Coworkers of various sizes.
Transcript
Talita: Well, holler if you need brute force. Coming in?
Tod: I’m waiting for Killian. Poor bastard’s got short legs, even for a tailer. Lord knows why they’ve been sticking around here in gravity.
Killian walks over to where Talita and Tod stand. They are about a third Talita's height and half of Tod's height.
Killian: When do the interns get here again?
Tod: 10:00. If they aren’t hung over.
Killian: Well. It would buy us time to diagnose the sorter jams…
The trio walk into the plant together.
Talita: Are your temps giving you trouble?
Tod: Egh.
Killian: They’re college kids. Nice enough, kinda irresponsible.
Talita: Mine have been… I don’t know. I’m not a very good manager…
She grips her throat nervously.
Tod: Don’t let them bully you today.
Killian: Yeah, outdoors work is dangerous. They need to listen to you.
42 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 82”
T34_MT
i love seeing centaur walk on all four (all six in their case lol) they just look so silly in the best way possible
MyUniverseinaBox
Your character designs are so cool rawrhgh
Greenjoe
What work do Tod and Killian do at the plant? Last it was seen they were helping to move Cal’s servers.
Phlosioneer
Killian appears to be a mechanic.
evileeyore
Tod is the “internal mechanics manager”, Killian is, as mentioned by Phlosioneer, probably a mechanic in Tod’s team.
Tod and Talita are at the same managerial rank in the DIrtball hierarchy, but she still considers Tod a supervisor above her. Tod probably keeps hoping she’ll figure out how to “step up” into the role.
I think Talita has likely been Peter Principled (but is hanging in as best she can by taking more burden onto herself), She could handle the position if she had some training in Leadership, but that’s not usually something you learn in enginerding school, she needs to take some Aggressive Business Managerial courses.
aaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA
i have to wonder what exactly mel *did* that pissed off calcery so bad
Phlosioneer
Based on the context we have, there was a conversation that went extremely sour. Knowing Mel, he probably announced his plans for some upgrade or improvements to Cal’s accommodations as a surprise to Cal, but Cal didn’t want them and was insulted by the assumption without asking first. The specifics will probably stay murky.
My best guess is a gift drone/robot/avatar unit for the habitat area. Cal clearly didn’t have one, nor did they have a screen or interaction-terminal (Talita looked for comms, not a terminal). It seems Cal was likely audio-only on dirtball, although he said he mostly uses text in the between chapter AMA. That seems like a nice upgrade to socialize with people more easily, but that’s an intensely personal decision for an AI (based on Gabu-Gabu in the AMAs, Bip’s parent) and also Cal would probably be insulted by the implication that they weren’t able to socialize already. Meanwhile Mel would feel insulted after going through the effort of planning and getting admin approval and funding, and possibly already contacting a manufacturer. The whole 9 yards, just like he’s doing now with talita.
It seems his parental instincts never stopped after he left the orphanage. And coworkers don’t like to be treated like children.
Green Heron
One nitpick: Mel uses they / them. Otherwise, all very good theories.
Phlosioneer
Ou! I hadn’t noticed, sorry.
JoB
Aaaaand another one, looking at
https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Characters/sirawituv.png
– we already saw that humans (as well as every other sophont species, I assume) had to cut back on “helpful” additives (case in point, no perfume in the detergent Talita uses) to make products less of an accident waiting to happen when sold in a mixed-species setting. Are there still “brighteners” in the washing powder (i.e., substances that convert UV to blue light to cancel, to human eyes, the yellow-ish tint fabric normally has)? I can only guess that clothes treated with such do look *quite* weird to anyone actually capable of seeing UV … *especially* when you’re *trying* to give a “bright” impression to avians (*cough* Idrisah *cough*) …
JoB
Also, having referred to the setting as “mixed-species” above but seeing that relevant issues stem from radically different biochemistry between the entire respective *fauna*: Would terms like “multi-world”, “multi-ecosystem” etc. be preferred?
JoB
I just thought of something … in AMA 2, Bip commented “why the hell would I want a kid? They might turn out like *me!*”
However, they crammed a part of themself onto these phones – a part that is now acting autonomously, with no connection back to the ship. Isn’t that effectively a budding, making phones-Bip a legal, if mentally limited, offspring of ship-Bip?
(Yes, the AMA already mentions that they “(only) ever made piecemeal transfer copies of themself”, but at least in the IT I know, a partial “copy” of whatever software is a long shot from being *runnable* on its own …)
Tyrone the Miner
Been thinking the same. If Bip Cloned part of himself from the servers to the phones and not transferred part of himself then yes, we have 2 Bip….unless the 2 Bip´s will melt together to 1 Bip again when connection has been established, either for choice or programming since no true budding has occurred.
However the concept of a true AI or even an Artificial Consciousness is so outside our sphere of RL experience yet , that we will not be able to comprehend the full workings and for most people , not even parts of how it truly works.
Phlosioneer
It takes some time for the budding to diverge from the original, unless the ai intentionally seeds the bud with different memories and code. Bip could maintain this for a while, but especially when the other half is powered off; it’s less of a budding then and more like copying the phones’ alterations back to the original.
Phlosioneer
(Source: the AI sophant page)
forest
every time talita touches her neck nervously im like yooo same hat. love you talita you can do anything forever girl. that includes bullying the interns back
Paroxysmall
Talita talking to short people momence (that or it’s the hallway)
Joysweeper
I enjoy Tod’s Just Some Dude energy when his piebald patch is such an anime protagonist trait. It’s good contrast!
Solanuma
i found supervising temp workers is a very good substitiute exposure therapy for social anxiety. It’s impossible to feel inadequate while witnessing the ways someone can mess up the job you’ve been doing for years
waterfan2
Killian needs a scooter. Especially if they want to keep up with Talita, whose legs are literally as long as Killian is tall.
Jay Eaton
The plant has transport tricycles for employee use but I think Killian is too short for the human ones and the avian ones have a weird seat. RIP.
Guest
I love the rapport between the long-term residents
Nerdbird
The distance model Killian 😆
Hemocyanin
Stick figure avians, my beloved <3
dokki
Killian <3
JoB
I headcanon that Tod has actually a large, if thin, number “1” printed on the back of his shirt (rather than it being the edges of his shoulder blades plus that he’s turned slightly to the right in all panels we can see his back in the first place). 😀
Adrienne
me five seconds ago: oh boy I wonder what people are saying about this page so far. I’ll go take a look at the comments section
the comments section:
JoB
“Lookit me I’m a mathematician and you wouldn’t *believe* what pareidolia is like for *us*”? 😀
gnome_artificer
My first thought upon reading your comment was that Tod had an arrow shaped patch. He is, the last Jovian Airbender.
The Packbats
Assertiveness is such a difficult skill, but so important when safety is on the line.
friendly spacer
This is such a realistic representation of this specific scenario at work. I bet Talita didn’t expect mildly ranting to her coworkers to turn into “your temps not listening is *your* failing” … or maybe she did. Either way it’s probably not helping her situation at large.
(If I’m replying to anyone’s comment, not intended. Last time I managed to post my comment as a response.)
zaratustra
Huh, you got that from the talk? I read it more as “You’re in the right, Talita, don’t feel insecure about laying the law now”
friendly spacer
I’m sure that’s what they intended. They seem very kind (and they are correct), but it could read as a shifting of the blame from the temps to Talita, too. “Don’t let them [do that to you]” instead of “they shouldn’t be doing that” puts the responsibility solely on Talita. Plus, “y’all’s well-being literally depends on you being a good manager”, which Talita just admitted she isn’t. Again, this is very clever writing, because it doesn’t read as malice (and they are right!!!) … however, they are also being unhelpful. Especially since the author blurb mentioned that Talita still views Tod as a superior. She might feel chastised. Anyway, it’s all very subtle, which I like, and this is just my interpretation of the scene.
furubatsu
You read it as them blaming her? It felt to me more like they were trying to give her a pep talk so she can have the confidence to actually manage them.
friendly spacer
Absolutely but possibly an unhelpful one. They seem very kind (and they are correct), but it could read as a shifting of the blame from the temps to Talita, too. “Don’t let them [do that to you]” instead of “they shouldn’t be doing that” puts the responsibility solely on Talita. Plus, “y’all’s well-being literally depends on you being a good manager”, which Talita just admitted she isn’t. Again, this is very clever writing, because it doesn’t read as malice (and they are right!!!) … however, they are also being unhelpful. Especially since the author blurb mentioned that Talita still views Tod as a superior. She might feel chastised. Anyway, it’s all very subtle, which I like, and this is just my interpretation of the scene.
Phlosioneer
I wonder if Bip is riding along with Talita and will appear at an inopportune/dangerous/embarrassing moment
JoB
Unless he has net-infiltrated a large part of the port’s infrastructure already, he’d need to be riding on Talitas tablet (*if* she even takes that along to work, it seems to have been waiting for her at home on page 30) which will likely wind up *under* her space suit while she’s wearing that. Good luck “appearing” as anything beyond a muffled voice within her suit if so.
Jay Eaton
Maybe I’m misreading you, but Bip isn’t anywhere but in those phones. Them appearing on other devices depends upon whether they can connect to them and control their display and audio. That’s not riding those devices so much as video calling them.
JoB
I wasn’t implying that Bip’s *running on* Talitas pad in any meaningful way – I suppose that that’d need a *quantum* device, and we’ve been all but told that Talita cannot afford *that* -, but given that he did hack it before, chances are that he left some sort of backdoor nonetheless … think “video call that you can’t hang up on”.
[is an IT guy and rather used to “if in doubt whether there’s been a compromise, *wipe* it”]
Spinland
Just a gentle reminder that Bip is not a “he.” 🙂
JoB
… thanks. I *just* wanted to look that up “to be sure” before my *next* post … X-S
(I’m slowly getting fond of *strictly* non-gendered languages – if only I’d *speak* one of those …)
evileeyore
In situations like this – where there is a lot of “unsureness on my part” as to someone’s pronouns – I default to just using names or ‘they’ if I can’t remember someone’s name (which is frequent until I’ve written/said their name on three or more different occasions).