Grrl Power #676 – Double Death Star?
I’ve had the idea of this station in my head for a long time. Now that I’ve drawn it I realize it looks more than a little bit like Apokolips, but the portals on Fracture Station aren’t… well, I’m not sure what the big fire pits are for on Apokolips, but on Fracture Station, they’re fleet sized Stargates/wormholes. (I’m sure the fire pits on Apokolips were just something cool looking that Jack Kirby drew to look cool and a writer had to backfill their purpose.)
Of course I imagined it with about 1000 times the fidelity of what I’m capable of drawing. Here’s an amazing fan render of Cybertron from a guy over at Artstation. So imagine, like… lots more detail I guess. Fracture Station is basically a moon sized city and shipping port. Sydney will get and give more information about it on the next few pages obviously.
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Considering this looks like an interstellar way station/truck stop/train station jump gate; and Sydney is apparently using an Ultra Tech level portal going by the previous page. I get the feeling the people running that station will be rushing out there with “How may we be of service?” rich customer incoming types only to be utterly confused by her just floating there…unless someone recognizes these orbs seeing as the previous orb wielder it seems was there before.
DaveB called it a “…moon sized city and shipping port.” Cities generally don’t have attendants on hand for people who randomly show up, regardless of how important they may or may not be. Until Sydney actually approaches the station for a landing, I don’t think anyone will do more than glance her way.
Cities do have a large multitude of people wanting to rip off the rich visitor though.
yes they do, it’s called a merchant.
It is called customs and customer service personnel. If you think a transit point of that size does not have such services then you have not been through an international airport..
I think it is time to introduce another hypothesis. It may have been that the squiggly unset line in her Prior Art list was Earth, but exactly why was not clear until now, Before, it could have represented the Alari homeworld on account of how Sydney got there, but now we know that is not true. So instead Earth is represented by the squiggle because the previous OrbCommander did not sketch an alternative, the way the Death Star appears to be an alternative portrayal of Fracture Station.
We may assume that the previous OrbCommander did not know about the “buddy system” that every Scuba diver is taught, and which Sydney appears to have discarded as soon as she achieved certification in Scuba. We know that sharks don’t like how humans taste (think of “shark attacks” but not “shark consumers”), and so Sydney could have survived just on that account, but we don’t know what sharks think of eating aliens like the previous OrbCommander.
Thus did the previous OrbCommander surrender the orbs to Sydney, who may or may not learn of it when she decides to visit Earth. There is still the “when?” aspect of wormhole travel to be explained by DaveB.
I really hope it doesn’t just end up being a time-loop-thingy where Sidney plants the orbs…
Of course, the voice-over will initially come piped over through her Comm Orb. One of the troubles she’ll be having is that she won’t be able to direct her flight path to a hanger door while she has the Comm Orb in hand to reply back. I really don’t see any reason why it couldn’t receive a transmission for her though, even if it’s not in her hand at the time. The trick is that the “Flight Control Center” would have to know what frequency to use to contact an Orb-Wielder, but if the Fracture is all that common of a place to go, they probably would know…
Docking will be by Lightbee and teleport.
I imagine the guy waving the long red flashlights might drop them.
reminds me of a dysensphere but built around a pulsar instead off a sun, which probably would give of 1000000x the Jules that building a dysensphere around a normal sun would.
Just as a rant, I hate Dyson’s narcissism and the fact his terms stuck. when I first learned what the common name was in sci-fi of what I had thought I’d made up I had a fit; not because I was beaten to the idea; I figured someone else had done it before, no, because of this incredibly lame name that sounds like something you’d name a new type of toy puzzle or something.
When I imagined a station to enclose a sun to harness its output, I also kept in mind this would black out the sun, but its gravity would remain and be detectable. So I dubbed it a “Black Sun Matrix”.
Actually, Dyson didn’t name it that, and isn’t happy that it’s called a Dyson sphere. He proposed the concept, yes, but he didn’t give it a name. He also didn’t envision it as a rigid body the way scifi has.
So they’re not his terms, and he agrees with you, which kind of clobbers the narcissism accusation as well. ;)
The closest thing to what Sci Fi Authors have described as a “Dyson Sphere” he envisioned is what is known as a “Dyson Swarm” (A series of independently orbiting power stations and habitats)
The solid rigid Sphere around a Star would be impossible to construct without some kind of anitgravity at the poles to keep the sun’s gravity from pulling the poles into the star.
Huh? The gravity at the poles would be just as strong as the gravity at the “equator”…assuming you bothered to spin the thing (which you would have to do in order to have pseudo-gravity at the interior surface.) Honestly, you’d have bigger problems due to tidal effects from stable orbits being elliptical.
I’m confused by this response. What is in orbit? Certainly not the station.
Also, the amount of gravity felt on the surface would just depend on the size of the sphere relative to the mass it surrounds. The surface gravity of the sun is about 30g, so you’d have to make sure your sphere was large enough to provide comfortable surface gravity. A typical pulsar is about 10 solar masses, so if that’s what this is, a moon-sized shell would be out. You’d need something far larger or some advanced tech to dampen the effects of gravity on the surface.
The effect of gravity would be greater at the poles because they would effectively be stationary while towards the equator it would be circling the star. (Think of a satellite circling the earth versus one sitting right above the North Pole. One would stay in orbit while the other would fall back to the surface.)
A circular orbit is perfectly possible, since a circle is simply a special case of an Ellipse where both Foci are the same point.
You would rotate a Dyson sphere, not only to increase the pseudo-gravity at the equator, but to help support it. However, this means that if it is a rigid sphere, the poles would lack that inertia-support and would need to either have antigravity to hold them away from the star, or some kind of engine or thruster doing the same job, since no known material would have the structural strength to hold a rigid sphere shape in that situation.
Wouldn’t rotating a Dyson Sphere cause it bulge at its equator, creating an ‘Orange effect’* where the poles would end up closer to the sun than equator.
*When modern scientists describe the Earth the say it isn’t a perfect sphere but bulges at the equator as it spins, so its shape is like that of an Orange.
Yes, and that’s another reason you would need antigravity or thrusters at the poles, since Gravity follows the inverse square law, and thus the poles would be more affected than the equator. That’s another reason to go for either a swarm or ring (or many many rings, each a slightly different size than the others so their don’t run into each other, rather than the classic sci fi rigid sphere around a star.
There IS NO inherent interior surface gravity of a dyson sphere. The net gravity (from the sphere itself, anyway) anywhere inside a hollow sphere is zero – https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/grvtysp.htm. You MUST spin it to have any apparent gravity whatsoever, and that would be a gradient dropping to zero as you approach the “poles”. But that’s not real gravity, simply centrifugal force.
If the star is at the exact center of the sphere, then the star’s gravity pulls on every part of the sphere identically. Nothing special about the poles. Spinning it simply adds a tangent vector.
If it is NOT at the exact center, then half the sphere will be experiencing a stronger pull from the star than the other half – thus tidal forces. Not that it matters – looking more closely – a solid dyson sphere is inherently unstable, and will eventually collide with the interior star without constant corrections.
@Mockery
That’s not quite true. You have the part about the surface gravity right, but not the effect on the sun. The gravitational potential inside a spherical shell is zero. All the way from one side to another and in between as well. It doesn’t matter if the shell is rotating or not(*). The shell will be neither attracted to nor repulsed by the gravity of the sun. Therefore all you need is a few pressor beams and the shell will be stable (a few = 4 in a tetrahedral arrangement). The rotation of a shell to generate pseudo-gravity is a different matter entirely.
A ringworld is unstable (again, rotation to generate pseudo-gravity doesn’t matter), and must be constantly re-centered to avoid collision with its central sun.
An object in orbit is an entirely different matter, and it was that (as others have noted) that Dyson envisioned: a swarm of small (10’s to 100’s of km in diameter) objects in orbits around the star.
(*) If you start rotating it at relativistic velocities all bets are off.
Fair point I withdraw the Narcissism accusation then. Just not a fan of naming things after themselves or after someone.
Like the Einstein-Rosen Bridge…I am perfectly content with wormhole or space bypass and the like.
It’s to honor the men and women who advance science. You may not like it aesthetically, but it’s important to recognize our history. From Pythagoras, to Hawking we must always honor those of us who made that great leap or discovery. As a history and science nerd I feel these names suit my personal aesthetic nicely. While “Black Star Matrix” does sound ‘cool’ to me so does “Dyson Sphere”. It makes me go “Who was Dyson? What lead to him thinking up the idea of this sphere?” While “Black Star Matrix” just makes me shrug and go, “Hmm Yeah I suppose it would be called that huh?”
Technically speaking, Einstein specifically said he never wanted anything named after him.
Then right after he died, they made Einstein University, renamed the Schwarzchild wormhole to the Einstein Rosen Bridge, and right before he died they named the element Einsteinium.
I swear they just couldnt take his main wish about not having things named after him seriously because of the hair.
I’d personally never want anything named after me, especially not my real world names; they are boring and generic (I won’t mention them here; kinda defeats the purpose of an avatar name). I’d much prefer things given descriptive names, something more universal if we expect them to be used in science around the globe; translatable names in other words.
Black Star Matrix is word salad. It’s a bunch of unconnected words that try to both sound edgy and is something a kid would think up. It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t say anything, it’s worthless on every level. It sounds like a pretentious garage band.
At the very least things like Dyson Sphere has a connection with a real person, a historical figure and is a uniquely searchable term that will immediately give you oodles of information searching for it in a library or the internet. Heck at the very least it accurately describes the shape of the thing.
It is something a kid came up with. I came up with it when I was like 12.
and you sound like you are trying to be liked by the other people going after someone here. Read the damned comments.
Seriously, I fucking withdrew my comment for crying out loud. So go screw.
Just to point this out, putting a proper noun on something isn’t descriptive of it. Yeah the silly name I came up with a kid isn’t as descriptive as something I’d come up with now; but its better than the oh so often lampooned concept of “I’ve decided to call it Frinkonium as I am professor Frink” approach to naming things.
Also, Freeman Dyson wasn’t the first one to come up with either the “Dyson Sphere” or “Dyson Tree” for that matter. Dyson Series is all his though.
If we want to give HISTORICAL credit to the concept we should be then calling them Stapeldon Spheres, or Star Maker Enclosures, or something to that affect, seeing as how Olaf Stapeldon beat Freeman Dyson to the concept in print by like three decades.
Yes Freeman Dyson put some more scientific logic behind the idea. and my rant was just a RANT and I did withdraw that rant when it was politely pointed out he didn’t actually name them those things himself.
PS: we really need to be able to edit our comments. I am much more level headed after a moment of thought.
Straight from the Wikipedia article for Dyson Sphere:
“In May 2013, at the Starship Century Symposium in San Diego, Dyson repeated his comments that he wished the concept had not been named after him.”
It took about thirty seconds to completely invalidate your complaints about Dyson.
Good for you, want a troll cookie. Try being polite.
Also fairly certain you and “Christopher” are the same person doing the (I am multiple people to gang up on one bit).
Or not, which ever. But seriously, if someone already said something there is no reason to repeat it. What does this look like? Youtube?
Comments get buried my friend. Your likely to get every Dick and Harry who disagree’s with you on your back for this thread.
Indeed,
getting flash backs to the Bloodrayne forum when I went after Uwe Boll for ruining the franchise.
Thanks for victim blaming Dyson on that one. Some people just really like being A-holes, no mater how far off reality they have to go to even begin their argumentation.
See Grat’s response? That was the polite way to point this out.
As this was something from years ago for me, the idea of looking it up before posting would not have occurred. and your tone is seriously not appreciated. I have to regard you as a troll because of it.
Your comment was impolite to begin with.
Quit sniveling about how your nasty insinuation was harshly corrected.
I withdrew my comment *not like I can edit the earlier ones*, so dogging someone after that is extremely bad form.
Your retraction came after Christopher’s Comment. They aren’t “dogging someone after that”.
Chris and Christopher yes, not the person I was just addressing however “Etiquette Commando”
and seriously. This doesn’t deserve this much talk; its not even related to the comic. Can we just drop it?
i’m glad that i am not the only one that saw this and thought pulsar dyson sphere.
my first though was, why leave the strongest emission points open?
thinking about it rationally, NOT capping the beams of emission is probably a smart move, given how incredibly difficult doing so would be. i mean, they’re more or less the strongest lasers known, emitting enough ultra high energy EM radiation to reduce anything mortals could throw at it into it’s constituent particles in nothing flat.
With the two polar beams, I was thinking “Maybe that is a black hole in a sphere?” These poles could be the “relativistic jets”. And thouse would not be the kind of stuff you want to collect: Moving at around 1/4 Lightspeed and being highly energetic and possibly hot enough that no atoms can form in them.
Of coruse that would not explain those other holes. And Blackhoesl only emit those while “eating messily”. The whole “gateways everywhere” just makes more sense.
My first though as well was a Dyson Sphere around a super massive blackhole tapping the Gamma ray bursts from the north and south poles (well as north and south as you can get in space). Genuinely feel sorry for Dyson with the naming though, especially as Olaf Stapledon came up with the description back in 1937, nearly 30 years before Dyson did his paper on it as well as others including Edgar Rice Burroughs among several others who explored similar concepts in their work.
Tapping a black hole’s jets?
Sounds like a practical idea, i’m just not sure it’s possible. The jets are things that naturally eject matter at/above the escape velocity of the body they form around (within the limits of the laws of physics). In short, they shoot out atoms at speeds very close to light speed. I don’t think there’s a material in existence that could be credibly close to a black hole and survive in that jet. Next to the jets, drawing on the power from a distance – magnetically, you say? The jets are known to be unstable. Working next to it, sooner or later you may find yourself inside the jet.
But think about it, if you could redirect a jet with an artificial gravity source, you could probably make things work – ‘oh, jet getting off alignment? Let’s either refocus it, or shut the thing down’ – or weaponize it. ‘You want our space gerbils for free, do you? Are you suuuure you don’t need your home world anymore? Keep this up and our power plant may randomly fall out of alignment…’
Don’t forget the radiation, it gives off, it would take some fantastic shielding, to make it safe.
Her hand is not on the shield orb. That’s the blue one, right?
No, the blue orb is the fly ball. She let go of it because, well, she’s in space. Not much of a risk that she’ll start falling. The purple one is the shield orb.
Both of them are kind of blue. The Fly Orb is the deeper blue of the two, and we know that’s the one she let go of because that’s the hand she was leading with going through the portal. And for some reason the Shield Orb is glowing purple?
The Shield Orb is more of an Indigo – so, a bluey-purple. The purple-ness is more evident when it glows though.
From the “Who’s who” to the right of the comic:
> Red – Energy Blast (PPO)
> Orange – Unknown
> Yellow – Telepresence and Truesight
> Green – Makes air?
> Blue – Flight
> Indigo – Forcefield
> Violet – Energy Tentacle (Lighthook)
Not shown:> Infra-red – User Guide and Tutorial
> Ultra-Violet – Settings and Language Preferences
The shield has not yet collapesed.
And even if, you got about 10 second of consciousness in hard vacuum. Unless your heart stops (1-2 minutes in), most damage from Vacuum exposure seems to be temporariy. If it does stop, human tech can not revive you anymore.
Explosive decompression would not be healthy for a her lungs, however. Especially if she holds her breath.
Oh, in case no one answered them. I think the fire pits on Apokalips are just vents for the furnace core of the planet. Also they install them on planets they are conquring as well *at least in the Superman cartoon back in the 90’s* as a way to destabilize and destroy a planet’s environments and because of this system the planet then becomes reliant on Apokalips tech just to stay inhabited. Basically its ambience with a big price. on Apokalips there are slaves who feed the furnaces.
It is all part of Darkseid’s business plan. He takes over planets and renovates them for profit. Putting in a fireplace always adds to the resale price. He films the process as part of his show “Extreme Makeover, Planetary Edition”. It is available from most interstellar cable providers.
I always assumed that they were extremely low efficiency thermal power extractors, boreholes basically, and that his big plan was to conquer all these planets Mortal Kombat style, where they just merge together. So, he basically just throws new worlds into that furnace to keep it going.
There is a simple reason for the Firepits: It makes it look more like Hell.
Wich can be both a artist explanation and a in-character explanation, as Darkseid really loves himself being “a Dark God/Devilfigure”.
To DaveB, the fire pits on Apokolips are basically forges powered by pain, suffering, misery and the souls of anything burned in them… Superman fell into one and was completely corrupted by it.
As for the ships using the Fracture, the ones I can identify are:
Left side (top working down): The Titan from Titan AE, a Gou’ald Mothership, a Starfleet starship (probably Constitution class).
Right Side (top working down): Temporal Dreadnaught from Star Trek Online, a Battlestar, 2 (maybe 3) Accalamators.
And front underside of the Fracture, we can see the Lexx.
There are others I feel I should recognise but the names aren’t coming to me.
I’m surprised you remember Lexx that was a fair number of solar cycles ago and didn’t become as iconic as many of the others.
The Lexx is quite distinctive: once seen it is not easily forgotten.
It looks like either a Firefly or the knockoff ship from Prometheus below the Star Trek ship on the left. On the right I’m seeing what looks like a couple of Star Destroyers.
Below the Gou’ald Mothership there’s something which looks similar to Talyn from Farscape.
The green ship on the upper left seems to be a Robotech/Macross Azashar class Mothership (about 7,2km length)… I have seen some of the other unknowns before but i can´t place it.
I wonder given the circumstances if a leveled-up Life Support Orb can also produce food for their owner (although given the owner nobody else could probably handle it given the spicy hot levels she’d she’d want). Free meals that finally suit her tastes.
Wish I had that. I would never have to leave the bubble.
Well except for doing one thing I guess.
I think the air orb could also produce liquids.
Something equivalent to Ensure ™.
Not sure if the safeguard would allow Coke cola.
Or whisky.
Rj…..yes….not sure about the recycling function.
It’s obviousy absorbing stale air while producing fresh air.
Syd has yet to use it as a auto-refilling squirt gun. I would.
It is a possibility that the orb can norish its wielder.
Actually it is also possible that the function is already there but she hasn’t noticed it.
If the Air-Ball dematerializes carbon dioxide and simultaneously
materializes oxygen in the immediate area, maybe it is also
surreptitiously emptying her bladder and rehydrating her with a
small quantity of distilled water.
Your comment about the detail level reminds me of Treasure Planet, where you see the crescent moon in the distance but as you draw closer more and more detail shows up until you realize it’s a space harbor made of buildings.
Since people have explained the fire pits…I’m just going to add that Apokalips is SO bad…that when Galactus tried to drain the life out of it?
He got NOTHING. There was no life left in the planet.
Galactus asked Darkseid why he had fought so hard to defend the planet when he (D) knew that he (G) would gain nothing from it and thus leave without destroying it (the planet).
Darkseid responded ‘Because it is mine.”
One of D’s creepy minions suggested sending the incoming big G to New Genesis. D said “No. New Genesis is mine to destroy, non-one else’s.”
Or so I remember that comic.
Sounds like one of those pre-Amalgam cross-over comics, the ones that don’t count in the canons of either company
That is ENTIRELY correct. Jack Kirby special. (Don’t believe it was written by him)
Sydney, NO! NEVER do what you did right there! I can’t believe that you’d be so reckless!
Always shoot pics like that in LANDSCAPE mode, never PORTRAIT mode!
I….I can’t even look at you right now.
As the object is spherical and there’s no horizon behind it,
I think we can forgive Sydney this time.
Given the massive beams emitting from the “poles” of the station, a vertically-oriented picture would actually be better. Landscape would just capture more of the empty space to either side.
Maybe she wanted to make that the new background for her phone? Landscape mode doesn’t work well for that.
In this case and her alignement portrait mode is an option when you want everything (extended plasma arms or whatever that is) in one picture and since it is space there is no down so orientation isn´t fixed. Funny thing is in SciFy ships often seem to orient in the same plane…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYLL7-rUGPY
But do we know her orientation in relation to the sphere?
Absolutely. Since she’s taking the picture in portrait mode, her orientation is either similar to ours or flipped around 180 degrees.
Unless she is offset 90 degrees from the object she is taking a picture of. ‘Up’ in space is totally arbitrary.
Tarne, I think you’re confused. Let me try this again:
If we start with the assumption that Sydney is as competent with technology as she should be given her background, she’s taking the picture right. Second-guessing her established technocred does not make sense.
My statement of flipped around 180 degrees was an assertion that ‘up’ is totally arbitrary. Note that I did not use the word ‘up’ in my prior response.
I can’t decide if the blue line above the orbs is a crackle of energy (like the others around her shield), or the vortex tail of the warp tunnel. What we can see through the opening looks like it bends off in that direction, but a warp tunnel that marked a physical path would be really dangerous, probably traceable, and almost certainly not FTL.
Guessing it’s just residual energy crackling around the shield. This should make for an interesting first encounter handshake.
If you look you will see other energy line around Syd’s shield. And they appear to originate from the causeway.
Those are the Mome Raths outgrabbing and outpushing.
Like your printer has seperate paper pickup and paper delivery rollers.
Not so much a Carroll reference as a Cheney reference.
Curse the inability to edit posts!
I meant Lewis Padgett.
Now I don’t know who I mean!!!!
Kuttner? Moore?
Whoever wrote “Mimzy Were the Borogroves” which was adapted
to become the motion picture “The Last Mimzy”.
IMDB says adapted from a story by….Padget.
Neat, a Dyson Sphere.
Nowhere NEAR big enough to encompass a star. Well maybe a neutron star or pulsar, but still, very very small.
I was considering it being a pulsar, given the two emission points. And the spin being involved in the capturing of energy/creation of gateways for science fiction reasons.
those are some very very large ships floating about, or its a fairly small planet. i suspect the latter. also, the debree ring around the planet is also pretty massive, seems like a tiny bit of recycling would pay big divendends there.
Slightly below and to the right of the Enterprise-looking silhouette… could be a Romulan Bird of Prey, if it’s an isometric view rather than perpendicular to the side. On the right, 2 Imperial Star Destroyers. The light grey-colored craft above those looks to me like a Federation shuttlecraft, but it’s either enormous in size if at a distance, or it’s very, very close to Sydney’s position.
That’s a Colonial Battlestar.
Has it ever been established if Halo can recenter herself inside Mr. Bubble? I can’t find any mention of this anywhere. If she drops something inside, say a phone for instance, can she pick it back up?
I think it was established she can’t uncenter herself, but she can change the shape. So she would need to shrink it vertically until she could reach the phone with her other hand. Or maybe just do that trick enough to pick it up with her feet.
I suppose she could shrink it enough to crouch inside… Tangentially, The shield seems to have collision with solid surfaces. I don’t think its a sphere while she is in contact with the ground, or if it is it clips through it. Do y’all think a landmine would work?
We have seen her when standing on a solid surface being attacked by a blast (well, a tentacle) that obliterates the surface around her, but which leaves the surface inside her shield intact. The shield has some sort of phase ability that probably solidifies in solid matter when it senses an attack, kind of like how the “geometric reinforcement” patterns show up whenever & wherever it’s struck.
You are right! Good catch. I bet it works in a similar way to how the com ball projection is not solid. The illusion would need a detection system in place for the teleportation trick so she can’t end up inside of things. This implies that the orbs have some sort of passive sensors of their own.
She isn’t always the center, we’ve seen her at the edge of it (i.e. when she bubbled around vehemence to stop his aggro aura). She was also not in the center when shielding the audience (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1129) during the press conference. Its probable it defaults to centering on her, but has some flexibility via some mechanism that has not been revealed. (Possibly just at the larger sizes?)
Ah! I can’t believe I missed that. Good point sir. My guess would be that she can freely move around but has no reason to most of the time.
I was thinking what Buffrog said, but I sternly resisted the archive dive, and two points of order would’ve demanded archive diving for links…and then I would’ve been lost all day and gotten nothing done.
(Thank you for taking one for the team there, Buffrog, you’re awesome!)
You know, I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t see Sydney standing triumphantly over her kills, yelling to the heavens “I Am Sydney! Warrior Princess Of Earth! Ayiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi( Xena Yell/Scream)!!”.
Xena’s war cry
(to be followed by a gagging/choking cough. Not everyone can do this.)
So… When are you gonna update the orb powers on the character information panel from ‘blue orb’ – Flight to something like Flight/Interplanetary travel?
Cora seems to be assuming that Sydney traversed the wormhole, and is not still on the Alari planet. Big assumption.
I wonder if they’re leaving their probes behind.
No they did not leave their probes in your behind.
No, they did not leave their probes in your behind.
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I’d say it’s a fairly reasonable assumption, from my point of view. The biggest clue is that the scanner officer reported the aetherum tunnel thing but did NOT list any sourcepoint for its origins associated with it. Dabbler did say that the orb artifacts were unscannable directly, but they did create effects with big energy signatures (the aetherum wyrmhole thingy would definitely qualify as such!) so it was a simple matter to realize an interstellar wyrmhole tunnel thingy powerful enough to leave no trace (like how an electric car leaves no fumes!) is Pretty Darned Suspicious if it has no sourcepoint.
The other clue is that they arrived on the same side of the planet as that hellalong deathsquid ship. (They could see it without sending out probes after all.) Logic would dictate that Dabbler’s friend would flee, and the most logical place would be to put a huge planet between her and the very very bad guys. So the fact the tunnel thingy opened on the far side of the planet, from an unknown source, made it doubly likely that it was Sydney Scoville Jr., exeunt Stage Already Left. Whether or not she was pursued by a bear, it’s clear that this is their only real big lead.
The lighthook would become very useful in that circumstance.
Err, that was supposed to be in reply to Zarzapan’s question about dropping her phone while in the shield: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2997/comment-page-2#comment-709771
Not particularly since she cant manifest the hook inside the shield.
We found out in the fight with Vehemence that the Lighthook can’t be manifested inside the shield.
I wonder if Sydney is going to be the first Terran publicly admitted to ‘First Contact? I can just see the headlines now…
The story is of course published by the Weekly World News or maybe the Enquirer so as to avoid panic. They even put Sydney’s pic on the front page!
Seems like both versions of the Battlestar. One on each side. Wondering if that is a base star under the Gou’ald Mothership and a version of the Tiger Claw from Wing Commander on the bottom right…
The economics of interstellar travel are apparently far different than I would have thought.
Cora is taking a crew of who-knows-how-many people on a search and rescue mission using a ship that is worth who-knows-what, instantly dropping whatever she was doing, and is willing to make multiple hops/jumps/whatever to avoid being traced and track Sydney down.
Who is paying for all of this? Is Dabbler or Cora that rich? Or space travel that cheap?
And who has paid to build a small moon-sized space station? How much do you have to pay to use it, to justify such an investment?
Or is all of galactic civilization post-scarcity?
It’s not likely that our society will be able to make it to the point of having viable interstellar travel without admitting scarcity economics are no longer technologically necessary. It’s quite likely that is not unique to our situation.
That said, that stuff certainly has a cost, but it’s probably not nearly as high as you’re thinking. Dabbler’s probably sufficiently good in bed to justify it. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Cora had some of that going on, too.
It’s also likely that desire to learn more about Halo’s orbs is also weighing in on the cost calculation. Assuming that Cora’s tech level is similar to Dabbler’s, they could be keen on leveling up, so to speak.
Post scarcity, cheap labor due to robots,
Specialists get bonus money on their guaranteed income.
The 2nd and 3rd jobs get them above subsistence.
The idea of having spaceships is kind of weird in a universe with established teleportation. That and stable wormholes, much better to simply move goods and people directly to the endpoint from manufacture.
To actually answer (potentially) your questions, the more established (read OLD) a Civ is the cheaper it becomes to make that kind of thing. What if the ships don’t require maintenance on anything less than a million years old? What if moving the ship about is a Power of a crew member and they are the only ones who can hop about? Here is a creepy thought, what if dabbler just has her controlled like jabber?
Dabbler, who is freely acknowledged as widely traveled (experienced in a LOT of different cultures, languages, locations, etc…and yes, partners, focus, mkay?), did NOT recognized the deathsquids. Not their ships nor their battletank attacksquid.
Dabbler ALSO confirmed it was not a punitive measure sent from the intergalactic policing taskforce. Again, she didn’t recognize them at all, and as someone who gets into fights a lot as an adventurer, she’d be pretty familiar with the interstellar po-po.
It will have been assumed that even if Sydney did not attack anything but instead fled the squiddly deathdiddly dealers…she will have seen the devastation of the Alari homeworld when fleeing them (presumably fleeing across the planet’s surface).
Maxima & the others had NOT yet tested Sydney’s ability to go into space. (At least, on camera.) So it wouldn’t be known which way Sydney had fled, save that the ship’s crew had clearly been asked to look for big, weirdly unsourced energy signatures of an unusual nature. The atherum causeway was probably the biggest weirdly unsourced energy signature. Remember, the scanner officer did NOT say there was a SHIP about to take the aperture, just that there was an aetherum causeway opening.
No sign of what caused it, ergo, Sydney’s weird unscannable orbs!
Sydney will have a lot of information for the intergalactic police taskforce to want to ask questions about, get copies of any photos or videos she took while on the Alari homeworld, etc, etc, etc, even if all she did was flee and thus observe. The fact that she fought the deathsquids? A foe that the widely-traveled Dabbler doesn’t know, and that Cora’s crew doesn’t know?
That’s worth quite a lot.
“A reward is being offered for any verifiable information leading to the arrest & conviction or officially authorized extermination of suspects in the crime of wiping out the Alari homeworld & its race without GalactiForce Permission. If you have any leads, please contact…”
Information about a new and clearly dangerous threat to entire planets is always going to be highly valued by governments. If they’re smart (and they clearly are, if they can get disparate races/species/entities to cooperate), they’ll pay very nicely for that information.
Yes, they COULD travel to the Alari homeworld to see the destruction…but if they interview Sydney first, they’ll have a much clearer idea of how much in the way of ships, armor, weapons, etc, to have on hand before heading thattaway.
Cora and her crew could even have received “vouchers” up front guaranteeing payment if they get to Sydney, and interview her on their way back to Earth, and hand off the transcrips and vidlogs of the interviews to GalactiForce (or whatever it’s called), and collect payment at that point.
Plus, if Dabbler said that her friend is tough yet adorkable, kind of like a stray kittenoid you want to just adopt and cuddle and then let loose its sharp lil claws on your enemies after you’ve turned it into your friend, that’d melt the heart of many a freelance adventuring crew.
After giving it more thought, it is entirely possible that there is a bounty for rescuing lost/stuck/adrift lifeboats and the like. To encourage the average spacer to go out of their way to help people.
Most likely, however, the good Captain is just Dabbler’s friend and doing it for free.
Imagine how boring life could be in a mostly automated post scarcity civilization, which is where Cora and crew live if their ship is any indication. I bet there are many who would love to go on a rescue mission just to kill the boredom. Especially if you get to rescue something as rare and exotic as a superhero from Earth.
In news feeds soon… “Coming live from Fracture is our quest Syd the MIGHTY HAaaaallllOOOO!!!. The original organizer of ‘Krack-CON’ the best tentacle themed convention in the universe. The only place to be is here on Fracture this weekender. Come and see the festivities! check out the Dealer rooms for ORIGINAL Earthian *ahem* 2D ‘Manga’ media”
Syd’s not going anywhere soon…
I see that even in space graffiti “artists” are still a plague. I recognize most of the ships, but what is that vibrator shaped one in the upper right?
I can’t make up my mind if it’s the ship from the cheazy Space:1999 t.v. show of the 1970s, or the Battlestar Galactica vessel from the show of the same 1970s era.
I also thouhnt about those 1999 ship, but since they were most a multi purpose cargo, i think they would show up one you got close to the surface in the trade sectors
Regarding Sydney “accidentally letting go” of the shield orb…I’m pretty sure that each time she went into space, just before doing so, she used a strip of duct tape (or clear tape, from her craft pouch) to seal her fingers to the orb (on the side we cannot see in this shot, aka over by fingernails/thumbnail) to make SURE she cannot release it accidentally.
Sydney’s easily distractable at times, but she is also smart, and very, very trope-wise.
Am I tho only one who noticed the symbology similarities between that planet(?) and her orbs?
Here’s my guess at what happens at the entry point to the station.
Sydney flies into a landing bay and sees a glimpse of a city of the most amazing assortment of high tech buildings, people and monorails she can imagine. She is met by a local customs agent who points her to a gate. Sydney walks through a scanner and it flashes an alert. A guard points to the PPO and says it is registering as a weapon and must be checked before entering the habitat zone of the station. Sydney then is stuck trying to tell him how it won’t let her leave it behind even if she wanted to.
This goes on long enough that Cora catches up with her and says she is here to take her home. Cora half drags her away while Sydney complains “I never even got to look inside!” (And saves Dave having to draw what the inside looks like)
Good thing the Orbs are unscanable when not in use.
HOWEVER……
If she is ASKED if she is carrying weapons she’d have to answer honestly.
Maybe puting a sock around it would satisfy them that it’s ‘unloaded/safed’.
Did Sydney ever get her handgun certification? Is she packing?
Maybe that would take a month or two of training that hasn’t hapened yet.
As Sydney is asked that question, she see’s no less than 6 entities answering that with a negative. AND they are all carrying obvious armaments.
Sydney then replies No sir/mam/ whatever.
AT THE SECURITY GATE:
Desk guy: Any weapons?
Sydney: Um.. No?
Desk guy: (Reaches in a bin. Hands her a pistol and holster)
Desk guy: Put them in the checkered receiptical when you leave. Have a pleasant visit.
Don’t you just love how there’s about two dozen types of ships from sci-fi movies or TV series visible around this thing?
Visible? Maybe on that double res patreon version.
Nope, they are visible on regular screens: identifiable on the other flipper…
Is it just me, or does Sydney’s hair look like it is down when she takes the picture?
It’s suposed to look weightless.
Deactivating the Flight Orb turns off the artificial gravity.
It was down when she entered the causeway, I think panel 2 is the error in continuity where it looks like her hair is back up in a ponytail.
The coming pages will be interesting to see; as the orbs are meant to be so mysterious that Dabbler has no idea what they are, but her friend immediately knows a place where the previous owner’s been; so either the owner was super secretive, or The Fracture is super secure.
Either way, massive revelation and maybe initiations/escapes are probably coming soon.
The type of portal Sydney made had its go-to address open while it was open so they could scan its destination. When it closed they wouldn’t be able to.
This Fracture looks like a major point of travel for larger ships. The universe is big and this looks like a busy place. Knowing about it doesn’t mean knowing about everyone who would know about it.
Like if you’ve been to Tokyo that doesn’t mean you know about a specific secret Yakuza informant who had been there and traveled to New York later.
After all the previous orb wielder has also been to Earth but no one on Earth not even the supernatural community seems to know what they are either.
Which would make perfect sense if the orbs lay on the ocean floor for thousands of years. This space station could certainly be that old.
Indeed.
I wander if it may also be a repurposed precursor type structure.
I am put in mind of Marvel comic’s Kylnn; which unlike the movie version was a massive structure built around the center of the universe. Various species had come to use it as a prison over the eons even though none knew who built it *turned out it was Galactus who built it, originally to imprison three other Galactus level beings*. One died, the other two unleashed when the Kylnn was destroyed.
I can think of some other examples, usually in the *we have used this ancient tower/obelisk as a source for our magic and creator of our world without really knowing its origin or even about the super advanced android living inside it*; although oddly the (this ancient super tech) in sci-fi has a tendency to end up being a prison or built around some primordial being or AI that destroyed the previous civilization.
Reminds me of an Anomaly Station in No Man’s Sky. ;)
I am slightly surprised you did not say a “wretched sphere of scum and villiany”.
Had to change my name because the Gravatar name was already taken. :(
Anyway, “wretched sphere of scum and villiany”?
Seeing Halo take the photo I hope she is taking notes for a suit with various tools and items such as a helmet cam. She needs her hands free for the orbs.
After her debriefing back home (with Dabbler under control) her equipment list will achieve Batman like proportions.
And when Deus finds out some part of his anatomy will explode.
Taking bets on which.
Perfect time to meet a CMOT Dibbler selling space cabbage rolls.
“Here you are, sir, madam, neuter, or bigendered; a pactically fresh, very organic cabbage roll. just 10 googly eyes, and that’s gnawing off my own sensory tentacle! ”
I can see it, yes.
I see silhouettes of lots of famous sci-fi spaceships.
Odds on the first thing Sydney looks for being a bathroom?
+1
Could this be where the orbs came from? If Sydney choose the “Home” location, who’s to say it would be HER home? In short, I’m hoping that place turns out to be Oa, rather than Apokolips
To be fair, if I flew away from a harrowing fight. and found a shiny giant orb that could possibly be a death star. I’d take a picture too. If I survive, I can print it off and hang it on my wall at home
Jack Kirby WROTE the original New Gods series, He didn’t just draw it for someone else.
He explained over the years at various times and places that the giant fire pits were sort of simultaneously actual fire pits where the planets’ “life force” was being burned, and at the same time, actual hell-pits where the bodies and souls of the people of Apokalips (and anyone else they presumably got hold of) would be plunged in to provide power for the engines of war that were the purpose of the planet.
The whole series was a bit hippy-esque, but Jack at the time he wrote this was one of the older hippies in the world.
so it’s like an airport version of a hyperspace gate? where like there’s a whole stream of traffic of all sorts of sizes and passengers and stuff? interesting
So, this seems like pretty good confirmation Sydney is, in fact, a spaceship. Of course that brings up the question of why it has such a weird RPG skill point style interface.
The simple option is it’s some kind of system designed to limit new users until they’re experienced with the system, like an alien version of flight hour requirements.
The less simple option is that the skill point unlocking is central to the function of the orbs. Maybe they rely on some kind of link with their operator that grows over time or maybe they were deliberately abandoned because the whole thing is part of some weird experiment.