Grrl Power #689 – Customs conundrum
Sydney obviously already knew that her orbs were high level loot, but now it’s confirmed she has a matched set of God-Tier artifacts. Or maybe they’re… Ragnarok Tier?
But as seen on this page, that can cause some problems for her in the right environments. Let’s be honest, it’s a “my suitcase full of money is so heavy” kind of problem most of the time.
Basically you can’t take advanced tech to a lower tier civilization. There rules are really specific based on each world, it’s probably pretty exhausting going through customs there. The biggest restriction is polluting pre-FTL civs with FTL tech, because the general belief is that a race has to earn that particular milestone… and survive all the particular challenges that civilizations are presented with on the path to deep space travel. The post-FTL civs have their own tech rules and hangups. Some have religious problems with vat grown meat or… holograms. I don’t know. Religion can be weird that way. Other civs have corporations working on the latest game console and they don’t want alien game consoles with quantum optical chips beating them to market and tanking their stock. I mean, imagine if an alien civilization started selling their own cars with an inexhaustible power supply on Earth. The automotive and oil companies would be done, and the world economy would be fuuuuucked.
Actually, forget aliens. If a supervillain wanted to fuck the world economy, all they’d have to do is sell cars that ran on water or something. Doctor Doom made a time machine in Fantastic Four issue… I don’t know. Two? That dude could legit make cars that got 200 miles to the gallon or that ran on banana peels, Mr. Fusion style. He could do that in his sleep and just own the civilized world in under a decade.
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Now I so much want to see Sydney have to try and sneak her orbs through the Earth-bound travel gate. She stuffs them down her shirt in an effort to disguise them as nursing sacks. Unfortunately since she has an odd number of orbs, one side is always slightly larger than the other. Even worse, the orbs get restless and keep bunching up on one side or the other. Sydney has to convince the customs official at the travel gate that this is perfectly normal behavior for human nursing sacks.
She is heavily pregnant and her child is an active one.
The original intro she had them stuffed in a tube.
Physically hiding them wouldn’t be the problem.
It’s the scanners she’d need to worry about.
Other news: Anyone else worried that Dabbler’s friends may try to steal the orbs?
Except Dabbler couldn’t scan them. So the tube might be the only thing necessary to sneak them past customs.
Her orbs don’t show up on scanners.
Or, at least, not on any technology that Dabbler has access to (except the plain organic eyeball).
The squid things from the last planet seemed fully capable of scanning the orbs. In fact, to the degree that it made them somewhat … agitated over their presence. So, some form of tech or magic can scan them and also recognize enough about their properties to get a frightening idea of their capabilities.
Not even properly there, if you go back and look the giant doom squids couldn’t even scan them directly, they just seemed to detect a void where they were. Still better than anything else we’ve seen, but more detecting that they’re not detecting them it looked like to me.
It’s the old solution to finding an invisible ship–you look for the wake. In this case, the squid-things know that if you scan an object with all your might, and it comes back as an empty glitch, then you bring out the big guns, RIGHT NOW.
Customs here would likely run into similar resistance. “What’s in the tube? Open it, please.” “Oh, just these nifty little glass balls.” “Okay, lemme just… waitasec… what the hell… PEOPLE, WE HAVE A CLASS 5 PHENOMENON, this is NOT a Drill. Prepare the area for Decon in 5… 4… 3…”
i like the look for the invisible ships wake part but i disagree on the big guns point. they didn’t know what they were dealing with so they started incrementally testing its capabilities. sending one unit … might even have been their smallest land walking mech … to see what it can do. it noticed it had a powerful enough shield to withstand a single strike. she flees but only at a not very impressive to space speed so it observes. she comes back they test her swarm handing skills … blah blah blah arc recap on your own time … she wins 1v1, they send 3 v1 … she more properly flees they bombard and then watch again. if Cora could watch her causeway destination then these Old Ones wannabes squidbillies sure as hell could as well.
point is they gave a measured response to an unknown power coming into play near the end of their campaign. those bombs she serpentined around looked a hell of a lot larger then squidwards flash bake beam that stressed her shield. if they though she was a proper threat they would have started out with that.
My uncle was in the army about the time the “Stealth” fighters were being made and tested. He said the most fun he and the other guys at the RADAR counsels had was calling off where the flyboy was. He said the trick was the counsels were linked to different stations and would show different results. All they had to do was look for the missing data from one tower reference the other two fast and they could call off Altitude, Latitude, and Longitude in moments. Said that poor pilot was just about in tears crying “BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW MY POSITION!?!?!?!?!?!?”. All the army guys toasted them that night for messing up the flyboy.
When it scanned them, it looked like it found nothing in a place where there probably should have been air. She could probably try to smuggle them to Earth in a vacuum box or something.
Not realy because we have a narative paradox that the Author created in the prolog. Namely that we still have not gotten to that point in the prolog.
If she does, eh, she still gets a brand new comic shop and refered to as the Big Guns by Anvil a few months from now.
Just means they weren’t successful in the long run.
Stealing the orbs – definite nope. See Sydney and the early bank heist incident. Max actually tried moving the orbs away from Syd, got stopped cold at about 20ft away. Further they would not move Syd either.
I thought this might happen. Really, she’s ridiculously rich. Criminals, here they come,,,,
Talk about unprofessional. It only says “Oh the humanity.”
Freefall and schlock mercenary! Yay! Good comics, the both of them.
I recognize Schlock and the Freefall characters.
Should I know the silhouettes?
You notice the comments about giving a caveman a hand cannon…
Schlock: Hey, did you hear someone say, ‘Never give an amorph a plasma cannon’? ‘Cuz I got mine right… hey, where’d it go??
Sam Starfall: *whistling innocently*
In order to get Schlock’s BH-250i he’d have to stick his hand into Schlock’s stomach. Schlock would notice a guy sticking his hand in Schlock’s mouth, or else through his BODY.
Only a Sqid could manage to steal from an Amorph, and only a Sqid would.
I belive the silhouettes in the second-to-last frame are of the Justicar and his adventuring band from a couple of novels set in the world of Greyhawk. They are the Justicar (human ranger, uses a still-living hellhound pelt as a cloak), a Lamia (the lion with wings and a human face), a Merilith (Snake woman), a Badger (a human that died and got reincarnated by magic), and a Faerie (in a reationship with the Justicar, wizard).
You get the Know-Prize!
… not to mention my eternal respect! :o
I love that Greyhawk Trilogy, but it never occured to me to associate the silhouettes with them… kudos!
YAY!
I had just noticed that it was Jus and the crew in the background. Hoopy!!
I second and approve of this statement. Any opposed? Motion carried!
Doggy!!
If Sam ever found out what the orbs are worth he would never rest until he had them.
Imagine for a moment whatwhould hve happened if the orbs had bonded to Sgt Schlock. He has as many hands as he wants and he’s unbeatable in hand to hand combat. He would literally eat Math.
Cpt. Tagon beat the Sargent in HtH. He is not unbeatable, especially when under orders to NOT eat the enemy.
And Dorothy wire only slows Schlock down long enough for him to put himself back together. So technically that fight was Tagon demonstrating Maxim 31: “Only cheaters prosper.”
Shlock has been beaten several times – Cpt Tagon’s victory in a jousting match is probably the least definitive, as slicing Shlock in half would’ve just been a very brief setback had it been a real fight and not just “first blood.”
Kathryn Flinders is the only one I can recall who has won a decisive victory by blasting Shlock to pieces with a fire hose (because he underestimated her based on size and gender), and then bagging the pieces individually to gain escape time while still letting him live. The only other near death I can recall was self-inflicted, when Shlock jumped into a giant excavation in total vacuum and splattered on the floor at several Km/s, they barely scraped him up in time to keep the bits warm and viable.
That said, the idea of Sgt Shlock wielding Halo’s orbs – in addition to his trademark plasgun – fills me with terror. And the craving for lots of popcorn and surround sound footage in a very distant location.
Schlock actually did die in that frozen pit. Petey re-booted him from backup after that. They might or might not have scraped up some of the fragments, but he hit really hard and very soon after that the situation got really complicated and they probably didn’t have time to do a thorough job.
An the other hand, Schlock’s data (keep in mind what they evolved from) *is* right on top of what is likely the command interface for that ‘moon’. Scary possibilities there.
while Schlok’s not unbeatable, it’s certainly true that with Schlok, to extend the “force multiplier” anology a little, the basic force being multiplied is higher and Schlok can get more force multiplication out of the orbs with less effort, since he can create as many hands as he needs. It IS, however, true that there’s an element of diminishing returns, in that assuming that one of the options unlocks the ability to use more Orbs simultaneously, then at some point Sydney would arguably catch up. (or, to put it another way, Schlok’s biggest advantage is reaching maximum power quicker, not (nessecarily) a higher maximum power level.
Hold on to your wallet and anything valuable. I see Sam Starfall, notorious pickpocket and captain of the Savage Chicken. Also his engineer Florence Ambrose. I love Freefall.
Don’t forget Helix.
I thought Florence and crew were supposed to be set in the far future, after humans figured out how to colonize other planets, uplift animals and built self-aware robots. To be fair, that last one was due to one of those uplifted animals. So Sydney is further in the future than we thought. Either that or:
Florence: am, you just can’t go using a time machine like that!
Sam: Why not? We are here, safe and sound. I deposit a little now and by the time we get back to our time, the interest on the account will be huge.
Florence: If we get back to our time, this place will no longer exist.
Sam: What?! Why?
Florence: The white dwarf at the core of the station will lose too much energy by then and not be able to power anything anymore.
Helix: Also, this station gets hit by a rogue planet in about 300 years, and gets ripped apart by the unbalanced tidal forces from the neutron star. What? I downloaded an article about space station disasters; this was part of it.
Florence: So, now you see why this is a bad idea.
It’s obviously a non-canon cameo. :3 And I freaking love it!
Of course it’s non canon. If it were canon, Sam would have tried to steal one of the orbs by now, stuffing it down his suit, and since they can’t leave Sydney, the sqid would find himself dragged after Sydney.
I saw it too and looked for someone who saw it to share our excitement. <3
Makes me wonder, though.. if Sydney puts the orbs in Tubey for a hot second while she jumps through a gate, would they follow through the gate, make their own gate, or fly through space to get back to her?
Doing so would create a paradox.
The gate would fail first.
Or….
That’s how the Orbs became orphaned.
Unlikely, the orbs have already travelled through a portal remained with Sydney.
Very interesting thought experiment. The orbs ‘go to sleep’ after some period of inactivity. If Sydney waited until they did, such as when we were introduced during the bank “heist,” there appeared to be a distance of about 10 or 15 feet she can be separated from them. Put the tube down just before entering the gate, step through … can the gate be turned off before the orbs react to follow her? If yes, just what the Hell would happen? Would they remain asleep, maybe reset for the next eligible being to bond with them? Gate to her? Pull her back to them? How inert do they become when inactive? It took seconds to awaken them when Sydney showed them off during her interview, but is their tethering property always perfectly instantaneous? Could Pixel’s reality hacking ability affect them, for example?
Also, given the info dump in today’s update, it now seems clear the orbs might be “beyond technology.” Maybe they have a tech base or interface with our Reality/dimension, but they may also be primarily magic or even all magic. When Sydney wet herself over Dabbler having Hammer Space to port things to her, she may well find out that she already has a Hammer Space of sorts with these orbs. Their abilities seem like they must draw unimaginable amounts of power from somewhere, and it sure isn’t from the local space-time continuum. They must be porting in power from somewhere, be it the heart of a convenient star or another dimension.
Nah.
Just sufficiently advanced.
RE: Clarke’s Law.
Very, very dissapoint in myself on that. I had intended to reference Clarke’s Law in my post when I was writing it, but quickly proof-read, decided it was a wall of text already, and so done and click post … only to come back and find out I neglected the most important point I was trying to make. Much dissapoint, many anguish, great embarrass.
I head-canonned (maybe incorrectly) that th reason they didn’t wake up instantly when first revealed is that Sydney was so absorbed in arguing how sweet they were and fast she’d get whisked off, she wasn’t giving them the focus needed to wake them. once she did, then zooom
Didn’t she have to touch one for them to ‘wake up?’ I don’t recall exactly, but that’s what fuzzy memory is telling me.
My money would be on the orbs stopping her from going through the gate, or getting yoinked through with her.
My guess would be that the orbs will stay within their normal limit range of her in ALL dimensions, not just a 3-D sphere, so they would probably just travel with her even they don’t actually enter the gateway itself. They could also probably effectively “punch” anyone using phasing-type abilities.
Perhaps they draw their power directly from the aetherium.
Nah. They’re powered by the Eye of Harmony.
DaveB has forgotten to draw Florence’s necklace :(
And Helix seems happy about something Sam is pointing at (that can’t be good)
The group in the background of the last two panels seem like they should be familiar…
They kind of look like Kin and MiniMax from Goblins, though where the Manticore came from I don’t know.
Nah, not big and slash or stupid enough to be MinMax :P
And it’s not a manticore, it’s a Sphinx
they are a group of chrs from some DnD novels by Paul Kidd, the marilith through my recognition at first as she doesn’t join until the end of the series, and you can barely see the faerie so she is easy to miss
I think Sam is showing Florence the sweet plasma cannon he stole from Schlock after distracting him with an ice-cream cone.
Don’t really know if you could call Sydney’s Orbs “God Tier”, cause let’s face it. If she went up against Jehovah (the Judeo-Christian God), he’d win without effort by either erasing her from existence or just having her drop dead. Though what Sydney’s Orbs can do is still quite impressive
As for Doctor Doom just taking over the world economically, the same point was made about the Nazi’s in the Iron Sky with their Helium-3. Point is there’s are reason the Reed Richards Is Useless and Cut Lex Luthor A Check tropes exist
Yeah, but against Ases, Olympians, Sekhmet or any other politheistic pantheon Sydney’s orbs would be close to even game
Yeah, but they’re also on such a low level that Savitar was able to convince people that he was one of them (Hindu to be specific)
That’s… more a case of the gullibility of idiots
Jehovah’s powerscore is vastly overrated. He never had the ability to erase people from existence, and his current power level is only enough to partially carbonize a slice of brea… any toaster does better then that…
And you’re basing this of what?
Or is this your idea of a joke?
Presumably because the visible miracles nowadays are limited to making Jesus’ face appear in toast.
https://www.amazon.com/Burnt-Impressions-The-Jesus-Toaster/dp/B0042QRYO8
And the less said about iron chariots, the better.
Incidentally, supers apparently measure their power in what it does to iron chariots.
Was that a Salvation War reference?
It was the Bible reference.
There’s a verse in it where God supports his followers, but they cannot prevailo over their opponents because they have iron chariots. No context is given how iron chariots are so OP they can stop the God himself – just that they can.
Didn’t read the bit about iron chariots, did you?
Also, Jehovah seems to be unable to do a lot of things, and has weird limitations on the stuff he CAN do, even in his own fanfic.
Like “Can kill every first-born child in an arbitrarily defined nation … can’t figure out how to NOT kill some of those, except if their homes have been tagged with sheep’s blood.”
My money would be on Syd.
Kind of amusing, but not particularly thoughtful.
What a god *does* do, is no measure of what that god *could* do. How a god chooses to perform some act says nothing about any limitations that may or may not have been imposed, either upon the act or upon the god.
The importance of that particular methodology may have lain in allowing the individuals the free choice to have the faith to follow directions or not… thus deciding their own membership among the chosen, and thus owning the results of their choice, for good or ill.
In other words, Jehovah appears to prize the granting of free will to the participants above most of the other features of godhood. That covers a world of “weird limitations”, most of them unknown and immeasurable.
“Can do anything, but will not do so if from His divine viewpoint the result would harm the ability of humans to choose freely.”
In a connected world, Plausible Ignorability must be maintained.
Except regarding images in toast.
The Blood on Doorposts thing was as a sign of Faith, if the people had enough Faith in God that he could do that, then they would show that by putting on the blood so that his angels wouldn’t enter their house as Jehovah had instructed
This is a comic. There is no indication that Jehovah even exists in the canonical universe, and if he does, his power level is unknown. If you’re trying to make some sort of comment about your personal religious beliefs in real life, that’s much better taken up in your local house of worship.
But if she had iron chariots, God would be fucked!
The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.
-Judges 1:19
The Judeo-Christian God has (had?) the power to create and guide a universe but doesn’t interact all that often with it, even at the height of miracles it only seemed to interact by imparting knowledge.
It might be it doesn’t have that much power left or it might be that it knows better or maybe it’s a case of it never had the ability to directly change things and only had infinite wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge.
She;’s “God Tier” in that the distinction is largely semantics for most people trying to fight her. Or, to put it another way, while she isn’t actually a diety, you still have about as much hope of defeating her as you would an actual diety.
Remember she managed to defeat those aliens that wiped out basically all of Sciona’s race? Which can do that despite there presumably being some form of galactic police? (I’m not thinking Green Lantern as much as someone would have tried to hunt them down before now to wipe them out. Look at the Barbary Pirates. They were enough of a PITA that several nations ganged up on them to force them to knock it off. The squid aliens can apparently resist that kind of thing, yet Sydney defeated them.
Anyone else want to see Schlock and Sydney team up?
Team up? With the lack of focus each has, I’m surprised local gravity didn’t drop.
They’d end up in a fight over food. Then Schlock would eat her. Then Sydney would shield and embiggen the shield and Schlock would explode. He’d get better.
No, they’d end up swapping recipes…
Of course, Sydney can’t eat some of what Schlock considers tasty, but…
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Schlock has trouble eating some of the spicy stuff Sydney considers tasty.
Hmm… Schlock, Sydney and Boxxy T. Morningwood at a chili-eating contest. Oh the possibilities.
I would. He eaten nanobots which tried to metalplate his insides didn’t he? Schlock’s race evolved to be able to eat ANYTHING and he’s the most successful one in that …
I want to see what happens when Tagon has to figure out how she fits into the OOB.
Continuing the Sigil theme, I think I see a bariaur in the background.
Little disappointed in the background cameos this round. I would have thought for sure that a No Man’s Sky reference would have made it in by now given the game is about space exploration.
I love the FreeFall reference! ^^
Also: I did NOT expect that Sydney’s technology was beyond even everything FTL-people know.
Well the thing is we may be looking at a Fermi paradox solution level of tec. Given that Schlock is the closest one to her, the timeing Of her off the cuff coment May be ironic.
Note the Fermi Paradx solutition Of They all were wiped out once achieving a certain tec level is only one of two solutions to the paradox in Schlock mercenary. The other is that everyone who survived was uploaded. We have two civilizations who did just that in Schlock after all, the people who constructed the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain and the people of Eina Aha who were genocide and mass uploaded https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2018-07-28
Shameless plug of Isaac Arthur and SFIA channel.
He made a series on plethora of solutions to so-called Fermi Paradox.
And on Megastructures.
And on colonization of everything – up to and including the Sun.
And on future tek and societal impact of it.
And – you get the point.
Love that channel. He has a really pragmatic view on future tech and civilization.
Pocket sized FTL is a few steps beyond FTL tech. Also, Dabbler obvious can’t emulate the powers easily, or she’d have similar abilities, like the near indestructible shield. That’s not saying no one could do it, there are almost certainly civilizations with better tech, but it’s a good place to start.
It is a revelation that there are NO known civilizations that can match it, but all post-FTL races having orbs would be a stretch.
There’s a couple oh minor nits that need picking.
One; Capital ships. Are we talking somethting the size of the HMS Invincible? At 17,000 ton displacement light loading It’s one o f the lightest ships considered to be a actual capital ship, or something thesize of The alian Mothership from ID4, or something in between
How big of a portal do thoes 2 examples make? Or is size not realy relevant because the diference in power needed between a Sydney sized gate and a portal big enough for the ID4 mothership Basically diference between a 9,999 being sacrifice and a 10000 being sacrifice.
It’s also worth noting that what Sydney has is probably a step UP from pocket-sized FTL. It looks like there are quite a lot of post-FTL civilizations, but Cora says that the creation of Aetherium causeways is something that can only be done by massive capital ships, and the like.
If I had to guess, Aetherium causeway >> FTL. Maybe the difference between superfast travel and wormhole-like instant point-to-point transport.
Cameos! … even worse… Webcomic Cameos! Damnit Dave, now I have to get back in the groove and update the comic’s entry in the Crossover Archive! XD
:D
I would love to see not only a villeins gallery, but also a who’s who of the cameos too.
Wait, so this is why Kenya called Sydney “Big Guns” (or similar) way back when? o_O LAME!!!! :P
Maybee, after all that coment hasen’t actualy happened yet.
No, was referring to Sydney getting that nickname due to her floating balls, rather than something that she did
…because it sure wasn’t because of her physical appearance compared to the rest of the team.
Unless it was ironic.
Sydney might be big guns, but she’d take the “good package”
Except Syd is literaly the second biggest gun on the team, and has room to level that up by 2 more picks, which if the picks represent power on the maxima scale means her upper limmit may be Maxima level. Given the jump from Mach 4 to Mach 16…
So yes. She is literaly one of the Big Guns. You want to be her Freind in reality. Being the polar oposit of her freind……is not good for your life expectancy.
Mach 4 to Mach 16 to god tier FTL…
In all fairness her beam is already more rediculousy overkill than you might realise, given that she basicaly cut through some of the actual thickest armor on an Abrams when she carved that wedge out of it.
That said, if the 5 point string means how powerfull her beam is and the 5 point scale matches her and Maxes actual power scale….
The fact remains that her is speed caped out, she now has acces to what is .literaly, some kind of gate or portal tech which while it impresses Cora does still have some limits, the most obvious being currently she know that she can only use it to go someplace kind of useless to her.
sacrificing thousand psykers? nice Warhammer40k reference :D
Panel 4 is a reference to WH40K, right? RIGHT?
oh man… Sydney is breaching the warp… don’t tell the Chaos pantheon! ;)
I guess of the Four Tzeenthch would be the most interested of her
Well, Slaanesh would approve of her gastronomical excess. And she did just do battle against a few thousand enemy fighters, Khorne likes that sort of thing.
She did kick ass, but she didn’t go berserk or collect skulls, I don’t think that was that Khorne. Slaanesh would be a thing, on the quest for the perfect spicy meal.
I signed up to comment solely for the 40k love. For Russ and the Allfather!
LEMAN RUSS WAS AN ASSHOLE!
You are not wrong DoctorM.
This doesnt make the actions of Magnus any more right, either.
If we’re going to play that game, there’s more than enough blame to go around between everyone involved.
What about Rowboat Girlyman? Or was it Robot Gorillaman?
What about him?
I’ve read his book. Its not that great.
He is in charge only because our Adorable Lord, Dorn himself didnt want the job again.
He remembers the second imperium and would rather choose to remain with his Father.
Entry to The Fracture is available to anyone but leaving is regulated?
(Isn’t there a Tom Hanks movie about that?)
Hasn’t Deus come specifically to cause a paradigm shift on Earth?
I guess each gate have customs and immigation control from their respective planet or nation. Entry gate check obviously happens on the *other* side, because it’s easier to boot people out before they crossed the gate rather than after.
Taking high-tech stuff to low-tech worlds is regulated.
The Fracture isn’t a low-tech world, so that regulation doesn’t apply for arrivals. (Though they probably have rules about WMDs and stuff.)
Leaving is allowed, but depending on destination your luggage will be searched and your toys will be confiscated.
Depends on where you are going. I would expect that she would have had a problem, if she arrived by gate in the first place. No customs if you don’t use a border crossing.
Deus brought his own gate, so he’ll bypass customs just like Sidney will.
Thus explaining why he built his own gate. Smuggling restricted xenotech.
You must be thinking of The Terminal, in which Hanks’ character comes from a nation whose government got overthrown during his flight, so the airport legally can neither honor his passport nor send him home. A rather different reason from Sydney’s.
As for the paradigm shift, it’s a Terran (Human, specifically), coming to Fracture specifically to advance his species (but mostly his own ends). That might call for some leniency on the customs rules. On top of that, he’s likely able to bribe and/or intimidate his way into nearly any contract he decides to negotiate.
Uh-oh. I see Sam Starfall. The base is dooooooomed!
Syd better count her Googly eyes :)
Wait…Wait….Wait… wouldn’t a caveman use the space gun as a club or a rock since it’s advance technology? It’s not like it came with a manual on how to use it.
I mean look at Sydney… she barely knows how to use her orbs. Actually…now that I think about it…I am a bit surprised she hasn’t killed herself trying to find out how the orbs function.
Well, a gun with only one moving part (the trigger) and no ammunition issues would be pretty easy for a caveman to figure out. They’d just examine it for a bit, wonder “hey what does this part do”, and THOOOM. If they (or fellow caveman witnesses) survived the firing and saw the devastation it wrecked they’d be finding applications for it in no time.
And I too am surprised that Sydney hasn’t killed herself yet. … orbs or no orbs.
… nah, the OMINOUS HUMMMMMM would scare him off first..
just made another realization….. Sydney is the caveman with a space gun… and not just any space gun… its a SUPER HIGH-TECH SPACE GUN that’s even too advance for high-tech aliens…
She practically wields Promethean fire/ Lost technology that galactic governments would fight over…
Heh…maybe her code name should be “Prometheus” rather than “Halo.”
Not that I’m a fan of monopolies or anything. But trading a company that can give us cars running on water, with the current car companies, is not a big loss. It’s not like the already existing car companies are good guys in any stretch of the imagination.
The biggest issue I can think of is the money being sucked off world.
Besides if the technology itself was released to the planet, as in open license. Then all the car companies of earth would find some way to manufacture it eventually. (Not that this kind of technology would even be possible without also a million other technologies to support it)
Technically, aren’t they already working on cars running on water?
Nope. Not physically possible unless we’re talking nuclear fusion. Water is the low energy state of hydrogen and oxygen, so you can’t do much with it unless you add an additional fuel element. Hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen combustion engines combine hydrogen gas and atmospheric oxygen to create water and energy, but there are no convenient sources of raw hydrogen. As such, you’d need to create the hydrogen from water, making the hydrogen closer to a battery that stores power.
If you can develop a chemical catalyst that can separate the oxygen and the hydrogen within a reasonable amount of time, then it’s possible. The catalyst might be extremely difficult to manufacture, but once you have a stockpile of it, you have a ready supply of combustible energy. After that, it’s designing a series of engines efficient enough to recapture the thermal and kinetic forces involved in igniting the hydrogen & oxygen.
It looks like you’re saying that finding the perfect catalyst will allow us to split water for free?
That is false. Catalysts can only lower to amount of transition energy needed, but don’t change the absolute energy difference between input and output.
You will always need to add energy into the water to separate it.
Water is “hydrogen ash”, just like CO2 is “wood-ash”. You can’t “unburn” either without adding the energy back in from some other source (e.g. the sun)
With the right catalyst, it would become viable to use renewable energies like solar, wind, hydroelectric, and thermal to turn water into hydrogen/oxygen, rather than depending on fossil fuels to provide power.
You’d basically be using the hydrogen generation process to become a means to store/make portable the energy you’re generating from those sources, and depending on the costs associated with the catalyst, cost effective when compared against lithium battery technology.
At least until they figure out how to construct a viable nano-capacitor…
I’m pretty sure the tech restrictions aren’t that strict. I think they’re more “Age-type”. Aka you can’t give a steam-based civilization nuclear power, or a nuclear-powered one that’s still using chemical rocketry access to FTL engines or kinetic thrusters.
Similarly, you couldn’t give a civilization barely starting to figure out the basics of transistors access to functional quantum computing.
However, it would probably be allowed to, within limits, sell stuff like computer hardware that’s of similar performance but lower power draw and/or heat generation.
I think one of the reasons FTL travel is meant to be a big milestone is because of the technological and economical paradigm shifts that would likely have to take place to even get to a point where FTL travel is something a civilization can develop. You can’t just have 3 different major nations develop FTL travel as a Second Space Race. Not easily, at least.
An alien visiting Earth in the 50’s may get away with giving Earth something like Velcro without causing too much trouble. However, some visitor in the 80’s giving Earth a material like transparent aluminum may be more of a problem.
Transparent aluminum aka Aluminium oxynitride or ALON, predates Star Trek IV by a few years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride
If I remember correctly, Scotty did set up an automatic wipe after using the computer to allow them to make enough for their needs. He wasn’t giving higher tech than we already had, just using our tech to make something we didn’t even know COULD be made. In essence, he did worse than giving them the tech even if he’d given a manual on how to do it ourselves, he gave them the IDEA that it COULD be done, which can spur all KINDS of new ideas, from new applications to new technologies entirely.
Ok a few minor points, they installed Plexiglas. Not Transparent aluminum.
transparent aluminum was already known and patented in 1980. A voyage home was 1986.
If I remember correctly, he actually gave the idea to person who he KNOW to invent that because he remembered it from history books.
I read a story called “Nothing for Nothing” where an alien got an idea from a caveman. Their culture wouldn’t let him just accept the idea for nothing, so he pointed out that a string under tension could be used to propel a sharp stick with quite a bit of force.
Thus, “Nothing for Nothing”.
But the end of the story was one asking the other “I wonder what we’ll find when we come back in 20k years?”
Depending on how FTL works, there are also some very, very serious tech and social concerns…
Like the ballistic problem. Spray-and-pray is a very serious problem in space – without friction, that shot is still lethal. Forever… and maybe the odds of any particular one of them hitting something anytime soon is low… but enough of them, over enough time is a problem.
It’s probably good for everyone that races still reliant on ballistic tech be confined to their own neighborhood.
Doubly so when you consider what a potent weapon FTL could be. Most SciFi imposes some sort of handwavy natural limitation on FTL getting near anything so big as a planet, but there’s no reason a FTL missile couldn’t destroy entire navies. That scene in the last Star Wars movie was about the most realistic thing in all of the franchise.
“It’s probably good for everyone that races still reliant on ballistic tech be confined to their own neighborhood.”
Like us!
Just being pedantic here but the Nuclear power we do use today IS Steam Power.
Actual direct conversion of nuclear reactions into electromotive force is limited to specialized military and stellar applications as nuclear batteries. That whole, we have no [censored] way of actually dealing with the things, is a major stumbling block.
Mind you I have seen engineering proposals for telephone box sized units to directly power neighbourhoods or apartment blocks, with a 10+ year replacement cycle.
Even the ‘nuclear batteries’ (Radioisotope Thermal Generators, or RTGs) used in those low-maintenance applications aren’t really doing anything directly related to the nuclear reaction. The radioactive material in those is still only used as a heat source, with a thermoelectric module to convert the heat flow into electrical power. The system would work just as well with any other equivalent* source of heat; the main benefit of using a lump of plutonium is that it can be relied on to do its job predictably with no moving parts or outside intervention.
Small Modular Reactors also use the nuclear reactor as simply a reliable way to heat things up, rather than anything more direct. Proposals I’ve seen generally assume the use of heat exchangers and steam turbines, because thermoelectrics can’t yet match them for overall energy conversion efficiency – especially if you have an industrial use for the still-hot steam once it’s done its run through the turbines.
* Most thermoelectric materials work best at specific temperature ranges, so (for example) a RTG module may not be the best design for exploiting a geothermal hot spring.
Yep, biggest question is what they want in return. But it won’t be ‘money’, because that’s just a medium of exchange. They can only buy earth-stuff with money. Rare resources? Genetic quirks? Delegate some of their (relatively) dirty industries/unappealing jobs to Earthlings, like our sweatshops and garbage exports? Distribution rights on our creative media? Heck, wouldn’t surprise me if that level tech is like our charitable spending on installing clean water and latrines.
As for screwing the economy, I doubt it would be as bad as that. Not trivial, auto-manufacturing and it’s suppliers is a big chunk, but we would be wealthier by whatever amount we save on transport costs, private and commercial. And there will be some new jobs to generate more interstellar exports. Painful in the short-run, hugely beneficial in the long run.
@Haiiro
>the biggest issue I can think of
Oh, sweet summer child…
How about the entire concept of “money” as humans understand it becoming meaningless in span of several years? Can you even begin to imagine consequences of that? Because proliferation of certain tek among undeveloped in social sphere civs will lead to something akin.
Or inevitable creative stagnation? Or automatic release of all and any claims of sovereignty and independence of Earth in general, much more any state/power block on Earth in particular? Or miriads of other consequences no one but most fringe and radically minded social philosophers dare – or even can imagine?
@NielsR
And what if there wouldn’t? What if jobs lost in production would remain lost simply because automated manufacture is far more profitable, and one overseer is more than enough for the industry of entire planet: one overseer with highly decorative duty of scribbling checkmark once a year in a proper place – which would be kindly indicated by oh-so-helpful robotic servant?
Which means all jobs – or, rather, “jobs” would be created in either service or arts&crafts department, doesn’t it? Oh, yeah – Earthian art: charming and rather cute, if overly primitive. And natives are always ready to serve – it’s in their blood.
After all, shifting economy that way made wonders for the blooming and prosperous country of Greece!
All in all, I highly suggest Simak’s “Ring around the Sun” as a primer of what may happen. And that is only with goods humans can imagine. Introducing something working with out-of-context concepts – like the idea of near-instantaneous communication through open to all depository of knowledge in medieval time – not only may, but will lead to total societal collapse. Left alone, humanity will inevitably crawl back – but in the case of hypothetical interstellar trading company that amount of interns with sharp need in company goods and democratic ideas will never be left alone.
“Oh, sweet summer child…”
I sometimes wonder if you people know how condescending you guys look using this phrase?
Why would the concept of money be meaningless? because of that one product? In that one market?
People would still need to buy other things than cars… cars don’t run the entire market…
Money only become meaningless if you can’t buy food, shelter, protection or medicine with it.
As long as money can provide you with any of those, it will have value, and it will most definitely have meaning.
Creative stagnation? jeez, are you so pessimistic you think humans won’t immediately try to appropriate the alien technology anyway they can? If anything it would inject in humans a fascination and interest that would only boost are creativity. When we suddenly understand that something we thought impossible is actually possible.
It could be that what is being referenced is not that one particular form of currency is useless.
But rather the changes in how we as humans would behave in post scarcity society would make such humans far more alien to us than just about anything sci-fi has created thus far..
“>the biggest issue I can think of
Oh, sweet summer child…
How about the entire concept of “money” as humans understand it becoming meaningless in span of several years?”
Most money now, is Virtual. It doesn’t exist in a physical form, if the computer technology dies, then all that money would vanish.
As would the vast majority of everything that constitutes our society. We lose the specific medium of exchange, along with the ability to make most of the things that we are currently exchanging for.
So what?
No real change at all, if computers went away. In essence, civilization collapses and we go back to barter and physical material wealth until a replacement token is developed.
With regard to the concept of money being meaningless, humans need a way to keep score. Calling it “whuffy” doesn’t change the fact that it’s money. The people who are best at collecting the tokens, and at motivating other people to do things that increase the number of tokens they have, will have the most tokens.
From a distance, that’s indistinguishable from money.
*…calculates the exchange rate of Whuffys to Yeets, decides it comes out to about 3.14 Whuffys to the Yeet, and 2.71 Whuffys to the Quatloo (Yeets were devalued a little after the Great Googly Eye Market Flooding that took place between pages #685 and #686)…*
Not really a concern. There are really, in the end, only three things they can do with it:
1) buy stuff from/on the money’s world (and country, for non-unified worlds) of origin
2) lend it to someone for use on the money’s world of origin
3) bury (or equivalent) it, so it never again affects its world of origin
(It can, of course, get passed around a few times before it reaches one of those end-points.)
Money is not material wealth. Goods, property, and the ability to acquire services are material wealth. Terran money would not be much help in acquiring goods, property, or services on any other world.
It’s funny how you and another commenter both think I’m naive for the exact opposite reason.
Money is just a colloquial term for value, or wealth.
You think US dollars has any value outside the US? It’s still a problem for US dollars to be sucked out of the country.
If you are going to answer that you can just go to the global banks and exchange the US dollars, so they are valuable outside the US.
How do you know there isn’t a galactic Bank? How do tourists on earth get cash? They would have to pay for their drinks at a bar you know.
Anyway, the problem is the loss of the wealth on earth, not that someone else get ahold of it. Burning the money would have the same consequence
“You think US dollars has any value outside the US?”
Many countries are dropping the use of US$, therefore it is losing value, outside the US.
There are rumors that Quadaffi was killed because he was going to introduce a gold-backed/based currency, the dinar, and then buy/sell oil with it.
Actually, Toyota just Put a car out on the market that runs on hydrogen and gives off water as a byproduct.
Although the actual tech is about 30 years old :)
So that wont tank the economy.
That’s a very DIFFERENT tech than something running on water, though. For a water-fueled reactor to be an energy-positive reaction (especially on the scale of a personal conveyance), you’d need fusion power, and fusion power would change everything.
(Yes I know fusion bombs exist, and no they are not practical for use as a power source, at least not in something the size of a car.)
Fusion power has over the last few years received an upgrade to fusion power in 12 years instead of the fusion power is 20 years away it had been on since the 60’s.
This year china with EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) hit 100 million degrees kelvin. With this temperature achieved we are closer than ever.
A coalition of countries is currently constructing ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) which is expected to be the first reactor capable of producing more energy than put into it. The construction is expected finished in 2025 with upscaling towards deuterium–tritium fusion experiments in 2035.
Actually it’s not that different at all. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe. If anything, it’s better than a car running on water.
And no, you do not need fusion power to run an engine on water. The only problem is it’s inefficient compared to the combustion engine. We’ve known that water can power vehicles since 1698, with the invention of the steam engine.
Steam engine = uses fire to heat up water, turns it to steam, which pushes pistons in the engine.
Combustion Engine = uses spark plug which explodes the gas, which pushes pistons in the engine
Btw, I’m just messing with you, Reltzik.
And here I was about to do a thirty paragraph post explaining the difference between turning water into hydrogen for use as a power source versus turning water into hydrogen for use as a battery. :)
I remember seeing the commercials, decades ago, where the actor would hold a glass under the tailpipe and some water would trickle into it. That concept car obviously didn’t go anywhere. I don’t think this new one will, either.
The limitations on hydrogen as a fuel haven’t changed:
1) It takes a lot of energy to compress it down so that you can carry enough of it to be meaningful (give your vehicle a decent range between ‘fill ups’)
2) To carry the compressed gas requires heavy tanks, so there is a huge diminishing returns problem with adding more tanks.
3) Unlike electric cars which just need an adapter and can charge off of the omni-present electrical grid, hydrogen fuel stations would need to spread across the land just as gasoline stations did, and that isn’t going to happen soon if at all.
Hydrogen fuel vehicles may become an urban thing, and that would be pretty cool. It would cut down on urban pollution and smog since the byproduct is water. But anyone who thinks about buying a hydrogen fueled car would have to consider that they would still need another car if they wanted to drive between cities or even any significant distance outside their own city. And so the early adopters will be either wealthy enough to own two vehicles, or will have to resign themselves to requiring alternate transportation (train, plane, rental, etc.) if they want to leave their city.
I’m nitpicking but .. is it Aetherim (panel 3) or Atherium (panel 4)? Or are they both valid transcriptions from another language?
The root word is spelled either “aether” or “ether”.
I’m going to go with both being valid transcriptions from another language. Consider the fact that here on Earth we have the US and the UK “separated by a common language,” as it were. The name of that causeway reminds me of the different ways that people from the US and the UK pronounce that metal that is used in thin sheets in cooking and to help store food. Is it “a-LOOM-in-um” or “a-loo-MIN-ee-um”?
Actually, you are getting the pronounciaton wrong for both words: Aluminium is pronounced “Al-you-MIN-ee-um”; Aluminum is pronounced “Uh-loo-MIN-im” (one of the largest manufacturing plants for aluminium is just down the road from here: Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter)
I would personally argue that inserting a Y into the word is highly illogical and that, as a result, the pronunciation should be somewhere between the two. Al-oo-min-ee-um neither adds letters like the traditional british pronunciation nor removes them like the american and is, as a result, what I strive to train myself to say.
Got the accent in the wrong place on the American version, there. It’s found on the 2nd syllable, “uh-LOO-min-um” and not the 3rd.
(I had to study the differences between British pronunciations and American pronunciations for my Music (voice) Major, & had to be able to parse out how to pronounce things the “correct” way for “singing in an accent”…and yes, that included how to sound Country when singing Country, and I personally hate Country music. Yay for those that like it, but ugh for me.)
You are half right. You got the British (probably everywhere but the US) but messed up the American.
American pronunciation
<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aluminium"British pronunciation
Crap… British:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aluminium
This explains why the Squiddies reacted so hysterically to Sydney. For her sake, let’s hope the real owners/inventors of the orbs don’t discover they’re active again! In Archon’s place I would give investigating the place she found them high priority.
Dave, panel 4 has a different spelling of Aetherium than the one before it.
I blame your universal translator.
Oh dear you have no idea what you’ve done Cora.
Sydney has learned it like so many different songs and people she has the power. The question is what will she do with it now?
All for freedom and for pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Sepculative economics is always tricky, and the outcome could reasonably whatever you want it to be, but I don’t think cars that ran on water would destroy our economy.
There would be disruptions in certain parts of it, certainly, but as a whole our economy has reinvented itself several times throughout the industrial and technological revolutions and keeps on trucking. What your promising is essentially free (or extremely cheap) energy, and you can undertake a whole lot of geo-engineering projects that aren’t economically viable right now.
Earth has plenty of water and land and sunlight, just often not in the right proportions for what we want. But when you can move things around essentially for free, you can desalinize enough ocean water to turn every desert green, then ship the resulting food wherever it has to go. You can build houses and infrastructure strong enough to withstand and disaster, or simply move people out of the way of disasters. You can set up carbon scrubbers to pull all the excess CO2 out of the air, and maybe even start actively manipulating global weather (dump enough ice into a hurricane to drain it’s energy, etc).
Even the oil industry wouldn’t disappear- you know why? Because you can make things other than fuel out of hydrocarbons. Specifically, plastic. In fact I read somewhere once that, pound for pound, converting oil into plastic is about 10 times as valuable as burning oil for fuel. The only reason we burn oi for fuel is because it’s so friggin’ plentiful and cheap.
The interesting question for the economy would not be how water-to-energy would destroy industries. The interesting question for the economy would be how water-to-energy would allow the creation of new weapons in people’s garages that could destroy people and/or infrastructure on any petty and irrational impulse.
Any energy source that could substitute for the energy release of thirty gallons of gasoline in a car could also substitute for the energy release of thirty gallons of gasoline in a firebomb, and could probably scale up to substitute for thirty thousand gallons of gasoline. And water’s easier to acquire and smuggle past security checkpoints than gasoline.
Workable fusion power would probably be a boom for most of the economy (though the oil companies, and oil nations, would likely see a big dip in their share of the pie). But people being able to turn their toasters into fusion bombs would probably cause more than a few economic disruptions.
Fusion power is quite save. It’s based around very specific conditions to release energy. If you have a 100kW fusion generator, you will only get 100kW energy out. There is so little plasma in it that even if it brakes it will put a little burn mark on the case. It may be millions or even billions of degrees, but it’s still only a few grams of hydrogen.
You don’t get explosions(fire bombs) from energy density, but from power, releasing that energy fast. TNT has only 4.6MJ/kg, wood over 16, coal around 34. The somewhat explody LiPo akkus around 0.54MJ/kg. A fusion bomb does need significant engineering. You need the fuel and you need a way to contain it in a way to start the reaction all at once. You fusion powered toaster (Why would you build something like that? build a power plant and a normal toaster. Way cheaper and more efficient.) will not be able to contain enough plasma or fuse it fast enough to explode.
Fair enough. The toaster was a joke, but I could imagine something that would go into, say, a moving van being dangerous.
I always see that comparison between TNT and wood or coal. But TNT contains its own oxidizer. Coal will just sit there if there isn’t some oxygen available. 1 Kg of Carbon needs 2.667 Kg of Oxygen to burn to Carbon Di-Oxide. So that 34 MJ/Kg is a bit off. 1Kg of stoichiometrically mixed Carbon and Oxygen is only good for 9.3MJ. Which, admittedly, is still twice the value for TNT.
If you want to make a bang, Charcoal Briquettes soaked in LOX are unstable grenades waiting for a spark (or a solid bump).
Frank Herbert wrote a short story, about 50 years ago, on exactly that theme. A scientist discovers how to build a type of laser that 1) anyone with high school electronics knowledge can build 2) is quite small (think, breadbox-sized, IIRC) including it’s power supply (which would, effectively, have to be cold fusion & all those implications) and 3) can chew a hole into the center of the Earth, literally meaning over half the entire Earth population can cut the planet in half. He decides to make it public knowledge on the hypothesis that, now that the entire world has the design, we will have to figure out how to get along.
Frank Herbert (bless and rest his magnificent soul) was vastly more the optimist than I will ever be, especially in regards to humanity.
I remember a similar short story where the premise was an inventor came up with a thought projector helmet that could simultaneously broadcast telepathic messages to everyone on Earth at the same time. After thinking about what he was going to say to everyone to announce his discovey he got a sudden realization. The story ends with the scientist turning on the machine and sending the message “A machine exists that can communicate to all mankind. Here are the plans for a way to block it.”
It’s not about getting along, though. It’s simply about not pressing the big, red end the world button.
We wouldn’t last two weeks.
Yeah… If that technology existed and was released worldwide it’d just take one maniac, one suicidal idiot, one terminal patient, one incel, or one jihadist willing to take the rest of us with him/end the world/show them all/bring about the Second Coming/for the lols.
If it took a day to put together the device the world would end on the second day after the blueprints were distributed. Guaranteed.
“you can desalinize enough ocean water to turn every desert green,”
Then what do you do with the salts extracted? We have enough trouble, figuring how to store Nuclear Waste.
Sprinkle the salt on your chips, like any normal person :P
+1 but maybe separate out the gold first to make a personal profit.
Thorium reactors can deal with nuclear waste. We had a functional one that operated for several years. best thing? we have mega-tons of it. if we started developing the tech more it would be safer, cheaper and a small pea worth of it would power a household for a year. it’s the material we toss when digging for rare earths.
We also have the tech to sequester radioactive waste materials inside artifically grown diamonds. The material of the diamond blocks negative radiation from getting beyond its surface, but you can still tap into the energy produced…and literally use it as a battery.
A battery with an energy production lifespan of a million years, completely safe (provided you don’t absolutely crush the diamond), and capable of continually producing essentially free energy.
The “reason” why people won’t put it into production is “it’s twice as bulky as modern-day Lithium-ion batteries.”
I WILL HAPPILY CARRY THE FRIKKIN BOOM BOX WITH TWICE THE WEIGHT OF THE NORMAL D-CELL BATTERIES, especially if I know that it will NOT die in the middle of my portable breakdance contest. (Yes, I’m that old, hush.)
The greater reason why that ‘battery’ isn’t in production being that it’s completely fictional, without even the benefit of plausible-sounding technobabble. I’ll happily be proved wrong, but it’s a big claim that’s going to need some big evidence (with cited sources) to back it up.
Yes, it probably is possible to sequester waste materials in artificial diamonds (although why you’d use such an energy-intensive method instead of the existing glass-based ones is unstated). They would probably also get a bit warm. But a diamond matrix isn’t going to stop any more radiation than a few wraps of paper would. You’d still need a way to efficiently convert a very low-grade heat gradient (i.e. a battery not hot enough to burn the user, operating in a room-temperature environment) into electricity. And the amount of power produced will inevitably decay exponentially over time, at a rate dependent on your isotope mix.
You dump the salt back into the ocean. Locally you’ll spike the saline levels, but the ocean is really freaking large and overall there would probably be no measurable difference. Salt is in no way comparable to nuclear waste, there are many salt flats made up of the salts from ancient seas that have disappeared.
You sell the salt as “sea salt” to people who don’t like mined salt. (After extracting useful materials)
Plenty of areas where Humans have mined salt from underground in the past, I’m sure some of those can be used as repositories.
I wonder if Sydney is going to try to check local records for info on the Orbs. They *have* been to this station before…
MAYBE they’ve been here before. Sydney only speculated that what she was working with was a travel log. It could instead be akin to preset bookmarks on a browser.
Still, it would be a good thing to check up on, if it wasn’t liable to get her orbs confiscated once the proper next-of-kin was identified and showed up to demand xir’s property.
You know the Fracture paid a lot of money to Space Google to get their link pre-loaded into all the travel sites.
We know the orbs have been to this LOCATION before, but that visit could predate the station itself. Another possibility is the people that built the Station built the orbs and as a result the station wouldn’t have records of the orbs. Or the orbs passed through here so long ago that the station purged the records due to inactivity, because records do take up space although much less space than physical ones.
We can be pretty sure the station was here the last time the orbs were, since the bookmark for the causeway generator function looked like a sketch of the station.
Seriously though, Halo needs to spend some time with either this alien or Dabbler tracking where all of her causeway bookmarks go. They can use the “toss a tracking spell rock Through” trick with Dabbler, or just have this gal scan it with her ship scanners. They would want to do either of these things in a safe place, preferably an uninhabited star system or (if they do it at Earth) the dark side of the moon to minimize collateral damage if something nasty comes through one.
Sydney doesn’t know how to trigger the emergency ‘Abort Transit’ function yet. What if letting to of the Orb after the Gate forms does not stop the transit?
Depending on how many limbs the original owner had I can see going through the gate with other Orbs having priority.
Yep She needs to get permission from Max first anyway to play around. And i am sure right now she just want to say hello to her bed. and Max will want a report on what happened too.
‘letting go’ darnit.
Mega galactic SCORE
Love the fist panel
great. now we will have to see who has the bigger ego. her or the guy who sleeps around.
Now that’s established,time to get Sydney home…
Those 1000 psychers? They just power the lighthouse.
The 1000 keep the EoM from dying. The lighthouse is independent of that and eats other psykers. On the other hands the ships don’t need psykers to open a warp rift.
Thad depends on the time ship was built. More modern warp engines are partially working on sacrificed psykers, while the old reliably heresy-era are fully tech with no magic.
Do you have a source for that?
Was that Psyker bit a reference to 40K?
And I noticed the Sphinx, Honey Badger, human adventurer, Lamia/Naga, and the elf(?) in the background of the same frame.
Sphinx = Enid easy going girl
Faerie = Escalla ( trouble on two wings )
Badger = Polk ( if foghorn leghorn was a quatermaster )
Adventurer = Justiciar (Evelyn, humorless doer of good) wearing Cinders the goodboy hellhound cloak
Marlith = Morag (proffesional personnal assistant )
Crossbowman = ???? Name escapes me
My impression was
Sphinx = Phix, from Wapsi Square webcomic
I think she looks more like the sphinx from SUBNORMALITY! the webcomic with too many words. I know she has a name, but given that she’s only been in maybe a half-dozen ± pages and he averages maybe 5 pages a year…
in both your suggestions those sphinx are Big Lady’s, the I can fit your upper torso in my mouth kind
The crossbowman would be Henry. Always loved this series – Justicar was a fun example of a someone who didn’t care about good or evil particularly, just Justice.
Fusion power has over the last few years received an upgrade to fusion power in 12 years instead of the fusion power is 20 years away it had been on since the 60’s.
This year china with EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) hit 100 million degrees kelvin. With this temperature achieved we are closer than ever.
A coalition of countries is currently constructing ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) which is expected to be the first reactor capable of producing more energy than put into it. The construction is expected finished in 2025 with upscaling towards deuterium–tritium fusion experiments in 2035.
Urgh ignore this, it was a comment that didn’t want to go into it’s right place
And to think that it only took 8 years! ;-P
Compare to strong AI, which, in last 30 years, moved from “in 30 years” to “in 30 years … maybe”.
My money is on ‘never.’
And what the hell is that ‘strong’ qualifier supposed to mean? There is no ‘weak’ AI, there is no AI at all. And never will be. Someday there might be a complex enough program with a large enough database that the Turing test will be passed, but there is a world of difference between fooling a human and an actual artificial intelligence.
I’m afraid this page needs a bit of proofreading (aetherium causeways is missing an e, and aetherium in the next bubble is also missing an e).
Actually the first case is missing a “u”. It’s spelled “aetherim” in panel 3 and “atherium” in panel 4. Combining the two one can conclude that he means it to be “aetherium” but neither panel spells it that way.
That’s just Cora’s accent showing. Move along, nothing to see here.
Warhammer 40k? Really? Should we assume Sydney is actually entering The Warp, or are you just having fun with shout-outs?
We could also assume that Cora’s translator selected “psyker” as the closest term Sydney would recognize to whatever aetherium-manipulating psionics exist in the setting. (But yes, this is a page full of shout-outs.)
Knowing her interest in anime classics, I would have assumed that the translator would opt for “esper” if that were the case but I could certainly still be wrong there.
Since the station was on the Orb’s history, the previous owner must have visited. Perhaps someone there will recognise them and asks about the previous owner.
The previous owner may also have been smart enough to have kept them ‘inactive’ and in his/her protective coverings. Or may have been a gelatinous blob who could literally carry them on the inside…
Panel 4 is that the Justicar Evelyn and friends in the background ????
Deus brought his own gate, so he’ll bypass customs just like Sidney will.
That’s something that’s always bugged me about comic book heroes and villains, even as a kid. If you can make this amazing technology why not market it and make billions instead of using it to rob a bank and steal thousands?
Indeed, for as smart as most villains are, they still have no idea How To Succeed In Evil. (Also available as a free podcast.)
Dahhctor Goldfoot
and the bikini machine
because that would change the world and make it less relatable to the reader and writers are told not to do that. but yes that would always be a better idea in the long run
Uh-oh. I see Sam Starfall. The base is dooooooomed!
Nah. The base isn’t well and truly doomed until the
Dirty PairLovely Angels show up.Next page, you see Kei and Yuri walking by in the background… toward Chode from Tripping the Rift.
Ironically, Marvel also explained why supervillains don’t just use their incredible prowess to do much mundane things.
https://i.imgur.com/YKaqaTH.jpg