Grrl Power #728 – She spent two months not existing for tax purposes
I spent some time thinking about this, and really, Archon would probably wind up paying anyone the least amount possible for time travel incidents. Not because they’re cheap, but when it comes down to it, it’s logical. From Sydney’s point of view, she only “worked” two days, and for some of that time she was asleep on Cora’s ship anyway. From Archon’s point of view, Sydney was technically on the clock for 53 days, but also absent from work. She is salaried and not hourly, so there’s no O.T. to consider in either frame of reference.
If she had traveled to the past, that could be trickier. Assuming she didn’t show up back on Archon’s doorstep before they ever hired her, that’s a whole other discussion. But if she went a month in to the past, then showed up five minutes after going back, and could prove she’d spent the time saving the world from whatever… would they pay her for a month or 5 minutes? It seems like the easy answer would be that they pay her for the month. She was doing her job the whole time after all. But what happens if someone got sent a year in the past, or ten? Their salaries are not inconsiderable. Sydney is a recruit, but Major Hiro went ten years in the past, that kind of back pay could cause a budgetary crisis.
Not that Hiro would show up and demand a huge paycheck necessarily, but it’s something that the bean counters might need to consider at some point, now that they know time travel is possible.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Glad to see they got the IMPORTANT stuff taken care of instead of asking the world-killer-killer a few questions.
I suppose that’ll come. Please tell me there’s video. The collar communicator, perhaps?
The real question is: Does Harem get payed for the number of bodies currently on duty?
Maybe based on the number of roles she has in the company
If I had to guess? Every member of Archon gets base pay according to either their military rank, or civilian government service level. (GS1, GS2, exc.) The extra pay over that is based on what their power set brings to the team. For example, Maxima effectively replaces the capabilities of an entire attack squadron of aircraft, and arguably the power of a heavy infantry unit as well. So she probably gets an additional pay supplement equal to some percentage of of the upkeep cost of those units. Which begs the question of how they’re going to figure Sydney’s bonus pay see how there are no interstellar starships in the US inventory.
My guess would be based on either a high-altitude spyplane or a high-tech jetfighter. My guess would be on the latter, once she’s passed a sufficient level of training she’s easily capable of offsetting at least a base infantry team (how large are those nowadays, 4-6 people?), a tank and a jetfighter, the latter two with pilot salaries included. I doubt they’ll give her the full maintenance value of those units, but something like 20% of all that would make a very nice bonus.
(Im not an army expert so my estimates are all based on second or third-hand experience)
Ahem. That is to say, there are no interstellar flight capable warships in the US inventory, except for Sydney.
Put together a salary and benefits package that will blind her with greed, triple that, then consider the alternative is not having a starship available and triple it again.
Don’t forget hazardous duty pay, scaled to the amount of hazard faced. she should get a few medals, too.
Huh… Would she be eligible for a Purple Heart after that battle with “Darkness Boy” or whatever his name was? How much injury do you have to sustain to be considered ‘injured in action’ or whatever?
I had a commander who took a sharp rock to the face and got a purple heart, so, not very much. There are some commanders who require it to be a major injury, typically a bullet or frag wound, while there are some who hand out medals like Halloween candy and will flex the rules to get a sprained wrist a purple heart for the base warriors. It all depends on the unit and the values of the commander.
Those get kicked up the chain for approval, so if you’ve got a Colonel who was groomed under some of those ticket punchers from Vietnam, you’ll have awards getting handed out for essentially nothing.
Hazardous duty pay is paid whenever you’re in combat or similarly life-and-death environments. You don’t have to get hurt, you just have to show up to get it. iirc, it’s double time for enlisted. But when i was in, “regular time” wasn’t even minimum wage, so double that is still small.
When Sydney first gained new abilities it was mentioned abilities were not tied to the salary. I can imagine though that Harem gets paid more than a single person of her rank, due to being able to multitask and having greater expenses in some areas than a single person, but I doubt it will be five times as much.
My question is: why is Arianna talking like she’s got input into who get payed what?
She’s PR, not finance. The Department of Military Personnel is ultimately who pays the members of Archon. Though DoD Financial Management policy wonks may get some serious input. The circumstances of getting a month’s duty pay for 2 days of actual duty and travel reimbursement for interstellar distances while on said duty are DEFINITELY going to get reported at that level. Although… The DoD tends to think up some fairly strange things; they may already have policy in place.
PR and Liaison and Legal?
Legal actually has a lot of say regarding pay. We settle all kinds of semi-legitimate disputes. (Emphasis on “settle”.)
the whould have rules for someone in a coma maybe base it off something like that
Sydney should offer to forgo her back pay IF they instead reimburse her for her mileage or her mission, at the standard rate of 20 cents per mile.
Yeah, but you’re only allowed to use a personal vehicle at most jobs if that’s cheaper than other means of travel, and the 20-cent-per-mile reimbursement rate is probably only for road-licensed vehicles, which Sydney’s balls are not.
She should get reimbursed for the equivalent of whatever a starship flight of equivalent distance on a lowest-cost private carrier would cost.
Which I’m guessing is pretty expensive, but who knows, maybe that’s only worth like four days of unskilled labor or something.
It has been mentioned that Harem even though there are several bodies is only considered one person. One mind remember. For example legally if one of her gets married all of her is. one tax return, one ssn. and so on.
perhaps each of Harem’s alts count as dependents for payroll and tax deduction purposes
There are precedents for this. The Hensel conjoined twins have separate driving licences and college qualifications, for example. There are older examples of conjoined twins marrying separately, although how that would work I really couldn’t say. Suppose one of Harem’s alts was killed?
Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, married separate women, lived in separate houses on a one week rotation and had 10 and 11 children respectively. The term Siamese twins, now replaced by the term conjoined twins, came into being because Chang and Eng were born in Siam, now Thailand.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiPmp-q2NrhAhUhFTQIHdOYBBoQFjAGegQIDxAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FChang_and_Eng_Bunker&usg=AOvVaw0yq6YVNeIJIbJi-2NrfOVc
I don’t know if this answers your question, but at some point Dave said their salaries are roughly equivalent to an NFL first round pick, which is between $2.5M and $8M per year.
What would be interesting is when and if Harem spawns off a 6th body. If nobody sees it happen she could keep it secret and have an alternative life going on outside of Archon. Harem #6 is on permanent vacation in Aruba.
All #6’s should be on permanent vacation in Aruba!
I do kinda feel that there would be some kind of bonus driven incentive though. I mean, face stomped three giant world ending aliens that the rest of the team fled from” should be worth at least a half a dozen free coffees or some meal tokens
That may actually mean trouble for her. Potentially antagonizing extremely dangerous alien race is hell of a debut
It was Sydney’s Orbs that antagonized the Squids, not Sydney herself. And that reaction came from an alien military unit that was already engaged in a planetwide genocide. Also, that violent reaction was directed to currently-passive observers who were not engaged in any kind of hostile action when they were detected. ARCSWAT chose to retreat instead of return engagement, but Sydney was cut off from retreat & had nowhere else to find safety.
All in all, Sydney had no choice but to engage because ARCSwat units had already been engaged upon. Interpreting Sydney’s actions to imply that she initiated hostilities is, at best, disigenous & dishonest.
No one ORDERED her to attack/counterattack the aliens.
Other then upgrading her Orb powers what purpose did it serve?
Self defense?
Sydney was not the one who initiated the fight. And hiding and escaping did not work. Several times.
As soon as Syd had the means to get away she got away.
There is an axiom which might possibly have originated in some prehistoric military: “The best defence is a good offence“. AKA “a robust attack“.
And in the military you do not need to be ordered to (counter)attack attackers. Have a look at the Battle of Long Tan, where a patrolling Aussie Company found itself up against multiple Viet Minh and Viet Cong battalions.
That entirely depends on the current “rules of engagement” which have, in recent decades, have at times actually REQUIRED field soldiers to get direct orders before they could open fire, even if they themselves were being shot at.
Which is stupid, but that’s what certain politicians thought was a good way to run the military.
Beirut comes to mind. Soldiers guarding the compound weren’t allowed to have bullets in their guns, never mind the question “shoot or not”. But I doubt that policy will be applied again anytime soon.
Counter attacking an ambush has been a standard military doctrine for thousands of years.
In the absence of counter orders that would be the normal response of well trained personnel.
The assertion that specific orders would be needed in that situation is spurious.
I agree with the others. Bottom line, Sydney did not fire first. She was fired upon and pretty much no matter what the rules of engagement are, once you are fire upon, its ok to return fire in defense of yourself, others and property. Or in Sydney’s case, just defense of herself.
The U.S. Military, and most other militaries, encourage their troops to show initiative, i.e. acting as the situation requires without waiting for orders.
Nah, it just means when you’re telling that story, you’re not buying the beers. :-)
Don’t know about that.
From a legal point of view aren’t they responsible for her being thrown into the future? So should cover additional expenses caused by only being able to work 2 days in two months.
Well Some English Guy, I think that’s why they’re willing to “split the difference” and give her a month’s pay for two days’ worth of (admittedly grueling) work.
Halo: [Reviewing her pay receipt ] Hmm, right. Man, that is a whole shit-load of deductions.
Shrapnel: Well, you are in the second-to-top tax bracket at this point. You could jump into the top tax bracket after graduation.
Halo: After years of whether I qualified to pay income tax at all, this is a big change. Um, I seem to remember reading about Combat bonus pay? I was in an active war zone for the better part of a day. I even got in a whole bunch of kills. Mind you, that might just be whole bunch of combat equipment deactivations.
Shrapnel: To qualify for combat pay, your commanding officer has to authorize that. I expect Lt. Colonel Leander will want some form of after-action report prior to authorizing your combat pay. In which case, it would appear on your next pay cheque.
I don’t think Shrapnel does their taxes, but he’d definitely be on call for new recruits jumping 4 tax brackets at once.
Sure it would.
In truth, Archon IS legally responsible for Sydney’s time travel situation. She was hired to conduct the business operations of Archon & under orders issued by her employers. If it weren’t for that, Sydney would have NOT encountered that situation at all. Even though the time-travel aspect of Sydney’s situation was unknown/unexpected/unanticipated by Archon before it happened, they are still responsible for her being IN that situation & legally accountable to the consequences that fell on Sydney.
Arianna does have a valid point though.
The likelihood (as I see it) is that in cases involving time travel, Archon would cover costs incurred for the duration of their …travels and pay would be according to experienced time.
That seems to be fair to me. You get paid for the work you do, but don’t incur any penalties from the event.
actually no, ARChon doesn’t pay them DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service) would, and they’d pay her because it’s a salary position, so even in the case of time travel, you get paid your monthly salary on the last day of every month automatically, no matter what.
Though if DFAS was covering her rent, bills, etc. they’d deduct that from her pay.
to be fair they also said that Archon dealt with her bills and obligations at event horizon comics.
you could argue that by preventing any financial downsides they already covered their legal obligations. only real potential pitfall left is if Sydney needs counseling
First!
I vote for all the paychecks!
Called it!
Two days pay plus applicable bonuses.
Annnnnnd accounting not allowing a time travel presdcendent.
ALSO…..
Sydney is reasonably rational and fully conscious.
She HAS caught up on her sleep.
Dang…I was hoping she’d show up, salute, then sleep for the next 12 hours.
(Nice catch, Maxima.)
“She HAS caught up on her sleep.”
Also, she got lai… erm, lucky.
I guess that help, too.
Typical Sydney, her answer to the twin paradox is to exploit the game mechanics. My DM would both love and hate her.
Gm:… ok due to tempral crisis you are now aging at a erratic manner and need to consume more to compensate failure to consume adiquate sustenance has a much more detrimental effect on you, on the bright side tempral anomalies affect you less now.
Better get a record of what happened to Sydney in the last few days before she starts forgetting details.
Red Dwarf covered this once. I believe the power company holding Lyster’s debt went to war with the Cheese People that evolved from the Fridge Wars, resulting in the destruction of Earth.
I know ‘danger pay’ is probably already worked into the base salary. But it could be questioned if being thrown forward in time to an alien planet and having to fight gigantic alien war machines would be covered by the base ‘danger pay’ in the salary. It is likely beyond what any payroll officer would expect when trying to calculate costs and values, but then, considering what a superhero might end up facing, it could end up in ridiculous amounts.
The ‘1000 years into the future’ would be interesting, as you have essentially sacrificed your previous life in the line of work. Assuming they recognise and honour that, you would expect a respectable amount of compensation, as well as assistance acclimatising to the new time… This was kinda glossed over in “Captain America”, but I assume that Shield paid for his apartment.
See, the best situation would be to have a portion of said paycheques (Halfing every consecutive year MIA, minimum being maintanance fees of current estate, ajusted for inflation) invested until the return of said personel. While it is a occupational hazard, they should be able to get away with it (especially if it’s added to the emplymemt contracts) especially if you can only access the funds over a simlar time frame. (Like a bonus.)
Do military personnel that are declared missing still qualify for pay if they finally show up later? Sydney could be described as MAI for those 53 days.
MIA personnel get payed as if they are active and their pay is either held for them until they are found. or if they had family then the family get 80% of the pay while they other 20% is held for the solders return.
They do. Or at least they advise that such be done. Just as they advise that you DON’T buy a horse.
POWs get full pay for the duration of their imprisonment, similar to MIAs. In short, military pay continues until proof of death.
Someone is going to have to write and interpret those regulations at some point. They might need to invent new grammar to deal with it as well.
Much of it would already be covered in the Uniform Commercial Cose, as Sydney in Archon is accorcording to a Contract of Employment. As far as it goes involving Supers & the US Government, there will be additional “terms & conditions” in Archon’s contract that probably aren’t addressed in the UCC, but they will be just as legally binding as long as the T&Cs don’t violate existing laws of greater weight.
I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they already had regulations- or at least plans- in place for time-travel. The US military likes to give outlandish situations to their officer candidates as final tests, and then takes best results as doctrine. Like, they’ve got stuff in place for Zombies, Alien invasion, attack by Mole People- all sorts of crazy things.
Surely Sydney would get paid every time a payday fell due. Her bills don’t go away, and she was on the clock and on deployment the whole time. Archon took her there, and no one else; it’s their responsibility.
The fact that she appears to have only experienced 2 days subjective time, is irrelevant. There’s nothing in her contract about that – there can’t be, because it had no legal or scientific basis until she just now returned.
If she was, say, a fisherman paid a share of the catch, the case would be different – but she isn’t. She is salaried (isn’t she?) and so, gets paid for the elapsed time AT HER BASE between deployment and return.
I’m looking at it from audit perspective, and I would not want to be the one to explain that hiccup in payflow 10 years from now when the inevitable review happens.
Why is there a problem? She was deployed on a known date, subject to the exigencies of operations whilst deployed, reappeared at a known date and location and was paid at her contracted rate between the two dates, plus any specific additional bonuses and uplifts she is entitled to consequent upon that deployment.
It’s simple. Sydney might THINK she has only been gone two days, but so what? I greatly doubt that her opinions carry much weight in such matters.
Handling it that way would create a huge incentive for abuse among time travelers.
“Well I don’t have any ties right now anyways, so I’ma sign up, jump 20 years during my first mission, and collect my retirement package to start a new life with. Easiest week’s work ever.”
intent matters.
you example is different then Sydney’s because he chose to go awol using a known power they had. they would be running a scam and the only way it could work is if they stayed in that time line and left behind everyone they cared for.
while Sydney was left behind through no fault of her own and could not get back to her time line by her own power. she might as well been in a coma in some pow jail somewhere because they out come was the same.
the two are very different examples and easily handled.
Right – hence the terms “no ties” and “during a mission” in my example. Very different situations, but how do you conclusively prove one or the other in a settlement? Even a half-decent coverup for a jump forward would be incredibly hard to disprove 20 when everyone else involved is retired, or 80 years later when they’re dead.
“Who do you think remembers it better, this retiree 50 years later or myself a week later? They’re just reciting their ancient post-action reports, and if they were wrong then, they’re wrong now.”
Well… Arianna’s position, denying contracted benefits, could very well create a loophole in her employment contract. I’m sure that Deus would be happy to offer her an alternate position in his organization, providing secure intergalactic transportation, or as another harmless looking bodyguard capable of shutting down World-Breaker giant aliens.
Sydney would bring new meaning to “Merc With A Mouth”
Well if Archon is going to stiff Sydney out of half her pay, they must have decided to drop the cover story about her being sequestered for training. The pay for any government employee in the US is a matter of public record. There are even websites where you can look up any federal employee’s annual compensation. It is only a matter of time before somebody figures out that Sydney is missing pay for no publicly known reason. Archon is definitely going to have to explain it to Sydney’s financial advisor at the very least.
Those public records are of aggregate annual salary in public service positions, not bi-weekly paycheck stubs, and I doubt special ops military personnel like Archon are on them. Long term perhaps you could massage some conclusions out of the overall trends, but this is Archon’s first year and Sydney’s only collected a single (advance) check at this point.
It wouldn’t take long for Aurelius Shrapnel to realise something suspicious is going on when Sydney misses a paycheck or two. Of course since it was Archon who set him up to be Sydney’s financial advisor he may have the clearance to know the true story.
On the other hand, as Sydney’s financial advisor Aurelius has a fiduciary duty to Sydney to work for her best interests. He would raise a stink about Sydney getting docked pay because he is legally required to raise a stink about her getting docked pay.
If I was Archon I would pay subjective time, then have ArcDark pay out an intelligence gathered bonus. With Sydney’s pictures and other intelligence gathered (did she pick up the shard that injured her?) Physical and information as a bonus payout. this would encourage information gathering and be good for everyone.
Nice to see Sydney reached the same conclusion I did on last page, to celebrate twice. Once for the birthday and once for aging a year.
Dude, seriously, we need a comic for that undernote.
I’d pay for reading about those United Wartribes of Amerikanda…
That’s Amexicanada. They hate being left out.
She should receive her full base pay, if for no other reason than to justify the “training” story they gave the press.
Plus performance bonus for surviving and the power up.
And.. i can’t believe they even had this conversation. But Sydney, I guess.
You are correct sir. The Gov pays salary as long as you are on the payroll. Period. Archon would then authorize bonuses for extra duty time if you spent 10 years Chono fighting during your last pay period.
But you always get your base salary because that is the contract, does not matter if you slept in the duty room while being on call for a month.
BTW I’ve had people pay me $75 hour just to sit at a desk for 2 weeks just so they could say the SME was available in case they crashed during an upgrade. Caught up on all of my webcomics that time.
I’m enjoying getting to see Max and Arianna in the strip again.
So that would mean they’re making… $200 million a year.
Even given Sydney’s reaction, that seems a little high; I doubt her shop was netting her anywhere near four million…
no the comic shop is purely a side hobby at this point. heck people don’t even need to buy anything to keep it open any more
I don’t think paychecks a thousand years in the future would be any problem whatsoever.
You don’t get pay raises while not existing.
Say you had an Army corporal frozen in time in 1943.
A corporal made 66 dollars a month in 1943.
That’s 792 dollars a year.
If cryogenically frozen and thawed out this year you would be looking at 60,192 dollars back pay.
Not some astronomical amount.
Inflation eats wealth over time, and absent raises everything depreciates.
And the real catch is how that pay is andled. If the was distributed normally then when the person wakes up the military has nothing to do and thus nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, when said soldier checks thier bank account, whohoo moneys just sitting there waiting for them. Even his distribution was frozen, being salary the math is easy to calculate so the finance department can simply open a holding account to hold said soldiers accumulated pay so when they are rvived, issue paycheck from said holding account.
Automatic despoit into bank account on time as normal would be the easiest method to deal with it. Would also help synedy keep any automaic payments she had going, going without issue.
POWs continue to receive pay, raises and promotions on schedule for the duration. Being Frozen in time is, essentially, the same as being a POW. The corporal would collect back pay as if he had been promoted and received pay raises on a regular basis.
Enlisted ranks don’t have regular schedules for promotion, and absent recent scores on certain variables their cutting scores are likely to drop to zero in the event of their extended absence.
Unless things have changed drastically.
I mustered out a long time ago.
While the frozen corporal might not receive any advances in rank during the time they are in the deep freeze, they WOULD receive the increases in pay that Congress authorizes for the military from time to time. That $66 per month for an E2 in 1943 is currently $1836 per month, plus any other allowances for clothing, meals, etc. The accumulated back pay would by significantly larger than $60,192.
United Underwater Wartribes of Amexicanada! Try to keep up, Donny.
I think Canamexika sounds better. Rolls off the tongue easier, and has the most important part (country) first. ;)
I think Canamexika sounds better. Rolls off the tongue easier and has the most important country first in it. ;)
A typical workday is 8 hrs out of 24 – hourly or salaried. Part of the remaining 16 hrs is usually sleeping so Halo’s sleeping on Cora’s ship is irrelevant.
Halo was on an off-site, authorized mission. She was on the job, is salaried and had no need to “punch in” for the entire duration. And even salaried get paid for extra scheduled work days.
What is time travel? Could it not be a non-linear mapping from one frame of time reference to another? As Einstein showed, time and space are equivalent, relative and dependant on the observer. In the “payroll frame of reference” the relative time was 53 days – during which Halo was on the clock and on the job.
Although Dave has specifically called out time travel, an equivalent scenario using current physics would be instantaneous transport to Alari and simple relativistic time dilatation on Cora’s ship coming home.
[Of course, this line of reasoning breaks down for time travel to the past but where’s the fun in that?]
In either case, there is the not so small matter of hazard pay plus there ought to be a bonus for potentially saving the Earth from destruction from the Kaiju.
So, if you’re caught in an area where time is faster or slow (time dilation, alternate dimension, pocket dimension, time bomb), which timeframe counts for being paid?
Since the pays from the US government, it would be based on NISTs frame of reference as the official US timekeeper.
In Sydney’s case two months have passed.
So Sydney got ripped off on what should be a trivial amount (1 months pay… minus).
So it appears Arianna is more crooked than Deus
Hmmm, this one had me wondering… I mean, yeah, they took care of her bills, etc. But she wasn’t actively working.
I imagine it would be like “Sydney fell into a coma due to an accident in the line of duty”… they would be responsible (at least here where I am, don’t know about the US) for those kinds of things (making sure she doesn’t lose her home, default on her mortgage, or what ever), but she wouldn’t get paid for those days as if she was working. I dunno, I guess with such a ridiculous scenario, it is hard to argue which way it would fall.
I don’t think it would be figured as if Sydney “was in a coma” because it’s entirely inaccurate. Sydney was on active duty deployment to capture a hostile enemy & went “missing” in what must be considered an active war zone when she was cut off from retreat, NOT disabled & presence accounted for.
The military continue to receive their full pay while undergoing medical treatment PLUS medical expenses. A soldier in a coma would receive his pay at least until his term of service expired.
Having two birthdays a year is a great power that drains a person of vitality at twice the rate. You live at twice the speed of everyone else, but you age at twice the rate.
This is something like the opposite of anyone who waas born on Febuary 29 (Leap Year). While there are some perks, such as being able to claim that they graduated from high school beofre the age of 5, there’s quite a few disadvantadges as well. Such as not getting to vote until after a point that most people have already been collecting Social Security. And to actually collect SS themselves? Forget it!
The payroll debate missed a different use case ie ;
“Yes Sir, you missed the last eighty years in a time anomaly! Happy to sort that out for you! I see that in 1939 your pay was 3 shillings a week, multiply by eighty years, and.. here’s your $2496.50 backpay! Congratulations! By the way, Sir, its time that you negotiated a annual pay rise!.”
Sydney:(to Maxima) You’re not going to count those past fifty-three day against me are you!?!?
Maxima is silent as she gives Sydney a blank stare.
Sydney:KP duty,here I come….!!!!
Maxima:Hold it Sydney,I haven’t said you’re on KP duty yet,but we have to make some decisions here.
Arianna nods.
Kind of surprising that an organization like this one didn’t already have a plane for temporally displaced employees. I mean slingshot a little too fast around the wrong star and boom, suddenly you have to make sure your parents meet so you can be born, and that’s just FTL space travel, bringing all these random superpowers into the mix and not to mention magical effects… You guys really need that little speed bump properly prepared for before you are ready for the really nice high tech stuff.
From thier reaction to Krona’s checkpoint it doesn’t seem time travel is that common, or so lighty treaded in this universe. There were any other reference to time travel as a thing that happened before?
The wise thing would have been for Payroll to put Sydney’s paychecks in a trust fund that gains interest and can deal with paying her bills. If Sydney had been put in a coma due to injury during duty, they would have to do such. Since they had a strong suspicion as to what happened, regarding the time travel, via Dabbler, Archon has no excuse for not paying out for the 53 day difference once Sydney arrived as predicted.
Sorry to rain on the backpay debate, but they should have had that sorted 2 days ago when the rest of the crew arrived back displaced. Sydney is just a same application of that formula, whatever it is. The debate is done and dusted. My GBP 0.02 (uninflated)
The rest of the crew didn’t arrive “2 days ago”, they came back throught the space-time portal and returned at the same place and time (53 days ago) they started from.
Everyone else came back through the (time) portal, so returned to the same time they left (plus elapsed time). It’s only Sydney who was displaced by 53 days, so she’s the only case where they need to decide how to handle it.
The rest of the crew came back to the same time as they left because the portal was bi-directional as long as it was open. The anomaly didn’t get revealed until Harem started having memories of future events.
Harem’s memories would have tipped them off that the portal involved time travel/displacement. This would have given them reason to start considering how to pay individuals transported into the future. Fifty Three days should have been long enough to resolve the issue.
Yeah it seems that sent me really does focus on the details more then the big picture. Then again this situation not exactly certain what the big picture is.
Truthfully, the military would pay Sydney for the two months plus all the hazard bonuses. And Arianha would have no say in it. Max might, but I doubt it.
Backward time travel might be an issue if you have to live through history again. “You were thrown back four centuries and had to come back ‘The long way, but we can only pay you since the Revolutionary war…”
Military gets paid monthly, not when they clock in. Reserves are slightly different with standby vs activated.
You know, depending on your knowledge set, drawing a salary would be worth a lot less than just using your knowledge of present-day technology, physics, history, and financial planning to address any wealth issues you were having at the time.
Yeah, any savings on time-travel to the future by adopting a policy of subjective time will be countered (at least over short time-periods) by the losses from applying such a policy to time-travel to the past. For regular mortals, there’s a limit to how much back-pay they can accrue since they’re unlikely to outlive their own (subjective) lifetime, but you’d want to consider the possibility of an immortal accidentally getting sent back to around the moment of the Big Bang and submitting a claim for thirteen billion years of subjective time…
This particular situation is complicated by the matter of Sydney’s cover – though I’m sure Arianna can explain that, as the “training” took place offworld part of the costs were covered by the hosts…
In general, over short time-periods, where no other adjustments are made, my instinct would be to use calendar time rather than subjective time – if only because it means you can just let the computer go ahead and make the regular payments at the regular times, rather than having to wrangle the system into doing something unusual. It also makes budgeting much simpler – rather than needing a dedicated contingency fund for time-travel-related back-pay, you can just budget for everyone’s normal pay rates.
Over longer periods, there are a couple of different scenarios to consider. In one, you know from the start that the time traveler is still alive and possibly also (roughly) when they went; in the other, they’re just plain missing, and at some point get declared legally dead, until they turn up again. The latter points to a reasonable policy for the former – give them full pay for the period until they would be declared legally dead, then treat them as dead, but set up a trust fund to conserve their assets. Over significant timescales, there’s a non-negligible risk of the trust fund getting wiped out in a crash, or of it growing to encompass a significant portion of the world’s economy, but my gut says (and I don’t have the economic training to know how good my gut’s opinion is) that the most likely outcome is that inflation and the trust fund’s own growth would mostly cancel out, so someone being gone a thousand years would be only slightly better off when they returned than when they left, despite their personal net worth in old money being somewhere in the billions… Unless, of course, it’s funnier or more dramatic to go another way.
Another accounting option would be to simply cap back-pay at the value of a return trip to the traveler’s original time (plus reasonable elapsed time). Someone genre-savvy enough would probably count on people returning to their own time on long enough trips anyway…
Based on the last panel, they seem to be making about 9 million USD every month. For scale, Jeff Bezos makes that amount in an hour.
I don’t think that Adrianna’s comment is meant to be taken literally.
My vote for what happens with pay as a result of time travel shenanigans (assuming forward travel) is that the paychecks get invested, the returns get reinvested, and then ARCHON pays for all the person’s expenses. Once the person reenters the main time-stream, all the extra money generated from investments as well as a single missed paycheck is then awarded to the person.
At this point, Sydney should have already been debriefed… What kind of Mickey Mouse outfit is archon anyway?
I’m seriously impressed.. you just invented the discipline of Temporal Accounting. WTG!
I don’t think what Sydney actually “time traveled,” but more experienced a version of time dilation that you’d see in approaching the speed of light. That is, as you approach the speed of light, the time you experience is slower than the time experienced by a stationary observer. While the rest of the team’s wormhole transits were virtually instantaneous, her star drive orb may have some “time passes, but not for you” issues. So while to her, the transit from the Alari planet to the station seemed instantaneous, to the outside world, it didn’t.
no Sydney and the team instantly traveled forward 51 days in the time stream, then dabbler after getting back asked Cora to pick Sydney up at the Alari home world on the day on the future they all got there before.
it then took two days time to get back to earth.
there was no time dilation at any point in this story just pure sci-fi/ magic space travel that gets around the need for time dilation.
Actually? There is precedent for this in the Military. Being declared MIA.
If you’re declared MIA, you get backpay for the time you were MIA, be it in a prison cell, or amnesiac on a beach, or what.
Captain America? Would be decently rich.
If I remember correctly, his ass(ets) were frozen for that period. :)
They were frozen, yeah, but he was still owed back pay.
In fact, even in the comics he got back pay of about a million dollars. Different calculations and variable could make it as much as four million and change, but given the sliding time line of when he actually was revived and variety of factors $1 million seems like a pretty good estimate for the comic writers.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/captain-america-owed-back-pay
Anyway, Arianna’s worry about having to pay 1000 years of salary is a bit overblown. They wouldn’t be paying some giant thousand years of pay and interest all at once, they’d be putting her salary into her account every month for a thousand years. Since her salary is some unknown number, probably in the $1-10 million range that would be a bigger bite than for Captain America being frozen, but it would still be a tiny fraction of the DOD budget. Adjustments for pay rises in response to inflation would be offset by increases in budget due to inflation, interest would be payed by her bank, or possibly by whatever investments a trust set up for her. If the DOD or a derivative organization still exists a thousand years from now there should be no problem with paying her. If they don’t exist then they don’t have to pay her at all.
What Sydney needs to worry about now is that all her fellow recruits after nearly 2 months have probably graduated basic training. She was coming into the program late for them as it was and they were not going to hold them up waiting for her. It’s very likely that Sydney might be the only recruit now.
Or worse. She’s the senior recruit in a new class of newbies. She. Sydney. Is the looked-up-to “voice of authority” for at least a few minutes or hours. Do not dare to underestimate what she could do with that.
I had completely forgotten the other recruits, and there would almost certainly be many more by now as people with powers came forward now that it’s ‘safe’ for them to be in the open.
Sydney being their primary peer example is a horrifying thought.
88uif dave doe not run with this, I’ll…..shout obscene things at my computer screen…? Hell of it is, she could make a really decent lead recruit… If she could focus!