Two coworkers on opposite ends of the spectrum of human size spectrum. Tod's piebaldism is an artificial trait floating around in the regular human genepool, Killian is from a clade of genetically engineered humans designed for life in zero gravity. But Calcery is, of course, the largest person in the room of any species, being about 30 massive server rigs.
Transcript
Talita: ...Buddy?She leans out over the crowd of ferrets to shout at two humans sitting in a forklift.
Talita: Tod? Killian? Did they take his comms equipment already??
Tod is a tall fat black man in his late fifties with stubble and thinning hair. His forehead has a large white piebald patch. Killian is an extremely short genetically modified human in their mid forties with a long prehensile tail, thumbed feet, and crinkled whiskers on their eyes, jaw, and wrists. Both of them look tired and slightly irritated.
Tod: No idea.
Killian: Ask the ferrets.
Talita approaches two ferrets speaking in tactile sign by tapping each other's arms. One is sitting in a forklift.
Talita: Um, excuse me...
Ferret 1: Yesh?
Ferret 2: Can we helf you?
They turn their heads to address her but do not pause signing.
Talita: Is Calcery still online? I’d like to say goodbye.
20 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 16”
dokki
I can’t help but appreciate the careful posing of Tod and Killian. Its so natural how they lean over the machinery. They’re not moving, but Killian instinctively grips the handlebar with his foot. Also love the advanced slouch on Killian from having two extra bones in his spine.
audible_smiles
Love the grippy tailed spacer feet!
gnome_artificer
My browser settings wouldn’t let me directly reply. As for the question of mammalian stripe patterns in humans, we have them… kind of. See Blaschko lines. They only really show up in cases of like skin cancers effecting one patch of skin and not the other. https://karger.com/imi/article-pdf/4/1-2/1/3001057/000452949.pdf
Jay Eaton
Yes, humans have a cell growth pattern along which pigmented stripes could form, but the only problems-free (more or less) striped humans are chimeras with two genome sets coding for two different skin tones. Blaschko’s lines are most often visible in humans when they have a skin disease, unfortunately. The stripes gene floating around in the typ genepool of RttS is non-chimeric and can produce much bolder and defined stripes than chimerism.
Harumin
Cal may be big huge boxes but they are cute and littol to *me* okay??
Trees
What year is it in this story? Good to see t-shirts with collars are still in fashion.
Aah. It’s piebaldism not, as I my brain immediately assumed, an airbender.
Jay Eaton
It’s the year 2333, in a timeline where humans invented fusion power in the year 2000. And the third act twist is that this setting is actually a very elaborate Avatar the Last Airbender alternate future
Zuorai
How are the BFL-2 glyphs written/composed?
Jay Eaton
Some day I’ll be confident enough about my conlang bullshit to share it in detail. But the “syllable” glyphs are composed of a handshape, touch locations, motion indicators, and repetition dots. The position and orientation of the handshape symbols indicates handedness and parallel or crossed touch. The location symbols indicate what segment of the arm is touched, and whether it’s tapped or dragged. Motion indicators are added for more specific kinds of interaction, like shaking, pulling, or twisting. The repetition dots show how many times the action is reduplicated, and their location shows contact side of the action. This will also probably continue to be tweaked for years.
Guest
Are they actually saying anything translatable?
Jay Eaton
Yes 🙂
Septemberdale
Tod can obviously hear. Why does he not have a visible cochlear implant? Piebaldism in humans exists as an effect of several actual medical conditions, but with the exception of vitiligo these in all cases cause deafness. Having read some on embryology, I do not believe piebaldism caused by genetic tinkering would be likely to escape causing deafness. Maybe it is a selective form of vitiligo?
Jay Eaton
Piebaldism does of course occur in real humans, and is associated with a lot of of other recessive genetic traits, but as far as I’ve read congenital deafness isn’t intrinsically tied to the trait. I think you might be thinking of Waardenburg syndrome, a specific genetic condition that is characterized by having both piebaldism and deafness. You can assume a massive amount of genetic tinkering was involved in RttS’s piebald humans anyways, there’s also non-chimeric striped humans in this setting and as far as I know mammalian stripe genetics do not work well in real life humans.
Septemberdale
If I may ask, where would one read up on the topic of mammalian stripe genetics?
Jay Eaton
If you can find anything let me know. I know I read something on the net years ago but i can’t find it now
Zidane
I like how in the 2nd to last panel the ferrets are still signing at each other even while speaking and looking at Talita, fun way of show they can process more sensory information than other sophonts
TotallySomebody
Bug ferrets speaking English with no lips!!!
Septemberdale
Aging Tailed Spacers are so… How is it said on Tumblr? Skrunkly!
Septemberdale
Like elderly cats.
Jay Eaton
Part of that is just because Killian looks perpetually rumbled. Man does not comb his whiskers.