Grrl Power #677 – Xeno economics
Sydney has a long road to travel before she starts acting like a wealthy person. Not that any amount of paper money from a world without an intergalactic trade agreement would be worth anything there, but with what Archon pays her, she should probably keep at least a grand on her in cash.
I imagine everyone on the team might have a card linked to a team account. Obviously all the expenses on it would need to be accounted for, but, you know, maybe Achilles’s car breaks down on the way to a supervillain attack and he needs a taxi or whatever. Since they’re domestically based, miscellaneous expenses might come up. The spending limit is probably tied to rank in that case.
Achilles especially probably doesn’t want to carry a bunch of his own personal stuff into a fight, since he generally runs at the most dangerous thing in any battle. I’ve drawn his clothes getting blown off or messed up several times already, but come to think of it, he probably would have his badge and the aforementioned card and a few other essentials strapped to one leg inside a wallet made out of the stuff they make black boxes out of. So the next time he gets all his clothes incinerated, don’t be surprised if he’s left wearing just a garter belt. Or I guess just a regular belt makes more sense. Just a really tough one, with a built in fanny pack.
The shot of the alien street scene isn’t nearly what I wanted it to be, but backgrounds have never been my thing, and what I pictured in my head would probably have taken several weeks to draw just by itself. So as with the shot of Fracture Station itself, try and imagine the street level scenes with about 10x the detail if you would. :)
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Hmmm… an arachnid, and is that a mondoshawan walking along?
Nice spot.
*looking around for Leeloo Minaï Lekatariba-Laminaï-Tchaï Ekbat de Sebat*
*tail wagging frantically*
[studying dimensional fracture points in the 5th wall, in case she and Sydney meet]
Hmm
HEAD CANON ACCEPTED.
Excuse me, citizen. Do you classify as Human?
Uhh… Negative. I am a meat Popsicle.
Moooooooltipaaaaaaaassss!!!!
Yeah she know what a multipass is honey.
Someday, somewhere, a municipality will combine their various public transportation payment systems into one card, and call it Multipass.
And soon thereafter will have to make a new batch because of all of us buying them up.
I was under the impression that her first name was actually Leluminaï, meaning “shining one” in ancient all-life.
Elementary my dear Spicefreak.
Looks like a Vorlon in the foreground too. So is a Minbari or Centauri joke on the way for a misidentified Sydney?
Vorlon encounter suit, one of the Klendathu soldiers from “Starship Troopers”.
I’m also seeing an Ice Warrior from Doctor Who.
One of the ships looks like something from 1940s scifi shows, but can’t recognize a specific one.
Also, those three guys in spacesuits at the forefront look familiar, but I can’t place them.
The ones in the foreground are from a space program.
One of the ships (on the right hand side, underneath the train line) looks like a black space invader!
Dum dum de dum de dum …
Nooo, it has turned into a space shark!
I doubt they get much merch from earth, I’m sure something on her is worth money.
I bet the first store she goes in has a Halo (Archon variety) figurine in the window. With collectible orbs.
+10
Actually her money is likely worth money. Collectors collect most anything, and in some cases, that is money. To the right one, Sid’s $17 may be worth all the money she needs. Now there are a few “ifs”. Collectors pay for scarcity and while green paper from hick planet 123456789 may be rare, some tourist may have unloaded a few pounds of it and the price falls to petty cash. [“American? worthless. Do you have any British pounds? One of those would get you a 1st class trip home.”] Then there is quality. Usually the better the condition, the better the price, but uncirculated stamps are just paper while used [and thus worthless] can be worth loads. So her money may be downgraded for being used, but upgraded because the signs of use also certify it is genuine.
Then there is the problem of finding a buyer. Collectors are always rare and finding the one who wants inked paper can be a real chore. So Sid may have to earn her money, but her money [or other items] may be worth a fortune
If you want novel items. She does have earth food on her. Limited, Perishable, and Scarce. Trifecta of value.
they also pay for 1sts’ in this case 1st time an actual human made it to fracture
The orbs are probably worth a fortune, but they might also mark her as “shoot on sight”.
Unfortunately, I don’t think any legal system allows you to sell something that can’t actually be physically separated from you. There is a distance limit, and they seem to be connected to her nervous system. Honestly, for all intents and purposes, the orbs are pretty much a part of Sydney’s body from now until death or God (DaveB) separates her from them.
Umm, sure they can be physically separated from Sydney, just not while she is alive, hence Aboo‘s comment about “shoot on sight”
Her DNA could be worth money.
Which will mean that this place will soon be populated by a majority of Halo clones.
well, i want one
Sign me up for a dozen.
How on Earth/Fracture would you plant enough California Reaper Chilis to keep TWELVE Halo’s sated?
1) The California Reaper is an obscure hybrid, I think you mean the current world record holder, the Carolina Reaper.
2) Neither of those chillies exist yet in universe. At best, we’d be be talking Naga Viper or some form of Trinidad Scorpion.
3) If you’re cloning Sydney then surely cloning her food is the least of your worries. It would probably provide much more consistent results than natural pepper breeding, too. Most of the record holders have not been genetically stable upon public release.
We all hope Halo will eventualy visit Astra’s reality.
2020?
In the WtC books it has been revealed that many of the potential
futures are bad. Population collapse.
It’s *THAT* realality that needs her DNA.
Specificly, several unfertilized eggs.
Would a HERO do that to save what is literally a fictional world?
Anyone who’s seen Megas XLR knows that Sydney might be better funded than she realizes. If anybody is curious, I would direct your attention to episode two, featuring the voice talents of Bruce Campbell.
Darn it Sydney! This is why you carry a credit card for emergencies everybody accepts plastic rectangles!
This is when we learn that Discover Card is an alien industry, and she’s just flat out able to use her card to buy things with her Archon salary. Discover being familiar with earth tech, they can even have an App for her to download to handle price conversion so she knows what she can afford :P
Heh.
This is actually pretty feckin sensible.
Surely an alien sex tourism economy would need a convenient medium of exchange that works locally and …elsewhere. Pretty much “Everywhere You Want To Be”.
The joke is that the credit institution in question turns out to be Diner’s Club International.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egOwFPRfPSs
surprisingly enough, DCI is; in point of fact, owned by Discover. We may be on to something here…
Shit
Dear God, Please let DaveB see this and write it in as a joke.
In fact, it would not surprise me if one of “The Council” members actually runs the company, or at least the Earth division of it.
Travelling to exotic worlds? New planes of existence? Having a grand adventure? Choose us!
For everything else, choose Mastercard.
or if you’re Deus, BastardCard
Deus doesn’t need a credit card or any form of cash when he is visiting The Fracture. He owns the place.
Aliens come to Earth for sex tourism; Deus comes to the Fracture for sex tourism.
Nah, Deus is going to aim BIG, seduce the Fracture its self.
Oh yeah, look at it go up and down on that pulsar like a stripper on a pole. Deus like.
This is where the remaining unknown orb turns out to be some sort of intergalactic credit chip, preloaded with whatever amount makes Sydney very happy.
Nope, it’s when we find out it’s a storage device and when she thinks “where can I get some cash/merch to sell?” reaches out and grabs the unknown orb and goes “hmm” that it opens up an inventory of REALLY expensive goods, that she can’t read ^_^
Maybe a passerby sees the list and asks (with orb translation?) I’ll pay you 200,000 blorbles for THAT!” hehe
They will keep their blorbles off Sydney’s orbs, if they know what is good for them!
How many blorbles to the quatloo?
Ok, let’s see;in panl would, I can see the Whale aprob from Star Trek, a Traveller type S Scout ship, and a Rebel frigae from The Empire Strikes Back,not sure what the other two shps are.
That should read, in panel two.
Assuming we’re looking down, and that forward is toward the bottom of the screen, there’s a single-nacelle Star Trek TOS destroyer at the top mid-left, and the green ship could be the top of a STTOS romulan warbird / war eagle with mods to the insignia and forward array.
We established on a previous page’s comments that large googly eyes can be traded in for a significant number of Yeets, not Blorbles. I’d go with yeets for currency; the races that use blorbles are usually not the ones living in a human friendly atmosphere. That hampers trade a bit.
I would guess Achilles probably has those Kangaroo shoes with the pockets. He’d probably keep maybe a couple of hundred for new clothes and lunch as well as a debit card under the sole (probably the second most protected place on his body).
Good grief, I had those shoes as a latchkey kid, growing up, because that way I wouldn’t forget my house key! (Long ouchysharp gravel driveway, you would NOT want to forget your shoes.)
Sydney goes up to a travel agent desk and asks what the fare is for a trip to Earth. They scan her DNA and locate the planet. He says “Good news. It it not too far away. The trip won’t cost you and arm and a leg. Just the arm. Those grow back in your species, right?”
Maybe Alien Rag paper is a valuable commodity or a novelty item for historians or cultural collectors and its worth a few hundred kyplixal’s
Once she becomes better known, Sydney could probably earn a couple hundred Quatloos for her autograph.
Ah yes but she has to be real careful about what she signs, she wouldn’t want to find out she sign a deed to Earth; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcSWvcMZnEc
Sydney, Destroyer of Destroyers of World’s!
You know, there’s at least one alien race that’s figured out that messing with Sydney is NOT a wise thing tmdo…
Yeah, but I have this funny feeling they have not quite given up and are gonna barge in and start some more trouble, then Halo and the current denizens and a few others who are itching for some action are going to teach them why you don’t mess with the cutie.
Passport anyone my money is that is what trips her up. So she would be the illegal alien.
If she’s lucky, that means she’ll get deported back to her home planet….
Her driver’s license and ARCswat ID should be sufficient.
Also, she’s in the military, so they’ll let it slide with a temporary pass.
Your belt exists:
https://www.wazoosurvivalgear.com/cache-belt-more-than-a-money-belt/
though for him it would probably have to be sprayed with truck bed liner or some such.
Well it’s a pre-order so it might exist at some point in the future ;)
Do you think Sydney is the kind of person that would have a copy of the golden record from the Voyager probes in her iTunes? The Pulsar map there would be freaking useful right now.
So is the last orb the universal translator?
She’s going to find a place to eat, order the spiciest thing they’ve got on the menu, something that will literally cause the most hardcore aliens to shit themselves in fear, and then complain about how it’s practically baby food.
Fun fact: Capsaicin, the active chemical that makes food “spicy” is a defense mechanism of the plant trying to prevent animals from eating it. It causes a rather unique “allergic”-esque reaction to the neurons in taste buds making it taste like its too hot to eat (even damaging taste buds and gums and other soft tissue as if it really were burned *tricking the cells into self destructing basically*,
In fact this compound is SO volatile that for the longest time it was thought only humans would actually eat it. As in pigs, rats, mice, raccoons, insects, things we think of as “will eat anything” are harmed by the substance too much to consume it. In fact only ONE other animal we know of will actually intentionally consume this substance. Tree Shrews, and this is because of a mutation that actually makes it so they aren’t sensitive to it *in other words they don’t react to it, they don’t taste spicy*
Humans then are still the only animals that can taste “spicy” and will still eat it.
Tree Shrew discovery seems to be around 2010 *I could be wrong, date on article was 2010*.
It affects the chemical receptor TRPV1 in most mammals, but in birds the receptor is different and they are not affected. It’s toxic to some microbes, fungi and insects, though not necessarily through the same mechanism.
Chances are that it won’t have the same effect on most alien biology and will either be toxic, do nothing, or cause some other effect. If Sydney has hot sauce with her she better be careful, maybe it’s a controlled substance!
I knew it didn’t affect birds, yet at the same time I’ve never heard of any bird species that actively eats pepper seeds or peppers as a whole. Something else in the peppers may taste bad to them; I’d have to look into it.
Yeah how different foods affect different organisms on Earth is a great grounds for speculating all sorts of ideas. Like the idea that mammalian milk would a deadly toxin for many alien species; or humans could find a “plant” like organism on another planet that is not only edible but delicious to humans and thus freak out the locals; like having sci-fi where aliens can drink car fluids only in reverse.
actually, you can toss some cayenne onto bird seeds so squirrels won’t steal it, and the birds enjoy the little bit extra bonuses (I think it’s vitamin c, but i could be wrong)
Neat, I may need to remember that, the squirrels around here are gluttons.
Vitamins C and A, predominantly, though it’s nothing that they wculdn’t also get from heatless peppers, since the majority of capsaicin’s benefits actually lie in the body’s response.
the idea is to keep the squirrels out of the birdseed, and the ‘hot’ cayenne does this, while the birds are only affected by the beneficial aspects of the spice
Fair warning – I, too, have heard this advice, and have tried dousing birdseed in hot peppers. And yes, I’ve tried cayenne too.
Given how much of it the squirrels still ate, I’m gonna say either that it’s not effective, or that squirrels in upstate NY are mutated Halo-squirrels that love spicy things. It certainly wasn’t that they were starving, either, the chubby little fluffballs. :D
Contrary to popular belief, capsaicin has no effect on tastebuds. Its effect is felt via the same nerves that detect heat, since its shape is very similar to the compound that the body releases to signal thermal pain.
This effect has nothing to do with its volatility (though capsaicin does have a significantly lower boiling point than water) and it doesn’t actual raise temperature in any way so it won’t do the same damage as real burning but, at the same time, many comon burn symptoms are actually the body’s own preventative measures, as you have alluded to. They will still all occur as though the heat were real.
Finally, while this is the first that I’ve heard about another mammalian species going for chilli on a whole scale, lab tests have shown that, when forced to eat it for s while, a certain proportion of mice or rats will develop a preference for spicy food. And, on very rare occasions, house pets, squirrels and wild dear have also been known to seek it out.
You know, depending on how savvy she gets, she could likely swindle someone into buying her dollar bills for a lot more as rare examples of currency from a pre-spacefaring civilization. Kindof like how Roman coins are worth many, many times more than the gold or silver they’re made of these days.
Is this where we find out the last order is a translator?
Looks like a good place to open a Texas-style BBQ joint.
What’ll ya have, Bubba? We gots beef ribs. We gots pork ribs. We gots bantha ribs. We gots griffin ribs… huh? Ya want wookie ribs? Sorry Bubba. No sentient species. Howza ’bout some goblin ribs? They won’t give you the trots fer more’n about a week or so and that’s the best guarantee you’ll get in the whole tri-quandrant area.
Have we forgotten that Sydney is a semi-vegetarian? No meat.
Well, yeah, but what’s ‘meat’? The Yinqa, native to Zoltrex 9, is rooted in the ground, but still hunts and eats the YinBuz, warm-blooded rock-eaters with chlorophyll in their skin. Which of their flesh would you classify as ‘meat’? Don’t even get me started on ‘fish’…
Meat is whatever Sydney’s conscience won’t let her consume.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1247
THEN she does on about the ugliness of fish.
She could totally be classified as a cannibal by other sophonts if she thought they were ugly and delicious. Nom nom nom!
Even Kurt Cobain said:
“It’s okay to eat fish.
Cuz they don’t have any feeeeeelings.”
I wasn’t speaking of Sydney specifically, but just any entrepreneur in general.
Deep fry the meat enough and no one will know if it came from a sentient species.
Or grind it up into a drink.
Poor Greedo…and the therapist bill of that writer yikes.
I’m pretty sure that trio in the space suits is a group of Kerbals.
As for her money, you know, it actually could be worth quite a bit more . . . if she can find the right buyer, someone who collects alien currency. The trouble is finding someone like that.
What are the odds that Sidnye’s first line to the “new” aliens is “Take me to your leader!” ?
She can do what time travelers always do for easy money…. sell songs she knows that the locals won’t.
In panel 3 I see a Spathi space ship. And what appears to be three Berts walking in a row.
And that’s definitely a Vorlon there. And one of the bugs from Starship Troopers.
And the pink ship is a Penetrator, also from Star Control (as is the Spathi). I originally didn’t think so but that was because my poor memory was telling me that the Penetrator was a lot more suggestive than it was in game. And by “more suggestive” I refer only to the shape, as a ribbed-for-her-pleasure space ship named “The Penetrator” and crewed by a race of all females is already plenty suggestive.
The bottom right thing looks like one of the Space Invaders from Space Invaders. Some of the others might also be Star Control ships, it’s hard to tell given the small size. The spherical ship could possibly be a Mycon, but the perspective is wrong if so as that ship was one of the largest ships in Star Control.
They look like three kerbonauts to me… from the game “Kerbal Space Program.”
Letting go of the cash was a mistake. Now she’s going to have to pick it up and fold it up again—one-handed.
Oh look – graffiti. Now we know they are civilized. :/
hope it is not gang tags, better just be silly kids doing it
That is what gang tags are: silly kids doing stupid shit
Sydney! You aren’t in orbit! Your hair is telling us that you are entering free fall and will hit the large mass near you if you don’t grab your blue orb!
You know what’d be great? if the Talk bubbles and the pretty drawings were separate images that were overlayed in rendering. Then we could hide the bubbles and look at the super awesome backgrounds.
she could run into something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IGTiFuDjTI this Idea of the future was quite strange.
Sydney: *mimes that she can lift things for money*
Salesman: “Oh, an Earthling” (perfectly understandable, through translator, “Interesting to see one so far away from home.
Sydney: “I am a warrior princess of Archon on Earth and if you get me there I can pay in buckets of loot! Since our money’s probably not good here.”
This is the comic’s destiny I can see it now.
I may have missed it in the comments, but does anyone else think that ‘Oh Boy” could be a Quantum Leap ref?
Not in particular no, the reference would be off context. It is still a fairly common expression.
You know… if they have a post scarcity economy (which they likely do), then the only thing of value to them would be information and services.
What’s more, all economic systems are nothing more than a method of resource allocation, trying to make sure everyone in the population receives sufficient resources for continued survival. Capitalism is no more the “ultimate” economic model than socialism or feudalism. It still comes down to the same thing: just trying to make sure everyone’s fed, clothed, housed, and entertained.
…So why doesn’t she just look for a representative of whatever agency/organization/institution exists to help wayward travelers, existing on the grounds that helping lost/stranded/impoverished transients get back home is far cheaper than having to deal with them sticking around and stinking up the place?
That’s right, ask for the Distressed Travelers Aid Society. But watch out, some of them are set up to help themselves first.
Wait Wait Wait,
Halo is still not as fast as Maxes Max Speed?
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!
Question is, since this place makes its living as a transit station, is she going to owe a fee for transiting into the area?
Unless Grunkle Stan runs the place I doubt it. Most transit stations don’t charge you to step in the door, just to use their services.
Your sci-fi may be lacking Sydney – due to the necessarily different rotation rates around different parts of a star, a dyson sphere is by necessity a cloud of separated stations on their own orbits.
Whatever this hunk of junk is, it’s not a dyson sphere in the traditional sense, as it would necessarily have to find a way to keep the star in place exactly in the middle rather than passively surrounding it, since any part of it being closer to the star than any other part would send the sun smashing through the massive hull as its gravity pulls that part harder and faster than the other parts.
Or it’s not nearly as big as you think it is, it’s just planet-sized, but close to you.
Actually no. A dyson shpere is just that, a sphere. It doesn’t orbit, it balances. The stars gravity is centered and so it pulls toward the center of the sphere. That gravity is countered by structural compression in a dyson shpere, where as in orbit it is countered with centfiugal force.
That’s not a traditional dyson sphere, dyson came up with the idea of using an orbiting cloud of satellites due to the unfeasibility of a solid object.
Whatever it is, a dyson sphere it is not.
If the sphere is hollow and spherically symmetric, it has exactly zero gravitational field inside. Edgar Rice Burroughs to the contrary, if the earth is hollow and you go into the middle you do not get to walk around on the inner surface of the planet.
Clarke’s Law, Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from Magic. (or Magick.)
translator seem broken, it says you are a moth in sweater.
“No, I said ‘tengo el gato los pantolones‘, and I was careful to phrase it that way.”
In no way would you want to build anything near a pulsar, magnetar or other type of neutron star. Firstly, the energy output is not greater than that of a star, its just more compact, so, your dyson sphere would, in theory only need to be a few hundred kilometers instead of something in the au range of radius. The reason it would only be in theory, is because no material could possibly withstand the gravity of a neutron star. You would be looking at a surface gravity from a sphere 100 kilometer around such an object of many millions of g. Anything that close would basicaly instantly be crushed into a thin layer of degenerate matter.
Pulsars and magnetars are also extremely deadly because they are magnetic to the extent that the iron in your blood would be ripped out of your cells, and emit hard radiation in levels that make normal stars seem tame. Also the tidal forces of an object so massive spinning so quickly, means stable orbits near a neutron star are impossible, which is bad news if you want to wrap one in a stable structure of some sort.
A much better alternative, if you dont want to go full size sun covering dyson sphere, would be to build something around a white dwarf, which has nice reliable thermal output in a small package, and gravity that would probably only be in the thousands of gees.
Except Cora’s ship clearly has artificial gravity. If they can create it, they could control it, and siphon its strength…
Neutronic Matter, might.
Look, Sydney, you know that Earth attracts a lot of sex tourism, which means you’ve obviously got an, ahem, medium of exchange.
….. I’m not saying that should be your first option. I’m saying that since that’s Plan B, you better start working really hard on a Plan A.
… are those kerbals?
Oh yes. 17 dollars.
Having $37,000 on her instead would be sure to get her to Earth.
(Sarcastic)
hence the following line of
American. Paper. Money.
As in it likely wouldn’t matter how much she had as its not local currency.
Little did she know. That due to other cell phone company being owned aliens. She could have got a signal there. Long distance charges would have applied though.
I’m picturing the cover of Cowboy Feng’s Space bar and grill (by Steven Brust) based on Dave’s comments.
Panel Two – two ships I can discern from Star Wars: An Imperial Star Destroyer and an EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate primarily used by the Rebel Alliance and Resistance.
And looks like a YT-1300 in panel three, just to our right of Sydney’s speech bubble
While traveling the the universe always carry tetrastable alitrope of carbon it can be used as a tool and is reconised as valuable anywhere it not overabundant like the core of some gas giant blasted away by a supernova (if you find such a place fill your pockets)