Grrl Power #1395 – Iron maidenform
What, indeed is going on? Get ready for the most shocking reveal… no, you all 100% know what the crowd gathered outside of the funnel cake stand is doing.
The general consensus is that you’re not supposed to sell high-tech stuff to people from pre-FTL planets. That said, if someone is on Fracture Station, they have access to some form of FTL transportation, so the vendors aren’t exactly required to card anyone, or perform any sort of advanced scan on customers. In the incredibly unlikely event that some STL generation barge drifted into orbit of the station… STL is “Slower Than Light,” in case you were flummoxed… If a sub-light ship did arrive at the station, an even that has never actually happened to date, then everyone would probably be okay selling them some engine upgrades, because 1) It’s just so unlikely, given the size of space, and to a race with radio telescopes, Fracture Station reads as a really odd, mostly obscured magnetar, so why would you send your generation ship anywhere near it, and 2) by the time you get there from where ever you’re coming from, there’s a reasonable chance that your species would have developed much faster ships and are already there. That or they might have experienced one of the great filters, like a self-destructive war on the scale that extincted them or at best they’re all Mad Maxing it for the last gallon of drinkable water, or they climate changed themselves to death and you’re the last of your species. So, heyyyyyy… Congratulations? Have a barely Faster Than Light Engine on us, buddy. And some funnel cakes. The bad news is that Fracture Station is a massive commerce and diplomacy hub, and every remotely habitable planet or asteroid nearby is claimed by someone and the nearest unclaimed place is 7,700 light years away. You know what? I’m going to throw in this Class E terraforming unit, on the house. With that, you might be able to find something workable within 900 light years.
Digit would very much be at home in a steampunk setting, where people are used to carrying an active furnace on their backs and 120 pounds of assorted brass gears, only half of which actually seem to be connected to anything useful. She’s never built anything that a sane person would describe as sleek, but then, she’s never had access to a hoverwagon-load of not-quite cutting edge consumer level alien tech before. Which may or may not enslicken her gadgeteering, but it should maybe give her some new ideas. My money is on her building a new, more powerful kind of harpoon with ergonomics that can only be used by someone with tentacle arms. Because it’s more efficient that way. If you have tentacle arms. Pointing out that neither she, nor anyone she knows has tentacle arms has about a 12% chance of registering with her. Because it’s more efficient, you see.
Ooh, look! A new vote incentive! And it’s updated with color!
Well, in progress, obviously. I have another one that’s actually a bit further along, but everyone was all, “Sydney Kobold vote incentive!” So I switched to this one. Plus the other one was a multi-character picture so it will actually take me longer to finish. I hope to have an update for this one each week, so stay tuned. There is a slightly higher res version on Patreon.
By the way, this gunmetal blue-ish background and teal pencils are how I draw the comic. I set it up this way so I don’t have to spend all day staring into a bright white blank page.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Bottom left I’m seeing cameos by a Zygon (shapeshifting race from Doctor Who), Roberto (criminally insane robot from Futurama, likes stabbing things, once killed a man with a sock), and a Sontaran (clone warrior race from Doctor Who, may or may not have an obsession with melting people with acid).
For dr Who references on this page don’t forget Lalifrey.
Looks like ROM: Spaceknight is in the crowd to the right there as well.
…
Digit needs a minder with a pre-rolled newspaper on hand at all times.
I can’t wait till till there is a cultural misunderstanding with Syd
I guess Ætholith bioframes can get really big. Not too surprising; I hope this one got some lessons in how to move carefully before wandering out onto the general station. See Tenri/Lapha/Sydney and shenanigans for reflexes involving tails when going through doors or lack thereof.
Digit’s been fairly smart here in getting simple, obsolete stuff. One of the problems with reverse-engineering things is that after a few iterations initially needed stuff has been pared down or out, and you don’t know you need it until you make the version that did need it. Then you turn it on and let the magic smoke out.
See also trying to recreate a cellphone using the newest version sold now instead of one from twenty years ago.
The latest version is basically one chip, containing about a billion transistors; you would need an electron microscope to even see a lot of the details. The rest of the case contents is one big battery. Why are the electrodes the shape they are? Lots of iteration on the shape of the electrodes, the shape of the battery, the exact composition of the electrolyte, etc.
The old one actually had different chips on a board wired together, with a fairly simple battery that could be removed. Much easier to try to replicate.
For that matter, you likely wouldn’t even be able to make an antenna that could produce signals that could connect to a current network, since that involved a fair amount of iteration.
Also second hand electronics betray usage patterns and are cheap enough to buy multiple of.
A. Maxima seems to have a problem(pretty high profile).
B. Altus walks around with a full size weapon and ammunition in public view. Wow. What kind of hellscape is fracture station? Look I understand that I should expect American scenery in an American comic, but I just happen to know that walking around with what appears to be a fully automatic weapon and ammunition in public is not legal anywhere in the USA(yes, one can get a full automatic weapon with a license, but public carry is still restricted), the rest of the North and South-american continent or the rest of the world for that matter, so apparently this’s an adjustment Dave made for story purposes.
My current hypothesis is a hfy style explanation.
With a belief in a right to assault weaponry the writer can get convinced that advanced civilizations let their citizens carry more and more dangerous weapons, but in that case, why is he the only one to carry any weapon in public.
So a question. Just what form of FTL is common in this story? Wormhole drive, warp drive, dimensional tunneling? Something more exotic?
Hm, does that cart use the antigravs from The Matrix?