Grrl Power #679 – Spree!
I’ve been trying to figure out what someone from a relatively low tech civilization could offer as currency to a higher tech one. I’m sure whole papers (or at least blog posts) have been written about this topic, but there’s only a few things I can think of, and some are dependent on the tech disparity.
If the high tech civilization has not just 3D printers, but something like matter replicators where you can build crap from the molecule up, the only things of real value I can think of would be information, power, labor and entertainment. The only physical material that would have intrinsic value would be things the replicators can’t recreate, like matter with a half-life shorter than, I don’t know, 40 years or something, like plutonium 241. Or maybe energon chips or zero point modules. Then that stuff would have potential value. Not that you’d want a bunch of loose change in your pocket made out of Californium 252. It would be asinine to use as currency.
If a civ does have matter replicators, information would still be valuable, like the plans to print your own Nintendo Switch, or the high tech civilization equivalent. In fact, if you had a civ with matter replicators and unlimited power, information like that would be nearly the only thing of value, I think.
If an advanced civ didn’t have matter replicators, then just about anything could be barterable. Gold has no intrinsic value. It’s a great conductor of heat and electricity and is nearly chemically inert, so it definitely has its uses. Humans generally go bonkers for it, but there’s every chance that an alien civilization could value some random material like aluminum simply because their planet has less of it, or because the aluminum cartel has told everyone that aluminum is desirable, the same way diamonds are here on Earth. Again, diamonds are useful in tools and other applications, but have no intrinsic value other than that we’ve decided as a race that they’re valuable.
Power is obvious. Any civilization would need power, (and let’s assume that the laws of thermodynamics hold true no matter your tech level) unless they’re at a point where they know how to generate so much that it’s moot. Dyson sphere level civilizations would have to be pretty embarrassed with themselves if they needed more power than 100% of a sun. Or… 99%, depending on the efficiency of their solar panels.
Then there’s labor. If your civilization has matter replicators, they probably have robot labor. I mean, we’re getting to that point. We have machines building cars, and in a few years those cars will be driving themselves. Amazon’s warehouses are full of industrial roomba things that carry stuff to and from shelves. Eventually all uber drivers and DoorDash drivers and UPS drivers will be replaced with robots, and we don’t even have matter replicators. But, if a civ has had a robot uprising like in Dune and their robots are no more advanced than roombas, then labor is something a low tech civ can trade on.
The only other thing of value a lower tech civilization can offer is entertainment. I drew Deus picking up a pack full of bars of something. I was thinking rhodium when I drew it, but honestly, let’s pretend those are fancy boxes full of thumb drives with terrabytes of human on human porn. Maybe some Hollywood movies and Buffy and Cheers and The Bob Newhart Show too.
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Won’t both parties be surprised!
Kind of like bumping into your neighbour when they are out on the town with someone who isn’t their wife.
Though getting a lift home would be an awkward ride.
Actually Deus would probably be tickled to give our young hero a lift back home, especially if he delivers her personally to Maxima to hear her say ‘Thanks’
And then have to explain what he was doing there, and how
As the sovereign of his own nation and assuming this device is built there I don’t think he would need to, and if he did I’m not sure what anyone would be able to do about it. The extra terrestrial side of it would likely mean that info about it would be restricted even inside the government, meaning Archon might be the only official human entity that knows aside from sharing the info with other groups.
Actually, now I wonder if there is a space police that prevent this kind of thing from messing with tech levels of different societies.
Except that Sydney is perceptive, knows what the Brane-ripper is, has seen it work, and knows it was stolen from the council.
Back to awkward, and being out of town with someone not your spouse.
So what lie is he going to come up with as to how he got hold of the Brane-Ripper?
The Lie won’t matter.
The council will be taking it back AND after Dabbler enlightenes the powers that be at the fracture, Deus probably won’t be able to trade there much.
And the World Governments (and The Council) will start looking closer into how SmugD managed to acquire that African country, and everything else
It’s a safe bet Halo and Deus are at the same place, but I hope- for Archon’s sake- that Deus isn’t the one to bring Halo home. I don’t see Archon owing Deus a favor to be a good thing.
I do. For the story.
if dues got seen by sydney and she tells others or brought her back that would only bring a lot of uncomfortable questions deus’s way and not a favor (could go as far as governments both official and hidden taking matters into their own hands).
Agreed. Considering it would mean Zeus exposing his access to Stargate tech AND participation in interestelar commerce, i’m not really betting on his helping Halo or getting anywhere close to her by intent.
Not getting anywhere near to her by intent – yes, not helping her – no. He would refrain from helping her openly if she would not become knowledgeable of him having access to the Fracture. Helping her covertly – that depends on his plans an her role in it, of which we know nothing so far; and if they bump into each other, he would have no other choice than to help her openly – maybe framing this as an independent rescue operation undertaken by him because his is a greedy capitalist, so you have no need to search for any other possible underlying intention save for greed greed is more than enough and don’t you want to return back as soon as possible hmmmmmmmm?..
Zeus the great System Lord has multibel stargates
I would say it would also land him in hot water with the council, because he’s using one of the items that was stolen from the vault for the wormhole. Basically, everyone would have questions for him…
Well for that particular item he would have a good excuse: He just picked it up after Sciona was defeated. I mean, Archon clearly saw Sciona with it. The fact that Deus was around to pick it up is a bit shady, but only on the “I’m keeping tabs on Archon to collect valuable stuff their enemies drop” level, you can’t use it to tie him to the vault heist. As far as everyone knows Deus doesn’t even know about the vault…
Now if someone was to find that book where he drew Sciona’s portrait post regen that could be a different story…
Except Deus knew how to use it.
Picking it up, fine, not returning it, less fine, but knowing what it is or how it works would really not be good. Not even everyone at the Counsel knows what all the artifacts are.
Archon secured the area post mission. Well, not secure enough, but secure enough that someone sneaking it out would have to know the area was secured by them and taking it was a deliberate act rather than “I was just walking past and this shiny object was sparkling in the moonlight…”
“secure enough that someone sneaking it out would have to know the area was secured by them”
Hence the “I’m spying on Archon” bit. Bad? Yes. But better than admitting that he knows about the supernatural, the council and the vault. I’m just saying that he has plausible deniability on any link to the vault heist so far.
The Council? Deus would be in more trouble with the IRS & various bureaus and any undeclared items being brought back, evasion of customs, etc.
IRS? Customs? Are you serious?
He is traveling from a nation he pretty much owns outright. While technically the young King might be able to lean on Deus for taxes and import duties, it isn’t likely. And I’d be surprised if Deus isn’t a model corporate citizen who pays his taxes in full and without complaint. His goal is (seems to be at least) to create a modern nation which is indebted to him and in so doing avoid all the “various bureaus” bullshit he probably has to deal with in other nations. Paying your taxes to that nation is a good way to provide them with the funding they need to develop that infrastructure much faster than if he were to be a corporate leech and insist on tax credit for all of the other good stuff he is doing for the nation.
He is also the CEO or a very wealthy multinational corporation, and almost certainly has politicians in his pocket in numerous nations. That gives him as close to diplomatic immunity as you can get without being an actual diplomat. And in many ways he has better than diplomatic immunity, as so far no other nation has revealed their own supers-group, and Deus seems to be known for working with supers.
So you just admitted he is a criminal, honest business people don’t have politicians in their pocket that give them immunity from prosecution: because they don’t need protection
“Criminal”? No! He just comes across as a bit shady at times. We know this for truth: it says so in his character card…
Being a criminal and being an honest or dishonest person are two completely different things. Weren’t you going away? You’re back far too soon, and with your typical ignorance.
All kinds of businesses and other special interests have politicians in their pockets. And unfortunately it is completely legal unless the very difficult bar of a quid pro quo can be proven. And when person A hands person B a few million dollars and person B then votes in ways that just happen to benefit person A, you still can’t prove that the votes went the way they did because of the money. No one but a child will believe that it was for any other reason, but it isn’t proof of a quid pro quo. And until money exits politics this will always be the case.
Just because you can’t prove criminality doesn’t mean a crime didn’t occur
Just another example of the level of intelligence we have come to expect from you.
That’s not true.
There are a few people I know that keep well-paid attorneys on-call, making sure they can’t be prosecuted, but they obey the law.
Why do they do this? Because some people who don’t have fame (or enough), or money (or enough) like to use the court system to ruin other people so they can scrape up the debris for themselves.
A friend of mine is stupidly rich, and had an ex-girlfriend. After one night, she kept something he threw away and then threw a child support claim at him. It’s good to have a pocket lawyer.
Same place.. but not necessarily the same time. Deus could have gotten the info from Sydney’s report after she got back to Earth. That also explains the progress on the towers of power.
I like the idea that the portal Sydney and friends used did transport them across time as well. So Deus had a while to make the tower and get his plan in motion, and just happens to arrive at the sphere the same time Sydney does, accidentally providing her a way home.
Nah… there’s too many square pegs to fit into round holes for that to work.. With time travel, you could save main characters from cutscene death.. but break reality as a consequence… (Chrono was rescued like that, but it literally froze part of the world in time forever.. including the heroes…)
Or Deuce gets a technical fault and thumbs a ride back with Halo in the ship.
My money is on Deuce thumbing a lift. Something’s gonna hit fan 9.
…From Outer Space, you say?
Only if we have a stand in for Deuce who covers his face with a cloak to hide that it isn’t him.
Deuce?
It is Deus.
Many people seem to think that Deus is a little shit.
or a sports car
(and if he gets away with his ‘shopping’ spree, it could definitely be a little Deus Coup
Well I’m pretty sure Cora would accept the currency he likes to trade it ;D
I think Deus would be getting the rubber glove and check all crevices on him just before getting his new orange coloured duds rather than a thankyou. For instance his bodyguard took the device from what could be considered a crime scene for one thing and he also has a load of other gear he stole from the black vault. The only place he and vale would be safe would be off world as the council let alone ArcSwat would deep six him hard when they find out, ESPECIALLY the council.
…is that a giant space spider in the background?
No, I think it’s a giant Flant.
(Flant = Flying Ant.)
Well do we have the tons of entertainment produced every year here on Earth to trade with, including games, comics, and music.
We also have genetic information as well as Magic, and Magical beings.
And with Sydney’s knowledge of geekdom, what’s in here head may make her richer there than anything Deus is carrying.
and she could offer them a store discount should they visit Earth
Giant termite, they come with wings, at least, some of the time they do. :)
I think it’s a giant space ANT.
hrm – Sydney doesn’t have any particular reaction to crawlies, does she? As far as I can recall, anyway – blasting a galactic schoolbus equivalent in a panic would be unfortunate.
Pretty sure that’s a Reaper.
Yes, it’s a giant cosmic spider. The lack of wings, and the eye structure give it away.
So giant cosmic spiders only have 6 legs?
Or did you miss that it’s performing a turn in the air, so its side is dipped towards the viewer, the wings are behind the ‘telegraph pole’, and it’s face are those four white dashes?
I mentioned the facial structure, meaning it has four eyes. Flies have two large compound eyes, Ants have two compound eyes, spiders have between 4 -8 eyes. Insects have a three sectioned body, spiders have two. That “flying” creature is anatomically closer to a spider.
For it turning in the air, spiders can do that by hanging from their near-invisible gossamer.
As for the number of legs, it’s an alien creature, maybe cosmic spiders do have 6 legs, or DaveB missed a pair, or the angle and obscuring telegraph pole is hiding a set of legs.
Deus almost certainly isn’t paying licensing fees for that porn, he truly is a monster.
Lots of free porn on the internet.. plus copyright is valid only on earth. No interstellars agreements in place et all.
Yes, but how much market is there for human por…nevermind, if humanity is anything to go by, it would sell like hotcakes.
What do you mean they don’t use USB standards? They’re …UNIVERSAL!
I mean, it says so right in the name!
An earlier strip mentions Aliens come to Terra (aka) Earth for Sex tourism, so human porn would be a seller.
Brief question… Does Deus have space property?!? Or did he just wormhole into any old warehouse on Fracture?
Deus probably doesn’t (yet), but Vale (being the eldritch whatever she is in a human suit) probably does (she did dial out). And she presumably bought her last plumbus there.
I don’t think Vale is wearing a human “suit” per say. It looked more like a shell, what with the way it chipped and cracked… A sexy human shell…
Maybe her human shell IS the plumbus she’s talking about? After all, we know it got damaged by Sciona. Maybe she moved into her spare after that and now she wants to buy a new one?
In Grrl Power #656 – Supervillain thrift shop, Dave siad at the bottom, “You have to wonder if she has any spare… shells laying around, and where she keeps them.” Maybe we’re about to learn the answer.
But what I wondered was whether or not that which wears the Vale (and isn’t that name a reveal in itself?) shell just consumed those Alari souls. Everyone seems to assume it was the Vale-critter leaving her shell to get the brane-ripper. My first impression was all the Alari souls trying to get in and take her over… poor fools.
I think it’s a pretty long stretch to make that assumption. The thing in the shell already looked like that on the battle, and we have no reason to assume or believe Vale consumed them. I’d leave it on the table, but I wouldn’t believe it without more reason than “maybe that happened”.
Nah, the Alari “souls” were pretty distinct, not a shapeless mass of vapor tendrils. I do think it’s plausible that Vale had them hide in there while she got the Skybreaker, hence the green glow being there before she was complete.
The plumbus thing is just a Rick and Morty reference. I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Deus ex machina
Literally.
God, I hope not. Him getting hooks into her via her owing him a favor — when it is so unneccessary — scarcely bears thinking about!
Yeah, Deus + Sydney for a night is not something I want to think or read about.
Better Dabbler + Sydney. She might even level up from the Amnesia Hammer.
You forget food, everybody has to eat something, and there are some things everybody can eat. And don’t forget that our species was evolved from a scavenger, so we can thrive on things that kill other species, like alcohol, chocolate, and onions. Just look up “human food that will kill your pet” on Google.
So while we may never be the technological center of the galaxy, we may end up the culinary center because we can eat everyone else’s food, and most sentients can eat some of ours.
Indeed, Coca-Cola might be anywhere from “causes mild indigestion” to “horrifically deadly nerve agent” to some aliens, while maple syrup might be their version of opium, LSD and Everclear… combined… without the drawbacks.
Time to start making mirrors?
All the +1’s
I really must re-read that series.
I’ve been creating my own universe in my head (as many a nerd is wont to do) and in it the specific thing humanity brings to the universe is chocolate, as no other planet has just the right atmosphere to successfully cultivate Coco. (I think it’s funny)
That’s one of the things that Diane Duane’s “Young Wizards” series posits – the most valuable thing Earth has is chocolate.
One universe had it being popsicles.
As many a nerd, I have read “The Mote in God’s Eye” by Larry Niven and the late Jerry Pournelle. Imperial space is (over)run by coffee snobs, and there is a scene where they mention Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee as the acme of coffee. Trader Harace Buree is more a tea snob, though he has tried JBM coffee (which is so rare, that it is reserved for the Royal Family.)
One of John Ringo’s Legacy of the Aldenata aliens is having human company, so he prepares their favorite bean soup (coffee bean, of course.)
Coffee. Tea. Chocolate. Hot peppers, from banana peppers and cayenne to reapers or hotter. The list of things a replicator may be incapable of duplicating accurately may be longer than the list it can’t.
Aw, man. I was not aware of Jerry Pournelle’s passing. Now I am sad. I didn’t know him of course, I just enjoyed his novels.
He was at his best with his “Computing In Chaos Manor” column in Byte Magazine.
So, you are saying that this Earth is the only known manufacturer of this incredibly useful nerve agent? Well – gather the CEOs, we are going on business trip!
Cheese is another good one; evolutionary speaking mammals are a couple steps weirder than birds/saurians, lizards, arthropods, cnidarians etc. So most worlds shouldn’t have mammalian creatures – unless that scenario is just a bunch of rubber forehead aliens – in dominant positions (we did have that extinction event to helpfully push out the previous masters of the world).
As a result milk-bearing creatures wouldn’t be omnipresent, even if there were some BS that sapient species all go warm-blooded humanoid omnivores that are always in season with attractive chest lumps.
BUT even if milk-bearing creatures were moderately common, that doesn’t mean that processed milk would in any way be a standard thing to find; the diversity in cheeses merely of bovine origin is pretty wild but each animal has different qualities (goats milk is so much stronger than dairy cow).
So even IF several planets/civilizations produce and sell cheese, earth cheeses could be valuable merely for the exotic cheese tasters.
So that’s also another reason for chocolate to be unique; cocoa may be able to grow on other worlds and there may be parallelly developed plants that produce similar compounds to coffee and chocolate, but that doesn’t mean the people of that world have anything close to a Cabury cream egg or a latte
Judging by the tits evident on all female aliens we have seen so far, mammals are not at all as rare as you seem to think they should be.
I see someone else has read John Ringo’s Live Free or Die (which is very loosely based on Howard Tayler author of Schlock Mercenary).
Really though this leads back to Dave’s case about information and ideas being the king commodity. If you have a post scarcity society that has punched entropy in the jaw and enjoys direct Energy to Matter replication as the most efficient way to produce items, there is no physical object or substance beyond their ability to produce with time. The only thing they need is the original structure.
If we go a bit less fiction science and keep a closer to what we know of physics currently, a kardashev 2 scale civilization could devote a single, or even several, rotating habitats the size of Australia to growing maple trees and not even blink an eye at the cost. Given that they’re likely extracting large quantities of raw materials from their own star (or even nearby stars) at that point.
The reason to have anything to do with Earth is the “Monkies with Typewriters” method of creating new information/ideas. Naturally occurring stable ecosystems apparently seem to be quite rare on a galactic scale. Even in a Star Wars type galaxy that is full of livable planets, and asteroid dwelling space eels infested with power sucking space gut-bats.
Maple syrup. Wars have been fought over it.
The Troy Rising series does a pretty fun take on maple syrup, it has a potent effect on most alien physiology but can only be grown on Earth. The protagonist leverages this fact to reverse a crippling trade imbalance; the story itself is pretty good as well.
Wasn’t it maple syrup that Don Harvey used on Sir Isaac Newton (the Venusian) when he reacted poorly to lift-off? (Robert A. Heinlein, Between Planets, 1951.)
*presses the imaginary like button*
The kicker? Sydney’s PAPER money is worth more due because, y’know. Planet with no trees. Its got to be unusual at best to be worth at least a sandwich or the alien equivalent. She gotta be hungry.
If you can assemble objects from a ‘bank’ of elements, then food is just another pattern to replicate, and value of any replicatable material is proportional to its rarity. George O. Smith addressed the same issue in the later of his “Venus Equilateral” stories — the staff of Venus Equilateral had developed exactly such a device, and it caused massive economic disruption — with two duplicators (including batteries) and a library of patterns, an individual failed of self-sufficience only through requiring raw elements; you could replicate more batteries or a replacement duplicator at need. Eventually, they discovered how to make a material that would destroy itself violently when scanned by a duplicator, which could be used as a currency material, but before then the economy ran on a glorified barter system — a washed car’s worth of walked dogs, and so forth. And even after the discovery of the material that was to become the new currency (IIRC, called ‘identium’), there was still value in “certified originals” — objects of personal craft that were certified never to have been exposed to a duplicator’s scanner.
It also changed the practice of medicine in an objectively gruesome way — when a person had an otherwise fatal medical condition where treatments didn’t already exist, doctors would scan the patient and create duplicate after duplicate trying different treatments until they found one that worked. Which then leaves the problem of disposing of the cured duplicate. This also created a stigma from being identical twins, triplets, etc., as “duplicate” or “dupe” had become a particularly vile epithet, implying that someone wasn’t a ‘real’ person, but a copy created in a duplicator.
Magic. A high tech civilization might now have access to mystic energies, so it could prove worth study or as a curiosity or if the magic provided does something useful more efficiently than technology can, then move over technology.
*might not have access
*might not have access to
If magic behaves in a predicable manner (which includes random behavior with ranges, ala quantum mechanics) then it becomes a branch of science as soon as someone applies the Scientific Method to it. It wouldn’t be “move over science” – it’d be “move over old way of doing things” once it hit practical application.
“Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!” — Agatha Heterodyne
*presses “Bring The Thunder” button for her at the end*
Science is just Magic that some people happen to comprehend. Magic is Science we don’t yet comprehend.Math is language, and should be simplified for the understanding of all.
I was just thinking the same thing.
Trade is almost always worthwhile. Say it takes 5 unit of Earth labor to produce a widget, but 15 units of Earth labor to produce a plumbus, while Spaceworld can produce both at a rate of 1 unit each. Spaceworld can outsource their widget manufacturing to Earth, and trade us 1 plumbus for 2 of our widgets. Earth saves 5 units per trade, and Spaceworld saves 1 unit per trade, benefiting both worlds.
Thank you for explaining this! It always bugged me why higher tech people would want to trade with lower tech people, if the high tech folks can make things so easily.
High tech gets their widgets made for 0 effort if Earth makes it for 5 effort, high tech makes their plumbus for 1 effort, and Earth gets it for 5 widget efforts instead of 15 effort… They could just make their widget and still do fine compared to Earth’s labor-costly ways…but by helping Earth out, even though it’s more costly for Earth to make it by far…Earth thus has something to trade and can get a leg up on the economics, improve their tech, and get closer to that “costs 1 to make it” ratio that the high tech society has.
Unfortunately, these days in privileged first world countries, too many people don’t understand WHY we should help “lesser-advanced cultures” than our own…and spout the utter nonsense of “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!” as if that’ll magically make things happen. Literally, bend down while standing on your own too feet, grab the cuff or rim of each of your shoes while you are wearing them, and lift yourself up into the air… Go on, I’m waiting… Whaddya mean, you can’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps? All the conservatives say it like you can! (Oh, wait, they’re mocking you when they say that, because they know it cannot be done. They just make it sound like it’s possible, and too many people gullibly believe the tone, and don’t bother to try to follow the logic…)
Worse, too many others exploit that labor/tech imbalance. They’d do so by insisting Earth makes the plumbus for 15 units of effort and sells them the widget which would only cost Earth 5 units of labor, both of which cost the high tech society 1 unit…only it’s not Earth versus some interstellar high tech society taking advantage of the dump primitive pre-interstellar people. It’s our own rich white oligarchs versus everyone else. And that exploitation will end when WE make it end.
I just wish more people could grasp this.
Rick and Morty shared universe semi-confirmed?
Since they pop between dimensions, are they semi-confirmed everywhere? After all, they watched an advert for the plumbus from another dimension rather than go there themselves.
Of course she could just be saying that to be silly.
Silly.
As an Eldrich Abomination she has no need for sleep and binge watches when off the clock.
Soooo… That’s more of a question for previous page, but how much time had passed? Last we saw Deus, the second tower was just being started, and now it’s fully built AND operational, it seems? And the whole time, Sydney’s in space?
It’s highly implied that when Sydney got sent to the Alari homeworld, there was some time-skipping involved. For Sydney, it’s been a day, tops, whereas for everyone else, it’s been months.
You’ve also got time relativity. If Sydney has been hanging out around higher gravity or in a system moving at a greater speed through the cosmos then less time may have passed for her naturally.
Yeah, the malfunctioning portal somehow bumped them back in time a bit, resulting in some odd anomalies (Like the backtime portal allowing sconia to communicate with her people further back in time than the Worldstompers’ attack on the planet, Harem’s “Too many of me” momentary confusion, and a slightly extended “Sydney Lost In Space” storyline.
(Cue “Lost in space” theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQzk09j2lZ8 )
Dabbler must have sent a time message to the ship she sent to pick Sydney up too, since they showed up shortly after Sydney’s second upgrade after the Squidward and Kaiju battles.
I don’t think the portal sent them back in time, it sent them forward in time. Sciona was in contact with the Alari homeworld, but the portal sent them to the planet after it was ravaged. Harem was disoriented because it was a future time after she had already returned to Earth. I suppose the portal sent them back in time when it sent them back to Earth. Dabbler probably sent her space friends a “normal” message.
Just don’t let Deus find out about this aspect.
If it has been more than 3 weeks she’s missed a few calls to her parents.
At the 4th week someone in uniform is going to have to tell them that she’s
MIA and that every effort is being made to get her back.
It has been confirmed from context clues (the second tower going from just the base to fully/almost completed) that at least with Deus that there is some timeskipping.
Thumbdrives?
So thousands or millions of species somehow managed to decide on one physical connector and one stack of encoding standards? And the format (presumably audiovisual) is consumable by most species? And it’s also pleasurable for many of them?
Talk about parallel evolution. And give those tech committees the hero treatment they deserve.
It seems that the Universal Serial Bus is more universal than we thought.
Maybe the technology actually originated, and was [deliberately?] leaked from, there?
Well it could also be a matter of USB tech imported from earth. Via tech geeks etc. Earthers may not know of aliens but the reverse is most certainly not true. I could see some of those traveling aliens who sex tourism take back examples of our tech and media with it.
In a fanfic i read, aliens portal to a sparsly inhabited area of Texas.
The military evacuate 50 miles around and send in experts to make contact.
The locals had already made peaceful first contact and allowed
(As if they could understand what they meant)them to build an outpost.
The experts weren’t making significant progress in communication except for math.
The humans decided, if the aliens were so smart, and they’ve portaled to other
alien worlds, let THEM figure out English.
They put a 100T of dictionary, theosarours, and hundreds of hours of audio and video
On a solid state drive and handed it to them.
The next day, each alien had a personal AI tranlator.
So if these guys are so advanced, let them figure USB thumbdrives out.
I read “Twilight makes first contact” too. : )
I was certain no one would guess it was Ponies.
Hopefully this isn’t what pushes him over the edge into full on evil (up to now he has been self serving and in his own mind world serving). But if he tries to do something to Sydney to protect his secret transporter which has the implications of being a national security or world security threat, that may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Plus, Dabbler’s “friends” were tracking Sydney. I’m going to assume they managed to trace the Aetherium Gate’s destination before it closed. Either Deus avoids Halo and she gets picked up, or they run into each other and he tries to blackmail her, thinking that she has no way back home without his help.
(There is basically zero chance of Deus not knowing that Sydney went missing on another planet, so he shouldn’t be too shocked to see her here.)
Art (which covers everything from Shakespeare to Stormy Daniels, with side roads to sculpture and sitcoms) is the main thing I could see that would interest a tech superior marketplace. And while it’s possible that bits of earth tech might have value as “charmingly retro native artifacts (take that new iPhone :-) )”, they’re still being sold effectively as art. Or as a primitive toy. After all, if you buy a boomerang from an Australian source, it’s not because you intend to go hunting Kangaroo’s, you’re buying a cultural artefact in toy form.
Hmm, a complete set of (one of the many) “Transformers” toylines could have value as well (heck, given how ‘focused’ some people can be about them, you could honestly mark them as religious icons).
Its actually a collection of those little naked guys wearing barrels, which when you pull down on the barrel the guy’s willy jumps out at you- Dan Quayle made them infamous for a brief period of time. Or, boringly, a bunch of Matryoshka nesting dolls – with each inner doll wearing one fewer garment.
Because, after all, art is art.
“Look, Main Ovipositor, look! That creature from dirt said I was ‘the cutest one ‘ she’d seen on all the planets it had visited! She put a gold star on my mandible! Isn’t that wonderful?” Gotta be nice to someone who says you hideous offspring is cute, despite what her grandparents say.
Lemme guess….Dues is carrying Gold pressed latinum in his backpack right?
Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum.
Entertainment is always possibility for trade – thought with Earth being tourist destination it likely already is available outside.
Most likely things to trade would IMHO be some curios or artefacts which are not replicable for whatever reason (magic, knowledge on how, …). Deus after all recently acquired some “items” which would be problematic to trade at home.
Narabedla, Ltd. by Fredrick Pohl imagined a corporation that kidnapped Earth artists and took them on performance tours of advanced societies, who were absolutely starved for original entertainment. The company farmed entertainers from hundreds of primitive worlds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narabedla_Ltd.
Honestly, because some elements in the universe are physically rarer than others, it’s entirely possible that you could take a big chunk of rare Earth minerals into space and someone, somewhere, would want it and trade you the universal currency for it.
Anywhere that doesn’t have matter replication and antimatter engines would want rare minerals, and like other people have pointed out, we could be the death world, where we can survive anything and our planet is chaotic enough to have many minerals rare to the rest of the universe without planet cracking. Or star cracking.
But, since people from elsewhere use Earth as a vacation getaway, there’s a good chance they will trade in our money, or value something of ours highly already, art, comedy, media, chocolate, or for that matter that the pink haired doofus knows what is valuable (or at least sells for high dollar to the black market) and they’re taking a bunch of that there for personal use.
Or it’s weed.
Don’t forget it could be the whole “authentic vs synthetic” argument too. Even if they have matter replication, it could be a restricted by density or molecular packing structures. Like making graphite instead of diamonds. Even if they got the packing structure right, they could care about the difference between real/natural diamonds and synthetic diamonds. The same could be said for chocolate and various other milk-based products.
I am endlessly amused by the “sound effects” in this comic.
Intoxicants. Every species likes to catch a buzz. Plus, properly refined, one can carry a lot of drugs in a relatively small satchel. Deus is an interstellar Pablo Escobar.
Men in the Jungle, by Norman Spinrad explores this somewhat. The main character is a con artist who decides to try to take over an occupied world after his last big break went bust. He liquidates his assets into drugs because of their portability and value
Bag of chocolate. Honestly, it’s a drug out there. Probably illegal in some systems too. Klingons wants it too. “nuqDaq yuch Dapol” (Where do you keep the chocolate)
they could be smuggling the rare mosquito as a rare pet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl4oAIzHT_k
SLURM! .. . er… HONEY
Hm another easy to carry items that might be valuable. Spored, Molds fungus and in general Seeds, Things like cheese start, wine starts, penicillin. seeds for Red wood pines apples etc.
Yeah you could replicate the matter, but growing it is easier.
Mmmm… space cheetos.
Mmmm… Unifon.
Two questions…
1.Will they bump into Sydney while there?
2.What is a plumbus???
The place is huge. They’l never met.
Law of funny demands they wil continously JUST MISS each other.
In the TV series Rick and Morty, they waste time watching TV from various
alternate universes.
On a show exactly like ‘How It’s Made’, the complicted procedure for making
The Plumbus is shown.
What it actualy does isn’t stated.
I think we ALL know what a plumbus does. It’s just so OBVIOUS even for those of us who are not into such perverted things.
Don’t even lie and tell me you don’t. You know good and well what those things are for!!! :) Admit it!!!!!!!
Since the Fracture is about to be visited by a ship full of people (with high tech scanners) looking for humans, and Sydney and Deus are likely the only two humans there, there’s actually a decent chance that they’ll at least hear of each other.
The Plumbus is a companion piece to the TurboEncabulator. They are both subsystems of a universal phase detractor.
Welp this is going to be awkward when both Halo and Deus cross paths while they are there.
Sydney: *sees Deus, gets accusatory look on her face*
Deus: *starts to sweat, prepares excuses*
Sydney: AHA! I KNEW it! You’re an ALIEN!!
Deus: *blinkblink, collar tug, feeble smile* Uh, yeah, you got me…
Terrabytes. See what you did there.
The comment about gold, misses the point rather. Apart from its decorative value, gold and silver have been used as bullion metals since the earliest times because they are relatively easy to find and extract in sufficient quantities to be used as currency WITHOUT being generally available in unlimited amounts. They can be worked easily into quite small units (coins etc), assayed accurately and reliably, and stored pretty much anywhere for long periods of time without significant deterioration.
Gold, silver and diamonds (and other gems) are also generaly considered to be aesthetically pleasing. In fact, it’s likely they got their perceived value in the first place because they look good and make for attractive jewelry. Beauty may not be that practical, but it is a powerful consideration in assigning value.
On another note, Vale is apparently well-acquainted with The Fracture, so it’s likely she has briefed Deus on what to expect and what would make good merchandise. (Then again, she does have a snarky sense of humor, so…)
It all depends on a tek level of the potential trade partner – gold and diamonds can be aesthetically pleasing all they want, but any K1+ civ would have an unlimited amount of gold to gawk at, and diamonds are just an unwanted wasteproduct of a fusion reactor. I mean, you can manufacture them intentionally if you want, but sapphires, emeralds, and rubies are by far more troublesome to make after a certain tek threshold is reached. Not to mention that aesthetic peasyness of diamonds are incredibly overrated and blown out of proportions due to the actions of one single company. Dismiss it all you want – diamonds in jewelry are crap, and always were nothing more than crap.
And that not waning into the murky waters of inherent relativity of aesthetics. I remember a SF-story where xenos were simply entranced by the beauty of cows’ dung splatters. That is, until the next bunch of godless aliens came in – thouse saw nothing unusual in the cattle shite, but were out of their minds in regards to manually manufactured apple cores…
On the other note – even K1+ will need raw materials to manufacture things – until they get the the matter replication, that is. But until molecular 3D-printing will become a thing, there would be an immense and unsquelcheable need in simple oil. Not for the fuel, mind you – but as a raw materiel for manufacture of complex organic compounds.
…And aperitif, but that wholly another can of worms. Which are served with oil as a mild aphrodisiac in cultured societies, mind you.
It could be sugar!
Like was said in Farscape by Rygel the XVI, Dominar of the Hynerian Empire, sugar is an illegal substance in the galaxy because it’s poisonous.
Happy I wasn’t the only one who thought of that. I think he said it was used as a poison on his homeworld, not that it was illegal everywhere. The thing I didn’t get was why Rygel could eat it. Superior breeding maybe? That sounds like how he’d explain it.
Sugar being deadly to most species is one of those story elements popular in ‘Earth is a deathworld and we don’t realize it’ tropes :)
Btw, little fact: Garlic IS deadly, or at least poisonous, to almost every species on earth…. except humans. For humans, it has medical benefits because we are a crazy species. :)
It may be a trope, but I love it regardless.
I once saw this little comic strip where god had finally made a place on Earth so cold that humans couldn’t live there. Then, down on the surface, there’s a human wearing a fur coat standing outside an igloo flipping god the bird.
Death world! And humans are crazy for living there.
I didn’t know that about garlic. But then again, I absolutely hate the taste of garlic.
Isaac Asimov wrote a Feghoot in which a guy and his neighbors have an outing, and the weird neighbors are watching the sky the whole time. They suddenly beg off and the entire neighbor family is rushing for their own house when an afternoon shower erupts. The guy says, “I don’t see what problem a little rain is. It’s not like they’re made…” the neighbors dissolve in the rain “…out of sugar…”
Garlic having health benefits makes a lot of sense. If garlic kills non-humans but we can eat it without trouble, then it seems a natural weapon for killing parasites and other undesirables trying to use our bodies as homes.
Yes that’s actually one of the main reasons that garlic has health benefits for humans. Because it kills many types of bacteria :). And apparently the ones it doesn’t kill are the ones that aid human digestion, so even when it doesn’t kill a non-human, it winds up being helping humans as a side effect :). It’s just hilarious.
And according to my uncle, which I won’t take as scientific because it just sounds like a folk remedy to me, it also weakens virii. :)
Well, we know it weakens the Vampire virus.
Read a story (or watched a movie) where it was explained the reason why vampires don’t like garlic is because they can never get rid of the garlic-breath (or at least takes several decades or centuries)
Butt yeah, if garlic helps keep you healthy, it would be anathema to a walking corpse
Of course it’s deadly just like cinnamon. You try and take a freshly baked gooey cinnamon roll covered in butter and frosting out of someones hand and I guarantee you will get bitten and or soundly beaten. :)
Well, I thought it was something like it was used as a poison in the Farscape area of the galaxy. It’s been a long while since I’ve watched Farscape, I should probably do so again soon.
In any case, three stomachs, dude, three stomachs! AND he farts helium. I’m sure something as innocent as sugar would prove no problem for a Hynerian. Especially since, unlike the other savages, he’s eaten almost every food in the galaxy (except ices scream).
Sucrose is highly addictive to Hynerians, Rygel saw human candy and fast food in a similar way we look at cocaine, heroin and meth (narcotics).
Sugar is also illegal in the MegaCities of Judge Dredd.
Er…considering the power requirements to successfully turn elements into other elements without creating unstable, radioactive isotopes, most replication would be on a molecular level and not an elemental level. (Yes, currently Earthlings do it with U to Pu but that’s both energy intensive, radiolocially dirty, and elementally crude (lots of byproducts). That for a relatively simple transition between nearby elements.) Which says that most rare, universal rare elements would likely have some trade value as well as specialized molecules either difficult, or unknown, for the replicator pattern systems…
So the replicators have a carbon cartridge, an aluminium cartridge, a yettrium cartridge, etc?
“Stupid machine! Why can`t I print diamonds when the iron cartridge is empty?!?”
If you have direct energy to matter conversion like in Star Trek all that matters is mass. More mass is more energy.
Deus is carrying popsicles. (Points for anyone who catches the reference)
More people would get it if that comic was still up. Three cheers for the worst dressed sentient.
As far as I know Zap Gun For Hire is still up over at StudioFoglio. Or is there another “Worst Dressed sentient?”
https://web.archive.org/web/20100113103721/https://www.airshipentertainment.com/buckcomic.php?date=20070111
Hm Syd would find and adopt a Winslow.
So Deus is going out to negotiate starting a Velvet Fist franchise?
Gotta say I love your webcomic. I really hope Sydney just runs into Deus and just does her usual analyzing, followed by ensuing high jinks.
So, DaveB, you’re saying that Deus and Vale just went on a star trek to the un-Discoveried country?
Now what are the odds that Sydney and Deus run into each other on a whole planet… Wait, this is Sydney Scoville Junior we’re talking about. Shouldn’t be long before every sophont on The Fracture knows about her. Deus and Vale will be lucky if they manage to avoid her!
AT THE FOOD COURT:
Deus: Gahh!! (Drinks water rapidly)
Server: Is there something wrong sir?
Deus: No. Just spicer than I’m used to.
Server: I was under the impression Earthicans liked their food spicy.
Deus: (pause) What gave you that impression about Earthicans?
Love it.
(at the food court): I’m sorry miss, that particular Spice is technically an illegal substance, and would not really do much towards the flavour of that dish. Just to be curious, though, wherever did you learn of it’s existence?
And I do look forward to seeing Max’s face when she hears about all of this. She’s been worrying non-stop about what might have happened to Sydney – in the meantime, Sydney has leveled up a couple of times by killing a couple of the world-slaying kaiju things, discovered that her powers include a hyperdrive, and used it to find the biggest shopping mall in the universe… where she bumped into Deus.
Yeah, once she gets home and is relieved of the stress re. death and being lost in space, this is going to be a great story, and possibly fond memories.
(I also think that the Sydney as ambassador for Earth should be played up EXHAUSTIVELY! … honestly, Deus is probably going to try to “register” the planet as being his sole property, if Sydney doesn’t register it first.)
I’d say that energy->matter replication, while useful, would still probably be bonkers expensive energy wise, and most likely raw rare metals like that would still have value. If they use something like molecular transportation (which is what I assume replicator tech is based on) or glorified 3d printers, the material would still be useful.
As a rule (so far as we know now, that is), any element down to Ferrum can be manufactured as a wasteproduct of creating energy in a fusion reactor. From iron and down in the transuranics and beyond – thouse consume energy to create. Just as exotics like muon matter, antimatter, negmatter, strangelets, or any other exomat of your choice. Beyond that, anything with structure would consume energy to create said form – molecular bonds are not cheap to make.
Other than that – you can easely mine needed materials via neumann-probes form uninhabitable planetoids, asteroid belts, Oort regions, and stellar clouds.
So, scarcity of a particular chemically simple material thing is a thing of fiction – that’s why fiction is full of unreplicateable gold-pressed latinum and unrecrystallizeable dilithium, recent pile of bovine excrement courtesy of STD notwithstanding.
Molecular bonds only exist in the first place because the molecule has less energy than the same atoms would unbound. The main trick in chemical synthesis is not making bonds, but making the right bonds to get the precise chemical you want, rather than assorted related ones.
The energy requirements for chemical reactions come, not from making bonds, but from breaking the existing ones. Throw a bunch of neutral monatoms together and you’ll start getting bonds over a wide range of temperatures…
While it is certainly so in classic chemistry, 3D-printing molecules can get a little bit tricky in this aspect. That’s why diamonds are simple to get with a rather primitive set of fusion-level tek apparatuses. Try to replicate something like that bloody molecule that kills malaria plasmodium by falling apart while discharging energy stored in its molecular bonds, or – say – UDMH, and you’d need to be very fast and exact to get the molecule you need, and not something with “catastrophic exothermic” epithet. And may Azathoth have mercy on poor soul of one who was not accurate/fast enough while replicating azidoazide azide…
But I digress. With the molecular 3DP we can get precisely the molecules we want. Of any replicatable chemical compound with ->100% purity. Which posits its own set of problems – but what we care about concerning the point of discussion, is the bonds – which would be formed not from redistribution of energy during the reaction, but from direct infusion during the printing process. If we fail to supply needed energy, materiel produced will form compounds by itself with full compliance to rules of conventional chemistry. Which would be of no consequence to industrial synthesizers producing bulk amounts of, say, carbon – but will nivelate any potential usefulness of said synthesizers in “replication” part of replicating anything beyond diamonds and such.
Now, how one can manipulate matter on the level of replicating even simple dihydrogen monoxide without creating hydrogen, oxygen, and let them oxydize on their own terms – that’s currently beyond my ability to imagine without several quite unscientific assumptions. But since it’s the staple of fiction, I’m ol klear with a wee bit of handwaving for story’s sake.
Yeah, even in Star Trek they only use replicators because it’s easier to transport energy than massive amounts of stuff. But for big projects (like ship construction) they still use harvested metals.
They use harvested materials because replicators can solve 99% of problems-of-the-week. Which would make the process of making series rather pointless.
And even if we assume that their concurrent replication tek is highly inefficient, writers made – to my recollection – latinum, dilithium, antimatter, and several other substances unreplicateable by definition.
That said – E still equals MC squared. Direct energy-to-matter replication is horrifyingly inefficient by the standards of Federation on their in-series tek-level. Using fusion reactors to create raw materiel in bulk, and refined by that time manufacturing processes to put that materiel into shape is far more preferable.
But then again – they have transporters. That’s a can of worms the size of half the universe. Like, for example, the notion that transporter and replicator are somehow two different things. Or the idea that with transporters existing, there are somehow still ill and/or old people in existence beyond random sick fucks who get their high from being ill/old. Even if we accept inefficiency of shewn Federation tek. Which on their shewn level from original series and further still would be more than enough to eliminate even possibility of poisoning, viral or bacterial infection, or BEING OLD.
Not to mention that anyone who ever was scanned by one of thouse things literally can not die unless the scanned one’s pattern would be erased from transporter’s buffers. All thouse people killed on away missions – they can simply be replicated in compos mentis on the timestamp of their last transportation any time. And if problem with this is moral and/or ethical – then it’s time to throw away such morals, and leave that ethic behind.
Well it could also be another issue. Like in Crystal Singer the Ballybran crystals may be easy to produce synthetically, but it also may be the favorite breeding ground for a particular kind of spore. One that while annoying is a symbiotic spore that provides several adaptations and benefits as well thus allowing a small trade guild to harness the usefulness of the material.
Replicators and transporters ARE the same thing, even in-universe.
The big difference is that with transporters you convert matter to energy then that energy back to matter so you only have to pay for the inefficiencies in the system rather than all that energy. With replicators you have to provide all the energy (well you get the dishes back).
Art has value. Handcrafted knicknacks and what have you. Bring out the glass beads. Or the porn again. Or both…..Sydney does a squee!
Well it appears deus did slip a tracker into Sidneys rebreather.
Heh heh heh…
Given that aliens have been coming to Earth and we know that Deus knows about them and can arrange pretty much anything they might want whilst there he probably has some IOUs and a good understanding of how the space economy works.
They could contain DVDs of the first 2 Alien movies. Everybody loves a comedy. Or would they count as romance/porn movies.
Seeing some interesting discussions in the comments, but has anyone considered yet that Deus’ visit to the Fracture might be a result of Sydney’s visit AND return to Earth?
That’s…. actually a very cool idea! And it would explain how D’s energy towers were now both complete and operational, when they clearly weren’t when Vale brought him the Skybreaker.
[Refining a previously posted idea…]
So, Sydney sees Deus and dale exit a door.
Sydney goes through the door.
Sysney sees a wormhole and goes through it.
Looking back, Sydney sees Deus’s budget StarGate. She also sees the brane ripper.
Sydney, thinking, “Hey, Sciona stole that from the Council! I’ll return it.” removes brane ripper from the circlular device.
Alarms go off, and voiced=s start calling for instructions. Ruh-hoh.
Sydney escapes and flys around the world, this time use GPS (which suddenly started working) to return to Archon HQ.
She decides on a quick meal at Fusion, where she runs into… Sydney Scoville Jr., orbs and all, who has ordered her an enormous platter of extremely hot & spicy food, and two pairs of safety glasses.
The second Sydney explains. “I’m you, about three weeks older. You’re going back to Africa, put the Cosmic Can Opener back in the Stargate, and calling for max power. The wormhole leads to ‘The Fracture.’ A more wretched hive… nevermind. When you get there, take off straight up, and start broadcasting on the Arcon channel, ‘Mayday, SOS, this is me, um you, um, Scoville’ oh I can’t remember everything. Dabbler arranged a ride, you just need to be in space to meet them. Improvise what you say – I did. And I’m you. Now eat our lunch and go, before Max realizes there are two of me. We don’t want to break her brain.”
Syd does as she told herself to do. She also follows herself and snatches the ripper for a second time.
Screw Deus.
Sydney: so…those weren’t really replicas, then.
Vale: looks towards Sydney and shudders visibly
Deus: I can neither deny nor confirm that statement.
You just shot zombie Flanders!