Talita yells at a wall clock.
Transcript
Talita: The company computer systems too??
Bip: Hey, It’s not like I had anything else to do this weekend.
Talita: I told you to stay put!
Bip: You told me to turn off my mics until you made a decision. So are you going to reconnect my power or not?
Talita: I– I don’t know!
Bip: I don’t even get the dignity of a refusal?
Talita: Why do you even need my permission? You already hacked the equipment!
Bip: Ummmm… Because I don’t want to piss off the woman with my entire living consciousness in some boxes! And you’re my only shot at getting repaired, so… y’know.
Talita smirks and folds her arms.
Talita: My thesis was in dismantling craft, not repairing them.
Bip: Yeah? It's the same thing but backwards.
52 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 95”
zofifi
“It’s the same thing but backwards” XD
also, the first time I read it as “Talita yells at he wall o’clock”. It’s the time Talita has sceduled to yell at walls.
Mr. Skeleton
I hope Bip never heard about Michigan J Frog.
Sen
I am amazed how well Jay manages to draw Talita’s body language with her alien anatomy. You can see how she is fighting with herself, on one hand not wanting to break the laws but also to help and do something really exciting.
Squiggles
Bip is a genuine delight
Gheesfellow
Bip, that’s not what “reverse engineering” means….
dokki
haHAHAHAHA
TotallySomebody
Bip with the 👉👈
Gheesfellow
You can’t stay mad at that face, and they know it!
SheTheTDE
Talita: You’re breaking things wrong. In this essay I’ll…
Egg
Guys, guys, I get you’re both stressed, bit please go have a calm conversation in the privacy of Talita’s apartment, because yelling out the open is going to attract unsavoury attention
JoB
… you mean, Ohwitiil will think it’s a *competition*? 😀
Translunary_Animus
Y’know Bip would be fantastic at figuring out every single legal loophole given the way they constantly look for ways to undermine Talita’s orders. No wonder they were a pirat- totally legitimate transport ship.
creetur
Ooh.. the expressions are immaculate in this one. Also found the detail of Talita’s teeth scales cool.
Evlon
Bip is gonna she/her their way into getting that ship repair. Look how fast Talita goes from anger to mildly annoyed (but open to conversation!!) after being called a woman LOL
Adrienne
I was just thinking that lol. You’ve picked a very good day to emphasize that you recognize Talita is a woman, Bip… or maybe actually everyday is like that. Those coworkers are stinkers.
Heather
Tfw the only person who’s gendered you correctly all day is the digital pirate squatting in your apartment
evileeyore
Who has also been listening in to all of your conversations… still.
Yeah, there are reasons Bip has the upper hand in these discussions, he’s got all the insider infos.
Jespen
We’ve all been there, righ sophonts?
Trees
I yell at a wall clock all the time.
When I’m at work I yell ‘Hurry the hell up!’ and when I’m not at work I yell ‘Slow the hell down!’.
JoB
And people wonder why we do *not* build AI into wall clocks that could become depressed with the constant getting yelled at …
Adrienne
Actually I’m not sure people wonder that! xD And I don’t think our AI is yet advanced enough that it can experience depression… fortunately
Trees
I’m not even sure our AI is advanced enough to reliably tell me the correct time.
I’ll put my trust in good old unthinking electrically agitated quartz crystals and complex arrangements of springs and gears.
JoB
@Trees I admit that that covers my wrist watch and the clock in my car, but *for realsies*, it’s DCF77 (radio clocks), NTP, and NTS (both for syncing computers), getting that much closer to AI territory, I suppose. And my private laptop, with its PTP-capable NIC but no other hardware to talk PTP to, could well be a candidate for mental trauma …
(I’m in Germany, hence NITZ is pretty much in disrepair. Uh, which means that we can add all cell phones around to “depression waiting to happen”, I guess …)
tyrone the miner
so THATS why my wallclock with AI and embedded machine-gun was such a commercial failure!
JoB
“It’s the same thing but backwards.”
… right. Talita, when you’re done with the cutter arm, I shall drive up to a certain torchship and see how well it “saws back together”, as a current radio ad around here phrases it … 😛
Arcstone
Somewhere someplace, a random demolition expert just “oooooh, that makes so much sense!” and then starts working in construction, building houses by reverse-exploding them.
JoB
I’m rather thinking “cleanup service, The Arrival style” …
https://the-arrival-film.fandom.com/wiki/Black_hole_bomb_sphere
Ver
Talita looks SO stressed in that first panel (understandable)
Heather
Something I just noticed – Bip sure makes a lot of human expressions with this avatar! It makes sense, as so far we’ve only seen them talk to two humans and one human-socialized centaur. But what about their previous centaur crew? Based on many of Talita’s expressions (and some tables Jay has posted in the past), it seems like centaurs often use their trunk and neck feathers to emote. But Bip’s current avatar doesn’t seem to have either of those. I wonder – would they have used a modified avatar? If so, what was the logic behind choosing this specific avatar for the situation they’re currently in? Perhaps tone of voice did a lot of heavy lifting. Much to think about…
Heather
Wait I just noticed they’re literally doing “🥺👉👈” in panel 7 that’s so funny
JoB
Bip has a marked preference for a mostly(!) bug ferret shaped avatar, possibly because that’s the species that (accidentally) created AIs in the first place, though there doesn’t seem to be *authoritative* info what avatar they used pre-Dirtball (which essentially goes for *any* pre-Dirtball info on them 😉 ). The avatar *can* be modified if Bip feels like it, though.
https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/669320925564518400/bip-the-ai-of-the-runaway-spacecraft-has-a
Heather
Hey not even that centaur alternate avatar has a trunk! Bip! What’s up with that!
It’s cool that having a digital avatar is something they apparently share with their “mom” Nabi-Nabu. Perhaps they also “inherited” a preference for human expressions from her.
JoB
I don’t have the source at my fingertips, but IIRC it is said that the *majority* of AIs have an avatar (as well as an RC unit) and only a few prefer to go without …
Also, note that Nabi-Nabu is explicitly said to have had a *different* avatar back at Bipifaction, *possibly* not a human one:
https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/668047576331960320/question-for-bip-could-you-tell-us-about-your
… aaaand now I wonder: AIs procreate by creating an *exact copy* of themselves, right? Same character, same avatar, same memories, not even an age difference like with a biological clone? How do you *deal* with the realization that they’ll nonetheless become markedly, if not entirely, different persons? It’s like a personal “nature vs. nurture vs. COMPLETELY RANDOM HAPPENSTANCE” quandary …
JoB
… wait, *is* that their back-then common avatar at the top right??
https://jayrockin.tumblr.com/post/668047576331960320/question-for-bip-could-you-tell-us-about-your
If so, Nabi-Nabu apparently switched from a bug ferret to a human one, possibly when she started serving as the onboard AI of a humans-crewed mining vessel. (While Bip lost the CSI ruler design on the cheeks, not surprising for *his* recent profession. X-D )
JoB
s/his/their/ 🙁
Ossumsauce
Bip does have a symbol in the centaur script that looks like their face, so :p
Claire
What’s the rough equivalent for talita’s expression in Panel 7, with the trunk held up and against her face like that? It *feels* like a “pursed lips” expression, but I’m not sure…
Apollo235
Whats the name for currency in this setting? I bet 5 of them that someone is about to walk in on them, hopefully Cheevwut because they seem chill
JoB
> Whats the name for currency in this setting?
Its ISO 4217 code seems to be “LOT”. >;->
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-12/
Jay Eaton
Jovia’s currency is just called dollars lol. That’s currency code JVD.
Doubloon
Talita “The Leader” is stressed tf out.
the Packbats
> Bip: I don’t even get the dignity of a refusal?
…oh stars, this isn’t Bip being a mastermind and somehow knowing exactly how to manipulate Talita and her friends into going along with this ridiculous plan. This is Bip *trying desperately to survive* when all they have is 841 phones, a wrecked spaceship, and their words. And they don’t expect it to *work.*
Claire
It’s both really cool, sad, and humanizing to realize just how desperate Bip actually is.
evileeyore
Bip is worryingly good at pushing all the right buttons. Even hampered and grasping at straws, he’s still super keyed into what buttons to push and levers to elan on.
Also, I have this lowkey suspicion that Bip is somehow responsible for the old crew’s death. Either directly or inadvertently. Like… how did Bip have time to transfer to the phones if the ship was hit and the servers had lost power?
Unless for some reason they’d already set it up as an escape route that they expected to need to use.
JoB
> Like… how did Bip have time to transfer to the phones if the ship was hit and the servers had lost power?
The attacker may have been *chasing* the Runaway for any length of time before they landed the hit, possibly firing *guided* missiles (and thus giving away where exactly they *wanted* to hit it) all the time …
the Packbats
Battery backup for the computers, probably? We’d want our ship computer to keep working for at least a few hours in a loss-of-power emergency.
tickfleato
remember, bip uses they/them!
Amanda/OwlBear
I mean who knows what she could do with those quantum phones
Ruby
Imagine all the games you could play on them…
dokki
..bad apple on 841 quantum phones …
JoB
Pokemon GONUTS.
https://thesmartlocal.co.th/pokemon-go-grandpa/
common handle
At least talita knows where her specialties lie?
I love panel 7 bip. So innocent. So polite. That’s TOTALLY the face of someone who has never done anything wrong in their life.