Grrl Power #947 – Mass Spec…ulation
I thought it’d be amusing to show Sydney moon-jumping around and for some reason I thought that would be best illustrated from the foot up. So, a slightly odd page. I regret not being able to make it all feet – not because I’m trying to satisfy some foot fetish checklist or anything, but it would have been a nice touch thematically.
Really, they should have done this with the orbs straight away. They did scan them for radiation, but it didn’t occur to them that they might be outgassing. I don’t know how fast Mass Spectrometers are, or if they have to scan for one thing at a time, or do everything at once. I guess whatever the answer is, this particular Mass Spec is going to take a few hours because someone took it apart to see how it worked and maybe had a few extra bits and bobs left over when they put it back together.
No, I don’t have a Who’s Who entry for “The List.” Yes, I have considered doing that.
I was going to post that since Dabbler is normally digitigrade, (yes, technically unguligrade, but I think Dabbler would agree that word is insufficiently sexy) walking around on super high heels wouldn’t present much of a challenge for her. But that’s because I momentarily forgot that she only looks like a beach bunny because of her glamor, not because she’s a shapeshifter. So, she’s still just walking around on her hooves. Even though her glamor is like a fully realized illusion with full tactile components, so you could give her a foot rub, and you would feel a foot while doing it. She would feel the contact being mapped to the correct part of her foot, which would be important if she was going to react correctly – and since succubi glamors are pretty hard core, it would be dumb if there was such an easy way to detect them.
Not that all succubi have digitigrade legs and hooves. As with most other demons, there’s a lot of morphological variety, but since their glamors will usually have to deal with hiding horns, and occasionally have to hide wings or tails, they are extensible to cover things like hooves and extra arms.
Note that when Dabbler is glamored as a plantigrade human wearing heels, she tends to stand slightly pigeon-toed, but in her “natural” guise, she stands duck-footed, which is evidently the opposite of pigeon-toed.
The new vote incentive is up! Some of you got sort of invested in Lapha and Garamm, so here she is testing out her new duds. I don’t know if or when they’ll show up in the comic again, (probably more a question of ‘when’) but we’ll have to see if she got any other options besides the tail. Personally I’d go for retractable, venomous fangs, but presumably if you get those, you also have to get a special upgraded pancreas or liver or something, in case you accidentally bite the inside of your own cheek with your fang.
As usual, there are a few variants over at Patreon, and as is becoming more common, a little follow-on comic.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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So will Sydney ruin any roller coaster she gets on now?
I was thinking about this last page, imaging her gripping the safety bar as her feet and back lift up as the car descends, basically being like a balloon tied to the car.
this add if the same thing will happen with other vehicles with a rapid descent like an airplane.
chances are the creators of these orbs just didn’t consider flying without using them.
The orbs seem pretty intelligently designed, it’s possible that they are only designed to dampen falling speed, so if she’s in contact with something like sitting in a seat in a roller coaster, or standing on a plane, she isn’t falling and it shouldn’t affect her.
If they have some way of measuring the local presence of gravity and differentiating it from simple acceleration (which by IRL relativity is not possible, but space magic), then they could oppose the gravitational acceleration via “feather falling” but not other forms of movement. So it’s possible that feather fall only protects her from actual falling and the like, not from, say, being thrown into the ground by a villain. Not only due to the above but for writing reasons – if Sydney passively can just avoid being thrown into the ground it can remove some sense of danger from being in air.
it would have to differentiate given it is gravity manipulation as it has to be correcting the course of the feather fall to go straight down from her position, because even at a slow relative drift she should be moving East ward as she descends opposing the Earth’s rotation….which she is also descending, so the feather fall is actively keeping the largest gravitational mass centered for the fall but reducing the effect enough to slow the descent but also correcting for any rotational drift.
I like that Dabbler has taken a real shine to Sydney and respects her, even to the point of not wanting to be on “The list”. Add to that Sydney has spotted things that Dabbler missed (“Too bad you couldn’t just place a trace spell on a rock and throw it through the portal”) And Sydney took down the kaiju monsters, alone, and impressed Cora.
They are both chaotic good nerds.
well she’s one of the few that truly understands what the Nth level tech means for what Sdy could become. she’s basically a small g god in the making after all
Just imagine, the orbs having been separated from their previous owner, landing on a desolate protoplanet and using it’s collective tools to terraform it so that they are more easily found again…
@Random Guy: Doubt the orbs have been on Earth for that long already. One of the warp targets is a space station after all – I may be leaning a bit far out of the window but I don’t think that thing has been ‘in buisness’ since before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
We know they haven’t been on Earth that long, but it does make me wonder if the Green orb’s passive node might be responsible for the creation of Supers on Earth…
I suspect if the orbs are a higher dimensional life form’s toy then then the creation of supers could just as easily be due to some other toy, possibly a character creator *avatar system* buried somewhere with a rock pressing against the on button so its just gone crazy, keying in on random subconscious mind to produce characters for a game that isn’t even going on…like the voice from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, only making people it keys in on into supers…and without the dying part.
THE LIST
All you need to do is lookup all the “prorevenge” and “nuclearrevenge” posts on Reddit and if Leon digs into the accounts posting those he’ll find Sydney.
Imagine getting Sydney’s list book and finding various symbols and check marks against people’s names, including your own, and being forced to wonder if she’s already done something and you just never knew it was her.
OOofh. Pro revenge tends to ruin years. Nuclear… it ruins lives.
Not saying Sydney isn’t up to either. Just saying, done improperly, they can accrue huge karmic debts.
I think of the list as a better signifier of unacceptable behavior for the more unsocialized of her friends and customers. Some, if not most, of these are probably pretty bad at reading body language and other situational cues. She is the owner of a Comics and Games store after all.
So does the passive upward acceleration less than g, constant or depend on the gravity felt? Does it turn off when she is not in the air, if not she is going to have to walk and maneuver like she is in very low gravity all the time which isn’t normally convenient. Even if it only is on whenever she is in midair it will make normal movements awkward. Maybe it turns on off based on mental control similar to how she moves the orbs around? would that still count as a passive? If it is controlled like that is it only on/off? Slight maneuverability in air like in a video game platformer while using 2 other orbs would be pretty sweet.
This opens up new possible ‘stunt’ options.
1) If she had grabbed Max before falling off the roof, would they both fall slowly?
2) If her personal gravity field is lower, can she now carry enormous loads?
3) How long will it take her to figure out trying to fly using a fire extinguisher like in WALL-E?
(3a. This could have negative effects. If she shoots a firearm, does she now get kicked backwards?)
Seeing how advanced the orbs are. I assume they just turn off when Sydney subconsciously wants them off.
She’s going to go right up that obstacle course wall now.
Hi, I know it may sound strange and ominous but can you add to your will a line that the general storyline and (more important) the skill Tree fully annoted would be revealed in case of your death? With the recent death of Kentaro Miura I stress over an untimely death of authors of awesome story but slow pace. I sincerely wish for you to finish your comic but the future is uncertain and your comic has already 10 years while being nowhere near the half-point
Bringing new meaning to the term “morbid curiosity”.
I grieve, for many artists, who died too soon!
And then there are those who cannot pass soon enough…
*looks at Tatsuya Ishida with terrible sadness and disappointment*
Ummm… Take a dekko at “Freefall 02144 January 27, 2012 at http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2200/fc02144.htm .
Dave’s still got a way to go here :)
There is a plethora of mass spectrometry devices and techniques. Among them interestingly enough is an “Orbitrap” mass spectrometer.
Mass-specs can actually be pretty damn fast. The idea is that you take some substance, heat it to vaporisation, bombard it with an eletron beam to ionize it (electrically charge it), then you accelerate it. Next, you send it through a precicely tuned magnetic field.
A Lorentz force is then generated that scales with the charge and magnetif field, which should be basically constant, causing the ions to curve. Since the force exerted is constant, and force = mass * acceleration, ions with different mass will undergo a different acceleration, so their curvature is different depending on the mass.
The different curvatures spread out the ions acoording to mass, just like different wavelengths in a prism, generating a spectrum. (Mass Spectography, generating a spectrum based on the mass difference). Knowing the exact charge and magnetic field applied means you cna now calculate the mass of all the ions in your spectrum, which you can use to determine exactly what the sample was.
There are a lot of methods for generating the ions that fly down the MS, not all of which involve heating the bulk of the subject to vaporisation. But they do all involve one way or another of effectively knocking tiny bits off it, which could be difficult given the Orbs’ demonstrated imperviousness to just about anything they’ve so far been subjected to.
I suspect the inference is they are testing to see if anything is being created around the Orb. Not the Orb’s composition itself. Which is an interesting set of test run themselves. For example, if the Orb dies direct energy to matter conversation, or is transmuting existing elements in some way.
Like the Air Shield. Did make all new oxygen molecules (cause monatomic oxygen would be bad)? If it did, how did it create the atoms?
Did it pull saturated O2 and condense it out of the water? If so does it regulate gas exaggerate, and saturate the nearby water with CO2 and other waste cases? This is kind of important for air/water pressure.
Did it split the water? If it split the water what did it do with the hydrogen? Same questions about air/water pressure.
There are tests that can be designed for most of that. And falls into the less used “lab science montage”.
Breathable air is mostly nitrogen (or some other relatively innert gas) Pure oxygen in toxic.
IIRC, a Spectrometer works by firing various types of light and radiation through a gas and seeing what frequencies are absorbed. The pattern of absorption would tell you basically everything that’s in it all at once.
That’s the general idea for the most common spectrometer types, working in the IR/Visible/UV ranges of light. Each different ‘building block’ of the material absorbs at a different set of frequencies – but it can often be an art to figure out how the absorption peaks seen translate to the full molecule, as the individual ‘building blocks’ thus described are relatively small parts and many look very similar. (Usually we cheat, and compare it against a library of spectra measured from known samples!)
There are also other types of spectrometer, which act in different ways. The common point is that they all produce a graph of response intensity against some control variable – a spectrum. That control variable might be absorption frequency, or mass of molecular fragment ion, or nucleomagnetic resonance shift, or…
No, that is not how a mass spectrometer works. Or a Raman spectrometer, for that matter.
How does this affect her going down stairs? Or riding an elevator? If she’s in a scrap and not holding the fly ball, will she have to wait until she floats lazily to the ground if she gets knocked off her feet?
A} alone or in pairs. B} She makes an orbitty sound. C} She springs, she flings, does 6 different things. D} Everyone knows she’s Sydney
Does she have stormy eyes that flash at the sound of lies?
I think that WAS an elevator they were in for the first 8 panels.
I was wondering if Sydney was going to have a problem with planes or high-speed elevators, but I imagine this is more “it affects you when you want it to (and turns off when you don’t)”. Control is probably like how she moves them around.
People on “The List” aren’t ACTIVE targets. The idea behind those types of lists for those of us with ADHD is that we go back over them periodically (hopefully DAILY, but…) and take notes on things that happened and DIDN’T happen. So she probably remembers WHY she’s mad at that one weird guy at the comic books store that wanted her to order a comic that was a give-away, but she’s not going to go after him.
I think that WAS an elevator they were in for the first 8 panels.
why for there be 4 color path lines on each side of the sign when only 2 lines generate from each side?
Two more function blocks, hidden by Maxima and Dabbler?
1 upvote here for a foot-fetish-satisfying vote incentive. Maybe Harem giving herselves a foot massage in various stages of undress?
maybe it curbs/negates her basic needs? I mean there cannot have been much water and food on the planet she was stuck on (so maybe she doesn’t need to drink or eat but she can still feel hungry and thirsty it’s just she won’t starve or dehydrate)
anyone remember for how many days sydney was on the planet for? I think it was mentioned to be fifty-something I don’t remember before she gained warp and I don’t think a few energy bars and maybe a water bottle or two would last
she was on the planet for less than 2 days. the portal shoved her 30 some odd days into the future. link to relevant comic likely incoming.
Less than an hour actually. So yeah, not much need to drink
thought it was longer since she had the whole taping the orbs to her hands to sleep thing down to a habit when she got back (that’s why penny set her up to see the shrink)
I think that can safely be written up to intensity of experience, rather than duration.
If she goes down an elevator will she hit the top if it goes down faster than she falls
Seeing Dabbler’s choice in footwear,I’m amazed that Sydney has asked, “Don’t you find those hard to stand on? I sure do!!”
I expect the new passive might actually help with that. ^_^
I expected to see the orbs around Sydney’s hair as she was upside-down. Don’t they float in relation to her head when they’re not in their carrying case?
Actually, you do have a point……..
She can control them with some intuitive telekinesis. It’s not unrealistic she’s keeping all of them still to make it easier to read the one in the machine. . .maybe more likely than a simple art mistake.
Looking at the page structure, I’d read it as general discussion in the meeting room for the first three rows, pause on realisation that the lab analysis was overdue, and then a relocation and time skip before the last row.
Of course, we know that Sydney can control the Orbs’ position relative to herself at will. Sydney’s doing a backflip, the Orbs are doing a frontflip, and Maxima is torn between telling her to pay attention and respect for her multitasking?
That probably makes sense. Now that I’m looking closely, I realize I can’t really tell what’s going on on this page. Much as I appreciate the attempt at creating something novel with the foot scene, in effect it’s just too many close-ups and too little context.
Arc-Sparq… this is either really really high level genius or insanity… possibly both very well blended using a mass collider…
Oh, that Girl is a Genius, alright.
*looks off in the direction of Mechanicsburg*
Or Duckburg.
We haven’t had any race cars yet.
Are you quite sure?
Been a blur, you know.
Get a load of those heels. Better hope Dabbler’s feet are super tough or she’s on her way to foot trouble.
she has hooves. the shoes are mostly an illusion.
Oh right. Still in her position I wouldn’t want to make it harder than it needed to be to walk around.
Even being an illusion, those are far and away the most uncomfortable-looking shoes I’ve ever clapped eyes on. My ankles hurt just *imagining* standing in those :D
https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2016/01/Scary-Beautiful-high-heel-shoes-Leanie-van-der-Vyver_dezeen.jpg
those’ll make Dabbler’s shoes look practically sensible
*giggles in ballet toe boots*
The problem I see with using a mass spectrometer on the gas orb is the ‘heat them up untill they glow’ part of the operation.
There’s a semi-related area of measurement that looks at the bands of colors that are diminished by through or reflecting off of a material instead. I used a reflective spectrometer (not a mass spectrometer) to do semi-non-destructive tests on materials back in the day. (The materials needed to fit into the device, which is the only part that was at all destructive). According to the manual, it could also work on gases if you put a mirror in the chamber, but the sensitivity was a lot lower.
The speed of operation depended on exactly how detailed you were being. One spectra was assessed at a time, so if you’re stepping one wave length at a time, it runs ten times faster than if you’re stepping a tenth of a wave length at a time. There’s also the question of the range of spectra that one covers. The device I used was able to go from near infra red to UV B, but there’s no reason a device couldn’t have a longer range.
As with a mass spectrometer, the results would probably be inconclusive due to the fact that it’s not running on a pure sample. While there is an area of science that focuses on working with mixed samples, it’s my understanding that they have better devices to detect various specific types of molecules, so it’s usually infeasible to do.
That said, the two techniques could be combined. Do normal spectroscopy to see what the gas looks like, and do whatever the other tests are called to determine as much as we can about what the gas is, so we know what spectroscopy results are really expected versus what is new. If I’m not mistaken, the normal procedure is to assume a “normal atmosphere”, which can introduce a certain amount of error if it’s used in a “non-standard” atmosphere.
In any event, unless the “air” ball is actively doing something, it’s not going to find anything. It’s entirely plausible that what the air ball is passively doing is assessing the environment, so that when the user needs it, it knows *what* atmosphere to produce.
It’s perfectly feasible to measure reflection spectra from a solid or liquid surface remotely, either through an air gap or via fibre-optics. Obviously, those will each have their respective baseline to take into account: either the absorption of the glass fibre, or of whatever distance of air it’s shooting through (which will be where your mirror comes in). Gases are a bit harder because there’s not so much material per volume, but it’s mainly an engineering difficulty of getting enough path length in a practical sample size (again, mirrors).
Impure samples are an issue for all types of analysis, not just spectrometers. Each part of the results generally come from relatively small parts of the molecule rather than the whole thing at once, so if you’re seeing parts A, B, C, and D it can be tricky to tell how they’re combined. There are some measurement techniques that can help to separate things, but usually it’s just a matter of using two bits of kit together rather than having anything radically different or of better grade – for instance, chromatography to separate out the components of the mix followed by a choice of spectroscopy options to identify what each component is. If anything, the need to combine often means compromising performance of each part relative to a stand-alone.
You could get a fair reading just flushing gas of a known composition past it, and running it past the spectrometer. They’re not trying to find out what it’s made of, but just if it’s emitting something.
Re_”The List”:
I’ve always assumed that each entry contained…
— the DATE of the Transgression
— the NAME of the Transgressor
— the CRIME that said ‘Transgressor’ perpetrated upon the poor, defenseless Sydney
(insert your own level of “snark” here)
…but for some reason, it’s taken this long for me to wonder…
…just how far back in time does this list extend?.
What was the “trigger-event”, which “gave birth” to this list?
How much later was it, before she started her “anti-list” (for “praise-worthy” events) in the BACK of the booklet?
Am I the only one who worries that this may be merely the MOST_RECENT_EDITION of this list, because she may have filled page-after-page of multiple booklets over the years?
If so, then how many booklets have been filled so far?
Re_”Taking this long for a thorough scan of the Orbs”:
In my mind, it’s not that Archon distrusts Dabbler’s scanning tech. Rather, this is the “Scientific Method” in practice. The attitude is, “If the results are real, then they can be reproduced & recorded in a reliable manner”.
While the Orbs were initially scanned for the full spectrum of radiation, scanning for matter (including gasses) is a lengthier process. When gas-production was thought to be only a “non-passive” process, they probably thought that they had the leisure to schedule this at a more convenient time. Now, however, there’s the possibility of a constant, passive, gas-production that’s on-going, & this is a more concerning matter. In particular, where is this coming from…
— is gas being MANUFACTURED? How? From WHAT?
— is gas getting teleported from elsewhere? If so, then WHERE? Is it strictly in-coming, or is (CO2) “traded-out” for (O2)? Is it ONLY (CO2)? Because if water-vapor doesn’t go-out also, then a lengthy “encapsulation” might get rather humid. That sounds merely ‘annoying’ while you’re on a planet, but it sounds LETHAL while you’re in space!
I’m gonna go with the most wild of guesses on the first transgressor being…
Her first period.
You have been added to the list.
No reason to assume this started at puberty. The list could’ve easily been something Sydney started well before that.
The List Vs. The Pit. For there can only be One ominous ‘The _____’
ON_A_SEPARATE_NOTE:
Maybe it’s just the evolution of the Artist’s style, but it looks to me as though Sydney’s bust (in the penultimate panel) is a tad larger than it’s usually been, since her “debut” so many hundreds-of-pages ago…
…what if the remaining “Mystery Orb” was gradually increasing her “pulchritude”, to be more in keeping with her peers in the “super” community?
That would negate the premise of the series.
She’s a female super without the #1 power.
It would work in a different series and/or medium.
Some woman GAINING superpowers only that they fully manifest over a period of days/weeks.
What was that comic with the Amazon and the talking genius ape?
It took her a few weeks to reach 7 foot tall. Had an unusual profile.
For Gen13’s Fairchild it was instantaneous.
Angel and the Ape. Are you talking the original, from the 1960’s, or the Phil Foglio version? (I’m only really familiar with Phil’s version.)
https://www.amazon.com/ANGEL-APE-1-PHIL-FOGLIO/dp/B001GIMW56
Huh. That’s not it.
I was sure there was a comic where the woman slowly transformed into a 7′ Amazon.
She had a pile of sneakers in her room. The ones that became too small for her feet.
She went jogging and accidentally ran out of town because she had infinite stamina.
Crossover characters (Could it possibly have been Gen 13?) saw an Interociter in her lab.
And most noticeably, that no one else seemed to notice, was that the ridge of her nose
went halfway up her forehead, giving her a slightly Picasso appearance.
Anndd… there was a talking ape there somewhere.
I think I know what you are talking about, but I cannot remember the comic name. Hopefully it will eventually come to me.
@[jayessell]:
Can you help us narrow-down the search a bit?
Any hint of who the publisher was:
Archie Comics?
Harvey Comics?
Image Comics?
Valiant Comics?
Dark Horse?
DC?
Marvel?
etc.
Digit: Holy Crap! Your producing a aerosol based oxidizing sterilization agent with absorption properties and properties found in surfactants!
* (I.E Air freshener)
Sydney: OH MY GOD! How poisonous is it!
Digit: Depends on your opinion on lavender?
It really irks me that despite being a part of my field of study, I have never actually learned to use a mass spectrometer. It is a very wide field of study after all.
Anyhow, from what I do know the answer to whether it will take a long time or not is that it depends on what they get out of it. If it’s just everyday atmospheric gasses then the analysis should go relatively quickly, if it’s some super complex organic molecule then they might not be able to tell much about it at all, without something to compare it to. And if the orb produces some alien elements that lie outside the normal periodic table then the diagram will probably look very weird.
I’m in immunology ok, HPLC and MS is on the other side of the field, all the way past bacteriology, and they use a specific kind of MS called MALDI-TOF.
I understand that Max was on her way to the pool earlier, but the fact that she still hasn’t put boots on by now does kinda put the lie to your “not making a foot fetish page” claim.
…For those who don’t know, when you stand pigeon-toed, with your toes aimed inward toward each other, that actually works to tilt the pelvis and torque the thigh bones a little. This in turn will open up a slight gap between the thighs at their tops (presuming slender-ish thighs). So if you’ve ever seen ‘daylight’ on a model wearing leggings, that’s how they get away with it. The gap has very little to do with how actually skinny a person is (which would require literal body-damaging levels of starvation), and quite a lot to do with how a person stands. Pigeon-toed also tilts the gluteal muscles outward (because the pelvis is tilting that way).
Duck-footed (heels inward, toes outward) will tuck in the rump and “close the gap” because it can often be created simply by clenching those gluteal muscles, tucking everything under & together….which I’m sure we can all agree with Dabbler isn’t exactly smexy-looking by human standards.
…So for those guys who want a gal “skinny enough to have daylight between her thighs!” YOU ARE BEING FOOLED BY HOW THEY STAND & THE ANGLE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHY!!! (…Just an FYI from a former model.)
Is that The Supermodel Walk?
That, or my wife just happens to be that skinny. Which, yeah, actually happens in Asian women.
My wife isn’t a former model, but she is a really skinny Asian woman, and it’s a real thing in (some) skinny Asian women.
Not asian.
Not female.
Not really all that skinny either.
Still find it really hard to walk in a way such that I DON’T have a thigh gap.
As for the passive on the “lifesupport” orb, I’d say it’s probably constantly scanning its user to make sure it’s emitting the perfect mixture of gasses for the user’s species. LIke that palm-scanner thingy at the stall that sells grakz back at the spaceport, checking the bio-compatibility of various species to assert which foods are good, bad, and/or dangerously spicy. It would make absolute sense for the ball to have this ability as its passive, too.
Take for instance that partially plant-like alien whom Sydney named Aster. If she is indeed partially plant-like, Aster would probably require an atmosphere with a little more carbon dioxide (maybe 2%?) than humans like to be truly comfortable when breathing. This means if Aster wielded the orbs, the orbs would need to know how to make the right kind of air for her, versus their current wielder, Sydney the human, who shouldn’t have more than 1% CO2 in her environment.
People always assume the straw is working together with other straws to break the camel’s back, but what if it’s traveling at a significant portion of the speed of light relative to the camel? An ‘oh my god’ straw, if you will.
Near lightspeed straws is not what the metaphor is meant to represent. I think any straw accelerated to that speed would burn up well before reaching the camel. XD
Well, if completely vaporising the camel (and a significant surrounding area) counts as breaking its back…
maybe the straw they’re talking about is the boba straw someone jammed into the camel’s back like it was a Capri-Sun?
Podiatrists approve of this page … but not of Dabblers shoes :-)
Whether this new passive affects her on an elevator is an easy test – she flies (or walks/teleports/etc) to one of the upper floors, opens the emergency hatch and stands directly under it. Someone pushes the button to go down, and see what happens. Pretty much zero risk to Sydney or property.
Some maneuvers in the Osprey should test other scenarios. I, for one, would like to see if the passives work when the orbs are not in orbit. What if the passive on the life support orb only works when she’s asleep? Maybe it puts her into a hibernation state that slows her metabolism or the like?
I am still suspicious that of all the orbs she’d grab when flailing underwater the one that could produce a pocket of breathable air around her is the one that went to her hand.
If that’s not its passive ability then I’d suspect something else is at hand, like a passenger.
The orbs’ movement is thought reactive. It is plausible that it reacted to the thought of ‘I need air!’ while she was reaching for the fly orb, and responded instead.
This better not get in the way of Frix cuddle times. Sydney was probably looking forward to that
Now for the real question… can she turn it off and on at will. Otherwise some things like trampolines and the necessity to actually fall correctly are going to suck in the future.
Possibly activating the encapsulated node allows the orb to activate on it’s own when it senses the owner needs it? Like how the Life Support Orb activated on it’s own and moved to her hand when she was under water and lost her breathing mask? And now the Flight Orb activated on it’s own when Sydney fell off the building.
the air orb seems like it did, but the flight orb I don’t see what you are referencing as she can call the orbs to her hand and knows what the flight orb is for so naturally she’d call it if she fell. the air one is only suspicious because she didn’t know that’s what it did.
But isn’t that the point? She could have called the flight orb (she said as much) but she didn’t. It activated on it’s own.
Perhaps activating the encapsulated node allows the Orbs to activate on their own when they sense their owner needs it? Like how the Life Support Orb moved to her hand and started producing air when Sydney lost her breathing mask under water? And just now we saw the Flight Orb kick in when she fell off a building…
Oh of course, NOW it suddenly posts my entry! ;)
Just realized – Dabbler and Sydney are both actually ADHD. Digit is classified as scatterbrained, but given that she has something “super” about her, its probably a mental efficiency increase, which likely looks a lot like ADHD.
That is gonna be a “fun” room after 2 hours of boredom.
Funny enough, in a lot of shapeshifter folklore, one of the common ways to notice a shapeshifter is because they don’t get the details of their assumed form quite right. Although I don’t like the idea that a particular type of shapeshifter has to make a specific mistake (hands being backwards, feet being backwards, back being hollow, feet being hooves), so I’d make a table of mistakes, lazy shortcuts, or improvements that a shapeshifter or glamour projector might make/employ, then roll to see which ones there are for characters to notice.
Things Brodder is not allowed to do in the Physics lab.
1) Use the IR Spectrometer to reheat his coffee
2) Post and rate everyone’s coffee making abilities using mass spectrometer, organic analyzer or laser density thingee
3) Relabel the IR Spectrometer Mr Coffee
4) use the vacuum sampling chamber to analyze bodily emissions of other students and staff – and post results.
5) Show the explosive nature of Instant Coffee to grads in the Microwave chamber unit and why they should never use it to make Coffee. Ground fresh beans or GTFO is not good science.
10) Set up a vacuum laser brewing device to make SPACE COFFEE (ie set up IR laser in vacuum chamber to boil water and force steam through grounds inside some extra glass tubing that was laying around. Note- when this was done to make alcohol the professor borrowed the design to send to his friends at MIT and Cornell. We ended up making space kahlua to give out to donors for the Applied Physics program also another way to dry foods and distill water and other organics in a purer form)
Note all of the above happened in Fall Winter of 88 Spring 89 saw new funding and a shit ton of rules specifically aimed at me.
Surprised that you didn’t manage to slip in a reference to 307 Ale.
The rules do specify the Physics lab…
No accelerator to miswire creating a tesseract that you can brew beer in?
the fly ball Did not give her Feather fall Until she was actually falling.
the air ball didn’t give her air (a lot of air very quickly)until she Appeared to be in danger of drowning.
I think the passive mode only activates if it’s needed.
I bet that if she had deliberately jumped off a diving board into that pool she would’ve fallen at the normal rate.
Feather fall is only continuing now because She is consciously keeping it going.
When she stops thinking about it, gravity will probably return to normal operation.
the air ball is not renewing her air inside the shield automatically because she’s been doing it manually,
long before it gets critical, so the passive never engages.
A additional Idea I had some time back, I think that -all- the supers Are N tec.
Sydney’s spheres are like a first person shooter video game, awarding points and equipment as she goes along,
but I think that under the ocean or a mountain somewhere there is a piece of N technology
that is running it’s version of a world of war craft game, filling out metaphysical character sheets
and then applying them to people according to It’s own mysterious criteria.
it’s the only explanation I can come up with for why supers only occur on earth,
and have such a wide range of powers and idealized bodies.
It’s being imposed from the outside.
How many hours until Sydney needs to pee?
Depends on whether Krona is in the building.