Sorry this is late, wordpress failed to post it at the scheduled time and I'm not sure why.
Bip delights in being a digital poltergeist.
Transcript
Talita walks along the length of the sled, and the front loader follows her, gesturing at the Runaway with its manipulator arms.
Bip: Honestly, the biggest thorn in my side right now is the habitat capsule. It's less urgent than the exterior, but I haven't been able to work on it at all.
The front loader taps itself on the side of the cockpit.
Bip: Can't exactly squeeze one of these through the airlock.
Talita: I actually brought you something for that.
She reaches into the large handcart they've approached and pulls out a small soft-bodied robot with a segmented worm-like form and a conical face made up of many metal limbs.
Talita: I’m letting you borrow Calcery’s old fleet of electrician worms.
The worm suddenly springs to life, twisting to look at Talita and extending its small camera eye limbs. Flat ribbon-like legs emerge from the node spots on its body segments. Talita stares in shocked horror. Bip speaks as if from the body of the worm.
Bip: Wow, you’re being awful generous with the equipment!
84 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 146”
waterfan2
Slightly terrifying thought: those ‘worms’ are the size of a human arm.
space_vermin_64
I love bip’s anthropomorphic frontloader
Hunter
“Talita, would you still be suspicious of me if I was a worm?”
JoB
“I’d be suspicious of you even if you didn’t have any I/O at all!!” 😛
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_once_read_many
Outlander
Oh, worm?!
AnaKaye
Talita’s eyes in the last panel! Too funny!
Enai
Soo… Is your Icon supposed to be a solar eclipse or the lunar cycle? Regardless of which, I like it!
Robin Bobcat
Oreos!
Tumorhead
WORM!!
Paroxysmall
the eye- and face-limbs do remind me of a shrimp 🦐 I feel like I’ve seen “shrimp worm hybrid” somewhere before but it just seems so elegant, so right… shrimpapillar…
also look at the little legs holding onto Talita’s hand <3
anon
I think the scheduled post broke again
I also think there might be a general glitch happening somewhere on the site, the major thing I noticed
the new button links to page 145 (instead of the most recent page, 146) on seemingly random pages ( 137/138, 139, 142, 80-86, 39-46 all link to pg 145 as the “New” page)(and those are just the pages I checked)
I’m not sure what would cause that but more data might help you figure out what going on on your end
Jay Eaton
I tested this but I am not experiencing this issue. Hard refreshing might fix it?
JoB
[shell scripts a “wget” loop]
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… actually, the earliest page to link to page 146 instead of 145 is #38, then #79, #111, #140 and #141, #143/144, and #145. If it weren’t for #1/2 and 137 and up, I’d say that only the *first* page of every chapter got its “New” link updated to point to #146 …
Vinemaple
For some reason I just love Talita’s pose in the second panel! So casual, yet so dainty! I think it’s the feet, I guess Centaur feet are just aesthetically pleasing and surprisingly delicate on a massive predator you’d think might have claws.
Also relieved to know that the delay is just WordPress being WordPress. Something Jay once said made me assume he didn’t have the comic on a scheduled automated upload.
Jay Eaton
Pages are usually scheduled, unless I was procrastinating on transcripts or finishing the AMA art, which are the most common reasons pages go up late. Also, my pronouns are they/them.
Egg
Starting to think that Bip’s way of showing affection is startling people, makes me wonder if how their previous crew dealt with their antics
Jay Eaton
Bip likes to be annoying as a form of humor. Which can be divisive. It comes down to whether you find them charming or irritating.
Zuorai
How Talita was trying to be sentimental, you can see a sappy human expression on her nictitating membranes, and how her pupils just SHRINK at Bip being two steps ahead of her. Brilliant
anon
Worm!Bip <3
Googily
Watching Bip be so expressive with the RC front loaders, like putting their “hands” on their “hips” in panel 2, is always funny to me. Especially after watching the temps try to use those machines.
Arcstone
oh god, I instantaneously hate that thing.
Vinemaple
Just wanted to make sure you know that reaction is understandable and nothing to be ashamed about, even here!
Sen
Bip controlling an electrician worm: “Let me slip into something more comfortable!” ^^
Love the wormies! Cute and useful!
Joy
BIP you are not supposed to BE IN THERE YET don’t just INVITE YOURSELF into SOMEONE ELSE’S WORM you little DEVIL
0xabad1dea
I get the impression that Bip absolutely could have taken over the worms earlier and was waiting for the exact *microsecond* that Talita confirmed they were being offered for their own use
Eux
worm time………
Momo
worms! worms! worms! worms! worms! worms! worms!
JoB
… would you, perchance, like to book a sightseeing trip there? 😛
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms,_Germany
veltzeh
It’s delightful how Bip emotes with the frontloaders! 😀
That 1 guy
Worms!!! and this is my first comment ever yay.
Jay Eaton
First time wormer over here
Enif
Aren’t they in vacuum? How would Talita be able to tell the voice was coming from the worm? I guess it could start moving around but still
cinna
They’re communicating via radio, so I don’t think the direction of Bip’s voice necessarily actually changed. I’m assuming the speech bubble’s tail is more for reader convenience, clarifying to us that it’s Bip talking while controlling the worm, rather than the worm just going haywire on its own.
r_murphy
That being said, it does bring to mind the likely desirability of spacialized audio; it would probably help with situational awareness and keeping track of your colleagues, and certainly would alleviate one of the many disorientating conditions of suit-work.
AnaKaye
My guess is that Talita’s instant clue is that the worm suddenly *moves* and that cues her to perceive Bip’s presence as having extended to the worm. Ergo, she “hears” Bip’s next utterance as emanating from the worm.
Felgraf
It’s possible the technology is miniaturized enough that, with a couple of radio arrays within the helmet, it can tell (via the comparative strength of the signal at different detectors) the ‘direction’ a nearby radio signal came from, and pipe it in through surround sound-like speakers so that it ‘sounds’ like it’s coming from the appropriate direction.
Which–in a universe where a lot more people are going to be working in no-and-low atmosphere environments more frequently, is actually a sort of tech development that would make sense.
Peter Jensen
The technology may exist, but this would be yet another place where Talita would have to customize it for centaur use, because as I understand it, their ears are more forward-facing (and also her larger physical dimensions may affect differential sound travel time). So the signal processing to fake directional sound would probably need some tweaking, depending on how accurate you want it to be.
Phasma Felis
Bip seems determined to punish people for helping him.
Origamigryphon
*them
Gar G
Oh geezus, that *is* terrifying XDD
I can see why she reacted the way she did!
Imp!
Love that Bip had absolutely no hesitation, not even a “wow thanks!”. I wonder if they knew the worms were already there (maybe even connected to them) and was just waiting for the go ahead.
Guest
I was wondering if they could sense/see that the worms were there, maybe Talita primed them for an AI connection, and Bip was already trying to worm their way into them (no pun intended).
Vinemaple
Some people IRL *cough* meandmymother *cough* grow up thinking that thankfulness is implied by positive reactions and praise, and don’t understand that sometimes phatic expressions are _necessary,_ and can’t be assumed as understood. Bip has always given me the vibe that they’re like that, and that they just generally don’t consider alternate or unintended interpretations of what they say and do.
Ruby
*gasp* Shai-Hulud!
JoB
AI-Hulud 😉
Enai
*Groan*
AnaKaye
tee-hee
Apollo235
Bip is surely very satisfied they finally startled Talita again
Amanda/OwlBear
electrician worm is so cute
Peter Jensen
For some reason they reminded me about how some electricians use ferrets to run guide-wires through tight spaces for installation work. I can just imagine a whole swarm of these things running wires all over the place in a seemingly chaotic mess.
JoB
So, page 20 all over again, only more … “micro-messy”? 😉
Trees
The worm in the last panel looks as if it’s wearing a tiny, billowing scarf like a world war one fighter pilot and now I’m wondering where they keep the worm sized bi-planes.
JoB
Talita: [folds a (large-ish) paper plane for the now-activated worm]
[plops the worm on top of it and THROWS]
Plane: [works as well as one can expect it to fly *in a near-vacuum*]
Bip: “… needs a bit of work, don’t you think?”
TotallySomebody
🪱
Claire
🪱
JoB
Good thing that the transcript explicitly states that it’s Bip animating the WaldoWorm – I was wondering whether Calcery had left a part of themself to keep watching their their stuff (though I’d also wonder why, if it’s important enough for them to guard, they’d have left it behind in the first place). :-3
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What exactly *does* Bip want/need to repair *inside* the habitat? The servers on the bow deck are evidently fine. The part of the electric installation that was hit directly got repaired by Talita, the rest of the (fixed) wireworks, assumed that the worms are indeed specialized on that, shouldn’t have suffered noteworthy damage. Life support – meaning *biological* life – has probably been largely wiped out by exposure to vacuum, but is, for the same reason, unlikely to actually recover before the hole in the hull has been closed and the habitat filled with an atmosphere again, not to mention that Bip’ll have to modify it from “centaur crew” to “centaur + humans”, anyway.
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Unless … maybe Bip’s holding hope that, in spite of the decompression whipping it around and into the walls, their original RC unit is still within the habitat and can be returned into service? It’s likely to be better adapted to further maintenance tasks on the Runaway than anything Talita could find on Dirtball and “lend”.
Enai
Huh, interesting question! I just figured they wanted to repair the doubtlessly severe damage the shrapnel wreaked. Yes, Talita repaired the power and data cables, but I believe she left everything else as it was.
.
But you’re right: Bip probably hat some kind of remote controlled mobile whatsit(s) to roam the hab and do various things. Where are those, what do they look like and can they be repaired or just charged and set to work again? I wanna see them…
JoB
> she left everything else as it was
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Certainly, whatever was lining the inside of the hull where it was punctured will prove to be outright gone, for starters. And that would definitely include not only stowed luggage of the former crew (as seen in page 105), but also a number of *secondary* systems (like whatever Talita’s working on in the first panel of “Oil and Water”). I just don’t see what Bip would want to give *priority* to as much as they seem to do in this page …
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> what do they look like
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I suppose that *this* is actually a look into the relative *future*, but the likeness would definitely have worked the same pre-Dirtball, so …
https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/639377229216956416/some-work-commissioned-from-the-marvelous-artist
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(We’ve also seen the RC units of Nedebug (a lot clunkier), Nabi-Nabu (much more lifelike, and they switched from bug ferret to human in the meantime), not to mention the mobile rig of Under-River-Through-the-Weeds (hope I do remember THAT name/spelling correctly :-3 ), but all I can conclude from those is that the similarities from one AI to the next are quite limited.)
JoB
> (We’ve also seen …)
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Should’ve looked on *this* site for reference material, rather than on Tumblr … :-S
https://jayeaton.site/RunawayToTheStars/Sophonts/SapientAI
Enai
I mean the rudimentary overview Talita gives here: https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-104/ looks to me like there’s plenty of room in the spine for a number of electrical and other systems to have been damaged by the shrapnel. Talita is also rather big which would probably mean dismantling at least part of it to get at the broken parts. Wiggly worm robots could just go there directly and repair most of the damage, soo… if its not Bips autonomous unit, that repair might be literally anything? Plumbing, light fixtures, air supply, systems for communication with the crew, you name it.
Enai
Also, what do you mean by “The first panel of ‘Oil and Water'”? I can’t seem to find a chapter by that name in the archive, and a quick look through the comic pages turned up nothing, either.
JoB
> looks to me like there’s plenty of room in the spine for a number of
> electrical and other systems to have been damaged by the shrapnel.
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Yes, as I said, there definitely is *damage*. However, with Idrisah having threatened to notify “the authorities” of Bips presence, the temps noticing more and more Talitas side job, Mel and Ohwitiil possibly getting the idea to make the use *they* want to make of of both the Runaway and the Vspear vessels *any day now*, yadda yadda, Bip should prioritize the repairs *necessary to get off the planet* above all. Like those radiator panels, and whatever might have needed repair within the spine to allow Bip to control their movement again. Bip is *very much* living on borrowed time here.
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> Also, what do you mean by “The first panel of ‘Oil and Water’”?
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https://jayeaton.site/Art/RttS/Comics/OilAndWater
Enai
I heartily agree that Bip (and Talita – when, not if, Ixion finds out about the misuse of their resources (or what the company *thought* was theirs, see: the complicated ownership of the Runaway) she’ll be in hot water) has to get a move on re: getting away from the planet but consider: they can multitask. The more bots of any size they have to do repairs with, the more repairs get done simultaneously. The repairs inside the hab do not necessarily slow down the structural repairs.
.
Also: thanks for the link! What a delightful little slice of life 🙂
Wormfan
YAY WORMS
oh6
I tend to worry about these conversations, as I keep forgetting that they’re in something close to vacuum talking by radio. Not that radio can’t be overheard, of course, just not as easily.
wingedhorror
Robot Worms
Robo Wormo
RoWo
Don’t mind me, just spitballing some branding.
Cass
I need an illustration of Bip asking Talita “Would you still love me if I was a worm”
TotallySomebody
This made me think of the fact that Bip’s “Earth Sona” would be a worm!
https://jayeaton.site/Art/RttS/AMA/1
Vinemaple
Still probably my favorite AMA.
Filiya
That robot worm looks really cute! I feel like they should be made by bug ferrets, but of course that’s very stereotypical thinking.
It also looks like food in Talitha’s hands.
Red
Yeah, but if you have teeth like her, everything kinda looks like food.