01/02/20 – The Heims

Spacetrawler, audio version For the blind or visually impaired, January 2, 2020.


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2020-01-02-spacetrawler3

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Shut up, Box-Bot.

27 Comments

    1. Muzhik

      Oh, I imagine he is. Otherwise, there’s a REAL stinky corner — or set of corners — on the ship. But face it — sometimes you just gotta go camo and let your parts fly in the breeze.

          1. lil sis

            Or.. just prefers to pee outside and is looking forward to the opportunity. He may have been marking up the place, but the cleaning bots keeping erasing the evidence.
            I’m reminded of a line in Skin Horse when the dogs complain they don’t understand humans..”they pee in water to make the smell go away!”

  1. Rex Vivat

    Unrelated to the current page, I just had a thought. The translator chip doesn’t make you fluent in someone else’s language, so unless you’re willing and able to shoot everyone with a chipping gun there’s still need to learn other languages. However, since it makes you understand any language as your own, wouldn’t that make learning a new language incredibly hard, if not outright impossible?

    1. Sean K.

      From previous Spacetrawler stories, I have the impression that translator chips are a standard accessory used by most galactic beings, and that it’s only on “dark” planets that it would be necessary to implant them into each person you encounter.

  2. Rikard

    I kind of see where Emily is coming from here, her personal journey and all that, but principles and ideals aren’t a substitue for guns. Perhaps she is at that point where she doesn’t trust herself not to relapse on reflex?

    Surely there must be some kind of stun gun without a lethal setting? A web gun perhaps? Colon spasticator? Non-lethal multispecies hallucinogen dartshooter? Orgon ray disperser? A micro homing missile system which only targets guns?

    OTOH, no guns means either A) lots of entertaining dialogue or B) lots of running away while trading quips, so it’s all good. (Or C, stealing a gun…)

  3. Night-Gaunt49

    Striking and stabbing weapons, blow guns, slingshots and martial arts of every kind too. Otherwise work on that world will be difficult.

    I’d guess flying armored bounty hunters will just kill anyone who tries to top them…and they would have to have powerful weapons to bring to bear on them.

    Now what would an “Orgone Disperser Gun” do to a person? Orgone is life energy. So they lose some of their life energy to the point of needing sleep maybe? Now a DOR gun at a light setting might inhibit someone by filling their bodies with a weak dose of Deadly ORgone fired at them in a concentrated beam without fully killing them. The settings would be a bitch. You’d have to do some test firings.

  4. Tobias

    The recent discussions about body modification raise an interesting question here. Would a Heim or offworlder using offworld devices to alter its body to have organic wings create a loophole in the Durns’ racism, or would that still count as technologically assisted?

    We’ve seen a lot of instances of technology being used to alter or heal human bodies, but no so much alien bodies, I think. Heck, becoming trans-species is probably well within the realm of possibility, given that many species are sexually compatible (as Dimitri discovered).

  5. russell styles

    Seems like only a matter of time before someone creates a device that destroys anything that flies without technology. Judging from the image, the Durns shoot the offenders by hand.

    If by chance there are automated guns, they could be suborned to shoot the Durns.

      1. russell styles

        Thanks. Yesterday at least, search was dead. Only found one strip with “box-bot” in it, this one. And viewing is nearly impossible.

        Note that she is carrying the “really accurate gun”, it is not in storage. Looks human designed, roughly, and is purple.

  6. Pete Rogan

    Saaaay, what happened to Emily’s rifle she bought on Earth? Wouldn’t it be too big to fit in the box-bot? Although I suppose she could have disassembled it (one more step to getting it ready to use) and stored the pieces. Hm.

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