Grrl Power #687 – A friendly tongue
My favorite thing about this page is that we break into this conversation midstream, so you need to realize it took Sydney that much longer to realize the other girl was speaking English. I don’t know what she is. Demoness? Tiefling-adjacent? Whatever. Obviously Gray-gal there suggested Sydney have some more of that supposedly dangerous-to-human spicy food so she could film it for her universetube channel.
There’s obviously other ways onto the station. People can beam down or take shuttles, but you’re supposed to use the starports if you dock, otherwise there’d be ships landing all over the place. There are some races than can fly using various methods, so they can just hop out of their ship and float down wherever they need, but they still need to park their ship either at a port or put it in orbit. Gray-gal can’t fly and doesn’t have her own personal shuttle, so she was being a little absent minded when she said there wasn’t any other way on to the station.
Also, there are travel gates all over the station (basically human scale stargates) but unbeknownst to most of the station’s populace, there are some gates that lead to weird places. Technically they’re shut down and not equipped with information kiosks, but it is still quite possible to get onto the station and miss the amenities.
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The problem is that whoever this is (almost certainly Cora, but Sydney doesn’t know this or her connection to Dabbler) has already placed a hand on her, meaning the unknown possible-assailant is already within shield range. See also: Shadow Ninja Dude from the Big Fight that snuck into her shield.
Which means shield is ineffective at defending against this new individual, because shield will simply trap them in with her.
Which means that Sydney is probably NOT going to shield up. Either she turns around to see who is talking, or she’s going to come ’round swinging, and by swinging I mean both fists and orbs.
The problem is that the laser rifle is going to ping ‘bounty hunter’ to Sydney. People who aren’t hostile don’t tote rifles around. Not just a gun in a holster, a *rifle*. A handgun in a holster, she would be more chill with, but actively toting around a rifle means expecting imminent hostilities, and since the place seems pretty peaceful to Sydney, she’s gonna immediately assume that they are expecting *her* to get hostile, which means their intentions to her are also hostile.
This has all the earmarks of a Situation going Tango Uniform in a very short order.
She could use her Light Hook. Bunch it up into a fist shape and Shoryuken the “Bounty Hunter”.
Flight Orb and “Tiger Uppercut”? She doesn’t have a ceiling to run into this time. If nothing else, it would get her out of grapple reach and able to bring up shielding.
Looks like a handcannon to me, an alien version of Maxi’s cannon, and Cora the Explorer doesn’t seem to be the stupid kind to openly carry a weapon around the station
Cora the Explorer. Lol! HILARIOUS! X-D !!!
Grab your Jetpack!
On a total tangent here: I once wrote one of the more infamously innuendo-laden EGS fanfics, an alternate-world version of the original series opener. In this version, instead of Tedd there was Dora (Theodore -> Theodora); one of the first things Elliot says is that Dora’s a lesbian, earning an angry denial from Dora. Sarah shows up and mentions that the other girls avoid showering near “Dora the Explorer” after PE class, leaving Elliot gobsmacked. Dora then insists that they meant her roaming eyes, but Sarah said, in effect, “yeah, no, that’s not all of it”.
She’s definitely holding it two-handed, and it looks like a pump-action something, or at least a secondary grip where a pump-action grip would be. At the least, it doesn’t look like it is *intended* to be a one-handed weapon, and a holster for it would be the size of Cora’s leg, past the knee, and be awkward as hell. So either she’s got that thing strapped to her back, or she’s carrying it. My bet is on carrying it.
Well it’d be pretty easy to break that grip or at least utilize it in an interesting way. If she goes for the flight orb first, and then does the annoying flying in a spinny single point around the flight orb, she should be able to detach anyone that’s on her, and put up her Shield. We already know that the light hook materializes Outside The Shield.
We also don’t know or haven’t confirmed rather that if she materializes The Shield close to her person that she doesn’t just cut through whatever is there like she did to the ground when she was comically flailing at the tank test. In that scene there was plainly a chunk of ground inside of her Shield flying with her.
Actually, it seems to me in the panel you’re talking about that it’s much more likely to be sand that was kicked up in the blast, I say this mostly because she was flying when she fired the PPO, the amount we see in the shot is a little higher than I’d imagine, but I think that’s more just a personal choice by the artist than anything else.
Yeah, that was sand that got trapped after she created the mini-sandstorm
Sydney might just tear gas/dragon breath her in surprised shock
Truly, I’m not sure if this is trending towards “Tango Uniform” or “Charlie Foxtrot”.
I guess we’ll be putting Syd’s newly-forged restraint to yet another test, here.
Well this situation has been a total CF from 633 when the Team was dropped in the Crapper. and technically she’s still in it, she just got one hell of a good feed in the meantime. and how she has Cat fright clothing.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2864
While I agree this has the potential to go… poorly based on Sydney’s past actions I don’t agree carrying a rifle = Bounty Hunter or Hostile intent. Soldiers carry one as do Police in some countries. I was a soldier. I and every other soldiers rifle had a weapon sling and we carried it over the shoulder. (Holstered if you will.)
My next statement is a bit out of context as Sydney is in a space station but if you were in the country driving down a 2 lane road, its not completely unusual to see a couple of men and maybe even a woman wearing camouflage and carrying a long-arm.
Depends very much on your ‘country’! About the only place in the UK you might consider that “not completely unusual” would be in a military training range, and those tend not to be accessible to the public when the munitions are out of the armoury.
“People who aren’t hostile don’t tote rifles around. Not just a gun in a holster, a *rifle*. A handgun in a holster, she would be more chill with, but actively toting around a rifle means expecting imminent hostilities, and since the place seems pretty peaceful to Sydney, she’s gonna immediately assume that they are expecting *her* to get hostile, which means their intentions to her are also hostile.”
Before she even came aboard she saw people walking around in Battle Armor. The ordnance on those isn’t generally detatchable.
Small arms is a comparatively minor deal next to other things that are at large here.
Most Battle Armour is just that, Armour designed for Battle, and most of their ordnance can be removed, just like with a handgun
Of course, if she goes shield and fly… well, it’s a dead man’s switch. She loses consciousness, the shield drops the hostage taker. More a Mexican Standoff.
Going on the comments as to what this new alien is. Given she has the “shield horns” thing going on (as in they are part of her head like an extension rather than growing out or on like horns or antlers normally do, and also appear to be stiff and not fleshy bits)…she puts me in mind of like a wingless, tailless variant of a Gargoyle.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/11/c8/13/11c813d982635f1d37de6b1fbbf1aa15–disney-gargoyles-disney-s.jpg
https://qvoicenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Lex.jpg
https://www.s8.org/gargoyles/archives/images/tv/hunters_moon/angelama.jpg
Well, glad to see that I am not the only one to think Gargoyles (and props to linking S8)
As I am not aware of it, and to cover my Ps and Qs just in case. I have no idea what S8 is or why it would be important or relevant one way or another. So no idea if this is good or bad to anyone. I just google images and grabbed the first three good mix of horn structures for Gargoyles I could find to illustrate their diversity and how they connect to the forehead.
It’s bugging me a bit how, in the first and last panel, the shading on Gray-gal’s nose/horns makes it look like she has a flat plane between the vertical center of her horns and the bridge of her nose, while from the side perspective (and from the clearer shading in the side perspective) there’s a very noticeable… inward-corner… thing. Also dang, now I look at it again, she’s really thin, while her boobs are proportionally pretty huge.
Can’t say I disapprove though :)
The ‘side-groove’ on her nose is her nostrils
Nah, he’s talking about from side on she has a huge brow ridge, but from directly in front there is no shading so it looks flat. It even has shading under it on the side view, so there is no reason you wouldn’t see it from directly in front.
Her right ‘horn’ does look like it has a bit of a bump on it, so the apparent brow ridge may be flat in the middle and the horns sweep forward a bit.
Or the horns may just be flexible and her brow ridge is what expands when she breathes in. Aliens, right.
Thought HeckobA was referring to the side groove :(
Deus would just have His Trusty Minion act as food taster. That could have interesting results, too.
WAG: This stuff is toxic to humans, not just super spicy but actually poisonous, but one of the orbs acts to protect her from it.
Or Sydney actually does have a super power: she’s invulnerable to the spices measured by her name.
A minor point, Duces bodyguards not actualy human, and probably is not even from this planet, so any food that could kill Duce might leave her reaching fore pure yellowcake for seasoning, while food that would kill Vale would just make Duce burp.
Like Gray-gal, she cute.
Also is that some kind of holo-emoji on her head?
Yeah it seems to be either just above and in front of her face or actually built into her hair I couldn’t tell which. What does it look like to you? I get a definite flame vibe from it, like the symbol for a campfire but without the sticks. There’s also if you look faint green one behind her but that could be somebody else.
The green thing is someone else, notice how it isnt in any of the other frames of her.
To me it kinda looks like either a part of her (flame) or it is like a device like a holographic mood ring.
Kinda like those electronic ears people DIY, that detects muscle movement/audio and causes ‘ears’ to move.
Will the crowd watching her eat come to the conclusion
she’s being arrested?
” Aw man… Show’s over. I expected her to explode or something.”
“That’s how they found her. Eating grakz like it was fgqii.”
“Never did figure out what those balls were. Maybe the balls are getting arrested
and she’s their accomplice.”
Sidney says that she has been wandering for days, which is something that always makes me have questions whenever someone is going from one planet (solar system/galaxy/universe) to another.
Whose time are they going by? Earth time is translated as rotations of the planet and revolutions around the Sun, so going to another planet may have much longer or shorter days (hours/minutes/seconds) than your own, and I’m pretty sure Sidney does not have a universal standard watch.
NASA has run into this problem on Mars. The Martian day is about 40 min longer than one on Earth, so the Scientists had to switch to that day/night cycle (because everything was solar-powered and could not run at night).
I assume that you switch to a local time cycle (if possible) and just expect that your communication with the next star system might not be read for a couple of days/weeks.
Here’s a great TED talk from a lady on some of the Mars rover missions about the adjustments that the team members and their families made to deal with the time differences. Starts slow but some really interesting points.
According to DaveB’s own time elapsed note on the comic page located in that very same “days” quipped panel…Sydney is clearly exaggerating when she says it’s been “days”…which, when you have ADHD, is pretty much what some moments feel like.
…Or even if you’re just an American trying to remember that the whole Tide Pods thing occurred just at the start of this year, rather than 2-3 years ago, which quite frankly is how this whole year feels. Half a decade of hell crammed into 11 months so far…
That……was this year?
Yeah.
A lot of bad things happened this year. Deliberately lots and lots of bad things.
Sydney, please stop convincing aliens that our planet spins at insane speeds.
“YouNiverseTube”
Riiiight…
Poor Sydney, she can’t even sneak off to eat one full meal, on the clock, without her bosses tracking her down!
I am sure that Max will give her the proper documentation to do add a lunch break into her punch card for the week……..LOL
“there are some gates that lead to weird places. Technically they’re shut down and not equipped with information kiosks, but it is still quite possible to get onto the station and miss the amenities.”
This wouldn’t happen to be one of those places, would it?
A hive of scum and villainy, yes
Told you she landed in Sigil :P
O. Henry Twist: that’s the same armor, but that’s NOT Cora inside it.
There’s a twist coming all right: that’s not armor.
;)
Corporal Scoville is showing a strong ability to adapt and overcome. Utilizing her skills to survive while short on resources and gather intelligence on her surroundings.
I am sure she will be punished servery for this. She’ll probably have to teach a class on “What to do if you are lost on in a non-human civilization”. Tis’ the cursed fate of those who are the first (simi-officially) to do something amazing. It was the fate of Nile Armstrong too. LOL
(He actually did create many courses for Aerospace at the University of Cincinnati. Probably got paid well too. Of course, he was a decorated Engineer and was able to describe everything, where Sydney is not. Most small business owners I know didn’t go to college instead just buying a textbook on Business and studying that. So she probably doesn’t have an “official” degree)
Sydney will be punished for not staying on a hostile planet with creatures that are determined to kill her? When she has no way of knowing if rescue would even be possible? o_O
Some people obviously think the US military is nothing but a bunch of General Failures and Major Disasters
Or, just ARCHON specifically (remember that crap after Kronachrome almost destroyed the Universe?)
“Who is this General Failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?” — Olde DOS computer joke. :-)
Sydney should have seen this coming. Saying something as fate-tempting as, “None of my friends have any way of finding me!” is obviously going to immediately cause that to happen.
Sydney is trope-aware, so we can assume she knows this. Clearly, she’s doing it intentionally – she’s probably been loudly declaiming to anyone who can hear her, “Oh, no! My friends have ABSOLUTELY NO WAY of finding me!!”, and then glancing about excitedly, expecting them to appear.
It was bound to work one of those times.
It would, of course, never work until she did it unconsciously and meant it.
I figure that’s what the cat’s hair jacket is about. She got troped.
Any bets on how long it takes Sydney to figure out who Cora is and how she knew her name?
I’m betting she’ll figure out Dabbler’s involved as soon as she looks down.
Straight ahead or slightly up, if the angle of the armored arm is
any indication.
I can’t tell if Sydney is sitting or stranding.
Panel 1…sitting?
Panel 3….standing?
Panel 6…sitting again?
Knowing her size, is there ay difference in height with either way ?
Ok, it all depend on the chair size :P
“I just can’t believe you can physically eat that stuff.” Is there another way of eating it? o.O
Its a common phrase, meaning it is surprising she can consume it without dire affects on her physiology.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/208
See last panel above.
Obviously she has the minor superpower “fraidy cat clothing morph”
Note that the first three time we saw her Fraidycat power displayed she’s had the drop into combat mode reaction https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/621.
However that said I doubt she had that oversized pistol drawn when she walked in. For one thing the rest of the slightly fuzzy sceenn (pun intended)doesn’t show that anyone else is looking or reacting like there bothered by her appearance. I suspect at most we might see lighhook and flight used to give her space. Not her spining around cutting loose with her beam of whoopass leveling the place while engaging flight and orb punching anything close.
The other thing is that quite likely she realised she invoked the Milion to one trope
I guess dabbler forgot to warn her not to scare Sydney. If shes lucky she will only get 5-6 orbs to the head and body and Sydey jumps back and sheids up..
You don’t know what Grey-Gal is, except for impressively perky! Yeeeesh! Jealous! ^.-
Ah the next big tech explosion would be bio-tech and gene-mods.
They will start out as: fix nasty disease. than allow for selection of kids eye colors/etc. they changing of your features etc.
Ever read book Copernicks Rebellion by Leo Frankowski? Fascinating peek into what might happen.
https://www.amazon.com/Copernicks-Rebellion-Leo-Frankowski/dp/0977386929
How about designing a seed to grow your own space ship, computer etc.
Genemods? Someone very recently claimed to have done this. Chinese researcher made an alteration in the genome that should confer hereditary immunity to HIV in a pair of twins. “ethicists” are complaining that the chidlren did not get to choose whether or not they wanted this gene change. Curiously, children also do not get to choose any of their other genes, because they do not get to choose their biological parents.
Well at first it will be done invitro – less shock to the system that way. I would be more peeved if someone made the choice FOR me, and at that time it was the only way to do it. I would prefer MY parents would make the informed choice.
BUT come up with a package that deals with all the major gene based killers currently known that could be applied to anyone?
When it comes down to it, some will make a choice for some against. We should allow for both.
I know we all want Deus to get given the same food but if that man has any weaknesses his desire to control his public image is amongst them, to date we have seen him list reasons his ego is not unjustified in being as inflated as it is until the reporter interviewing him agreed it was justified and comment on his worry that changing the last word in a sentence he was saying would show. He is not the sort of person who is ok with being outperformed to the extent that he couldn’t eat one bowl when Sydney downed four becoming a space meme and he wouldn’t have an acceptable way to redress the balance as most responses would be considered petty (definitely not something he wants to be). He would probably seek to reward Sydney in order to end the contest in his mind or be constantly alert to ways to win a rematch in a more favourable contest. Sydney being unaware of what’s behind his behaviour would likely assume the best of him.
Everyone’s talking about what Sydney’s about to do when she turns around, but you’ve all failed to notice one thing; in the last panel, her cheeks are puffy.
Fear vomit?
One of the effects of eating Spicy Food.
Cora better have water proof boots… :)
What makes it look puffy, is her mouth shrinking
Ya’know come to think of it, Sydney is one of the first publically known (real) superheroes on Earth.
Her presence on the Fracture, and appearing on various Universetube *or whatever term Galactic Shared Network has here* videos should do wanders for Earth’s tourism board. Have aliens recognize her, visit Earth, talk about the super who can eat something that apparently is so surprising to be consumed that its a wander it is even on the menu apparently…or the usual consumer doesn’t have three bowls of it at least LoL.
So I wouldn’t be surprised to see this come up.
PS: Maybe not intended but, going by DaveB’s comment on unplanned design here, is this a case of accidental character? I mean she’s the first person here Sydney is talking to, being friends with, and is going to be seen on this individuals’ Utube channel. I would expect a “if you are ever on Earth look me up, we can hang out”.
Sydney looks super cute in that last panel.
Yeah, she does.
I’d like to add Dave’s art has really improved since the beginning simply amazing.
English is one of 12 thousand languages….oddly convenient.
Well, it is widely used, thanks to British colonialism, followed up by American industrial might. Put English and Chinese in your translator, and you should be good dropped almost anywhere on Earth.
Um no, even allowing for a drastically reduced value of planets in solar systems in the greenbelt capable of developing sentience, and assuming it took longer than earth did, the current number of civilizations that should be such that currently we would have no doubt about there existance. The Fermi paradox is still in full force for us. The current most credible theory is simular to the one posited in Schlock mercenary. Something is wiping civilizations out. Unlike Schlock though in reality it could be something not malevelant from a third party.
Umm.. ok? But not sure how that relates to English being one of the 12000 languages on her translator.
Remember, most spacefaring planets will have a single language, either a planetary one or a galactic one, so there’s not much competition for those 12000 slots.
This is a basic rule of social distance..
1) They come to Earth for sex tourism.
2) English is one of the top 5 trade languages here.
3) Therefore English is one of the top 12000 languages that might be useful here.
English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and you cover 80% of Earth’s people. Add the next five and you cover 80% of the rest.
Am I the only one getting a KSBDs vibe from miss grey face? Her face has a mask like quality, and she has some device that looks like a golden flame lighting her brow. She just needs to start kung fu fighting to finish the effect.
Do you mean Kill Six Billion Demons?
Yeah.
Since it was clear that the food vendor understood Sydney earlier, I went back and checked to see if they were wearing a translator just to how far ahead Dave was thinking, then I realized, “Wait, I don’t know where the ears are.”
Why it hears through a series of glands located at various points just under the epidermis of its torso. Give it stereoscopic hearing so good that that the eyes have practically become vestigial if not for their ability to detect intensities in light and expression.
am I missing something?
what is she replying to in the first panel? I didn’t see any hint that horny girl (snicker) had asked Halo anything…
Read the text box under the comic.
I like reading the comic “as-is” without getting backstories or explanations outside the comic. Comics should make sense without having to have them explained, at least that’s how I feel..
It’s kind of like music, I like listening to music but I really don’t need or want to hear the artist’s entire life story to enjoy it… if a song doesn’t sound “right” to me, I listen to the next one, or the next. Those DJs on the radio that insist on giving backstory to each song before they play the song… I LOATHE those DJs, I just want to listen to the music, jam, sing along or dance, I don’t want a biography with the music…
GAH, wow, went off on a tangent, bottom line, I like reading comics, I don’t like reading backstories because they should be IN the comic if they are relavent to the comic, does that make sense?
It makes plenty of sense but if someone is asking questions down here then they are already looking for explanations outside the comic so I don’t consider it unreasonable to direct them to the text box. This arc has had its share of sudden jumps probably because Sydney has had no one to talk to so in order to keep advancing the story things are getting missed.
I honestly thought my browser was clipping the comic or was skipping a page…
Bah, missed a / on the closing blockquote tag…
Maybe this has been discussed before, but “junior”?
Yup, way way back in the early pages when she is first getting interviewed by ARCHON it was touched on. She also has plans to name any offspring Sydney, so they can be Sydney Scoville the Third.
Yeah, she was named after her dad, so logically she would be Junior (don’t blame Sydney for most people not realising ‘Junior’ is gender-neutral, just like ‘Sydney’ itself, crappy city by the way)
Page #83
This could end ugly. Sydney could breathe on someone…
Or worse, fear vomit.
Not to mention that a Dyson sphere has an almost unimaginable surface area. And depending on the species, you might prefer the inside or the outside. With spin you’d get a gradient ‘gravity’ effect on the inside of the sphere with the highest ‘gravity’ being along the equator and the lowest at the poles. Again accommodating a great many differing physiologys. On the outside of the sphere the central sun would be providing the gravity.
Yeah, but this isn’t around a sun, its around a pulsar or gravity well, white hole, or some other power source being harnessed by the station. In all this station could be the size of the moon…granted still big enough that to have Sydney and Deus pass within a block or so of each other despite no one directing Sydney to a visitor area or something is still nuts.
Well, Sydney is no expert but she seemed to be completely confident that it was a pulsar. Which is a star. I’m not sure what you’re calling a ‘gravity well,’ since all mass makes a gravity well, even if vanishingly small unless you don’t have enough mass. If you have enough mass then again you have a star. White holes have never been found, although theoretically they are possible, but they have no ‘pull’ and in fact cannot be entered just as a black hole cannot be exited, so one would provide no gravity for the station. “Some other power source” is terribly unspecific, so now you’re just blathering about nothing at all.
It is around a star.
Anyone reminded of that scene when Sydney met that teleporter when Maxima brought her to ARC way back?
I kinda hope that Sydney assumes the worst and comes around swinging a plate or something — and it pings harmlessly off Cora’s helmet.
“Yeah, Dabbler said that might happen, so I took precautions.”
That alien has huge tracts of land
When in doubt, make them larger. Boobs equal site hits.
Dave’s such a tease; I suspect that the next comic will shift focus to either Zeus & Vale or back to Archon on Earth.
Also…shouldn’t Sydney need to go to the bathroom by now..?
75% chance of a cutaway to Earth.
Dabbler shows Maxima a photo.
Sydney is in Cora’s ship’s brig.
Mitten-cuffed and tranked and under guard.
Maxima: ???
Dabbler: She resisted rescue.
Honestly expecting a cut back to Cora and *moments ago* walk up and checking out Utube channel feeds of the situation at hand.
I like how the Grey-girl has a ‘mood flame’ above her head that kinda gives insight to what she might be thinking.
That’s a third eye
Or a power suppression seal that works both as sealing a more dangerous form to other residents *like a power energy hair form that emits tons of radiation*, that also acts as a warning sign to others that this small life form is much more dangerous than she looks.
Or its a holographic ornament popular on her planet like hair feathers and beads and such are on Earth
Or is a natural orbital like the Alari wings and she can fire energy beams from it or form an Armor from the X-men style forcefield suit.
Or its her true form and the body is a bio-android construct to move around and experience the physical world.
Or its an avatar view point and the body is a construct but her true form is far, far away and observing things through the view point.
Or…lots of things.
How many of those things ‘wink’? Panel five isn’t exactly ‘winking’, butt it is going half-lidded like her other two eyes
Most if it has an emoticon function built in, especially for avatar or mood ring like purposes.
It could also be a buddy ball, *a floating AI that helps the person out…granted those usually are floating over a shoulder or something, but I’ve seen ones with a personality before*.
Do not “taunt” happy fun ball.
Now that you mention it, it reminds me of the amulet/decoration on Zeetha’s head from Girl Genius.
The thought occurs to me Deus is here clearly to get technology to take back to Earth where he will likely have it reverse engineered…or more lazily repackaged. The translator being a likely first candidate for that, only for Sydney and Dabbler to recognize it later.
I would go for tools/reference ‘books’ and tech manuals first. Trying to reverse engineer a item as compact and functional as that translation doodad with current earth tech, would almost certainly destroy it without gaining much useful information.
That describes one of my big beefs with sci-fi in general when its contemporary Earth meets aliens.
-I have a whole list, but one of those items is reverse engineering perfectly technology beyond current human understanding…like…its like expecting chimps to take apart a car and build one of their own. A chimp can be taught how to drive, it like many animals can understand that the car can go when you are in it…it is one thing to have the skills and knowledge to operate something, it is another to disassemble and reassemble your own.
Yes, butt by reverse engineering, you can learn to build your own car, to your specifications
What does the chimp do if the car breaks down or simply stops working? Take it back and ask for a new one?
You kind of missed the forest for the trees there.
The main comparison is and why it bugs me in sci-fi is that the alien tech is often TOO advanced for the humans to realistically be able to take apart, study, and reverse engineer as even the base conceptual points of it are built up from tech humans aren’t even at the start of designing or understanding.
It would be like chimps using rocks to try and take apart and replicate a car engine, they simply couldn’t and wouldn’t know where to begin so any attempts would at best break what they are working on and at worst kill them via an explosion, toxic gasses, ect…
Heck just look at stuff we have now, many an average person who doesn’t already know how various electronics work couldn’t be expected to take apart their PS4, PC, Microwave, or whatever and realistically replicate it by building their own parts. Just multiply this by a few thousand times and even with an engineering degree having someone who knows circuit boards, combustion engines, nuclear reactors, staring at something that looks like a bunch of crystals and goo that defy gravity once you take the outer shell off and they’d be completely lost where to begin…and yet SG-1 could hook a damn laptop up to that and build their own ships…granted with help from the Asgard so kind of cheating, but other sci-fi has done it without help, and it is a tad goofy.
Have not the tools, training, or experience for the job in other words.
-we need you our team of brilliant Earth robotics engineers to figure out how this machine can defy gravity, dampen inertia, and phase through solid objects
(open up the outer casing and a bunch of liquid sparkly soap stuff spills out followed by what looks like a series of hearts connected by tubes, and once it hits the floor all of it suddenly mineralized and turns to sparkly quartz dust)
*Uh…I think we broke it.
On that same note, it can be one thing to have a basic idea HOW something works, another to replicate it though.
Like robotic engineers trying to copy biological functions, yeah, getting there, but it is a slow process, as you have to find mechanical parts and substances to replace the ones you don’t have the exact materials for or can’t replicate to the same intricacies.
That’s why, in those shows, it’s usually a team of ‘eggheads’ who have the arduous task of reverse engineering space crap, often with disastrous results along the way (remember what happened to Data in “Independence Day”?), and even then, it usually takes a few decades
One of my favorite moments from SG-1 was there they got a Goa’uld ship and it just took off into space on its own with one of them trapped inside, a Tokra told them you can’t just slap a property of the US air force sticker on an alien ship. Unfortunately this same show had its fair share of *eureka I have solved the ancient super alien tech with my laptop moments too*…these shows were always a tad inconsistent on a few things.
So I do appreciate when it doesn’t work. Just hoping Deus gets that moment from his own scientist like…uh…did you get the owner’s manual sir? We couldn’t even tell if these are circuits or nerve cells…or whatever they are.
Or… as opposed to alien technology,
an idea for a product that’s within Earth’s current manufacturing abilities.
How long did pencils exist until someone put an eraser
on the other end?
I have been using Google translate to read a lot of Danish recently , there is enough missing vocabulary to get hilarious flubs about once per paragraph. I am sure that the translator on fracture is much more advanced, but because language changes constantly flubs are probably inevitable.
I wonder if that translate device the Grey-gal has also works with the written word as well.
Sydney may have inadvertently found a bit of help with understanding her orbs.
Or maybe not. Dabbler probably has the same library of 12,000 languages, and she clearly stated they weren’t anything she recognized, which one presumes she cannot ‘read’ them either…except Sydney couldn’t activate the tech tree at that time…and frankly, we still have to see if Sydney can do it without any skill points hanging around.
Dabbler may have more languages. One device
Having that number doesn’t make it all there is.
Well, yeah, she’s been adventuring for decades, but she’ll have the base 12,000 guaranteed, one would think.
I could be misremembering this, but wasn’t there a mention on a previous page that only Sydney (and possibly Krona) can see the markings on the orbs? It would be hard for Dabbler to translate markings if she cannot see them.
She needs to only put her “points” into the center ring. It has been shown, that increases understanding of the Orbs.
Just realized Sydney is getting better on her internal filters, she excluded one of her patented ‘colorful metaphors’ when she realized she was hearing English.