Chapter nine over! Coming up next, two log pages, then reader AMAs. I will be doing them weekly again until the final chapter is finished. After that: The final chapter of the book!
Um, and if you'd like to hold that book as a many-layered brick of wood pulp:
The RttS book now funding on Kickstarter!! It's happening! Come get a book here!
Also, it's time to submit questions for the end-of-chapter character AMA. The last time, that is! There will be no character AMA after chapter 10, because that's the end of the book, and I will be busy sleeping for a month and then writing the next book.
Transcript
Bip's avatar perches thoughtfully on the edge of her tablet as if it were a physical ledge.
Bip: I copied myself into those phones as a self preservation impulse. But before you recovered them… offline, in a broken ship with a crew I couldn't save… I felt like I didn't have anything left to preserve.
Talita lies on her bed, looking at the tablet on her dresser. She responds softly.
Talita: I'm glad I found you. You're worth preserving.
Bip: That's kind of you to say, Talita.
She turns her face into her pillow, thinking.
Talita: Bip... will you be looking for a new crew after this?
Bip: You'd be welcome onboard.
Talita: I'll think about it...
On the wall above her bed, behind her posters of rockets and planes and space stations, stars seem to twinkle.
52 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 267”
Captain Confusion
the composition of the last panel… how talita has her face touching the fuzzy human blanket and her feet at the tanned centaur quilt…. she literally has her head in the stars
Bug
RUNAWAY… TO THE STARS… TALITA…
Vinemaple
Oh, right! Bip is elaborating on last page’s statement that they hated being alone… Stars, Bip really got put through the wringer before we met them…
MutableAlias
Bip, being measured and low-key about mentioning their passive suicidal ideation when they were essentially stuck in limbo with just their thoughts immediately after all of their close friends living and operating within them are wiped out due to sudden damage to their body, is definitely a moment.
And obviously that one ancient comic about Talita considering joining Bip was a meme and this isn’t, but it’s touching to see how that scene evolved to this one. Even though the intensity of the situation is not over for Talita yet, this is one of the best post-crying resolutions you can get.
cypr
oooooh talita you wanna runaway to the stars so bad oooooh
milk4evertoasted
reading this comic after watching project hail mary is like ascending upwards and grasping at the stars
Sasha Bucher
TRUE. both of them are kind of hypercompetent engineer yuri one might say
Redacted
Hear hear
MyUniverseinaBox
Also I bought the book via kickstarter and I’m so excited to receive it!!!!! Congrats on reaching far beyond your goal <3
MyUniverseinaBox
This is so lovely. What a heartfelt way to end off the scene. Godddd
Vinemaple
I can’t view the page. When I try to open the image in a new tab, I get an error message from “bunny.net.” Good thing there’s a transcript and a vocal reader community!
Vinemaple
It’s visible now.
Heather
Oh my gooooddd the stars on the wall…. the outside is inside………. hhhhh I love this comic
Night
Ahhhhh my feels. Also I will be doing everything in my power to acquire the comic. college savings be darned!
SeastarCrunchies
Ohhh she didn’t immediately reject the idea!!! Yess Talita! Go, be free amongst the stars with your friend(s????)
halley
she brought it up, even!!
Fantia
‘I’m glad I found you. You’re worth preserving.’ ‘You’d be welcome onboard.’ And what if I cried a little? :”) ❤️
The little rocket poster in the last panel fading into a starry space is such a lovely detail! It is perhaps time,, to run away,, to the stars.
Maned Wolf
[Project Hail Mary happy song begins playing in background]
un_pogaz
I remender the draft comic when Bip suggests to Talita that her leave and the joke that despite her rejection, the thought was persitant.
The fact that in the real deal, Talita is the one who make the first step to ask it, even if she are no realy thought about it, is way of the other side of spectrum and very emotional.
As the Talita declaration about preserving Bid.
zephyr
ooohhhhh the posters in the last panel looking like a rocket taking off into space like talita will soon be doing with bip and the rest of her family!!
furubatsu
Me: Oh hey Talita, how’d your meeting with your new team g–is that a resignation letter?
aves
I know you probably meant “Mel,” not “Me,” but I think that actually you should be in charge of Dirtball now. I don’t know you at all, but I think it would be fun to see what changes a reader makes.
wingedhorror
I don’t know anything about any of you other than we like the same cool comic, but that alone makes me pretty sure Furubatsu, or you, Aves, would be a better admin than Mel!
furubatsu
I’m a Team Leader in a retail store so I *basically* have the same credentials to run a space mining colony as Mel
Eowyn The Legend
Talita reaching out for connection in her moments of distress! I feel like that’s got to be progress compared to how things seemed to have gone for her before she started working. Our little Talita is growing up!
waterfan2
‘A many-layered brick of wood pulp’ is basically the best long-lived storage medium humans have ever invented. Clay tablets can sometimes survive longer, but a codex (hardcover book) is much easier to make and has significantly higher storage density. There’s no special tool required to retrieve the information – just eyes and the ability to read.
We use magnetic tape storage for long-term computer storage but that really only lasts for 200 years. The plastic tape becomes brittle or has uneven stretching.
Books are pretty awesome.
Maned Wolf
Didn’t they figure out something or at least theoretically about encoding data into bone marrow or dna or something and freezing it for long term storage? Or I am remembering something from Horizon Zero Dawn and not real life?
JoB
Encoding data onto DNA/RNA is a real thing, but not exactly affordable or mass produced, not to mention illegible to the naked eye.
On the other hand, though, I’m not convinced that all papers and inks ever used with the intent of producing a long-term recording remained legible, or even in existence, for as long as intended. We have a clear survivor bias there.
the Inmara
Oh, there are whole college classes about archival paper and inks, and which mediums to avoid because they fade, yellow, become brittle, bleed, etc.
Humanity knows, and not just any book will survive.
Also, there’s flood and fire. So, mass printing helps too, by making redundancy and distribution.
JoB
> Oh, there are whole college classes about archival
> paper and inks, and which mediums to avoid
Yes, there are now. Nonetheless, problems like, e.g., the acidity of cheap mass-produced paper amounting to a self-destruction feature on the scale of decades were unknown at the time when the material was introduced; it was considered “just paper”, and found to act differently than previously-analyzed kinds later on.
Likewise, I don’t think that the original owners of engraved metal foils have thought that we might be unable to “just unroll and read them”, and would have to resort to pure sci-fi / magic (hi-res CTs) to decipher them. And we haven’t even gotten to unforeseen “storage conditions” yet (as in, palimpsests) …
There’s a reason why the proposed methods for “nuclear semiotics” look so outlandish to us …
HAL9000
>Clay tablets can sometimes survive longer
just ask ea-nasir!
Peter Jensen
IIRC, those tablets survived because they had been fired, which was not normally done (instead tablets were routinely cleared and re-used). So maybe he was particularly proud of his trickery and he deliberately preserved the complaints. Or maybe angry customers tracked him down and burned his house down with the tablets in them.
forthebit
Or there was just a coincidental house fire (possibly related to his willingness to cut corners in geeral)! We may never know. History is neat.
LeBonk
Ea-Nasir rolls “worst copper business ever”, subjected to millennia of posthumous mockery
Raydfil
ohhh wow. i can’t believe we’re nearly done. oh my god. what an end to the chapter. i’ve been following this series since early 2024. i cannot believe we’ve come this far and i cannot wait to see the last chapter. my god this comic makes me so emotional
Maned Wolf
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/runaway-to-the-stars-book-on-kickstarter-in-april/
“first of a planned four [books]”
Maned Wolf
“…following the same characters.”
Lilac
oooughhhh its just so good its just so well written aaauhughh
frambo
Huh! Until now I thought it was gonna be Bip themselves starting the conversation of Talita joining their crew; an outside voice being the one to call her to action. It’s a fun surprise to see that Talita started that conversation – for the first time, agency over her own future, in a way!
Kaffee
Y’know, we are basically seeing rtts via Millers Planet Time. For Talita and Bip, they’ve only been talking for like 30 seconds, but from our perspective their conversation has unfolded in slow motion over the span of a week: time dilation :D!
Septemberdale
Y’know, I never thought about it that way before, and now what was once a source of frustration is really really cool! Thank you so much, Kaffee!
Gar
Its time to run away to the stars…
Archieve
I love how Bip already knows Talita well enough to tell the subtext of her question give a direct answer.
clover
It’s finally happening!
Accursed Dirt Boar
She’s thinking about it! woooo!
So that means there must be at least one more event that will solidify the decision, hope is not as bad as this one…
Eowyn The Legend
Agreed! I love seeing someone else pick up on the story beats like that. Our innate understanding of storytelling tropes is so fascinating to me. Plus, there’s so much cool worldbuilding in this that it’s always surprising me!
Genko
It’s cool to see the impact a support group is having on Talita. She never would have considered that at the beginning of the story, even as an offer from Gillie.
meatballmenu
SHE’LL THINK ABOUT IT WOOHOO
Archieve
YES! I wonder how many days in verse remain until Bips scheduled departure. Already thinking of how long she’ll get to pack, will it be a rush packing of everything she can discreetly carry in under 24 hours or will she start planning earlier and get some assistance from Gillie and Idrisah?
Peter Jensen
Did they find and refine enough heavy water so Bip wouldn’t have to coast for decades to the wormhole? Or will Talita have to get … creative …
XtraStudios
I’m so excited for this book to come out!!
Ashran
C’mon Talita you know you want to give it a try!
Think of the adventure!