyboys…especially aaround Dallas.
Just be sure not to confuse the Cowboys with the truck drivers.
They used to have a ball team by that name. Pretty good one, if i recall my ancient history correctly.
“It there think there is a issue, better stop before trying to cross a large ocean with hours to the nearest landmass” – Pilot Rules.
Since Dabbler is with them, why didn’t they just have her open a magic portal back to HQ instead of taking the time to fly back in the first place?
When did Dabbles develop that ability?
She has magic. Teleports and portals are how she got to Earth in the first place.
When has it even been suggested that Dabbler has the ability to open magic portals, or travels that way?
since she can teleport stuff to and from her lab, it stand that she could teleport herself to it, but she might not be willing to take other people to her secret place
Given that the teleportation is a feature of her cybernetic hand, I’m guessing it’s technological rather than magical. I’m also guessing that it’s not powerful enough to teleport anything very large. In fact, she has explicitly stated so. If she can’t teleport the collapsed stasis pod, which is smaller than Sydney, then she surely can’t teleport herself, let alone multiple people.
if they hit the water i am sure Dab has a suggestive shaped Life raft in her teleport arsenal
Doubles as a flotation device, you mean. It’s called a Mae West for a reason, fun to look up if you don’t know already.
Genre savvy alert? It’s probably nothing… right?
Back when I was reliably running a supers game, I used to pull the old “You’re on a mission and suddenly you’re needed someplace else” trope pretty often – and about half the time it was because the PCs were “getting too close™” to one of the villain plots, so the villains gave them something to be distracted by.
On occasion I did the “I need you here then there then yonder so you don’t mess with my nefarious plot” trope, and it was never once questioned by my group of grad student friends.
Granted, a group I was in once called up the “villain” and asked them how to infiltrate their secret base, so I kind of get it. :D
After having seen the old John Wayne version of “The Alamo”, in which the Alamo is shown in the middle of open, sandy terrain with a small bit of scrub brush, I was surprised when I visited the actual Alamo and found it was a) in the middle of downtown San Antonio, b) was right on a (small) river, and c) the entire region is pretty green and lush, with forests and trees everywhere.
The John Wayne movie was filmed in Brackettville in *west* Texas. West Texas is infamously dry (and a popular site for “Western” movies), while *east* Texas (where the Alamo actually is) has abundant rainfall (at times, way too much) and is pleasantly verdant.
As for the Alamo being in downtown San Antonio (closely crowded by hotels and restaurants), the city grew up around it, although it was in a town of about 2000 even at the time of the famous 1836 battle.
We imagine Africa to be mostly dry because the British loved colonizing deserts, and since most of us in the US only know English, those are the accounts we know best. Or rather, those are the accounts best known by the people who inform our opinions about Africa.
Yeah, no. The Africa movies of the 1950s were almost all set in the jungles, with the porters carrying stuff on their heads, calling the white guys “bwana”, and getting picked off by tigers. Or lions. Or whatevers.
Not, however, hippos or cape buffalos, which are the actual serial killers over there.
Also, the Tarzan movies of the 1930s-50s were set in the African jungles as well.
An example would be the Abbot and Costello movie “Africa Screams” Co-starring Clyde Beatty (Famous for bringing large animals back alive for zoos, etc.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzdhcUg1b34
Almost winter, winter, still winter, construction, if you want to be more specific. Same general idea, but the two extra winter-adjacent seasons with snow really add some punch
In Northern Michigan, where I attended college, it was winter, winter, winter, and 2 months of tough sledding.
First Law of Transportation: The pilot / driver has the final say, period. They’re in charge of safely transporting people. If the Engine Failure lights are flicking on in the cockpit, if the temperature gauge is hitting the red zone on the dashboard, THEY get to say WE ARE STOPPING NOW. (Or Landing Now, as the case may be…if they safely can, of course.)
Sydney knows they need to get back. Sydney also knows that she doesn’t know her orbs all that well. It’s the equivalent of the Check Engine light, and you gotta pull over to, well, check the engine.
↑ This! ↑
I worked on a ground test adapter for a jet engine. when I explain the purpose I usually say something like ‘a Check Engine light at 20,000 feet is a problem.’ as to why they would dismount the engine to test it before flying.
Hmm. Will we finally show that the final ball is a power core?
I’ve lived within 100 miles of that spot you mentioned in Texas all my life, so I get the comment about desert. Despite that, I’ll share the “Two seasons” joke I heard about Alaska.
There are two season in Alaska: Winter and Construction.
From a part of west Texas here, not many cacti “yet” need to go further west, mostly mesquite and scrub officially we’re edge of plains and scrubland. Though there is an amazing site in New Mexico when your driving past desert, cacti, and long cold lava rocks.
So, Anvil absorbs inertia… does that mean if the fly orb gave out, she could absorb Sydney’s & Dabbler’s inertia to keep them from being pavement goo?
Sydney has innate feather fall now and Dabbler knows a feather fall spell (though if I remember correctly, it only affects her). So this particular group wouldn’t be troubled by a sudden drop onto hard ground.
But swimming thousands of miles of open ocean without the orbs would be quite annoying for them.
Sydney has feather fall and Dabbler probably has something she can use in her teleporter arm.
Anvil previously jumped off a roof while holding Sydney, after explaining that she could do exactly that.
Orbs running low on power? Two scenarios:
1. Actually running short of charge due to depletion. Ruh roh. Not good, where/how does one acquire a vast amount of energy to refill them? I’m envisioning something like the “Stargate:Universe” episode where the humans stuck on the ultra-advanced starship they don’t understand managed to drain most of the power. The ship shut down most of its systems and started falling towards a star. The humans expected to die, up until the ship skimmed beneath(!) the surface of the star, opened scoops, and refueled.
2. Out of “action points”, like many online games. “I’m sorry, level 3 newbie, you are only allotted X action points for each [time period], wait until [time] for points refresh, or level up to expand your points pool.” The orbs may limit just how much awesome power a novice can unleash until they prove themselves further.
Speaking of energy sources or recharging, where does Max’s vast energy come from, and can it run out?
“No one’s figured it out yet.“
I despise those gumball trees. I spent ten thousand dollars recently getting them taken off my property. They’re relatively nice looking, but whatever asshole decided the house I bought needed a dozen of them around it can get bent. Their root system is so obnoxious too, if you don’t grind them all the way down you’ll find them re-sprouting from their own roots twenty feet away after you cut them down.
Now that they’re gone though I got some of the forest debris pushed back and you can actually walk around my yard! I wouldn’t recommend doing it barefoot still, but it’s much better than it was!
Too much to read; sorry if this was pointed out already. Art error: she has five orbs floating overhead and two in her hands. Duplicate purple orbs.
Nevermind. I’m a moron. There were always 7.
I will assume given the tech level this isn’t about energy levels, or the orb being cracked, *seeing a tiny passenger inside the orb would be an out in left field*, however assuming this relates somehow to her becoming more attuned with the orbs and getting some kind of feed back she wasn’t getting before. Like something is telling her she isn’t using it to its full potential or there is an upgrade that solves some current situation, or the orbs detect something of interest.
never mind, I just don’t usually like games with fuel restrictions or ammo limitations. Although Mana limitations and skill points are common in games I play. Note to self, just keep thinking of the orbs as toys for larval Nth.
So I’ve been working under the assumption that mysterious orb was cloaking and she has not unlocked visual spectrum filter yet (getting eyes on something in space is very hard and she is a tiny speck)
This opens up the possibility (albeit slim in my mind) that it’s just access to the engine as it were.
Actually nix that, flight orb was already damaged (broken nav log) it’s more likely related to that…
Anyone else notice that the color of her off hand is wrong?
Dave the misconceptions about Texas are world wide. I went to a Scout Wold Jamboree in the early 80s. People always asked where you are from. If I said Texas people wanted to know home many oil wells an cows my family owned. I a made the mistake of saying Dallas, then I got the question of if I knew JR Ewing.
Most of the world thinks the US is much smaller than it is. I have been around tourists from all over the world who had made plans to see the whole US in a couple days, including one who to me they planned to eat lunch at Niagara Falls and then drive to the Grand Canyon for the sunset.
Turns out maps are about the same size no matter what country they depict, so people in say the UK hold up their US map next to their UK map and go “right, I know it’s about 2 hours from here to London, so looks like I can cross 2-3 states in the same time.”
every time people think that just remember them that the entirety of europe can fit inside the US with some room to spare, it really put things into perspective how huge the US is (its basically a continent that wanted to be a country and no one could tell it no)
I think that is mostly because we never defined things like “country” and “state” very well. State is almost always synonymous with country, the only exception that I know of is the USA. That makes me think the USA is not actually a country, it is a federation of countries. But I guess I am being weird again because nobody seems to agree with me.
DaveB, I went to high school between Spring and Tomball. Our mascot was Bearkats. Were you anywhere close?
Emergency potty brake, and the need to flex the hands before holding the orbs for over an hour!
She can’t get the orb out of second gear?
Direction seems to be thought controlled. Speed adjusted by grip(?).
I don’t think this is a ‘low fuel’ alert. Sydney would not be begging for permission to stop if she knew that’s what it was. we keep expecting her to act a little childish. (link farm incoming) however, she is generally recognized as an adult in the US. (this is admittedly a low bar) she has run a comic shop in partnership with another human being, has a drivers license, has scuba certification, and was able to overcome her fear paralysis to… throw someone using their tongue. this was before passing basic training. Archon trusts this woman with a gun now… (cue ominous music) all this to say, whatever it is that driving Sydney to ask, it is not obviously life threatening, yet. so hopefully we will find out next time.
An unknown alert, if she can sense that’s what it is, could be scary indeed. She’s still coming to grips with being bonded to possibly the most powerful artifacts in the known galaxy, has no idea why they work or what they’re ultimately capable of, and she can’t put them down or move away if they start misbehaving catastrophically.
It’s like walking around with a nuke you sometimes use as a hammer, then have to sleep with it under your bed.
I still think Dave B is going to flash back to HQ and prolong our waiting.
suggestion for you regarding the movement. you tried to put in particle affects, but you didnt blur the stuff they were moving past. i know that it ruins the images somewhat, but it would translate movement better
I just noticed, why is Sydney the only one in uniform for this trip? It does feel like an appropriate outfit for the destination, but it is strange that she was the only one.
It’s strange that she’s in uniform at all, given that it’s supposed to be a non-military sort of trip. Presumably for safety, since she’s the only real soft target of the group when caught unaware.
as torabi said- these are probably by far the toughest clothes she owns. also, she may need one of the less flamboyant women to pointedly remind her that her bank balance allows her to actually shop for clothing. also, as I recall she’s been a jeans and T-shirt person up to now.
Maybe the Flight Ball is signaling the presence of a nearby McGuffin.
Ooooh, I like this theory. Maybe they’re flying over Wakanda or a similar lost civilization that had alien connections.