Grrl Power # 1154 – Stroll in the penta-park
Max shouted the quiet part. But then, she’s the field leader of the U.S.’s Super team, so for all anyone getting lunch there knows, wormholes are a daily occurence. I’m not sure if the glare at the end there is a “I am one of the most dangerous things in our arsenal, so back off!” or an “I outrank you so don’t you dare eavesdrop on the things I am shouting!”
While working on this page I learned that the center of the Pentagon is a 5-acre park, complete with a hotdog stand, which may or may not be closed, but in the Grrl-verse, it’s open. Probably sells more than just hotdogs though. Sausage on a stick, maybe a kielbasa on a bun with some whole grain mustard, and if you want to stick to selling only roughly hotdog shaped foods, then why not churros, skinny burritos, push-pops, and pretzel sticks as well?
The April vote incentive is up! As promised, it’s a Sydney pinup. Not airplane bathroom selfies, but hopefully her cuteness will satisfy.
Variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon, as well as the semi-usual bonus incentive related comic.
.
.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I have to admit, I did not expect one of the Harems to get something from HaggardBlaz3’s imgur collection as an armsleeve.
Can the Harems break their connection at will or temporality cease to exist for a time?
If not…. EVERYONE felt that tattoo being applied.
Harem can de-pop bodies, such as with the broken arm incident, but that’s the only mechanism we know of. She could have put the other 4 in storage, or just toughed it out. Maybe even found sufficiently distracting physical activities that the tatted instance was background noise instead of the focus.
They CAN temporarily cease to exist. It’s called being un-teleported, and Harem used that early in the comic when one of her got a broken wrist. That copy stayed un-teleported until she could get to ArcSwat’s medical officer. In fact, if I recall correctly, the more of her are un-teleported, the physically stronger the rest of her are.
That said, however, there are certainly advantages to having several of yourself at once able to multitask, to the point where having only one of her exist for the duration of the tattoo application probably wasn’t the best option, even accounting for the pain.
There is no “everyone”. Harem is ONE mind, controlling multiple bodies. And she always feels everything. But she compartmentalises, so that usually a reaction to what happens to one body doesn’t transfer to the other ones – unless she’s genuinely surprised (see the Atomic Wedgie incident).
Remember, there’s just one Harem. No matter how many times she appears and noogies herself.
I think I read far too much Manga, I am pretty sure I recognize a few of those faces.
Yea, at least Max has the common sense here.
The amount of energy to glass an area of a planet is most likely a good % less to punching a hole in time and space.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on exactly what kind of magic physics it uses, the entire point of wormholes is that you don’t travel through the intervening space you connect the 2 ends directly to each other through a dimension where the intervening distance does not exist. Glassing a desert on the other hand is a direct application of energy there is no way real way to shortcut that.
Some concepts for wormholes require negative mass matter, i.e. the creation would be potentially energy-positive.
This is the correct answer. But Dabbler has enough higher tier common knowledge that she could probably spot this possibility. What is her knowledge sharing rule of thumb though? Zero state energy makes fusion look like the toy at the bottom of a box of SugarCrap cereal. Does she want to hand out hints in that direction? Humans? Do I trust them with an energy loophole that allows creating a new universe for fun?
This isn’t about Dabbler, it’s about what mechanism the orbs use.
It’s not actually zero state, it’s just what we perceive as zero.
A siphon between two containers at the same level with both absolutely full will not flow. No matter the size of the container.
The quantum foam hides a lot of energy, but it’s all at the same level.
That’s why I seldom order quantum foam on my latte.
Not exactly through another dimension. More like the two regions of spacetime are directly connected, like both sides of a doorway, rather than two ends of a tunnel. It’s a topological defect.
The navigation interface is very tunnel-like, in a klein-bottle kind of way, but it’s probably a flattened 3d representation of a higher-dimension shape anyhow.
It depends on whose equation you are using. The issue with theoretical physics, some of those variables unknown when based on known or observed reactions and properties will come out one way but when set with other possible properties or new observations change that out come. Which is science, an on going discovery what is possible.
Of course we are also looking at a fictional universe where emotions are an energy source and we’ve seen multiple types of wormholes, Sydney’s being something special going through a sub dimensional bypass around space time.
Of course when it comes to a desired outcome in physics while there may be many roads leading to a possible conclusion they tend to divert off two main branches, force and finesse. Push till it works or find a hidden outcome that required a more complex combination of other forces acting together reducing the force needed.
When somebody with that much brass is shouting the save play is to not look and try to not be a lighting rod. Also the informally the snack bar in the center was know as “ground zero” because the pentagon was an assured target in a nuclear war.
Wonder if the name fell into disuse after Sept 11, even as gallows humor it’s not as funny after that.
I don’t know, I think in the “They tried, we are still here” fashion it’s even more funny.
It didn’t stop being true.
I have a not extremely reliable source that says the stand is still open and still nicknamed (well the whole park is) ground zero. If true my guess is they all know it is nuke ground zero not other things.
Military Times says the stand is scheduled for destruction by the end of 2023 for unspecified reasons. Also goes into some of the wild Soviet speculation about it being the entrance to an underground bunker, when everyone should know there is an entrance to said bunker at each of the vertexes of the actual building. It’s no secret if I know about it, and I’ve never even been there.
I was pretty sure the entrance was hidden out on the Mall.
By 2011 it was shut down for 5 years. A few yesrs after that it reopened as an au bon pain.
If the place ever did get nuked, would they have to rename it the Penta-gone?
But then I don’t know if post-apocalyptic scavenger hordes would be into word play.
Alien dice? This past weekend, I watched a YouTube video of a guy using jeweller’s tools to make a D20 out of a piece of amethyst. Beautiful work and result. The video did not show the die being rolled however. That would be about as close to alien dice as your could get without leaving Earth’s atmosphere.
Try searching “alien dice” on Amazon. :) There’s several interesting sets (Was shopping dice not too long ago for gifts) but one set that really stood out was a 3D printed hollow metal set that… Let’s just say it doesn’t look like a dice set but rather a bunch of weird seed-pods.
I saw that video too. Gods that thing is gorgeous.
Watching the techniques was just as pretty as the result. These kinds of discoveries are the geeky content I keep coming here for.
Fantastic video.
There used to be a really good webcomic by that name that went on hiatus for a while and the bookmark didn’t transfer to Chrome some time back after an upgrade, so I can’t post the URL in this comment.
Still there. Still updating slowly. The two words run together. dot-com.
Hm. Just about time for my yearly binge read of that comic.
Three to four months is a lot of time, but given the energy output I think that she’s still on the far side of “holy shit how overpowered is that?”
That said, coasting on pure Law Of Drama, I’m expecting that some time after she’s in dire trouble because there isn’t enough power, she’ll discover or be made aware of a way to charge them.
Hell, for all we know, they do get powered by “experience” and her points are fuelling it rather than just unlocking things. We don’t know the rules, and may never know them at all. Ooooor… putting points in the centre is the energy source. That requires testing, we have a mighty need for SCIENCE
The remaining unknown orb only has two paths.
“Recharge Rate”, and “Max Storage” seem like the obvious things for them to do.
Something I feel like they are ignoring is that they don’t know how much energy the orbs started with. This is the first time they’ve seemed to run out, and there’s no indication that they started empty.
If they started with a large amount of energy, it could take much much longer than they think to fill back up.
This. They may have been lying around collecting energy for 65 million years before adopting Syd.
And Sydney has been putting them through a major workout, between tanking the Squiddy nukes, glassing the desert, and processing/transmuting several square miles of atmosphere. Probably prior users managed to go months or years without apocalyptic incidents, makes sense that she would be forced into expanding/reinforcing something given her extreme usage patterns.
Hmm, We have Dabbler who is powered by Lust.
Vehe feeds on violence, I wonder if the orbs tap into a field much the same…
It could be they speed up faster around creativity…imagination etc… maybe they will fire up quicker with her back at the comic shop, surrounded by that sort of thing.
I’d love something like that. Has a real Green Lantern vibe to it.
they’re powered by friendship,
“I have the power of friendship on my side, and this space gun powered by friendship!”
https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/84rccl/superfriends_shens_horrible_oldposting/
Hmm: lust, wrath…
Could the orbs be gluttony-powered? Does Sidney’s love of giant bowls of super-spicy foods hold the key?
I think you’ve cracked the code!
go to a power plant and have one of the orbs float to a transformer and see if it absorbs the power or causes a state wide black out.
It occurs to me that if a race can get off their planet reliably [not hitch hiking ;)], vendors should be willing to trade tech.
By that logic the Lockheed Martin should be willing to sell the F-35 plans to any country that can sail a ship to New York harbor.
In most sci-fi scenarios with a Galactic Civilization and first-contact scenarios I’ve seen, FTL is generally the barrier. After all, there’s rather a major tech jump between chemical rocketry and space/gravity manipulation (which most FTL methods that aren’t designed by Douglas Adams seem to rely on). Though I would personally say that a stable colony on another planet should be enough for at least first contact, even if it’s not yet enough for a full tech exchange.
Seriously though, the core concepts behind how to execute chemical rocketry were already known a thousand years ago, if not more, with the invention of firework rockets. From that point, most of the process starting in WWII was to figure out how to make it fly where you want it, then how to make it last long enough to get out of the atmosphere, then how to make sure nobody dies while flying it, then how to get the rocket back. All vital steps that took a massive amount of work and effort, sure, but all refinements of an existing concept.
Something like a warp drive is theoretically possible, according to the math (alcubierre drive), but we haven’t the faintest clue how to ACTUALLY warp space manually in any sort of practical way. At most, we can generate tiny black holes for fractions of seconds using gargantuan particle accelerators. That’s like the discovery of fire for chemical rocketry, basically.
The FTL dividing line is less a technical barrier as a practical one. If a species is confined to a single system, you can close it off and designate it as reserved, but once they have interstellar travel, odds are they’ll bump into SOMEBODY sooner or later.
Legend has it that the soviets thought the hot dog stand was the most important part of the pentagon as they always saw top brass going in and out along with everyone else all the time.
It was jokingly referred to as “Cafe Ground Zero” because the upper administration had fun perpetuating the myth that at any given time during the Cold War the Russians had no less than two ICBMs targeted directly at it at any given time.
For the love of all that’s holy, STOP PUTTING NUMBERS IN YOUR DAMN COMIC. Or do some goddam research. You always, always mess them up.
This time, you’ve screwed up energy useage by many orders of magnitude. To melt *1* kilogram of sand to glass, it takes at least 1.5 megajoules of energy (https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/54681/how-much-heat-energy-would-be-needed-to-turn-a-large-section-of-desert-sand-into) if you did it without any energy losses. One ton of sand is 1.5 Gigajoules. Even if it was just 1cm deep of glass, a ton of sand only covers 37 sq meters. You had Sydney melt many square kilometers of sand, eg petajoules of energy.
It took like 5 minutes to google this and multiply it out. Why is this so hard?
Sydney doesn’t know that. Gigajoules just seem like a large number, like a GW is reactor range.
Also https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale
Sydney seems smart enough to realize that a Gigajoule is actually a relatively small amount of energy in relation to the things she’s been doing.
Also, Dabbler would definitely know, and it seems they’ve explicitly discussed this.
Sydney is functionally illiterate, innumerate, has zero common sense and thinks shouting “BADGERS!” is funny… and you balk at her quoting incorrect numbers?
Chill the fuck out dude. It’s not that serious, it’s not like Sydney actually knows or has been shown that she should know how much energy she used. Take a deep breath.
She has been given the number by Dabbler, who should know:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1095-cooldown/comment-page-1/#comments
The episode in which Dabs tells Syd that she used “gigajoules”.
I’m just taking it as Sydney was told by Dabbler she used Gigajoules of power, and just repeated that term to Max, since it was the one Dabbler used.
Exactly. This means that “Sydney doesn’t know what she’s talking about” doesn’t work for explaining the mistake, since she’s citing Dabbler, who would.
You can repeat something you heard word for word and still not know what you are talking about. Plus Dabbler put an emphasis on that Giga, so in context she is saying something more than what Sydney is repeating.
> You can repeat something you heard word for word and still not know what you are talking about.
I didn’t say she knew what she was talking about. I said that doesn’t work for explaining the mistake. Because it’s Dabbler’s mistake, who should know what she’s talking about.
> Plus Dabbler put an emphasis on that Giga, so in context she is saying something more than what Sydney is repeating.
Um, I think she was just emphasizing how much it is, or rather how much DaveB believed it is.
So many PENTA Joules? /s
Penta Jules is the guy sipping tea in the background.
A Clockwork Orange Julius?
Well, since petajoules are just many gigajoules, it’s still technically correct to say gigajoules. :)
Also, as others have pointed out too: Sydney might just throw that around as a catch-all for big number. She doesn’t really have a need to remember a more accurate term.
Also also: Chill, this is just a (deliberately) silly super hero comic. It’s not a documentary that requires scientific accuracy.
Technically correct is the best kind of correct.
Since when does Harem have an ahegao arm sleeve?
when was the last time we saw that harems arm?
Let’s face facts. She probably had it before the series started, back in 2010. That, or she bought it from Sydney’s store (the one now situated in a former cathedral).
Since last week
This is the kind of thing that Dave will forget to draw, draw differently, apply in reverse/mirror order, lose the original image of, and then freak out about because it either is or is not realistically moving with the arm etc. Dude doesn’t remember the chokers half the time. :)
So the ‘since when’ answer should be all of these: always? never? just now? whenever the artist feels like it?
Enjoy (or not-enjoy) them for what they are for now. Part of the fun of this comic is the fashion (or absence of fashion) show.
They’ve already established there are humans in space. Cora being one. All they have to do is pretend to be one of those and that they have a ship already really – just like what happened with Deus.
OK, that’s probably the best Mabel joke I’ve seen.
Agreed. Kudos for the small details that make this comic so good.
Seconded. Also, heard it in Bart Simpson’s voice.
Yeah. I agree it’s one of the better uses.
I don’t know whether to be happy or kinda sad that I’m old enough to know the joke was first used in a Bugs Bunny cartoon back in the 40s (and later made famous in the modern era by the Simpsons) as a reference to The Great Gatsby.
(I’m one of the lucky few to have never had TGG as assigned reading… though next time a teacher assigns me Beowulf, Gilgamesh, or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight I’m going to scream and stomp out of the classroom. Well… if I end up back in college again someday. I got assigned papers on Beowulf FOUR semesters in a row… Fortunately I didn’t have to write the last one because it was the same professor as the third and she took pity on me by just giving me the same grade since she knew I had that poem down.)
Okay, I’m bit. WHICH Bugs Bunny? I mean–there has been a LOT of retconning, but I saw most of them fifty years ago, and I don’t remember this. The closest I can recall is when he was hairdressing Monster, but that was not interrupted.
Now I need to look up if there really is a restaurant called Penta-dogs.
Because I would want to get a hot dog from there.
You don’t have clearance
I’m pretty certain anyone who is an American citizen can get into the courtyard, actually. It’s open to the public Monday-Friday, 6am to 4pm. There’s also a visitor’s entrance into the Pentagon itself.
But clearance is a moot point. I checked and found out the distressing news.
1) Apparently the hot dog shop was called ‘Cafe Ground Zero’ because the Russians used to want to destroy it because they thought there was a secret high level meeting room/emergency in it for pentagon officials. Rumor has it that the Russians never had less than two missiles aimed at this hot dog stand.
2) The building was torn down in 2006, so it’s an anachronism if it had been in the real world, since in the comic the year is some time between 2009 and 2017.
3) It has since been replaced by an Au Bon Pain fast casual restaurant, which is not nearly as cool as a hot dog restaurant that also serves noodles and hamburgers called freaking Cafe Ground Zero which was believed to have a secret bunker under it and the Pentagon was just built as a fortress for this bunker. No one thinks cool stuff about Au Bon Pain. They just think it’s good bread. Boo I say. Boo.
Today is a sad day for me. A sad day indeed.
Today I too learned about both the hot dog stand and its demolition, and am likewise devastated by the loss of something I never even knew I needed.
* sad hug of comfort and solidarity *
We were robbed of our future, during our past! *sob*
so, where did they hide all the presents?
They were stolen by porch pirates.
Hard to say in the moment.
I might use that response in almost every interaction where I want dramatic moments going into the future.
Can confirm it adds instant drama, I’ve had a few great moments with it. >D
Although it must be used with discretion.
Gigajoules seems kinda tiny, TBH.
You want big numbers, use dynes.
FYI, at one point the restaurant in the center of the Pentagon was a Taco Bell.
So you are saying Taco Bell really did win the Restaurant Wars?
Every single thing in Demolition Man is destined to become reality. All of it. I have it on good word from Dennis Leary that the script was not a script, but was in fact a message sent from a time traveller from the near future as a warning to us all, but we do not heed that warning.
It’s an Au Bon Pain now. Which is both not as cool OR as funny.
And now I have to check in on a 15 year old webcomic. Thanks Sydney. Man, when is the last time I thought about alien dice.
It’s older than that. I read it while I was in college, 20 years ago. And yes, this page just made me go check on it. Astonishingly, it’s still running. I have no idea what’s going on with the story anymore, though.
Yeah, it’s probably a coincidence, but I thought of that, too. Haven’t read that in decades… I feel old.
“The hot dog stand in the Pentagon’s center courtyard, which has long been a source of Cold War speculation, folklore and legend, will be torn down in the coming months.”
— https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2001080694/
Sydney should tell the others that the trip is postponed until further notice and type of reaction will that get?!?
One of these days, you need to have Harem show off all her tats. …At least, I think that’s one of Harem’s… uh… alters? Duplicates? whatever the term is…
Maybe for a vote incentive.
Pretty sure there was already an incentive with all of Harem in lingerie.
Although many maintain that the gazebo in the courtyard is “ground zero,” I maintain that the Pentagon was never a target. Why would our enemies want to destroy the Pentagon if the result was a military that functioned better? <– cynical opinion formed from too many years of working tgere.
I was in AFROTC back in the 70’s, and it certainly was a widespread joke in the Air force that the Russians’ strategic nuclear bombing plans left out D.C. in order to slow down our recovery after the war.
if that is a the hotdog stand in the middle of the pentagon, that is a no hat, no salute area… just a fyi
As prior military, I feel like I need to point out the park is a “no hat, no salute” area. Max is technically “out of uniform”.
I don’t know if every branch points it out, but it’s the largest “no hat / no salute” area in the U.S., so it gets pointed out a lot more than normal. Along with the Ground Zero hot dog stand.
It may still be a courtesy thing. Max prefers to wear hats whenever possible to cut down on the blinding glare of her shiny golden face when exposed to the sun. It may be worth the minor uniform violation even if, yeah, Doylist DaveB probably didn’t know about it. Everyone else seems to be wearing hats in the last two panels.
Heh – I love that even the lens flare at the Pentagon has five sides…
I wonder if Sydney was trolling Max at this point? Could go either way tbh
Same, although Harem’s presence indicates a possibly-related conversation.
Harem’s presence also indicates that key intel on the orbs capabilities and limitations is being discussed openly in front of a spy for Deus, with whom the US is actively trying to trade alien tech and possibly avoid war long term. Having Deus learn so directly that a) the orbs have limits, b) what those are, and c) that the US has interstellar capabilities, is showing pretty much all their cards during the current negotiations.
Him knowing that they can visit Fracture station might actually be beneficial here. If he knows they can get technology elsewhere, he might be willing to go for a slightly lower price.
Deus may decide to blackmail the US for political leverage, or sell to another buyer, or escalate his use / acquisition of alien tech, or anything else. But simply lowering his price is probably not on the table when the US needs that knowledge to remain a national/global/galactic secret.
The hypersurface of a tessaract is eight cubical faces. Since each square is shared by two cubes, there are 24 squares, along with 32 edges and 16 vertices.
There are actually three 24-faced Catalan solids (which are face-invariant, and thus suitable for use as dice), but one of them (the triakis octahedron) when rolled turns up a tilted edge rather than another face. The other two, the tetrakis hexahedron and the deltoidal icositetrahedron, do turn up a face when rolled, and I own examples of both. You can get the deltoidal icositetrahedron at The Dice Lab, along with many other unusual dice suce as Rhombic d12s, and a d48, possibly the least useful die ever made.
Thank you!
Bit of trivia about the snack bar at the center of the Pentagon park. When they first built it there the Soviets saw this structure with their spy satellites and officers entering and leaving it every day around the same times. They assumed that such a thing being built in such a secure location must be a super secret and important meeting room and spent a huge amount of time and resources trying to find out what it was, especially when it was apparently so secret that none of their spies had even heard about something secret being built there. Eventually they found out that it was just a snack bar for the park. I wonder how many KGB bureaucrats got sent to Siberia for wasting so much time and money investigating a snack bar?
I remember hearing back in the 80s that the USSR was using the snack bar as an aiming point for an ICBM in case of war.
To be fair, I’ve long suggested the pentagon have some kind of food court in the middle of it. I’ve lived near dc since 2003 and I just can’t help but wonder how no one thought to include something like that.
The pentagon was very much planned, and built from the get-go like it was its own city, on-purpose.
IIRC, the pentagon was originally planned to be converted into a library once ‘The War’ ended and the military could be drawn down. You don’t let dirty peasants near your precious books with sticky food covered fingers.
Call me petty (please?), but GJ just doesn’t cut it for stuff like this.
Ballpark estimate for the Galtyn stunt is better suited in the very high TJ to low PJ range. It takes more than ~10TJ/km^2 (40GJ/acre) just to get the stuff to the right-ish temperature, melting costs extra.
For scale on the charging rate: A normal kettle runs on something like 1.8kW i.e. ~6.5MJ/h or ~1GJ/week.
Or you can get a GJ burning ~30l (~8gal) of gasoline if that’s more familiar.
Too many Numbers:
Word of god gives ~10km diameter for the disk, makes ~70km^2 to account for less than 100% coverage. And to be nice let’s assume she exclusively heated the top 1cm.
Silica has a heat capacity of >40J/mol and ~60g/mol. A cubic meter of sand weights about ~1.5tonnes. Melting/Glassing temperatures are > 1000°C over ambient.
Makes about 1,5*10^7 kg/km^2 * ~660 J/kgK * 1000K ~10^13 J/km^2 or ~700 TJ total.
Feel free to correct me if I screwed up the numbers (besides some generous assumptions).
Silicon dioxide has a heat capacity of ~1000 J/kg*K, unlike silicon at ~700J/kg*K. Other than that, you’re correct (although we don’t know how deep Sydney actually melted the sand, and we have a competing area figure of 10km^2 in https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1095-cooldown/).
The Ground Zero cafe had *the best* brats and Italian sausages.
In the Pentagon, Max has just enough rank to be trusted to make coffee and perhaps write reports that other people will review and revise, which somebody else who is actually important might eventually read and perhaps sign.
From what I heard when I was in, you just described the full birds.
One of many reasons LTC really doesn’t seem like a high enough rank for the position.
Honestly, if anyone was to question Max on what she meant, all she’d have to say is she was on a call with a writer for a pilot episode for a show about supers in the military, and she has a personal vendetta with wormholes in sci-fi, so if she’s gonna be a fact checker she wants nothing to do with that crap.
No, all she has to do is say “classified”, and everyone present will immediately know to now ask any further questions, because they are at the Pentagon.
Are Harem’s tattoos on her arm new? I haven’t noticed them before. Going to check back in the archives.
(checking)
Okay most recently she’s been wearing a jacket for the Ascenders assault (so no way to tell about tattoos there), and at the Ascenders attack on ARC HQ, that was a different Harem (although we do see a brief panel with this Harem and she didnt have any tattoos on that arm, but we can’t see her shoulder instead, since she’s wearing a T-shirt).
The last time before that where this Harem had her arms bared was during strip poker.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-853-pyrrhic-poker/
Then she had no tattoos at all on either of her arms.
Before that was when they were talking about favorite ice creams.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-827-peaches-and-pics/
Also no tattoos on her arms.
Before that, the last time we saw this particular Harem was when Sydney was asking her about polyamorous relationships.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-774-polymaybe/
Again, no tattoos on her arms, or at least not ones going up to her shoulders (we can’t see her arms because she’s wearing long gloves). HOWEVER she did have tattoos on her sides of her torso.
So what I can conclude from this is Harem either 1) only gets temporary tattoos that just LOOK very real but can wash off, 2) Harem gets her tattoos healed off by the doctor with the healing powers, or 3) Harem is able to remove her tattoos somehow via teleportation or de-teleportation or some aspect of both of those things. Because she went from having tattoos on the sides of her torso but not on her arms, to having no tattoos at all, to now having tattoos on one of her arms up to her shoulder but no tattoos on the sides of her torso.
Anyone else have theories?
If Harem has been to Fracture Station, and if I were ARC, I would have one of her stationed there at all times and possibly with a rented room she could keep private to teleport into, and thus she may have access to magiscience lasers and nanotech that creates temp tattoos or something. Or, she could buy specialized nanobots hard coded to not reproduce themselves that she can use to give herself tattoos as desired.
Or, since she’s friends with Dabbles, she could just get some variant of glamor/biomancy for altering her body for giggles similar to what Cora has but way scaled down. Dabbles seems to play pretty fast and loose with the Prime Directive analog, but is very very careful not to give out anything ‘powerful’ but would probably be willing to give a few friends some party tricks (see the holo choker).
The hardcoded nanobot thing was actually a method to create a tech oriented litRPG, the logic being that the nanobots have to create a pea sized factory to make more, they can only create a factory in a person with a fixed ratio of factory:brain mass, has to accept commands from the brain in question, but you can lay claim to the factory of any megafauna you kill. A lot of it was built around trying to exploit the limits in different ways.
Most of those theories sound plausible. :)
Except the one about her having a place on Fracture Station because spacetime and time dilation or whatever she was experiencing on Alar would be a major problem for her, even assuming she can teleport that far.
But the rest? All plausible as far as I can imagine. :). Until we have word of god otherwise.
The discomfort on Alar was from having being an extra instance in the wrong part of the time stream – although we never got closure on whether the 5 “future” instances also were discombobulated, or were able to pass any information. But taking a non-timeshifted copy to Fracture might have no such effect, especially since using the Causeway at mundane velocity eliminates any time dilation effects.
We don’t know how well her link holds up over such distances though. She appears to be quantum entangled, since she could still communicate (but not teleport) through Mr Bubble, so she may have truly unlimited range. So far though we haven’t even seen her operate across state lines, so we need more data.
“The discomfort on Alar was from having being an extra instance in the wrong part of the time stream”
The discomfort was that the distance away did not account for spacetime, which is how Dabbler was able to figure out where, roughly, Alar was to have Cora go look for Sydney. I don’t see why that wouldnt still be the case with Harem having a person permanently on Fracture Station. If it’s a magnetar, it would likely also be VERY far from Earth where FTL travel (like through an Aetherium Causeway) would be a factor to her discomfort as well. Unless the Aetherium Causeway somehow accounts for that problem in a way that the Sky Ripper did not.
“But taking a non-timeshifted copy to Fracture might have no such effect, especially since using the Causeway at mundane velocity eliminates any time dilation effects.”
I’m not sure how. it’s still instantaneous travel from one place to another, light years away. Unless they’d know for a fact that the aetherium causeway can do it in a way in which there would not be ‘too many’ Harems due to spacetime, it probably would not be a great idea.
“So far though we haven’t even seen her operate across state lines, so we need more data.”
We learned a lot in Dabbler’s Science Corner #2.
Well we do know that she can teleport so far away that she can’t teleport back with places that she has extreme familiarity, like the farm where she grew up. Which I’m assuming isnt in the same state as Archon HQ since it was described as ‘hundreds of miles away.’
We ALSO know that she needs to be able to SEE where she’s teleporting to in order to teleport there, AND there’s a law of diminishing returns the farther away it was. It was SPECIFICALLY stated that she can’t teleport to the moon, even with a giant telescope. So it’s likely that having a copy that far away from the rest of her would be ‘bad’ for her for an extended period of time (or permanently).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-dabblers-science-corner-2/
(last panel and second-to-last panel)
Not sure what you’re basing this on – Harem never said “I was too far away from myself” or “my thoughts are out of sync”, only “there were too many of me”. I’ve always interpreted that as the disorientation of sensory overload; she may have a similar feeling when she spawns a new copy, but to a lesser degree since she’s built up capability for it (and possibly done it consciously), rather than having it thrust upon her unawares. Perhaps the duplicated brain alone was getting all of the extra info?
Au contraire, Alar is (was) a well known planet in the galactic community – the NYC invaders all knew what an Alari nanny disc was, for example. The team already knew it was Alar, and surely its coordinates are public knowledge, and only Sydney’s precise time and local coordinates were unknown (necessitating the launch of Cora’s scanners to find the orbs, which instead detected the Causeway).
I had totally forgotten this one, nice find. So she can definitely do “hundreds of miles”, presumably without issue, if she knows the location well enough. But she doesn’t need to physically see her destination, e.g. the Ascender base was a blind jump. When Jiggs helped her with targeting, Harem said she “usually” needs to see it, but apparently a general direction and grainy video of the room was sufficient. The follow page discusses that she has a spatial sense (which she also told Sydney about at one point), but that she “doesn’t like to bet her life on it.” Shortly thereafter she jumps into the atrium based on peeking around the corner with another video camera, so it appears she relies heavily on visual orientation but has some flexibility.
And on the 2nd page after entering the base, another copy cheerfully pops in (with Varia), so any copy can clearly move to another copy without needing to see the location with her own eyes. So the visual component seems to be the limit on prime (unguided) jumps, but not the limiting factor on her overall range. The diminishing range on visually-oriented jumps is most likely limited by the speed of light, e.g. the moon is 1.25 light-seconds away and travelling 2.4 km/s relative to Earth. Clearly not sufficiently accurate targeting data – even a strong enough telescope to let her see a room-sized target would be showing her something that had moved 3km from where she’s observing it. Walking that back to Earth-local terms (and the science corner), “17 miles to the horizon” represents only 91 microseconds (9.1×10-5 seconds) which is effectively instantaneous for human-scale motion, so a telescope would work for that range.
But we’re told there’s still diminishing returns, so the limit seems to be a combination of sight and her telespatial sense; sufficient data from either input appears to be enough. If a copy travelled around the world, e.g flown to Galytn with the away team, I think she could send another copy there from the US.
Whether distance is really the crux of the matter, rather than the time shift and sensory overload, isn’t clear to me from existing data, but I still tend to think it’s not a problem. We know she’s spent a lot of time travelling the world to get familiar with more destinations, but not if she travelled in a pack instead of fanning out. Knowing how far she’s spread out in the past without effect would be very helpful.
The closest thing we have to her distributed presence is probably VR, which targets <15ms visual updates to prevent user discomfort from detecting latency between movement and result. Harem's mental connection is probably tighter than just the visual info, but let's roll with 15ms. We can infer that she's actually gone "hundreds of miles to where she grew up", call it 300 miles or 1.6 milliseconds at the speed of light. That's well within the limit, she could do about 10x that (more than coast to coast) before hitting the vision limits. Global travel would reveal it though – the max speed-of-light delay she'd experience on Earth would be around 42.5 ms between antipodes, definitely enough to trigger a reaction.
Whereas if it’s a quantum entanglement situation, distance is irrelevant.
“Not sure what you’re basing this on – Harem never said “I was too far away from myself” or “my thoughts are out of sync”, only “there were too many of me”. ”
Um… yes. There were too many of her because of how spacetime works vs instantaneous travel via the Sky Ripper. I’m basing it on what was said in the comic. That’s how Dabbler was able to figure out WHERE Alar was. Using math.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-651-obtuse-loop/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-674-space-cavalry/
Read what Cora’s crew says in panel 5. Local RELATIVE TIME. The problem was how spacetime works when you mess with instantaneous travel. Harem was all messed up because instantaneous travel is going to mess with someone who is simultaneously in two places at the same time already. There were more of her than there should have been.
“But she doesn’t need to physically see her destination, e.g. the Ascender base was a blind jump.”
It was not an ‘actual’ blind jump. She had video of it. That was why Jiggs went in first in the first place.
“But we’re told there’s still diminishing returns, so the limit seems to be a combination of sight and her telespatial sense; sufficient data from either input appears to be enough. If a copy travelled around the world, e.g flown to Galytn with the away team, I think she could send another copy there from the US.”
No she couldnt. She isnt a teleporter like the movie ‘Jumper’ The only places she can go to a LONG distance away without looking seems to be places where she has a very close connection to, like the farm that she grew up on. The whole point of the last panel in Dabbler’s Science Corner #2 was that if she teleports there, she can’t then teleport BACK. Apparently ARCHON HQ is not a close enough connection for her to jump to without actually SEEING it. Even with seeing something on video, it has to be within a certain distance though. She can’t teleport to the moon, even with using a high powered telescope to look at it. She couldnt teleport to Galytn, even with seeing it on the news. But she COULD teleport to the bank or to Sydney’s old comic book shop when she saw those on the news. Probably because the bank and Sydney’s comic book shop were within the distance that she can teleport via seeing it on the news… but Galytn and the moon are both too far. Fracture station would DEFINITELY be too far then.
“Whereas if it’s a quantum entanglement situation, distance is irrelevant.”
Apparently it’s not irrelevant because Harem does have hard limits on how far she can teleport. This is word of god stuff stated via Dabbler’s Science Corner #2.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-dabblers-science-corner-2/
(second to last panel again)
“She can teleport anywhere she can see, but that does not mean she can jump16 miles to the horizon. She has to be able to actually see her destination, but there’s a DIMINISHING RETURN. Even with a giant telescope she couldnt teleport to the moon.” (And that’s not even video – that’s magnification.)
(last panel)
“However, Harem’s range increases with familiarity. She can teleport back to the farm she grew up on hundreds of miles away.”
We take two thing away from this:
1) Harem’s ability to teleport DOES HAVE A RANGE. If it didn’t, there would be no point in saying her range increases with familiarity.
2) Her normal range for places that she does not have VERY close familiarity with, like where she grew up on her farm, is ‘hundreds of miles away.’ Galytn is thousands of miles away and she does not have the same familiarity with it as her home. Fracture station is …. I think Maxima said 20 light years away but that’s probably wrong since the nearest magnetar is about 5200 light years away (Swift J1822.3-1606). And other magnetars that we’ve detected are between 8100-9000 light years away. Fracture Station is likely even further or we would probably have detected it on our own. Harem can NOT teleport there. It’s too far. Diminishing returns would go to zero before she reached the moon even, let alone light years.
“This can create situations where she can teleport somewhere, but not back.”
Clearly this means that the familiarity has to be REALLY REALLY familiar for even a few hundred miles, like her family farm. Because otherwise she could just teleport to her farm, then teleport back to ARCHON HQ if the familiarity with Archon HQ was as good as the familiarity with her family farm.
You’re basically using the movie ‘Jumper’ to describe Harem’s teleporting, but Jumper’s distance is a LOT farther than Harems, and does not require visually seeing it – just a picture and having been there at least once before.
I think you focused on my tangents about personal sight vs video teleportation and lightspeed propagation, and missed my main point about distance not being a factor to Harem’s ability to function. Or maybe we’re just talking past each other?
Harem says in the first page you linked, “It wasn’t an issue of proximity. I was confused because there were too many of me.” Spacetime dilation or no aside (re: FTL vs wormhole), once she arrived on Alar and reverted to “normal” spacetime, how she got there didn’t matter anymore – those effects had ended, and all her copies shared a reference frame again. Based on her explicit statement, being light years away from the other copies didn’t seem to matter, only that there were too many of them.
Still not seeing where you’re deducing that Dabbler needed to figure out Sydney’s location – neither of those pages (nor any other I could find) says anything about Dabbler trying to compute coordinates for Alar, only that she needed a large power source to get there quickly. And as soon as she realized Harem was invoking time travel shenanigans, she abandoned an immediate rescue effort because she realized Cora could just go make a pickup at a reasonably specific time and place – 53ish Terran days in the future (or as close as Harem could pinpoint). Presumably Dabbler specified the arrival time as precisely as possible, but not a time prior to the portal closing because wibbly wobbly causality paradoxes etc. Cora explicitly arrived later than intended (per your 2nd link) due to an en-route encounter with the Fel; presumably she was supposed to get in position for the instant that Sydney got stranded and be ready to yank her out of harm’s way within seconds of the portal closing.
Returning to the subject of Harem’s teleportation range, agreed that she has a limit. I just think that limit is her awareness of the destination (which improves with familiarity and sight), and not on the actual distance.
“missed my main point about distance not being a factor to Harem’s ability to function. Or maybe we’re just talking past each other?”
Ah. Maybe? I just think the idea of her being on Fracture Station for an extended period of time wouldnt be good for her, not because of the distance but because of:
1) the idea of her GETTING to Fracture station in any way that involves instantaneous travel (Sky Ripper, Aetherium Causeway, any other instantaneous way that doesnt take into account time dilation associated with how spacetime works) would result in there being ‘too many hers’ – not because of proximity to each other, but because the farther away one goes in light years when it’s done instantly, the more of a discrepancy there will be for that Harem body compared to the rest and more unsettling it would be for her as a result; and
2) Even if htey were to figure a way to counter that (ie, not doing instantaneous travel and doing an FTL ship instead that might be less ‘extreme’ for Harem, it would take a significantly longer time for her to actually get back. And communicating between the Harem on Fracture Station and the other Harems on Earth would still be subject to her ‘spacetime equilibrium being off kilter’ because THAT would be instantaneous travel as well, meaning there would be too many hers when communicating with her other bodies as well to relay info. Unless she was to take a ship back to Earth each time she needed to report in, which seems to be cumbersome and could be done by ANYONE – not just one of Harem’s bodies – who would be more valuable in other areas.
“Based on her explicit statement, being light years away from the other copies didn’t seem to matter, only that there were too many of them.”
Her statement was that it wasnt the distance itself that was a problem. It was the time dilation effect on her (ie, her trying to communicate with herselves on Earth apparently takes time when talking about light years, rather than THAT being instantaneous) results in her trying to communicate with herselves at a time that all five of her bodies are on Earth again, while at the same time one of herselves is on another planet in the past.
“Cora explicitly arrived later than intended (per your 2nd link) due to an en-route encounter with the Fel; presumably she was supposed to get in position for the instant that Sydney got stranded and be ready to yank her out of harm’s way within seconds of the portal closing.”
Yes but my comment was about how Cora was talking about coordinates given, instead of just ‘Alar.’ It implies that the location of the Alar homeworld is not exactly public knowledge. Especially since objects in space are constantly moving further away from each other and so you need some sort of wa to calculate where they are. Think Stargate and how the Stargate Dialing Program in the DHD has something in it to deal with stellar drift. The only reason Abydos could be reached without a DHD, before they had a dialing program which could calculate stellar drift by using the writings that Daniel found on Abydos, was Abydos was close enough to Earth that the stellar drift had not affected the address YET.
“Returning to the subject of Harem’s teleportation range, agreed that she has a limit. I just think that limit is her awareness of the destination (which improves with familiarity and sight), and not on the actual distance.”
Yes but hundreds of miles is a lot different than thousands of miles, and MUCH MUCH more different than light years in distance. If, by the time she’s gone hundreds of miles, there’s already significant diminished returns that it needs to be somewhere she’s lived most of her life and all of her childhood, the diminished return would almost definitely be close to zero once you’re talking thousands of miles, and definitely zero once you’re talking light years.
It wasn’t time dilation from instantaneous travel that caused the issues on Alar, it was a broken portal from messing with the Sky Ripper before the formula was fully inputted. They got shotgunned into the slight future, to a destroyed Alar. These are the things you have to worry about when messing with time and space.
“Her statement was that it wasnt the distance itself that was a problem. It was the time dilation effect on her (ie, her trying to communicate with herselves on Earth apparently takes time when talking about light years, rather than THAT being instantaneous) results in her trying to communicate with herselves at a time that all five of her bodies are on Earth again, while at the same time one of herselves is on another planet in the past.”
The Harems are quantum entangled, their communication is instantaneous. Her discombobulation wasn’t time dilation(or rather, light speed lag, time dilation is something else) but straight up time travel. The damaged wormhole brought them 2 months to the future, so Harem was communicating with the five future Harems. If it were light lag limiting Harem’s communication, she’d feel alone, because the signals from the other Harems would take their time to arrive, she wouldn’t actually be able to real-time communicate with them.
If it were time dilation, Harem would feel her other selves going faster or slower, but that’s not what happened. Time is relative with regards to velocity, not location (disregarding gravity sinks), and frankly I believe “relative time” is either something administrative like time zones on earth or just technobabble to flavor up the FTL.
“Yes but my comment was about how Cora was talking about coordinates given, instead of just ‘Alar.’”
Um, when was that supposed to be? It’s not in any of the pages you linked.
“Apparently it’s not irrelevant because Harem does have hard limits on how far she can teleport. This is word of god stuff stated via Dabbler’s Science Corner #2.”
If you scroll down to the A/N on that page, you’ll find Word of God saying
“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.”
That means Harem can always teleport over to Fracture station, if one of her is staying there as a beacon.
CountryMage:
“It wasn’t time dilation from instantaneous travel that caused the issues on Alar, it was a broken portal from messing with the Sky Ripper before the formula was fully inputted.”
It felt to me like the broken portal made the portal unstable…. which is why it both moved and was closing after it opened. If the formula had been finished, then the portal would have been stable and kept open and in ONE place on the Alar side. The only reason for time travel to occur would be because of spacetime and instantaneous travel, which violates causality no matter what.
“They got shotgunned into the slight future, to a destroyed Alar.”
I mean this is POSSIBLE but has less evidence of that in the comic than what I said. I don’t know why being shot into the future would be an unintentional side effect of the sky ripper formula not being completed WITHOUT it having something to do with spacetime.
Voyager:
“The Harems are quantum entangled, their communication is instantaneous. Her discombobulation wasn’t time dilation(or rather, light speed lag, time dilation is something else) but straight up time travel.”
No – her discombobulation was that they travelled there based on spacetime, but Harem’s quantum entangled brain doesnt bother WITH spacetime. As a result, Harem winds up being in two different times at the same time. The one for the Harem communicating, and the one for the Harems being communicated with. Which is one more Harem than there’s supposed to be since quantum entanglement does not work well with spacetime over long distances. That’s causing a violation of causality, because her instantaneous communication is bypassing how normal distances with data transfers are affected in a spacetime continuum. Hence… discombobulation. The one sending out the information should not exist as far as the other Harems are concerned from a physics standpoint, and from the sending-out Harem’s standpoint, there’s one more Harem than should be existing, because she’d be also sending out information to the other Harem brain like hers, which hasnt caught up to her. Because of how spacetime works when you don’t mess with quantum entanglement theories.
“If it were time dilation, Harem would feel her other selves going faster or slower, but that’s not what happened.”
When I talked about time dilation i’m referring to the actual travel between Earth and Alar that normally should occur when using non-instantaneous FTL transportation. I’m not talking time dilation like the device used against Maxima in NYC. I’m explaining that with Harem, there’s a discrepancy between her quantum entangled brain and how spacetime works when communicating via vast distances.
“That means Harem can always teleport over to Fracture station, if one of her is staying there as a beacon.”
No she can’t. She would still need another of her bodies to be there as some sort of anchor for the ‘de-teleportation’ and ‘re-teleportation’ to occur at Fracture station. Read the full Word of God as he wrote it:
“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.”
An anchor is needed, in that ONE of her bodies has to ALREADY be in the location to which she’s de-teleporting and re-teleporting.
Get out of here with your fan fiction. Like, did you somehow forget that Sydney traveled two months to the future in the comic? We also have Word of God explaining it:
“Time travel! This is why when the team arrived on Alari Prime, Harem got discombobulated, because suddenly there were twice as many of her”
“So they were thrown 51 days into the future”
It’s time travel, and her confusion is a straight-forward effect of that. There’s no need to bring in physics concepts you don’t really understand.
“No she can’t. She would still need another of her bodies to be there as some sort of anchor for the ‘de-teleportation’ and ‘re-teleportation’ to occur at Fracture station.”
I literally wrote “if one of her is staying there as a beacon.” So yes, she can. If she stays there. Which was the proposal.
I had totally forgotten this point, but it does seem to support unlimited distance (if only with an anchor) and, by extension, quantum entanglement. Really, really wondering where the de-popped body mass goes if any of the other copies can manifest it at will. I would so, so love to work for ArcLight doing R&D on powers. Machina Industries would be pretty awesome too although I would have a few more ethical reservations there.
But there is only time travel involved here, there isn’t any time dilation happening – the ends of the portal (like those of the causeway) are not moving at relativistic speeds relative to each other. Aside from some comparatively negligible vector differences like orbital speed, they’re effectively in the same inertial reference frame. An inertial frame of reference does not experience time dilation (or length contraction). Time dilation is the shortening of time when measured by a clock in a moving frame of reference compared to time measured by a stationary frame of reference.
If Harem had travelled to via FTL (or near-FTL) methods, then yes she’d be having issues with time dilation. But with wormhole travel there’s no dilation, and if her brains are quantum entangled there’s also no propagation of neural signals to be distorted across the light years – it’s just already there.
The quantum entanglement between the Harems is just FTL communication, which along with time travel is already a thing in Grrl Power, and violates causality by allowing time travel, which is also a thing separately. (This is also why quantum entanglement can’t transmit information IRL.) So causality is already broken in Grrl Power, and since DaveB doesn’t understand relativity, not even the galileian version, frankly relativity doesn’t really apply either, so we shouldn’t try to reason from it.
Sciona could communicate in real time with Alar Prime, so a Wormhole or Aetherium Causeway wouldn’t have problems either.
Every time you say “spacetime” further reinforces that you have no idea what you’re talking about. But also that you’re so sure of yourself that there is no convincing you otherwise.
Voyager:
“Get out of here with your fan fiction.”
It’s not fanfiction. It’s what’s been in the comic.
“Like, did you somehow forget that Sydney traveled two months to the future in the comic?”
Because that’s how spacetime works. Spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space WITH the one dimension of time in order to take account for relativistic events. When you’re looking out at the stars, you are not looking at the star as they look CURRENTLY, because light takes time to travel to Earth. And when you travel faster than light, there is a relativistic effect where time is moving slower for you. The effect is that you wind up being at a time later than you were relative to your starting location. While FTL drives in Grrlpower universe might have some sort of sci-fi reason for it not happening with it, the sky ripper portal was unstable and did not seem to be able to deal with that (probably because the circle was incomplete, whereas with Deus’s stargate, it was complete).
You’re just saying ‘it was time travel 53 days into the future. I’m explaining WHY.
“We also have Word of God explaining it:”
Literally in the FIRST sentence of the comic you linked, Maxima confirms what I’m saying.
“It’s been especially hard for us considering HOW MUCH LONGER ITS BEEN FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE.”
“There’s no need to bring in physics concepts you don’t really understand.”
Except I do understand the physics concepts and all you really need to do is just check wikipedia on special relativity or they have had more than a few specials on Albert Einstein’s thought experiments about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuD34tEpRFw
There’s a concept known as the twin paradox, which special relativity ‘solves.’
https://youtu.be/h8GqaAp3cGs
“Sciona could communicate in real time with Alar Prime,”
Why do you think it was communication in real time btw?
“so a Wormhole or Aetherium Causeway wouldn’t have problems either.”
You’re making an assumption. That’s more fanfiction than anything i’ve said. :)
Torabi:
MUST you be so rude when you post?
“Every time you say “spacetime” further reinforces that you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Maybe you should just look up what spacetime means?
A system of one temporal and three spatial coordinates by which any physical object or event can be located. Spacetime AFFECTS TIME. Time goes faster the farther away you are from the earth’s surface compared to the time on the surface of the earth. This effect is known as “gravitational time dilation”. It is predicted by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity and has by verified multiple times by experiments.
“But also that you’re so sure of yourself that there is no convincing you otherwise.”
Instead of arguing ‘I’m stupid’ or whatever equivalent you’re doing, maybe you could explain why I’m wrong? Because what I’ve just stated explains how there would have been a time discrepancy (ie, effectively time travel because of how spacetime and relativity works).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuD34tEpRFw
Here. Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about it too. But I’m sure you know better than him as well. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BCkSYQ0NRQ
I know it’s been a few weeks, but I just saw your answer, and I can’t just let that stand.
“While FTL drives in Grrlpower universe might have some sort of sci-fi reason for it not happening with it, the sky ripper portal was unstable and did not seem to be able to deal with that (probably because the circle was incomplete, whereas with Deus’s stargate, it was complete).”
You realize that this already concedes your point? If the reason it happened was because the portal was damaged, why would you assume it would happen with Sydney’s Aetherium Causeways? The orbs are well known to gracefully handle the side effects of their abilities.
“It’s not fanfiction. It’s what’s been in the comic.”
No, it’s not. There’s zero mention of the time travel having anything to do with relativistic effects. The only mention of relativity, period, is a technobabbly reference to a specific method of FTL. There’s nothing supporting your theory in the comic.
Now let’s take a look at you misconceptions.
“And when you travel faster than light, there is a relativistic effect where time is moving slower for you.”
No, that’s what happens when you are in motion. Motion(moving through space) is not the same thing as travel(“getting from A to B”). And it happens when you’re moving slower than light. Moving faster than light would mean your Lorentz factor is imaginary, and time dilation isn’t well defined for you. Anything travelling faster than light, perhaps a tachyon, or a warp ship, would in fact appear to be travelling backwards in time at least from some frame of reference.
“The effect is that you wind up being at a time later than you were relative to your starting location.”
The time dilation from the twin paradoxon doesn’t disappear once you travel back, unlike when Max, Harem & Co. went back through the portal. That alone should have clued you in that you’re on the wrong track.
“Literally in the FIRST sentence of the comic you linked, Maxima confirms what I’m saying.
“It’s been especially hard for us considering HOW MUCH LONGER ITS BEEN FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE.””
Well obviously it’s been longer from her perspective. After all, Sydney portalled to the future, whereas Maxima lived through all of it. It’s been 53 days from Maxima’s perspective, and two from Sydney’s, because Sydney jumped travelled 51 days to the future. That’s fully explained by time travel, there’s nothing implying anything about relativistic effects there, and in WoG it’s called time travel.
“Why do you think it was communication in real time btw?”
Because the statement wouldn’t make sense otherwise. “I was in communication with them days ago” is not the same as “I got their last letter, which took two months to reach me, days ago”, and the latter doesn’t make it impossible they’re all dead.
“You’re making an assumption.”
No, I explained how it followed. If FTL is possible without without time travel shenanigans, FTL is possible without without time travel shenanigans. All of this is just geometry, the specific method of travel doesn’t matter.
“Except I do understand the physics concepts”
Let me tell to you that you don’t. I’ve pointed out a few misconceptions of yours above, and you also never mentioned frames of reference, the true basis of relativity. Nothing about relativity of simulaneity either, the core explanation behind the twin paradoxon. You’ve watched a few popsci videos but didn’t really understand them.
There’s no shame in not understanding something as complex, abstract and counterintuitive as relativity theory. I only have a partial understanding myself. But you should be aware that your confidence is misplaced.
Frankly, your confidence talking about things not in the comic as if they were is worse, because that should be inside your capabilities.
No, you’re basing it on your incomplete and erroneous understanding of physics, not anything in the comic. There were too many of Harem because she was 53 days in the future, and thus the one body that went through the portal joined the 5 that already existed at that time.
Parts of her brain are quantumly interconnected, and the point of that is that she can communicate instantaneously, across any distance. This does conflict with some current theories, and would have some interesting implications with respect to time and reference frames. Studying Harem might provide Earth scientists with some very useful data on interstellar communication, though they’ll probably get that from the FTL ship they’ve since acquired.
“No, you’re basing it on your incomplete and erroneous understanding of physics, not anything in the comic.”
Torabi sometimes your posts are a real quandry to me. Your arguments in this post all actually support my post, but you’ve framed it as if i’m wrong and that your arguments counter my post.
It feels sort of like you are arguing with me not because you’re saying anything that is actually in opposition to what i’ve stated, but because you are just arguing. And usually to throw in a few barbs (I don’t understand why the need to add the barbs about ‘my erroneous understanding of physics.’) I’m actually pretty good at understanding the basics of physics involved. You need a substantial science background in order to sit for the patent bar, let alone pass it. I did take physics courses in college. Also, while this isnt physics, I do have a pretty good knowledge of ‘sci fi pop culture’ science as well which bother to deal with spacetime and spacetime workarounds (Farscape, Andromeda, Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect, Babylon 5, etc), not to mention Real Life theoretical physics applications (the Alcubierrer drive, which would be an example of violating local causality).
Also I’ve continually used links (I use links in a LOT of my posts, very regularly in fact, as you well know), so I’m obviously using what’s in the comic. I also usually point out the exact panels for which I’m coming up with my arguments.
It’s confusing to me since most of what you say in your post actually SUPPORTS what I’ve been saying and is the exact ‘understanding of physics’ which I was talking about, instead of refuting it.
“There were too many of Harem because she was 53 days in the future, and thus the one body that went through the portal joined the 5 that already existed at that time.”
… right. Because Dabbler needed to know that information in order to calculate for spacetime in order to get Alar’s coordinates so that Cora knows where to go. And again, it explains why Harem’s revelation that there were too many of her HELPS Dabbler with this. What you are saying is SUPPORT of my statements – you’re not refuting them. I’m assuming you do understand WHY they were 53 days in the future. Because the sky ripper breaks causality since it’s literally instantaneous travel (much like Harem’s quantum-entangled brains are instantaneous travel for information), which is more causality breaking than even FTL travel.
It also goes back to the main point of the thread, which some people may have lost track of amidst all the tangents – that it would not be particularly pleasant for Harem to have one of her bodies on Fracture Station for reconnaissance. Trying to communicate with herself on Earth via the whole ‘quantum entanglement of her brains into one mind would still have the problem of ‘too many Harems’ for Harem to be able to easily deal with.
“Parts of her brain are quantumly interconnected, and the point of that is that she can communicate instantaneously, across any distance. ”
AGAIN you are actually SUPPORTING MY REASONING. She can instantaneously communicate across any distance. But spacetime still exists. So when one Harem is on Fracture Station, there will literally be ‘too many Harems’ if Fracture Station is exceedingly distant from Earth. It’s the COMMUNICATION which is going to be the problem for Harem because she’s going to sense that there are more of her than there is supposed to be. Spacetime isnt just a thing on Alar. It’s also going to be a thing on Fracture Station.
“Studying Harem might provide Earth scientists with some very useful data on interstellar communication, though they’ll probably get that from the FTL ship they’ve since acquired.”
I’m pretty sure that quantum physics and FTL travel would not like each other much. :) The FTL travel seems to involve either hyperspace or slipstreams or some form of limited wormholes from what we saw with Cora’s ship. Quantum entanglement doesnt seem to bother with that sort of thing. Which means one has to deal with spacetime (by going into an area where spacetime is different or creating a bubble where physics is different so that normal physics can’t say ‘NO DONT DO THAT’ – ie, hyperspace, slipstreams, warp bubbles, alcubierre drives, etc) and the other is ignoring spacetime limitations despite being WITHIN spacetime (when dealing with vast distances). When the two streams cross, it’s disorienting for Harem.
“Au contraire, Alar is (was) a well known planet in the galactic community”
While the Alari are a well known race in the galactic community, and the Xevoarchy may know where Alar is, Dabbler seemed like she did NOT know where Alar is. Otherwise she wouldnt have needed to calculate the coordinates based on the whole timespace deal in order to give Cora coordinates. She would have just said to Cora “Go to Alar homeworld and pick up Sydney – you know… the planet which everyone knows the location of?”
“the NYC invaders all knew what an Alari nanny disc was, for example.”
While they may know what an Alari nanny disc is, that doesnt mean they know where the planet is located. You know what an iPhone is (I just love using iPhones in my examples apparently). Do you know the location of the factory at which your iPhone was made? Or even the location of the warehouse was stored before you received it? Actual address. Do you know the address for Tim Cook CEO of Apple (without looking it up on your computer or your smartphone, even if it’s not an apple iphone?)
“The team already knew it was Alar,”
The team knew it was Alar because Sciona was bragging that they were now on Alar. It doesnt mean they knew WHERE Alar is located, spacial coordinates-wise.
“and surely its coordinates are public knowledge,”
Why would you assume a warlike and somewhat xenophobic race’s home planet coordinates would be public knowledge?
“and only Sydney’s precise time and local coordinates were unknown (necessitating the launch of Cora’s scanners to find the orbs, which instead detected the Causeway).”
Sydney’s precise time was needed specifically in order to calculate where Alar was for Dabbler. Who was another person who knows who the Alari are, but there’s nothing to say she knew WHERE Alar was. Otherwise it would have made no sense to need Cora’s help AFTER finding out Harem’s revelation about spacetime and its effect on her. Also no reason Cora would have said ‘the coordinates given to us by Dabbler’ instead of simply ‘Alar.’
“Dabbler seemed like she did NOT know where Alar is.”
She just didn’t know how to get there, because the wormhole was destroyed and she didn’t have another way to travel FTL. That’s why she needed to call Cora, who had a ship.
“Otherwise she wouldnt have needed to calculate the coordinates based on the whole timespace deal in order to give Cora coordinates. She would have just said to Cora “Go to Alar homeworld and pick up Sydney – you know… the planet which everyone knows the location of?””
We haven’t seen her having to calculate any coordinates, and we haven’t seen her call with Cora. Any evidence the call with Cora didn’t go roughly like that?
“without looking it up on your computer or your smartphone”
Why that restriction? Why would Dabbler or Cora not just look it up if they don’t know out of hand?
“Why would you assume a warlike and somewhat xenophobic race’s home planet coordinates would be public knowledge?”
Planets are not easy to hide. Any enemy of the Alari could just follow an Alari trader home (we know Alari traders exist from the nanny disks, and we know FTL travel can be followed because Cora specifically takes measures to prevent the invaders from doing so with her.) Or find candidates with regular telescopes, then visit them all with scout ships. Maybe it’s not public knowledge, but it’s certainly not unavailable knowledge either.
“Otherwise it would have made no sense to need Cora’s help AFTER finding out Harem’s revelation about spacetime and its effect on her.”
Cora has a way to get there, Dabbler does not. She didn’t have the artifact (it was nicked by Vale), so she couldn’t have built a new wormhole.
“She just didn’t know how to get there, because the wormhole was destroyed and she didn’t have another way to travel FTL. That’s why she needed to call Cora, who had a ship.”
Again…. why did she then say that knowing about Harem’s revelation HELPED then? What does it help with? It helps with calculating where Alar is, when accounting for the 53 day gap in spacetime (which would tell just how far away Alar is)
“We haven’t seen her having to calculate any coordinates, and we haven’t seen her call with Cora. Any evidence the call with Cora didn’t go roughly like that?”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-651-obtuse-loop/
(Last panel + what DaveB says in the blurb below the comic)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-674-space-cavalry/
(panel 5 – shows that in order to get here, accounting for relativity and spacetime was necessary)
“Why that restriction? Why would Dabbler or Cora not just look it up if they don’t know out of hand?”
Um…. the smartphone comment was a comparison to a real life idea. Why a restriction of no smartphone to find out where the iphone was built or warehoused? Why a restriction on Dabbler knowing how to make a portal to Alar then? Cora says on Fracture station that they’re all over Fracture that can get Sydney directly to earth if not for space customs. If those are able to be made, why would Dabbler not be able to make one? So I made a comparison of a restriction for finding out in RL where Tim Cook lives. But fine. Say you have access to an iphone. Tell me which factory and which warehouse your iphone was created and stored in. :)
“Planets are not easy to hide.”
For this, I will quote Douglas Adams.
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
“Any enemy of the Alari could just follow an Alari trader home (we know Alari traders exist from the nanny disks,”
No… we know that Alari nanny disks exist. We do not know where they are manufactured. iPhones are not manufactured in Tim Cook’s house.
“Or find candidates with regular telescopes,”
You need to know where to look to point the telescope at a planet. Think Farscape. The reason Earth is not known to the Peacekeepers is because they frankly had no idea to look in the area where Earth is located. Scorpius knows of Earth, and didnt know where Earth was located. Even though he knew
that Earth was in a portion of space called the Uncharted Territories. Because that portion of space was uncharted hence the name. There was no looking through a telescope to figure out where in the uncharted territories Earth was, because ‘Space is big. Mind bogglingly big.’
Also because Alari are xenophobic and warlike, and it’s quite likely they’re good at hiding coordinates of military targets. Like their home planet.
“She didn’t have the artifact (it was nicked by Vale), so she couldn’t have built a new wormhole.”
We know that they exist on Fracture Station. Dabbler’s smart enough to know how to invent something that’s already been invented on a station where Dabbler has been during her many space adventures. Because she presumably would need to also know Alar’s coordinates. Also because Cora’s ship would be faster than her building one. But AGAIN… why does Dabbler only decide to do this AFTER Harem’s revelation and Dabbler saying this would make things easier to figure out? Because it helps to know how far away Sydney is, since space and time are intertwined when you’re talking about vast distances.
“Again…. why did she then say that knowing about Harem’s revelation HELPED then? What does it help with?”
Because it means they have 53 days to prepare and mount the rescue effort.
“It helps with calculating where Alar is, when accounting for the 53 day gap in spacetime (which would tell just how far away Alar is)”
The gap is time travel, from the damage to Sciona’s ritual. This wasn’t a part of regular traveling. We know this because Sciona, who designed the ritual was surprised so much time had passed. Also, if it were travel time, they would return 106 days later, not at the same time, which would also defeat the point of a wormhole. (And even if she knew how far away Alar is, this wouldn’t actually help her much in finding any coordinates.)
“(Last panel + what DaveB says in the blurb below the comic)”
So no actual evidence. Just a reaching hypothesis based on an intentionally obtuse sentence.
“(panel 5 – shows that in order to get here, accounting for relativity and spacetime was necessary)”
Given the reference to “angle of departure”, that’s obviously related to the workings of their FTL drive. No evidence it had anything to do with obtaining the coordinates.
“If those are able to be made, why would Dabbler not be able to make one?”
Lacking some parts? Or maybe she could make one but isn’t able to connect it to the network?
“Um…. the smartphone comment was a comparison to a real life idea.”
A bad comparison, and asking for the specific warehouse is just making it worse. We’re only looking for the home planet of a civilisation. That’s the equivalent of knowing Apple is based in the US.
“Space is big.”
It’s also very empty, and anything interesting stands out like a beacon on a telescope. Cartographing stars is trivial, and cartographing planets is only somewhat harder. Any FTL civilisation worth its salt will routinely have maps of all planets in the area.
“No… we know that Alari nanny disks exist. We do not know where they are manufactured.”
On Alar. They’re created by Alari and sold to Alari (the ad was targeted at an Alari audience.) That they’re sold elsewhere is proof there’s trade with Alar, which can be followed.
“You need to know where to look to point the telescope at a planet.”
The sky. Then you just cartograph all stars in a given distance. And it’s not like people wouldn’t know roughly where the Alari live from where they come from. I don’t know Farscape, but from your description it’s soft sci-fi.
So there’s no chance for the Alari to hide their home planet, so no point in trying.
“We know that they exist on Fracture Station. Dabbler’s smart enough to know how to invent something that’s already been invented on a station where Dabbler has been during her many space adventures.”
She clearly said she would require the artifact. She’s a good mechanic, but she can’t just conjure missing parts. Sciona clearly needed the artifact, too. We don’t know the requirements for travel gates (power, infrastructure, raw materials in both quality and quantity).
“why does Dabbler only decide to do this AFTER Harem’s revelation and Dabbler saying this would make things easier to figure out?”
She doesn’t. She decides to do it before (In panel 2 of #651, she says she needs to make a call), then just “it will make things easier”. She does not say anything about figuring out anything. It’s probably the extra time making things easier.
“space and time are intertwined when you’re talking about vast distances.”
You’re waxing poetic about physics you don’t understand again.
I see the parallel you’re making with locating the iPhone mfg plant, but I don’t think your conclusion logically follows. Sure, people knowing about an Alari product such the nanny discs would not require them to know where Alar itself is. Their specific knowledge is irrelevant to my point, which is that Alar is a world with an extended galactic trade presence, so its coordinates would be available to anyone wishing to travel there.
Cora revealed that Earth’s location has been known for ages, everyone’s just been ignoring it because there was little reason to go there without official relations. But that once video of supers made its way onto the galactic web, Ray Cosmos was able to bring an unsanctioned, uninvited tourist ship to Earth within days. If it’s that easy to get Earth’s coordinates, surely it’s even easier to get Alar’s.
brichins:
“Sure, people knowing about an Alari product such the nanny discs would not require them to know where Alar itself is. ”
I should also add that i suspect that Alari nanny discs seem to be mainly intended for Alari children, based on that commercial. Cora just happened to buy them to deal with prisoners instead.
“Cosmos was able to bring an unsanctioned, uninvited tourist ship to Earth within days. ”
Earth, unlike Alar, is also apparently a place that aliens tend to go for the sex tourism, and have since ancient Egypt or before. Not to mention a steady trickle of humans into space a while ago. And Earth isnt xenophobic. They were just a population that was mostly ignorant of aliens until very recently. Earth has a Council, which includes a Xevoarchy member for the alien population on Earth, plus also a Demon representative and various other non-human, non-Earth-born representatives. Who are in good standing with at least one major government on Earth (the United States), and probably multiple others.
Alar doesnt seem like much of a tourist attraction. Or any non-Alari attraction.
Alar is very xenophobic and sees non-Alari as subject races. With the exception of Deus of course, who is the exception that proves the rule since he is clearly superior to any Alari, as Lorlana realized since she is very observant. :)
Alar does NOT have a ‘Council’ on it. Nor a Xevoarchy representative. I doubt one would live long if they approached Alar. Or would have before the Alari were mostly wiped out.
There was indeed information from her 5 doubles retained when Dabbler came home. They used it to stop a lot of flare ups for the next 3 months until Sydney came back, as Harem told the team what was going to happen. It was alluded to in the comic when Maxima was kicking the guy’s face in just before being notified that Sydney was coming home.
*thumbs up!* Yep.
It’s not in https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-717-the-long-foot-of-the-law/. Can you give me a link?
Wondering as well. It certainly seems like that’s what they should have been doing during the 2 month gap, but I can’t find anything that actually confirms it. The example here just sounds like a supernatural that objected to the ‘invasion’ of the Alar refugees.
I found it, it’s in the A/N to https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-727-a-timely-prank/.
“Past Harem also instantly knew everything that had happened in the intervening time. Since she only has one mind between all her bodies, the two versions of her integrated into a new single mind with the added memories. Her ability to recall those memories, however, is somewhat limited. They’re all there, but they don’t just burst forth unbidden. Most memories need some context. She sat down and tried to sort of remember everything in order, but a lot of the samey daily minutia got lost in the kaleidoscope of monotony that is modern life. The big events, however, were a lot easier to pull up. In the last 2 months, the team has gained a bit of a reputation for being exactly where they needed to be to prevent major crimes and disasters. If anyone is speculating that Archon has a psychic, they’re okay with people believing it.”
Nice, thanks for the sauce. Also was interested in the prior lines:
I had been assuming only the single instance on Alar was affected (1+5), but as she has a single mind (since the wormhole was still open?), all 5+5 copies were involved. Which raises lots of questions about what would’ve happened if Harem had been left behind with Sydney. Would Harem have been down to 4 until that copy be re-integrated? Or been able to stay at 6 afterwards? Could the team have prepared a recovery package and had future Harem port an instance to Alar with it?
As others have pointed out, there are 5 different bodies for Daphne, with one left unmodded so she remembers what she looks like. I think that’s the strawberry blonde. So she goes from no tats to a full sleeve neck to wrist, depending on which body she’s using at the moment, or which one is being addressed in a particular conversation.
This PARTICULAR Harem didnt have tattoos in past links though, then had different tattoos, then no tattoos again. I am bot talking about the other 4 bodies – just this one.
On the menu of a hotdog place I once visited was an 18 inch cheddar dog with white habernero mustard that they called ‘The Hot Date’. It came with free refills on your drink.
When I lived in Maryland, I found out how widely pizza can vary between franchises.
The Papa Johns franchise close to where I was living was the one also in the Pentagon. Their Pizza was GREAT. They were voted #1-3 in the country for the franchises for years.
the Papa johns down the road in Columbia was like, wtf, is this even the same chain?
The fun thing about the hot dog stand is that the Russians didn’t know that, and they thought it was a secret command center for years…
One of a baby’s first lessons once they become mobile is to find their limits.
Looks like Syd is still learning this! XD
FYI, that 5 acers is also the most secure open to the sky spaces on the planet. Only people who eat there are people who can have clearance to the layers of security around and inside the pentagon. Also attracts attention from a lot of spies from around the world, if just to find out who goes there. I honestly wonder if the landscaper/s who tend it have collections of disabled bugs from there in a trophy case.
With golden glares so close to her eyes, does Maxima ever blind herself with her “skin”?
I have concerns about Harem’s sleeve.
A complicated sleeve like that isn’t as much as painful as being a possible heath risk. Clearly she didn’t have a reaction and went through the process of caring for it while it healed but there are very clear rules for getting a tattoo that size.
My son is currently going through that process of getting a sleeve (based around a dragon not anime orgasm faces) it’s going to be 4 colors so it’s going to take several sessions spaced out over several months. You CAN poison yourself if you have too much done at once! Yes, yes, I’m sure there are readers out there that’s going to argue that point, but read up on that before you tear into me.
Just because you (or someone you know) got away with it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a huge risk. My son got the black line done (shoulder to elbow) of the first dragon and it took a week to get the thing to stop weeping plasma, I watched him take off the plastic wrap, clean it up, apply the ointment, and re-wrap it (with my help) everyday for a week. He felt ill for a couple of days as well, but that’s the body reaction to being stabbed thousands of times by an ink-coated needle at high speed. It’s called shock, like how you feel after an accident or surgery.
My concerns weren’t about the acquisition or upkeep of the tattoo, but the content of it.
I’ve seen teenage/20+ kids out there wearing jackets, both sexes, of the “Ahegao” face, it’s pop culture, if you had any idea of the shear number of hentai/manga/anime porn that flooded the USA market in the last decade or so, you wouldn’t of mentioned it. I’m not into that stuff myself, I’m not into cartoon porn, however my youngest is (he’s 33) and will launch into details if you dare say anything about it LOL, it’s mostly harmless. If you want more info, search Ahegao, I hope you have all day LOL!
Odds are it is an actual sleeve, one you slide on and off, a tattoo that complected would take a few days if not a week at least before she’d be showing it off. And besides, it’s a cartoon inside a cartoon!
Damnit now I want to visit the Pentagon just for a hot dog…
The hot dog stand is the Ground Zero Cafe.
Not anymore it isn’t. It’s now an Au Bon Pain. :(
The more I think about it, the more in despair I am at how I will never be able to eat at a Cafe Ground Zero for hot dogs in the middle of the Pentagon. The best I could hope for is some mildly good bread from Au Bon Pain. That’s not worth going to the Pentagon though!
Change .org petition to reinstate the hotdog cafe?
A very worthy petition.
… https://chng.it/nFjTm6tCNG
You’re doing God’s work, sir.
Now if we can just get the courtyard itself renamed “Foody McFoodface”.
Alien Dice is a cool webcomic that you should read.
How in the heck does the orbs system not have a visible or easily checkable “current battery percentage” indicator?
This seems a fundamental and critically important piece of information for any device that can be drained by usage and needs to be topped off.
As Max points out, not knowing this basic info can get the user into serious situations, and one would think the orb designers would have been well aware of that and not want newbies to get stranded in space or whatever.
(Sidebar: Maybe that’s how the orbs’ original owner died in the ocean, leaving the orbs for Sydney to eventually find?
Sidebar#2: Why wouldn’t the orbs be designed with a feature of, “If abandoned, auto-return to factory for reuse”?)
Maybe the power level is viewed telepathically, or only visible when the skill tree is open, or some such. It probably shouldn’t be visible to anyone but the user though, for tactical reasons.
the more we learn and question the orbs, the more convinced I am they are hyper advanced alien toys. Stranded, not an issue, call your parents to come pick you up. Heck what if the last orb is an emergency ride home and hasn’t worked so far because *unrecognized number because their kid bought a new set after losing these* or the emergency situation is insufficient.
(that or the alien kid would have another device as a cell phone or a mean of communication beyond the restrictions of the lower dimensions that amounts to yelling across the street for them).
That said, they do more and more give that vibe of like those really old school sci-fi cartoons *which funny enough weren’t described as beyond comprehension alien tech but human tech…with cartoon logic of course…pure imagination no reasoning* that later stories would use similar ideas as (it was hyper advanced alien technology)
like an old space themed cartoon going.
Hey kids, the new Omni-Cube Deluxe is now on sale, it has gravity beams *show gravity beam getting a toy flying saucer with real little green men “pets” out of a cosmic tree*, laser tag with friend (warning do not aim at lower dimension life forms), holographic projectors for playing pranks, and even can transform into a hyperspace moped. Don’t worry, if you feel the power cells are getting low use the hyper space wireless phone device included to call for a pick up from mom or dad. Its that easy, order your own today.
Probably the passive node on the unknown orb.