Grrl Power #700 – Too bad he’s not getting miles on that trip
Fracture Station limits what cargo someone can load onto their ship, based on the ship’s home world technology and flight plan, but obviously that doesn’t stop people from flying wherever they like once they take off. The station’s policy is to maintain the technological hierarchical status quo, but ultimately, they don’t really care what you do outside of their borders, and don’t have a way to enforce it anyway.
Someone planning on violating tech hierarchy still needs to be a little clandestine about it, as they’ll report that stuff to the galactic authority, but it’s not exactly impossible to get away with it, especially if you’re doing something small scale. Really, the thing that keeps is from being a problem is pre-FTL civs usually have no way of getting their hands on post-FTL tech anyway, and post-FTL civs have little to gain from selling to the pre-FTL ones. As discussed on a previous page, or at least in the comments, there’s not usually a whole lot the pre’s can offer the post’s. Even without stuff like matter replicators, if your post-FTL civ is still really in to gold and jewels, you can probably mine an asteroid field or a lifeless world and really strip mine the shit out of it without having to worry about cutting the locals in on their share, or ecologically destroying their world.
There are definitely reasons to trade with pre-FTLs though. Like if you want to ingratiate themselves to them so they’ll join your federation and not the Dominion or the Hierarchy or the League of Obviously Exploitative Space Dicks Who Are Really Bad at Branding. Or the species has something unusual to offer, like they’re all psychics or mages or whatever.
You know, in addition to what he actually bought, Deus presumably has those hover trolleys as well. A guy could get rich if he made actual working Back to the Future Hoverboards. And probably get sued a lot as well, no matter how many warnings the company puts on them about wearing helmets and not using them over water.
This is a somewhat inauspicious page 700. It’s not normally a big landmark number but it’s round anyway. Maybe I’ll try and do something exciting for #750.
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D’aww, poor Vale really looks bummed. Some people suggested it’s because she liked the shopping and it has to end, but I think just having to leave this interesting place would be reason enough.
But what if she knew about Sydney hanging out with Cora, and was bummed that she couldn’t join in or hang out with Sydney herself?
Vale’s never been shown with any friends, and I think there’s a reason for it. I don’t think Deus counts, because she clearly thinks he’s obnoxious, most of Vale’s expressiveness appears reserved for when he’s not looking, and he was surprised she made a joke.
I really don’t think it’s the shopping – she can come back any time she wants now that Deus has the portal up and running with a continuous power source. It may be related to identifying Sydney’s voice (still conjecture), but I can’t imagine a realistic reason why.
My guesses are either she couldn’t find something she really wanted (shopping or otherwise), or that something tedious / unpleasant coming up soon on her agenda.
This comic really has depth, given the amount of thought and comment provoked just by one individual looking glum.
Rightly so too!
It doesn’t hurt that Vale is likely the most enigmatic person in the whole series. Little hints stand out, especially to people with a bit of fixation with her like myself.
She’s glum for the same reason a kid is glum when they have to go home after a day at Disneyworld. They dont wanna go back home. They want to keep having fun.
Actually, she looks tired to me. No reason why an eldritch abomination can’t get tired, I guess.
(BTW, Big D and Vale are two of my favourite characters right now!)
Yeah that body language says “I’ve had a long day shopping and I’m on my way home” to me too. Doesn’t quite match what we know of her but maybe she’s just been awake a long time.
Whatever powers her might be Earth local, or like a Vampire’s sleep on the soil deal.
I’ve been intrigued by Vale ever since I started reading in mid-2016.
Notice that Vale had to carry the huge heavy boxes, but her boss tugs them on a hoverthingie.
She is probably upset because the Plumbus shop was out of her favorite color.
No household would be complete without one. So I can see why she would be bummed.
Oh, she got one.
It was taupe, though. taupe.
It doesn’t go with any of her stuff.
Looking at all the theories on the bummed attitude.
Adding a darker theory, what if she was imprisoned on Earth *abandoned there* but is a ghastly marionette type entity that has to be contracted to someone and obey their orders and has been wanting off the Earth for countless centuries, and this was her first time getting off the planet…only to have to return to Earth because of her mystical contract to obey Deus.
Never liked the whole “crazy powerful entity forced to obey whatever” thing, it kind of feels like a cheap narrative mechanism, much like the criticisms you posted about Supernatural where even the most ludicrously powerful entities have stupid weaknesses.
I think it’s far more interesting if she has her own goals, and there are things that are hard to get by force no matter how powerful you are.
Very true, it would be a bad/disappointing direction to go, but random thought and a common trope so figured might as well throw it into the hypothesis bin as well.
I’d much rather the (for shits and giggles) explanation for why she’s helping Deus, always liked the (the universe is our playground we just do what we find amusing at the time, place rules and limitations and then go for it); as it feels more like what really powerful eternal beings and the like would do for fun.
As long as they have a ‘safe-word’ or some way to return to ‘normal’ if slash or when needed
Ancient Magic Now unfold,
Power from the world of Old,
My True Name I now Embrace,
Awaken from the Depths of Space!
Actually, she looks like a tired kid to me… busy day, running low on energy, and sitting on the shopping trolley while someone else does the work.
Considering how she has done all the work so far…, it’s only fair the smug git gets to carry her home (or pulls the hover-trolley)
Look at how tiny her mouth is, that looks more like a down in the dumps expression to me.
Maybe she bought a bunch of stuff on impulse as they went, but then saw something she really wanted but didn’t have enough on her to afford it.
Deus of course being her boss not her ATM had his own purchases he was focused on and no way she could ask him for a loan. She now she has to make a note to remember that one thing is there and where and next time bring enough to buy it.
My guess as to what he bought: 3D printers that can produce biomatter. We know people who are in dire need of replacement bodies.
But that implies Deus is a really moral person, who is willing to restore an extinct species to life (albeit presumably for payment).
Whereas their planet is presently unoccupied and could be looted by him at will, with no obligation to provide a return service.
Of course there is the minor inconvenience of the occupying forces, but they remain an issue for either proposed course. If Deus wants payment for restoring them, he will need to find some way to get rid of the invaders, so they have access to their resources.
The only alternative is that he just brings them back to life on Earth, where they have no goods to pay him with.
Which is not unworkable, thinking about it. He clearly has some kind of deal with Vale, to keep her working for him. Likewise he has found ways to get other supers and supernaturals in his employ (albeit possibly with just traditional payment). So he may well like the idea of having an entire species indebted to him.
Disagree fully.
He’s a businessman, through and through- restoring an extinct species, or creating replacement bodies, or all sorts of other “good” things?
“Good” is a brand word. It doesn’t mean anything. Would it be “good” that he’d create new bodies for all the alari souls? Sure. What if the only reason he’s doing it is to appeal to his own greed since they’re higher life forms and he can get more out of them than others? No, that’s just greed again and not “good”. Others benefit but that’s not his primary interest- it’s a required secondary so no one complains or stops him from being even greedier later.
That country in Africa he took over- was it Good that he stopped most/all the violence and exploitation (non beneficial exploitation)? Sure, the people have safety and spare income. He wanted that so they’d spend that income on the things he’s now offering- pay the people who make things, who then use that money to buy the things they made. His money doesn’t go anywhere, and the people caught up in it are happy.
Smart business.
Restore dinosaurs? Jurassic Park but he gets his money back (from aliens at least probably).
People injured because they didn’t obey the signs? He owns the hospital and legal system available, I’m sure. So he gets even more money.
It’s almost like Deus is Koch/Rothschild.
I say he’s doing like they do with cell phones. He now has cutting edge space tech. He’s going to backwards regress it and then put in the base levels in the country he now controls production of. Then he can slowly brining it up to the levels of what he brought through the portal in “Technology miles stones of our own’ making his country the cutting edge country of the world and him billions and billions of dollars with never before seen (cept to Dabbler) tech.
Whatever Deus has planned, he was working towards this plan before the fall of the Alari home world. There is no reason to believe that at this point in time he has any information about what happened to Sciona or her home world. He knows her lair blew up, but he knows nothing about what happened off world.
Solidly argued.
Mind you we would have thought he knew nothing about what Sciona was up to in a secret vault deep in the ocean’s depths. Yet he arrived in obviously full knowledge of things that man should not know …
Could the Calamarians be Deus’s minions?
Yeah, pretty sure that Harem would have told himme about the Alari what with with the septendecuple agent thing going on.
He’s definitely not a moral person, but having a race of proud warlike beings indebted to you for their survival is far more fun than a planet to loot. And potentially far more profitable.
Looting an empty planet is small potatoes compared to ruling a living one, particularly if you are the one who resorted it. When choosing between money and power, always choose power.
Alternatively – Advanced alien gene splicer. Page 3030 mentions gene mods, and supers are a thing.
…
Where did Sciona (hey she’s alive again in a comment) get that bloodmancer’s valu-pak of super blood samples?
Deus, probably. Sure someone will say something about that warehouse, but I’m sure ARCHON dealt with that, so to replace it… yeah Deus could have all sorts of super blood that was part of the hiring process or sexual conquests or parking lot royale cleanup loot or who knows what.
No, not Deus.
Sciona had a BUNCH of people hanging up in her cellar, remember? When Sydney discovered she could lightbee teleport via the newly bought pip on the comm orb? Those people were from a variety of different backgrounds & abilities. And she was in the powerful body of a troll, so why would she need to pay someone to hunt down whatever, when she could just nab whatever she needed bloodwise off the streets herself, with a little bit of cheap lurking & some patience?
I already answered that :)
Not exactly. Unless I missed something, she left that warehouse well before ARCHON dealt with it. They had to delay because of the time skip, then she attacked and then she took off IIRC.
Everyone asks what happens if one of Harem gets killed, but what if one gets cloned?
I assume the quantum entanglement that interconnects the brains of her copies is something that happens during her… mitosis? The clone may or may not end up having her power but wouldn’t end up on the same web/link what have you. Of course the entanglement is something more complex than direct physical since she can choose to teleport without dead skin cells and toenail trimmings and so on.
What if one Harem gets pregnant? What happens when she becomes one again? Are all of her pregnant now? With the varied diet and activities each of her experiences creating small differences in the growth cycle of the fetus can it recombine or will it result in quintuplets each time she separates and recombines?
This doesn’t strike me as something he is doing, just now, because of the alien spirit incursion. … Deus has been preparing for this since, at least, a good deal of time before the “super monsters” tried to get into the “monster vault”. (He designed this whole scheme around the device obtained from the vault.) Most probably a LONG time before that, since he created a giant power plant to power and possibly hide the signature of his wormhole device.
I just hope that he doesn’t get away with this. I can’t believe that in the entire galaxy/universe that he is the first chump who has tried to uplift his world/self by creating a personal wormhole from his planet to the nearest dyson construct.
Ooh, Deus is capable of carrying way more shopping than Vale.
And Vale and her shopping!
:-D
No wonder she feels a bit redundant!
:-(
That’s because Deus can do anything. God bless Deus that magnificent man.
Next you will be envisaging him in his flying machine, going uppity up up!
Yes, he is Mighty Uppity, isn’t he :)
VALE: My personal hypothesis is Deus’ superpower is that he gets influence over people he shags. That, and I think the encyclopedia of shags is magical / may give him more info. I mean, it could be “magical love” or something, where they think it’s their own feelings at first.
Vale just happens to realize it and has then made the most of it. Why else would an eldrich horror remain in human form for so long? Is Deus THAT interesting to a possibly trans-dimensional being?
Thus the reason to date Maxima, the most powerful female on the planet possibly.
Of course! Why else could he possibly want to date Maxima?! (Just kidding, and it’s an interesting idea. But he’s also got a lot of guys working for him and he’s so far shown no signs that he swings both ways…)
Deus’ Superpower is clearly the same as Batman’s – Truckloads of money.
He has actually stated that.
*silent attempt to say something, paralyzed for a minute*
Are you suggesting Maxima Leander signed his book?
…more likely he has a couple of pages reserved with her portrait drawn in…
Well Maxima thought they had been dating. So possibly.
Although that would only be in a euphemism sense. If she ever got eyes on such a book, with her image in it, I think even Vale’s bodyguard skills would be pushed to the limit!
Deus’ superpower is knowing what he shouldn’t be able to know [or at least how to get that information.] Thus he can build something that no other earth barbarian has the least idea how to build, or thinks is outright impossible, to travel to a far more advanced society and bypass their restrictions against his doing what he is doing.
His relations with the ladies are easily explained by the standard male explanation [“we need a reason?”] and the girls hardly seem under his control due to sex. Sciona, the clear case, merely decides he can have pampered slave status. Harem loves the idea of being a spy. Maxima regards him as an ally?. Vale is just an underling.
The more interesting question is where is he getting his super science knowledge. How did he know how to build his gate toy, and how to get by the guards?
Anyone else hearing that guy in Dennis Franz’s voice?
The line Deux uses here is a reference to Blade Runner, and comes from an old Nursery Rhyme:
To market, to market to buy a fat pig; Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog; Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.
To market, to market, to buy a plum cake; Home again, home again, market is late.
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun; Home again, home again, market is done.
To market, to market, a gallop a trot, To buy some meat to put in the pot;
Three pence a quarter, a groat a side, If it hadn’t been killed it must have died.
I was going to be disappointed if someone hadn’t mentioned this. All that is missing is a couple of diminutive automatons replying “Good evening DX”.
I first saw it quoted in the 1960’s in the Lost In Space comic book series. (No relation to the TV show.)
So is DaveB saying I shouldnt join LOESDWARBAB?
Because I was totally in on the acronym. It flows off the tongue.
The organization with the best acronym ever is the “Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society“.
Red Dwarf ref.
Well I don’t know about that, but you need not worry about the ROUS’s.
I see an opportunity.
Sorry I’m not anywhere near as skilled an artist as Dave is, but here you go puppy: http://eugenecomics.the-comic.org/comics/24
Heh
I just noticed that Deus isn’t wearing a tie. He’s wearing an ascot.
Deus has a tie with a trinity knot.
And right then, he realizes he is not home, but in a holding cell, as station security redirected his portal. They had detected the portal when it opened up, and were just waiting to catch him bringing contraband back through it. Then they also charge him with operating an unregistered portal, which results in hefty fines.
And the death penalty, retroactively five generations
I am tempted to put “League of Obviously Exploitative Space Dicks Who Are Really Bad at Branding” on a T-shirt.
Sydney: “Ooh, where’d you get those spicy-flakes? Got any Grakz to put them on?”
Max: 8^|
Deus: “Uh, any what?”
Or Deus could get suspicious of the occasional “Grakz to Go!” boxes that show up in the trash from the Archon dorm building and Sydney’s trash at home.
Oh, come ON…you know someone like Deus will be keeping track of their trash. You can learn a LOT about someone by seeing what they throw away.
A thought, so we know Deus used a private portal (the Brane Ripper),
we now have confirmation it didn’t connect to an existing transport system *Fracture star gate network* as some had a few pages backed theorized was the room the portal opened into being a visitor waiting room via smaller portals. We know that’s not the case.
But it also wasn’t some back alley or abandoned looking area as it was right off a busy street. So Vale dialed the portal coordinates, seems she got REALLY precise and didn’t just connect to a pre-existing gateway network, or a random spot on the Fracture *portal would have been at risk of being found*. So Vale had to have chosen a spot she KNEW was secure and wouldn’t be found.
Likely conclusion, Vale is an alien entity, and this was her room or apartment/time share or whatever on the Fracture; or at least a space she was able to call ahead and reserve *like a rental space*.
I did consider the difficulty in setting the portal to a precise area like that, and the possibility that Vale has something there that may help. DaveB mentioned that there’s areas where the portals are supposed to be shut down, so maybe…
Both here and on page 679 we don’t get a good look at the room and can’t see whether or not the portal is anchored to something on that end. Conservation of detail, or conservation of spoilers?
For that matter, was the portal running the whole time? It looks like the skybreaker either is spinning here, which would be a major hazard, or it just recently re-opened the portal. If it reactivated recently, who reactivated it?
“Sir, I just had an energy spike from Condemned Portal 7334 in blue sector… but it’s gone now.”
“You know those old portals occasionally release discharges for several decades after being shut down, we’ll get Maintenance to have a look at it tomorrow. Not like anything horrible came through.”
Vale looks around in the market, turns to Deus, “Ever get the feeling someone’s talking about you?”
Deus: “Yes, I just bask in it now.”
As for the reactivation, Deus could have set the control system that the Brane Ripper/SkyBreaker combo is hooked up to redail after a set time. “Okay, the trip will take us 2 hours. Set the clock.”
As they stepped through the portal Deus did tell control to keep the lights on ‘we will only be a few hours’.
Which could be interpreted literally, or as a casual way of saying ‘keep the portal open’.
I lean towards the portal(s) created needing to be kept powered to remain open for any length of time. The two previous examples of it in action collapsed shortly after being created. Sciona may have intended for her portal to remain open, but blowing up her own base in true villain fashion took out any power source she had planned to use to accomplish that.
Deus arranged for a stable power source to sustain the portal till at least close to sunset local time.. though admit I am somewhat disappointed nothing came from troubles with fan 9.
Has anyone counted the number of limbs on that merchant? I suspect that he has more than the optimal four. And probably more than the provisionally acceptable (thanks to Dabbler) six. I think …
*pauses for dramatic effect*
… he may be one of Vance’s distant relatives!
The thing I have been wondering throughout this estended Deus and Vale shopping saga is…depending how things go could Sydney eventually get a skinsuit from Vale for Trent?
Not that I’m shipping Sydney with Trent or anything.
That comment underneath–you came THIS CLOSE to owing me a new keyboard. Well done.
Deus has definite supervillain-y aspirations, but any alien tech he brings back and tries to capitalize off doesn’t (necessarily) have to be ‘Doomsday Machine’ scary. Think of all those ‘small’ ideas out there that have generated mucho cash from relatively humble beginnings – the inventions of liquid paper and post-it notes spring instantly to mind.
So, Deus could have made his deal for, wel,l pretty much anything. Something that cheaply converts nuclear waste into organic fertilizer, schematics for manufacturing frictionless ball-bearings, genital-enlargement pills that REALLY work, even solid maths equations for successfully squaring a circle or finding pi ‘s last decimal place could have definite monetary possibilities.
Of course, given Deus’s predilections, we can be sure that whatever he has gotten is something that will become galactic-scale HUGE in the right / wrong hands.
I can think of a few small techs,
like zero point energy batteries (Earth’s current battery tech is lagging behind and thus holding back robotics and other machine engineering),
Foldable, paper thin, plastic like laptops. Like a whole computer, gigabytes if not terabytes of data and its a plastic like sheet you can fold up *and not cause any creases or damage to unless being excessively aggressive with it…like running it over with a tank*, with tons of options, touch screen. Maybe if a flip it in the air and release 3-D hologram art from it that floats in the air a moment.
3-D self-contained hologram programs that pretend to interact with surfaces *but don’t really* and be interacted with like pets or…let’s cut the chase…a much more realistic Pokémon Go experience. Like set up a station some where and “real” holographic pokemon appear in the area for players to catch and battle and interact with their own as if they were real using “pet gloves” and cell phone apps to react to the 3-D server system.
Or just things like hover rails for cars, perfect radios, perfect thought interface with computer, virtual reality MMOs…that don’t have the problem of sucking people’s minds into the game by accident on occasion or copying them.
Prosthetic bones that repair themselves if damaged.
the list can go on for the sorts of stuff one civilization could take for granted or even regard as a toy or common tech that could really throw a less complex tech civilization through a loop.
heck introduce Pet Slimes, intelligent, self replicating, perfect easy to take care of pets that also have industrial use for clean up, and spa use for absorbing unwanted back hair, ect…only for people to discover they are sapient artificial life forms whose neural structure makes them even more complex than humans with a possible hive mind…so shoggoths…only less end your civilization and more…let’s get kinky with this. But the ethical dilemmas, the confusion, the moral out rage over having sapient beings that want to serve, because they were designed that way…and not being mechanical robots more likely to illicit sympathy from organic beings like humans.
like I said, could go on and on…like a thought experiment, think of something that could be an everyday use item to one culture that could uplift or cause social and economic upheavel in another.
Men in Black did a throwaway comment on alien tech that has been introduced to Earth via them patenting it, the list includes Velcro, Microwave ovens and liposuction.
A simple little tech item like self cleaning screens would make Deus rich(er) on their own.
Smart antibiotics, reinforced plastics or ceramics, transparent aluminium/steel, more efficient electric engines, water reclamation tech, anti-pollution techs, smart pesticides, etc.
If I were Deus I would be trading for information & industrial equipment. Foldable, self recharging laptops are all very well, but the science behind them & equipment to build stuff like them is far more interesting and valuable
Plus, it’s easier to pass it off as his own if he has the plans rather than a finished fully-working product he has no clue how works
Once you have the equipment, and maybe buy the tools and owner manuals as well, and have labs of high tech engineers and possibly aliens on the payrole who have at least comparible tech experience (assumption there but I wouldn’t put it past him to be working with a few), he can backwards engineer the alien tech, then manufacture their own version.
As we’ve said before on previous pages, it makes more sense to build their own versions so they can build more on their own, and also not worry about any part of it having a “made by Xandar” type stamps on them to give away what he did. This whole operation looks to be following a clandestine, we made it ourselves knock offs approach.
Problem is, if he releases TOO much stuff, he pops Earth’s tech level and BOOM… floods of intergalactic imports ruin his monopoly/trademark. Especially once it becomes obvious that his stuff is a cheap knock-off of something he must have procured from beyond.
When I think about it, when it comes to the tech embargo customs thing they must have a HUGE list that comes up related to different worlds, and if those lists aren’t updated regularly *as in tech advancements in different fields advance at different paces on different worlds and even parts of different worlds* it could be frustrating like how specific it is…like; “I am telling you we HAVE 3-D printers with food on my planet, this gizmo I bought is practically the same thing just with more texture options, we’ll have that in like a few years at most.”
Its one thing to say (We shouldn’t give these steam punk tech and incantation demon bargain only magic users access to Mana Crystal animus cores or Monster Summon, Capture and Control cards; as it could destabilize and advance their entire culture too quickly beyond what they may have naturally reached).
or ya’know the classic, don’t hand the agrarian steel and simple machines tech soldiers ray-guns and mecha hell beast mounts.
But some these others may see a tad arbitrary. Especially if they don’t keep great records…I swear my world does have USB cards that hold thousands of songs on them, no the Zune you found in the junk shop is not our latest portable music device.
I’m starting LoOESDWARBaB. Y’all are defacto members.
Well, you could make a filler of the “home again” frame, make it bigger and more ominous? IDK
Well there’s other organisations that are nearly as bad as League of Obviously Exploitative Space Dicks Who Are Really Bad at Branding.
There’s always the League Of Seriously Exploitative Really Scornful Space A-holes Yet With Amicable Attitude Types.
You gotta love the acronym for their name in English!
Shouldn’t that be “With Happy Attitude Types”? o_O
Their name in Swahili is even betterer :P
The hover-trolleys to carry his purchases alone will make a pretty hefty sum of money if he reverse engineers them and sells the hover tech.
One of the problem in strip-mining lifeless worlds is that different species have different definitions of lifeless. A mineral rich world might have no atmosphere but intelligent minerals, we’d have no way to tell. That’s the twist at the end of Deep Storm. Aliens consider our world lifeless enough to hide an advanced weapons cache there. It actually has liquid water. Shudder.
No way to tell until the intelligent crystal seeing its neighbor being mined, reconfigures its crystalline lattice to amplify and focus the local star’s light and heat into a beam to burn off the miner’s face in defence.
Yeah, us ugly bags of mostly water have to be mindful of the Horta
The planet is lifeless
-silicon based crystals that infect ordinary rocks that are overtaken and become like themselves.
(standard definition humans use for life would still not consider this alive)
similar issue with (intelligent life),
*dark part of my own series was humans found a life form on a moon of Saturn that was edible and showed no signs of intelligence…but many years later thanks to contact with another intelligent alien race got ahold of tech that could detect complex abstract thought patterns…and the life form was indeed fully sapient. Just its shape and means of communicating made it nearly impossible to tell it was sapient (not physically capable of displaying traits humans associated with intelligence)
Hmm, not only a stable wormhole/gate ‘thing’, but one that adjusts for at least one end moving as the Earth orbits, rotates, and the entire system moves as the galaxy expands. Which means the Fracture end is moving as well, even if the station doesn’t rotate or orbit.
That’s… not how worm-gates work
it could just be locking onto gravity wells and having the ends be stationary relative to those points of reference.
You usually have two types of portals, regardless if they are wormholes, hell gates, shadow gates, time holes, ect…
and these are (being generated by a machine) or (stable portal suspended in the air).
The first is easy to explain…its being generated by a machine, the machine is on the planet/location and therefor it is generating the portal so it is also moving with the machine.
the second also, we assume the event horizon has some sort of mass to it, like a containment point of the rift, otherwise the rift would close immediately or spiral out of control and entropy into non-existence *like your typical slash portal like what the brane ripper did initially, that closed just as quickly as it opened*. As the event horizon has mass, it is subject to gravity and there for holds the portal relative to the gravity just like a machine would or anything else on a planet.
Or since the Brane Ripper is magical, and the portal is a magical construct, the ends could just be held in place by magic.
It’s not about how they are held in place, it’s how they are connected
How would Deus get *himself* past customs?
“I’m sorry sir, you’re from where?!”
*checks list*
“Would you step into this room over here, sir, we’d like to have a word with you…”
:-D
I think it interesting that the merchant indicates that whatever Deus has bought is cutting edge technology. Presumably, as he does not qualify it, that is by the standards of a civilisation capable of building a Dyson sphere around a weird type of star.
He does then go on to talk about the restrictions placed on primitive planets, which has drawn most of the attention from the comments. But it is possible that Deus is not just positioning himself to be a global player. I think he wants to have toys comparable to the big boys in the galactic sandpit!
Well if he’s a fan of Star Gate SG-1 he might be using their playbook…
-also a jumping the shark for the show that kind of bugged me-; before humanity as a whole is even aware of the existence of aliens why not turn Earth into a major player in the Galaxy, get ahold of advanced technology and even build space ships, and have bases across the galaxy, allies, visit another galaxy, engage in several interplanetary wars, including an on-going conflict with Space Vampires…
before ever telling the people of Earth about aliens…
I mean honestly Earth as the underdog, and not wanting to alarm the population to the threats of the galaxy is one thing…but to wait until AFTER Earth is known and regarded by every advanced civilization as major interplanetary players is…kinda silly.
*My Fellow Americans, I come before you today to inform you aliens are real…oh and also we have three space ships we built, we have overthrown several galactic empires, are allies with ancient alien races, and are currently at war with space vampires while a group of sociopaths we told were on an important mission were shipped off to a several millions of years old ship on the ass end of the universe looking for God or something.
A random person in the street was able to identify Sydney as a human, so it’s likely that the merchant knows where Deus is from, and what the relevant import restrictions would be. His wording need not imply that the tech is cutting edge in some global sense… I would guess that Deus is purchasing the most advanced stuff that can be reverse-engineered and manufactured with the tech he already has, so it’s probably not the absolute top-of-the-line (yet).
True. And I am fairly confident that they are in a part of the Dyson sphere which specialises in contact with Earth, which reinforces your argument.
Still the other take is still a reasonably strong possibility, despite that.
I wouldn’t use that as a gauge that everyone knows what a human is.
Humans may be known well enough, or there are enough aliens with the same basic build that a world with supers and other genetically modified variants yet isn’t space faring is a well known anomaly,
but it still doesn’t mean everyone knows what they are.
After all, Pikachu, Darth Vader, Godzilla.
A very well known thing, almost common knowledge, good chances most anyone you meet will know what one of these are…but…you can still meet someone who doesn’t (as unbelievable as that might sound). *Not counting the people who pretend to not know because they think that make’s them look better for some reason*.
it could just be locking onto gravity wells and having the ends be stationary relative to those points of reference.
Is it me or does Vale look worn out!?
She’s gonna sleep well tonight :D
What if the slightly dodgy alien who sold him the tech did a switcheroo and Deus just ended up with 48 tins of Grax? It would be hilarious. “What IS this shit!” “Looks like weapons grade food?”
Personally, I’d consider 777 to be a more significant number than 750. But that could just be me.
I wonder why so few people celebrate number 123. Maybe we get a special on 1234.
The link to “Super Redundant Heroes” needs to be reset. It’s not going to the comic.
What I would be purchasing would be yottabyte storage loaded with informational as well as instructional documents on science of every conceivable sort starting at pre-FTL to as advanced as available. All in triplicate, with multiple access nodes per unit. With internal power for portability. But that may be too slow to be useful for his immediate goals, no matter how useful it could be in the long run.
On the whole *we will help your civilization to in dept you to us* trope it is surprising how often its done rather drastically. Like the aliens cause a problem, swoop in and save the Earth, only to turn around and go (We have saved you, now you owe us; become our colony…and PS: for some reason we really suck at our own robots and space ship technology so send your best scientists to work on that stuff for us.
I tried to play with this once, wasn’t satisfied with the result, not even sure a copy of (The Cohora Conflict) even survives anywhere *other than maybe a floppy disc in a closet I can never retrieve data off of again most likely*. But had these aliens release nanite plague pods on major cities that turned people into zombies. The Cohora (my name for the little grey big eyed aliens), would then have swooped in and saved humanity *after also reducing the population somewhat and destroying man kind’s infrastructure ect…*; to in debt humanity to them; because they realized humans have complex abstract thought and they have precedence based prediction only; so their technological advancements were much slower and realized humans were advancing at relative stages much faster than they were so wanted humans to be in debted to them so they could then later ride humanity’s coat tails after humanity surpassed them.
-was subverted by the presence of vampires and Other World alien races also invested in the Earth who took advantage of the chaos the Cohora caused to create vampire controlled domed cities.
Only other big way I’ve played with this was having the Kuhrai (alien cat people) watching Aesperia (world of super-humans with magic powers as well) with minimal ambassador contact with some help as their middle men to other races…only to later find out Aesperia had a crap ton of stored tech locked away by its “founders” so after they came back uplifted Aesperia themselves. But hey, good relations; Aesperia gets Kuhrai mech tech to examine, and the Kuhrai get magi-tech levitation and power cores to examine.
I’m sure all the stuff he’s bought is profitable or at least desirable to him for his private stash, but I wouldn’t be surprised if what he really wanted was something the post ftl types aren’t even paying any attention to in the first place. Like the hover trolleys and container materials.
Super high tech is really great, but there’s not much reverse engineering you can do when all your science and fancy gizmos can tell you is that it’s an inert substance that can’t exist.
Take our latest microchips back to American Revolution. Sure it’s less than 3 centuries difference in tech, but they wouldn’t even be able to figure out what it’s for, much less what they do and how they do it.
Remember, any sufficiently advanced technology is guaranteed to make researchers lose their hair in frustration and futility.
Very good point, when you want to reverse engineer something, you want something one or two steps more advanced that you can reasonably analyze, take apart, and have some idea how it works so you can duplicate it; even if its beyond what you currently have.
Like giving someone with a megabytes computer one that can hold gigabytes. *like two decades difference there, and still it would be a stretch and take a few months of study to figure out how it was done most likely*.
Its one thing to drive the space car and shoot the space gun, its another to build one yourself.
-So my room of very brilliant scientists you have had three years studying this alien gizmo, how soon can be equip all our soldiers with them?
*Sir…its…a string of beads…um…we can’t…X-ray it…can’t break them open…can’t scratch them…other than guessing it reacts to thoughts to shoot these vibrations…laser…not hot yet…are somehow…maybe plasma beams….we…have no idea how it works, there is no way we could duplicate this.
-Okay what about the other gizmo?
*Its full of gel, we know its some sort of computer or related technology because we saw how it was being used, and we could get the casing off but…its just this…gel inside. When we tried to study it…it turned to sand, now the whole thing doesn’t work…our best guess is the part we scooped out was like breaking a chunk off a mother board…we didn’t know what we were doing, didn’t have the right tools,
-hmm
*some silver lining, the casing can be studied, we figured out what it was made of and can apply that to our tanks to make them fifty times more resistant to impact. Its truly remarkable material
-that the aliens put on their…toys; fine.
See my above statement of what I would get. Library’s of science from every tech level possible.
This variation of the “prime directive” is just as immoral as the half-arsed one they came up with for under-budget sci fi shows in the 60s.
1)It gives lip service to the equality of all sapients– but effectively treats anyone from a less technologically advanced world as a lower species. Get your hands off our sacred superior technology, you damned dirty ape!
2)Expecting other races to “reach technological milestones on their own” is as about as moral as an adult expecting a child to live like a feral animal in the woods, and only allowing them to join the village when they learn to talk, clothe themselves, and make fire and the wheel on their own.
3)It’s a fanciful, fairy-tale vision of “evolution” — whether biological or “cultural”— as some magical force that automatically slowly lifts all races up, so no humanitarian obligations are necessary from those who have already progressed… funny, it’s the exact sort of thing Progressives accuse Conservatives of doing. “Why should we help them? They can darn well pull themselves up by their bootstraps, just like WE did!” *puts on top hat and monocle and smokes an enormous stogie*
4)The farcical notion that “they can’t handle advancing too fast!” Reality time: you know how many generations it takes to go from the stone age to the space age? ONE. In fact, it’s an uplift we experience with every generation, because every generation born enters this world as an invasion of screaming, naked savages– and it’s up to the previous generation to civilize them before it’s too late.
Finding a culture wallowing in barbarian ignorance and leaving them there is an immoral obscenity.
This sounds like a Smuggler’s Den. A really big one. The kind that has had apathetic oversight for so long that their infractions have grown bolder and more systematic. The kind that an ambitious career law enforcement officer, investigator, or prosecutor could reap for a whole lot of glory.
These guys probably have the cynical intelligence to be aware of thaat, but not enough. Every one of them thinks they’ll get out in time and leave someone else holding the bag.
I can’t help but wonder–even as rich as Zeus is (by Earth standards), what Earth commodities could he possibly have to trade that civilizations on Fracture Stations would find appealing, and in what quantity?
Various forms of entertainment, services of some supers, Carbon or other universal uncommon materials, hiding places(for criminals) and touristic tours.
He doesn’t seem to be buying a lot of turbo ftl tech, so I suspect it has a pretty acceptable price.
My idea would be around:
One Karishnikov tube warp drive: 1 month of super labor,
one pack of 10 rechargable extreme batteries: 1 hour of super labor,
one spaceship power source: 2 months of super labor,
one design AI: variable by age and quality to 1 week of super labor to 50 years of super labor and
one universal translator: one day of super labor.
Pornography and other entertainments, apparently. (Forward link, slight spoilers, click at your own risk.)
Maybe I’d be disappointed if I found out where the reference is originally from, but I like to think at this point everybody who says “home again, home again, jiggety jig” wants to think they’re cool enough to quote Lucifer, which tells me they’re massively uncool.
It’s from a nursery rhyme. Which may be even more massively uncool.