Talita's in a rotten mood, for some reason...
Transcript
Talita walks down off the elevator ramp in the pit that the Runaway ship is being stored in. A front loader is there to greet her, with two electrician worms perched on the steering wheel. She has a new nose piece on her helmet that's longer and more rectangular to accommodate her antlers.
Bip: Wow! Why the long face?
She scowls.
Talita: Ha ha ha. You’re so funny.
Bip: Sorry.
She walks alongside the frontloader as it drives towards the the ship.
Talita: What did you need again? I don’t normally come out here on weekends.
Bip: Furniture removal!
The worms strike a silly pose. Her nose wrinkles in annoyance.
Talita: Do I look like a moving service?
Bip: It’s a bit below your paygrade, I know. But none of my equipment that fits through the airlock can lift more than 20 kilos.
33 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 202”
Gar G
I love how expressive they are
JoB
… say, Bip, what are you really up to?
The personal belongings of the late centaur crew (see page 105) don’t look much like “furniture”. The stuff that got obliterated in the upper decks by that “moving object” doesn’t look like it’d exceed the per-piece 20 kg limit (page 8), not to mention that Talita already had to address that when she fixed your wiring (page 103), and that there is (used to be?) a honking hole in the hull to get it out, instead of you being restricted to “the airlock”. And there’s no immediate reason to remove any undamaged cabinets etc. from the habitat – not even to save weight and thus fuel, as the rest of the ship dwarfs the entire habitat.
Do you intend to have centaur-sized “furniture”, as in, acceleration seats, replaced with some human-sized items? Already?
Or am I just underestimating how much the meaning of a term like “furniture” can morph in the mind of a spaceship-inhabiting AI … ? (“Whaddya mean, you’d like a ‘bedside lamp’?” – “Well, as you can see, there’s no floodlight on that ship-moving crane’s arm yet …”)
zaratustra
Regarding your first statement, so far we’ve only seen the luggage compartments, not the living ones.
wingedhorror
Bip puppeting their own Statler and Waldorf pair of worm robots is so iconic.
Rose
furniture removal… and the last occupants were centaurs… i think Talita’s going to get very existential
Greebus
Maybe now Talita can get some centaur-sized furniture!
Arcstone
I’m guessing the worms cant work together to lift heavier stuff?
Vinemaple
Furniture moving across the facility like sheep being stolen by the Nac Mac Feegle!
“That settee wasn’t there a moment ago, was it? Did it jsut… move?”
Spicethereal
discworld? mentioned in the RTTS comment page? it’s more likely than you’d think…
Jay Eaton
They can, but not in a way that works well for the situation. You will see the issue in a few pages
Kitty
Lock in, Talita. This annoying worm is going to have to be your new best friend.
BravoLimaPoppa
Was that a Talita death glare at Bip?
creetur
One must imagine what it’s like to be a dozen or more little woerms..
Peter Jensen
The modular frontloader is designed for AI remote operation, so there’s no reason for the electrician worms to be in the driver seat and gripping the wheel. So, is this just Bip being cute about it? Because they *do* look adorable there. I want those to be real, so bad. Not that I have a specific use for them, but they’re a very cool design.
creetur
Gives me the same ‘weirdly cute’ vibe that those robot spot dogs do
JoB
> The modular frontloader is designed for AI remote operation
… and there officially is no AI on the planet right now. It might be more inconspicious for whoever looks at any logs to read “ok, OK, there has been someone physically working the steering wheel. On the weekend. Guess we’ll have the temps’ quarters searched for precious metals ‘privately’ mined from the slag field again.”
Vinemaple
OH, my word, I love this so much, the idea that Bip is NOT just being cute but is covering their tracks is such a delightful headcanon! (explanation: cars irl already have sensors more or less like what JoB is describing)
Peter Jensen
The idea is nice, but this work-site does not really seem like they’re very diligent about stuff like that. Or the fact that they’re repairing a spaceship in secret would have long since been discovered. Just Talita having unaccounted for time spent outside should have raised so many flags already. But in a way that seems all to real for how things tend to work in remote company towns in real life.
Claire
Even as a bunch of worms… Bip manages to have sassy expressions.
Bruce Mickelson
Wow! Is that a ship in the background of the first panel? Beautiful tech art, as always.
JoB
The transcript says that the scene takes place in the pit holding (only) the Runaway, so that’s necessarily her. She’s been rotated axially 90° again, though (compare pages 103 and 140).
pelya
Talita stronk
JoB
That raises the question: Do the other centaurs bother with changeable nose pieces for their exosuits? And why does Talita? During the times when there are no antlers in the way, a larger nose piece would accomodate an assortment of switches within reach of the trunk that do not need to be clunky vacuum- and glove-clad-fingers-certified versions like the ones on her comms panel …
petra
my thoughts behind it is that having a panel with switches in the snoot location where you can’t visually verify what you’re touching might be dangerous and also having antlers in the way wouldn’t help much during their growth period. also having the snoot piece be longer regardless of antler growth might be unwise space use? like having an extra long finger glove with nothin’ in it half the year your finger nail doesn’t grow long or something
Vinemaple
It would make sense biologically for a Centaur suit to have controls that can be activated sight unseen with the trunk, but Talita wears glasses and thinks like a Human, and probably didn’t even seriously consider trunk buttons in her helmet, even though she will sometimes use her trunk for her phone’s touchscreen.
Teod
It may not be convenient to always have an extra long helmet, but it’s better from an engineering standpoint – swappable nose is an extra seal you need to worry about leaking and an extra attachment mechanism that could malfunction.
My guess is this construction is a result of an oversight. She made it too short originally, forgetting about her future antlers, and then was forced to choose between adding swappable noses, or redoing the entire helmet from the ground up.
JoB
… OK, Talita, time to show us your inner Yao that insisted on having a joint there from square one. Where do you hide the interesting nose part variants? 😀
mossrabbit
its possible the shorter helmet nose saves a bit of oxygen (smaller helmet = less oxygen needed to fill the space), but i cant imagine it’d save more than a few seconds at best. the in-lore explanation is probably closer to what you said tho lol. i can imagine the scramble to make the adjustments when she realizes her antlers are coming in and her helmet wont fit it wasnt conductive to making the most mechanically-sound choices.
creetur
Well, there’s likely not a lot of other centaurs in a position like hers, but if I had to guess it would be because switches there would be hard to implement (maybe?) and feel around for, and it’s better to not have her trunk occupied if she needs to talk.
Apollo235
Bip is in all likelihood aware of the interaction the girls had, but I like to imagine they aren’t and are commenting *exclusively* on the longer helmet.
BobisOnlyBob
Bip almost certainly knows – or can easily guess – how many times Talita hears this comment on the regular and went for it anyway. If they had a goal, it was directing mild irritation at them for their dumb quip so she’s not focused on what’s actually bothering her.
Vinemaple
The more people bring up this (off-patreon, anyway) fanon that Bip is subtly managing the women’s emotions and stepping up to be an emotional punching bag if necessary… the more I start to see it. I am really looking forward to finding out whether it’s canon or not!
Enai
Whether or not Bip has dropped some eaves on Idrisah’s chat with her mother and Gillie, they’re completely able to read centaur body language, and Talita is generally not subtle about hers. They may just be reacting to her being obviously upset.