page 1380 – The Best Policy
Don’t forget: Layla has already convinced the Cap’n to indulge the kids’ nonsense in hopes of being able to charge their parents an ungodly amount of fees later on. Otherwise, this would be VERY out of character.
So, anyway, remember what I said earlier about post-convention exhaustion last week? Yeah, instead of actually recovering, I just had that give way to pain-old regular, anytime-of-year exhaustion. It’s been a slightly chaotic few days around the house, and although SOME of that chaos has subsided (i.e. a whole crew of construction dudes have come and gone), I’m still in a state of high distraction right now. That’s all a fancy way of saying that I’ve already noticed three or four things in this page I wish I’d noticed during editing, but I just don’t have the juice to go back and redo.
HOWEVER, in case you missed it on Friday, go check out the whole new TWC Voting Incentive series that’s just now kicked off! Despite my weariness, I’m still pretty excited to finally be starting that!
EDIT: New TWC Voting Incentive is up! Now there’s actually a reason for comments to migrate over to THIS week’s comic! (Also, let me know what the resolution of the image looks like. TWC finally activated the new site design they’ve been talking about, and I think it may be stretching out the existing image to fit the layout)
The additional irony is that the Cap’n actually has a device that will repair and recalibrate everything on that escape pod in about 5 min without needing the huge list of random items at all, but nobody asked him to borrow that.
No he doesn’t, Ed8. If he did he would use it on his own ship. The primary irony is that Cap’n ABSOLUTELY doesn’t want them to move the escape pod, as it’s the main thing blocking a massive hole straight to the void of space in his ship. Basically, that thing gets moved, his ship is likely going to have to be abandoned due to these kids.
The secondary irony is that half a dozen spoiled brats are a greater danger to the ship and everyone on it than the literal living-superweapon and ignorant psuedo-natural-disaster that is Stillez. Even Avatar, as while she’s not in danger of injury or death, she is in danger of extreme boredom over an extended period of time.
Hell, if the boy’s do succeed, then they’re in SEVERE personal danger as well. Stillez does NOT take anything that could result in Tax being hurt well, and they’re currently risking deep-space depressurisation killing her.
There’s absolutely no way a teeny tiny little hull rupture like that would cause him to need to abandon ship. The Exposition is huge, about the length of the original Enterprise and much larger by volume, all he’s going to have to do is close the bulkheads for that section, or set up a forcefield, and keep going as if nothing has happened. Another minor repair to bill to the kids’ parents.
Think about it: Cap’n has been flying around for a long time with Ichabod on board – if the ship were toast every time a minor little 10m wide hole got punched in it, he’d be on his 150th new ship by now! This one’s only unusual because it’s the first 10m hole that wasn’t associated directly with Ichabod’s activities and even this one is indirectly Ichabod’s fault through association with Mariska.
(Also, the Repair-o-pod-9000 the Cap’n has only fixes escape pods, it came free with the ones that were included when he purchased the Exposition. Not like he would have paid extra for an add-on.)
There’s probably some comparability problems preventing tech designed to work on The Exposition from functioning on the boys’ stolen ship, most likely to ensure that you have to buy any replacement parts from a licensed dealer for whoever was commissioned to build the thing in the first place (which is probably why they were able to so easily able to find a video on how to fix things with common items: “jailbreaking” this brand of ship is probably a common concern)
@ Ed8: The “Repair-o-pod 9000” would have had to be calibrated to the escape pod the kids use, which would have been effectively a brand new top-of-the-line design (Neva giving the easy-repairs video is actually evidence of that). Cap’n’s Escape Pods would be at least ten, if not twenty, years old now, and thus the repair tool would be incompatible. And that’s ignoring the fact that the Escape Pods likely would work the same way as the Vending Machines, in that after they’re used everyone considers it cheaper/easier to just replace the things.
Ichabod rarely brings true danger to the ship onto the ship. As in, I would NOT be shocked if the two greatest dangers to the ship Ichabod has ever introduced was Trigger and Stillez, in that order, with the Mad Scientist Inventions being somewhere between third to fifth place. We’ve SEEN some of the types of things Ichabod has dealt with, even before the beginning of the story, and it was always far away from the ship. Even when Ichabod needed to escape in a hurry, from what I remember it was on a travel pod that was safe long before Ichabod was in contact with the Exposition.
As for the danger, do you REALLY think there is all that much spare room on the Exposition? If you cut off a corridor, even one of the ones around the edge, you drastically decrease the number of paths through the ship. Layla even called the ship small on page 40, even if the size of the ship now adjusts depending on plot requirements, it’s not as large as the Enterprise is in Star Trek. Even if we’ve seen an “Enterprise” in FOT, that’s just a different ship with a similar external appearance, or it’s been shrunk for the purposes of the joke.
Do remember, though, Layla only considers The Exposition “small” in comparison to the other ships she was used to traveling around in, which normal people would have considered needlessly big and ostentatious.
Sure, but it’s essentially a space-going passenger ship. It’s the equivalent of what a “standard” Cruiseliner would be if we had never discovered plane-based flight. It’s big and can fit a few hundred people, but every part of the environment is required and there’s no such thing as “unused” space, unless you count the currently-empty bedrooms (or the Mystery Room).
Now, it’s entirely possible that the outside layer of the ship is purposefully filled with corridors simply to ensure that when something punctures the ship it goes into a “relatively easily sectioned off part of the ship”. But it is MORE likely to me that the Escape Pod went straight through a set of bedrooms or other purpose-use rooms before it’s front entrance ended up in the hallway. Which mean that ten-meter hole is a lot BIGGER than we saw, meaning more expensive to repair and more destruction from being removed.
I’m not saying that there aren’t explosive-decompression protections. There should be… just like there SHOULD BE numerous protections against flooding on ocean faring ships. Everything we’ve heard about the Exposition suggests that it’ll have working ones, but the absolute minimal amount. Which means blocking off what is effectively a quarter of the ship, it’s amenities and associated access points. Which makes me want to suggest that the ship is constituted in JUST the right position to block off access to both the Gym and the Shooting Range/Nursery/Morgue.
@ Voting Incentive: Honestly, given how the Twins operate, I feel like anything Bridget is bad at, Alphonse is likely good at, and visa versa. I feel like I shouldn’t say more, because saying anything more would spoil the voting incentive. It is