Weren’t everyone’s family portraits done under some sort of duress? Usually it’s mom cracking the whip, or sometimes it’s mom and dad, but I never met any kids that were excited to be forced into a collared shirt so you could go rest your arm on that fuzzy saddle thing while mom glared at you to “smile nice.”

Peggy’s foot is attached and functional, but Frix gave Peggy a few instructions like to avoid heavy exercise for the first week, to some toe dexterity exercises, stretch out the muscle, etc. He probably gave her a few pills to help the “seams” in the tissue integrate optimally. Stuff like that. The general tech level of “space” in the Grrl-verse is good, but it’s not “I’ll just run you through the transporter and perfectly re-trans-integrate your missling leg, and also screen out any potential hereditary diseases and also make your hair longer if you want.”

Honestly, I think it’s a missed opportunity in Star Trek that they never dealt with the ethical implications of what you could really do with transporters, like “Oh, you’re 40 pounds overweight? I can transport that away no problem.” which then leads to all kinds of shenanigans. I can fix your fertility issues, I can ensure your baby is perfectly healthy. Runaway gene editing, the pursuit of super soldiers, so called “master races” etc. And don’t tell me transporters can’t do that, they’ve definitely done little tweaks here and there before. Sure, maybe Starfleet transporters aren’t set up to do that, and they probably have a raft of regulations discouraging that sort of behavior, but you’d never convince me that the Founders wouldn’t exploit that stuff, or some obscure alien race wouldn’t do everything they could to become the ultimate warrior species or whatever. And sure, that race would inevitably wind up in a Morlock/Eloi kind of situation, or they’d all devolve or produce incurable cancers and are desperately searching for an exemplar of their race preserved in hypersleep or in a transport buffer so they could do a reset, because a lot of sci-fi writing is a bit predictable, let’s be honest.

It is amusing all the storylines that did spring from transporter technology though, because – and let me be clear that I have no evidence of this, it’s only conjecture – that the whole idea of transporters had nothing to do with a vision of futuristic technology, it was all about keeping productions costs down. A cross-fade with some overexposed static is a heck of a lot cheaper than having to shoot a bunch of miniature and full-sized prop shots of shuttles leaving the docking bay and flying down to a planet. Granted, O.G. Star Trek had like six shots total of the Enterprise that they kept reusing, with the exception of a few episodes like when they fought the doomsday ice cream cone, so they could have economized shuttle footage if they really had to. But I’m still convinced it was about saving money, and also a four second shot of a transporter dis-and-reintegration probably saves more screen time than shuttle launch and landing sequences, leaving more time for interracial and interspecies kissing.

I do think there are limits to some technologies. Handkerchiefs probably have an upper tier. That said, you could keep pumping improvements into a thing until it only superficially resembles its antecedent. Like a hanky that Star Trek-style transports tears and snot into nothingness, but also analyzes all fluids and proactively applies a cure for that corneal cancer that it predicted and also perfectly moisturizes your skin and also leaves your fingers dry and clean but also not so dry that trying to pick up a piece of paper becomes an iffy proposition – and if you unfold the hanky it’s also a portable hole with access to essential survival tools and a pile of Werther’s candies and everything else available from the Warehouse at the End of the Universe so if you get Isekai’d with your hanky, you can blow your nose and cure the Oblivophage and produce a jar of honey because honey is more valuable than gold in the world you got sent to.

So when I say there are limits, I guess I really mean that there are limits to how advanced a thing can be and still be considered that same thing. But it still looks like a hanky. So… people would call it a hanky. At least colloquially. I suspect the Dictionary definition of “hanky” would still be limited to “a square of fabric people blow their nose into then stuff back in their pocket.” Because if you’re living in a world where a hanky is also a wormhole and a tricorder, then imagine what your shoes could do, or your belt, or your everyday carry pocket knife. In a world like that the dictionary would either constrain itself to defining words by their original meanings, or there would be only a single entry that just says, “Look, anything can be anything else and it can all do everything. Form is meaningless. What do you want from me?”

The new vote incentive is up! (Finally.)

I’m revisiting a panel from a recent page, but I included some comic reactions and a few outfit swaps, so hopefully you all enjoy it. I also plussed up the art from the comic version a bit, though I suspect that despite the time I spent on that, not a whole lot of people would immediately notice that, so I’m gratuitously pointing it out here.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.