Surely we're just doing maintenance in a tedious way because you're dumb and hate us, right Talita?
Transcript
Adam continues to the scale the rungs of the ladder. Then, without warning, Talita's hands clamp around his rib cage and she plucks him off the structure, putting him down on the foundation of the tower with an unceremonious THUMP. The surprise wearing off, he gets up and turns to look at her furious face.
SFX: clk
Talita: Do you have a deathwish⁉
Adam: It's GOT handrails! If we were using the damn things we'd be DONE by now!






120 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 225”
Lilith
we need to hit Adam with hammers
Zuorai
Scooping him
I like the dark parts of the suits that show where it should bend, and Talita’s helmet looking sturdier around the snout bc of her antlers
meow
we dont see it, but i bet talita’s mad sprint over there was something to watch
JoB
The rest of the crew is left out of this page’s panels because they can’t be seen through the regolith cloud, anyway.
Tune in for the team’s next shift, where they’ll be mopping Shikaviil port’s solar panels way beyond Dirtball’s terminator.
The Opossum Witch
So glad the public finally gets to see this page, been sitting on my hands about it
?¿
That removal has big “kitten climbing the curtains” energy. 😆
Sabella
Oh Talita, you’re not the slightest bit in the wrong here. I don’t envy the report you’re going to have to write.
Tentament
haha oops Talita looks like i climbed up the ladder again silly me guess you’ll have to gently but firmly hold me to put me back down haha
florence
HELPPP???
DUD
Do you think there are still people who “could totally take on a centaur if it came down to it” in the 24th century?
Light_In_The_Fog
o certainly. I mean i feel like that mentality comes from not having had any aggressive interactions with a species, and centaurs are rare enough and conscious of stereotypes that that’d be unlikely
bryn
oooh, adam causing trouble, who would have imagined? /heavy sarcasm implied
huh, i could see this being framed…. badly for talita potentially…….. of course she is preventing an accident! but physically grabbing and yelling ‘do you have a deathwish’ could be read as threatening enough for disciplinary action if adam caused a stink about it….. just a worried little thought therfe. yeesh, Talita is really being ran through the wringer right now!
Boxthing
I remember really connecting with veteran friends on safety culture. I worked with dangerous animals, they worked with deadly machinery or explosives. You only needed to screw up once for somebody to die…
Stray Cat
When I shared this page with a friend, my comment was, “Adam’s not winning Employee of the Month anytime soon.” I think that’s a decent way to understate it.
Nikki
Oh no 🙁 as a person who is the tallest in a crowd more than 99.5% of the time, I fear I already know where this is going…
raydfil
Wait i’m curious- what do you think is going to happen?
Flori
I too am incredibly curious as a tall person. Only tall person problems that I can immediately think of are hitting your head and blocking the view of people behind you
Nikki
just based on past experiences i feel like there’s a chance adam will put on a real sad frowny face and make a complaint to the higher ups that talita was using her unusually large size to intimidate and threaten him
Flori
Jeez. Glad I haven’t had that experience. At least, not yet I haven’t
Mobi-gg
I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again:
Hold stupid temp gentle like hamburger
JoB
“… but do keep hold of him”? 😉
The Opossum Witch
no hold like hot dog, perfect for flinging into orbit
dzamie
Dude, if you were clipped in, she wouldn’t have been able to do that. Like, even if there was some other safety protocol you were ignoring, she’d at least have to settle for yelling up at you rather than setting you down like a misbehaving toddler.
Heather
Oh you can TELL her trunk is cobra-posing even behind the visor. Get yoinked idiot!
Flashbacks to Talita clipping herself into a harness and fastening herself to the Runaway even while walking on a horizontal surface behind a guardrail… we love a woman who respects safety regs!!!
Hunter
YES.
YES.
VALIDATED CRASHOUT!
LET HIM HAVE IT, TALITA!
Yell
He cannot possibly manage to keep this job. Please, Adam, a single safety protocol.
Sparky Lurkdragon
Like I said on the Patreon: This gives me a moment of connection to the avians who watch vial videos of ‘giant human security guard puts asshole avian in their place!’ in the sense of, like. Seeing someone with a bauplan that resembles your evolutionarily-ancestral predators pluck a grown member of your species up like he’s an unruly toddler really is quite something, isn’t it? No wonder humans tend to find centaurs physically intimidating, and no wonder avians tend to find humans physically intimidating.
Even if it’s Talita and I know she wouldn’t hurt a fly, and even though it’s Adam the Turd.
MissZena
For a second I had no idea what Talita was getting so upset about until I realized
dude isn’t hooked into anything and is trying to climb up something that is tall enough to at least be similar height or even taller than what looks like a scissor lift at its tallest height which I’ve heard can get as high as 50 feet in some models
Then I fully understood oh my god justifiable reaction a fall from something that tall could do some serious damage and if it doesn’t hurt Adam it could break something in the suit which would be equally bad if not worse!!! Goddamn!!!
Havlock
And what’s more, the ladders and catwalks are Avian sized and rated for their weight. So even with the extra strength I assume was designed into them as a safety margin, one with some metal fatigue or a manufacturing defect that reduces its load capacity and Adam’s weight could be enough to break it and send him tumbling, or rip his suit on a now-sharp piece.
Hunter
Plus Dirtball’s gravity is likely not low enough that a fall from that height wouldn’t hurt; Adam is risking serious injury.
EnchantressEmily
Unrelated to this page, but does anyone else have trouble with the comment form? Every time I comment I check the “save my info for next time” box, but it’s never worked even once. I have to type in my username and email from scratch every time.
TotallySomebody
This
Enai
Same here. At least my username is short 🤷
(Let’s see if the emoji posts)
JoB
I’ve never seen that work in the first place … (And debugging with a cookie manager extension, I can see the cookies holding the data in question. Though they seem to have a set lifetime of pretty much nil … ?)
JoB
About 30 minutes, now that I posted the above comment. Still doesn’t fill it in for this comment, only the “remember it!!” box remains checked …
HAL9000
mine works, though it may be my browser doing it rather then the site itself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
MyUniverseinaBox
Oh yeah mine never works
Counterpoint
Same here… I’m trying again, right for this comment, but I don’t have big hopes 🤷♂️…
thegriffin88
You’re not clipped on jackhole! Jfc Christ on a cracker Adam what do you want on your tombstone? He died as he lived: impulsively. And we’ll just attach whatever’s left of you to the skyhook.
Rad internet Stranger
Grab the child!! Oh wait.. Grab the manchild!!!
MyUniverseinaBox
oooo drama incoming hehe.
God I hate this guy. Adam, you stink!!!!!
Scolopendra
Dad used to be a USAF master sergeant in charge of flight line maintenance in the late Cold War F-4 days. He was doing his usual walk of the line when he saw a junior airman doing something with the vertical stabilizer on an F-4 while standing directly on top of the horizontal stabilizer.
Which, on that jet, is all-moving so it’s only got one hinge point.
And even then, they’re sloped.
Over the jet exhausts, and it was powered on at the time.
One slip, or one accidental bonk of a control, or one thing breaking and that airman would’ve got fifty-three kilonewtons of maybe 900 centigrade air moving at over Mach 2 to the face.
Suffice to say, if he were able to he’d have done exactly what Talita did. As it was the best he could do was roll up a maintenance stepladder which was RIGHT THERE and proceed to mime to the airman that he was to get down off the plane right [redacted] now. Dad, despite being a sergeant, was not prone to using obscenity professionally so apparently it got the point across.
thegriffin88
Everyone has a breaking point a some situations call for a resounding ‘Fuck!’
HullScrap
I don’t know if Jay is still reading comments for transcript corrections but at [ -without warning, Talita’s clamp around- ] i think there’s supposed to be a word like hands or hooves or gloves after “Talita’s”.
HullScrap
Ah, shes pushing the radio controls on her shoulder. I totally read that initially as an “up yours!” gesture.
That guy
Yay, new page I’m my birthday
hessian
happy birthday!!
SOLARIS
happy birthday 😀
SOLARIS
not a fan of how it turned my emoticon into an emoji. oh well
hessian
me grabbing my cat before he can gobble up a chopped onion on the counter
mossrabbit
remember y’all: adam isnt a real guy, but jay is. as much as we all wish to see this man suffer the consequences of his actions, jay is the one who has to read everything said, not adam, barring any freak interfictional wormhole incidents.
now that aside; adam’s cracker ass behaviour continues. in a world where humans can be six-legged dragons, its somehow not comforting to know this specific species of White Man has survived into this era. as much as i want to see his ass taught a proper lesson, i dont think anything short of an actual tangible near-death experience would have any effect.
Chrysalis
I’m starting to suspect that Adam is the sort of person who only learns from actual-death experiences.
mossrabbit
i WANT to have a more charitable view of the man, and say that witnessing a coworker be maimed or die would make him realize his foolishness, but its hard not to see the other scenario where he just says “well if you listened to ME that wouldnt have happened”. adam is an asshole but SURELY he couldnt be THAT self-centered. i hope
Jordan Aster
Jay is not a guy.
mossrabbit
all the references to guy/man/he are towards adam, not jay, dont worry.
Gar G
OH MY GOSH, being able to just reach out and grab someone like that…
I honestly never realized that she’s THAT big that she can just… do that! (of course she’d never do that to someone except in an emergency situation like this)
the Packbats
I feel like Talita works incredibly hard to be the kind of person where you forget they’re the size of a small tractor, yeah.
Gar G
Definitely, especially with her meek attitude; makes it hard to realize what she’s really capable until she actually does it
Viashino_wizard
not only is she big, she’s insanely jacked even by Centaur standards because of her weightlifting hobby
Lilac
Insane that he can look at someone very angry who just forcefully pulled him away from what he was doing and is now asking if he “has a deathwish” and still Immediately be like “I’m doing a smart thing what is your problem!!” Instead of being like “Woah wait what’s wrong/what i am i doing wrong” like Read The Damn Room dude I get having an emotional reaction but like. Dude
Lilac
Someone who is presumably older than and has been in and studied this field far longer than him too, and has definitely had much more field experience than him. So really this just proves he has no fundamental respect for her because his statement assumes she does does know what would happen even though all glaringly signs point to otherwise, like he doesn’t even see her as knowledgeable. Awful
Lilac
*signs glaringly point to not glaringly signs fjfhhfhds
Lilac
*does not know Damn Infinite Typo World i need to read less fast when I type so sorry fhfhfss
Flori
He absolutely doesn’t see her as knowledgeable, as in a previous page he called her a diversity hire.
Lezzlebit
Yeah no exactly if my boss forcefully pulled me aside and said “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!” I’d be like Oh my god I’m sorry (though I am thankfully Not Adam, and Adams absolutely exist in the real world…)
Lilac
Meeting of the orange bug ferrets……
Logan
Ooo, I’ll grab everyone some coffee
Artor
I’ve worked with a couple of Adams before. If they were about to do something dangerous, I left them to it unless they were going to endanger someone else.
JoB
♬ 99 copies of Adam on the payroll … 🎶
Mr. Son
Right? How’s the first sputtered words out of your mouth not “What? What’s so dangerous?” And then you LEARN. And hey, maybe your boss IS being overbearing, but how do you KNOW until you listen to WHY they think it’s dangerous?
NannyCanes
As someone who used to struggle with this a lot more, I can see the mental disconnect between ‘what I’m doing’ vs ‘what she did’ and ‘why she did it.’ It’s literally just a lack of thinking outside of what YOU are doing and why YOU are doing it, and that Adam, in this instance, likely thinks, “it holds my weight [for now], I’ve used ladders before, I’m faster than the scissor lift, let’s be efficient!” Dude has severe tunnel vision in everything he does, and likely doesn’t consider the consequences or outside factors of what he’s doing at all. It’s overconfidence coupled with narrow thinking, and critical thinking/common sense is practiced, not innate.
Odds are, he’s not seen fit to practice much, because that would require some humility on his part.
EnchantressEmily
Good thing Talita’s so tall!
SpiderFlavoredSoda
Did a rough count of pixels on the last page.
Assuming he was only trying to access the platform halfway up the tower, he was about to free-climb 12 meters (39 feet or approximately 4 stories) with no visible fall arrest system. Even if that ladder was build for a fully loaded human, this is a dumb decision to make in general, and especially when medical help is on the other side of an airlock.
(Note: I also check the OSHA letter of interpretation about scissor lifts. Lifts with appropriate guardrails do not require fall arrest system.)