Schlock Mercenary

Scientific progress doesn't just go boink!, it goes THUNK! as well.

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-04-19

Partial loss of matter being moved is just an early quirk, no way that's still a thing. It would already be causing problems with damage to brain neurons and microelectronics alike if it was still present.

The lecture also isn't directly related to the communication attempt, those are being sent with a normal teraport of their ship. What Kevyn is on about here is his random idea that went "I wish I could teraport my brain from being asleep to being awake and working in an instant."

Edited by Adannor on Apr 19th 2019 at 10:54:51 PM

I like the not-so-subtle indication that we are going to see "THUNK" as onomatopoeia more and more in the comic's future.

Wasn't it how the teraport was powered?

Yes it was power source for the handheld teraport devices. As you may notice those aren't actually in use at all. Once stuff has been properly fitted to a ship, it's obviously easy to power it with regular annie plant output. And again, the entire idea is silly Early-Installment Weirdness.

Alternately, since it's been implied (if not outright stated) that research into the teraport has continued (which Fridge Logic states would happen anyway; technologies are always being worked upon and refined), one could simply Hand Wave it by saying that earlier models of the teraport resulted in partial loss of matter, but advances since then have made this no longer an issue.

Continued research and new models were very explicitly portrayed, so yeah, they're a thing. For example a comparison was taken between an old version the dogpeople pirates were using and a proper modern "Mark 9" with the former causing some sort of shock to the body that made Kevyn lose his train of thought and him saying latter is much better.

The narration mentioned here the "conscious event threshold." They used to be disruptive, annoying, and at least slightly dangerous, but now they're so easy you won't even notice them unless something goes horribly wrong.

Actually Kevyn said after that rather improbable incident that he tuned the teraport so that the matter loss comes directly from the annie plants themsevles.

Oh, there was an explicit citation for that? I didn't remember anything like that, but that's great.

More clarification from Kevvyn, on a few subjects:

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-04-20

I've been trying to find and but sadly I can't. I'll try again later and post the link if I can find it.

Oh CRAP!!!

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-04-21

Some questions we ask are ones we shouldn't.

Am I the only one who had a mild "hubba hubba" moment with her shedding the coveralls in the last panel? Anyone else?

Given that thematically its signifies she's either breaking up with him or that at the very least there are severe relationship issues, no.

The royal "We"

Huh... based on how Kevyn was early on versus how either him or his time-displaced clone are today, I feel pretty confident in saying, after Sunday's comic, that his time-displaced clone is terrible at introspection. While the Kevyn still working for Tagon is only marginally better, I think he'd, at the very least, recognize in what ways he's changed.

I don't know. If you look at it, Andreysan might be the more honest one. Because when he open sourced the teraport he made the Teraport Wars possible and directly instigated the Core War. That's on both of them since it happened before the time-cloning incident. With that rather ambivalent legacy on his shoulders how is another weapon, no matter how terrifying, any different.

But at the same time, he doesn't have to be the one to build this weapon. If he takes the time to be introspective, he should realize "This is little more than a fun engineering project to me, but my girlfriend is in a moral panic about it. I should scrap the project."

Although, on the flip side of things, people tend to dig in their heels when someone seemingly suddenly decides they need to change themselves entirely for their partner's sake.

Tagon looks spiffy in Mess Dress Uniform:

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-04-23

Oh wait, it's his teraport twin...

Huh. Guess that tux back in Mallcop Command grew on him.

Is there Ship Tease between Murtaugh and Tagon in these past few strips, or am I imagining things?

I mean, there has been Ship Tease about the two ever since "Can Full Of Sky." I see it in today's comic, too (though it wouldn't surprise me if the flesh and blood Tagon stays single).

Boring. And what may be more Ship Tease. Are they on a date?