Poor Ruddock, lonely and then ignored. Wish I could scritch you behind the ears buddy.
rws
The authorities are bound to notice that many houses being crushed and the occupants disappearing. Covering this up without revealing galactic society will be tough.
C.B.VINCENT GOUDREAULT
You are quite correct. The 195th country/territory in the world in terms of population is shy of 100,000 people. The house crushing style of landing favored by the Stribs, let alone the abductions, ought to have left an impression.
An impression on the people, maybe. On the _landscape_, definitely.
rws
They would certainly not take evenly from each country. Countries with a lot of deeply rural citizens, or densely packed would be logical. And maybe people in sparsely populated areas.
On the other hand, they selected people not likely to be missed. Seems they (galactic’s) know more about us than we do. Fooled by adoption and by identical twins. So do they have detailed information on everybody in China and India and the Amazon or Congo.
We may find out, eventually.
KQY61
They crushed *my* house. I noticed. And they left my radio station intact (above the workshop). So the entire Earth amateur radio community would know about it in short order. And I am going to buy the galactic equivalent of a Space Caterpillar D11 and drive over every one of their oversized puppy like heads. See how well they truly like crushing incidents.
Stribs aren’t part of galactic society though so I doubt they care. But just to be rigorous: houses crushed and occupants missing from neighbouring houses.
Jude
Look at Ruddock. He hasn’t moved a milimetre, and are his eyes even wider opened than before? Since his conversation with Aitana has been rudely interrupted, perhaps he’s wondering whether limbic fizzlers would go well with robotic mice, whether his new ship would know how to make them and whether they would help alleviate his loneliness.
Coyoty
He’d just feel useless anyway. They already have enough guns and booze over there.
Mgnostic
Missing people and a trail of smashed houses? In Oklahoma we would just wonder how we missed the tornado.
Efogoto
That brings a whole new meaning to “O-o-o-o-o-klahoma! where the wind comes sweeping down the plain …”
Muzhik
@Efogoto — you seriously thought it had any other meaning? 🙂
Efogoto
So … the lazy circles the hawk makes … are at 200 miles per hour getting whipped around the funnel? Huh.
TB
There’s actually no such thing as a tornado. All that damage has been done by spaceships with holographic disguises.
Muzhik
Let’s crunch some numbers here:
Just went back to the beginning. Assuming Aitana’s parents are the last ones taken from Earth, and assuming each ship will pick up the same number of people, then there are 195 ships holding about 2,000 people total, plus or minus 50.
And they want these humans to build settlements on planet “Gentlekindness.”
Right.
They’d better have some real whoop-a$$ tech to throw that housing all together. Because even with mind control 2,000 strangers are NOT going to be even remotely able to assemble all the housing and infrastructure by themselves.
Plus, even after the Stribs have started their dastardly plan, they’re going to have to make regular “beer runs” to Earth to pick up replacement people, to replace those lost due to accident, illness, or (eventually) old age. Because 2,000 people probably isn’t enough for a stable breeding population of humans without running into some inbreeding down the road, esp. since not every one of the couples being collected were ones that would willingly impregnate/be impregnated by some random human with the correct genitalia.
So these Stribs may have all the cool tech toys, but they really don’t think things through, do they? Of course, we already knew that, didn’t we?
Efogoto
According to the symbiont, there are hundreds of stasis chambers on one ship alone. Even for the low plural vales of 200 or 300, that gives 39,000 to 58,500 humans across 195 ships, assuming they all have “hundreds of stasis chambers”.
Prior Semblance
Maybe they grabbed a bunch of random people to do menial labor in addition to the specifically chosen parents.
Pete Rogan
Never mind the captive humans. How are the Stribs going to relocate all their kids to the human-colonized planet?
I just erased my next thought, which would have been telling. Instead I’ll just ponder whether Ruddock is now thinking of having the Strib computer build him a bar-bot. For his own entertainment or just to pickle the three surviving officers. Or perhaps he has another idea, needing as he does some sort of companionship. A robot Emily, perhaps.
No, I think I’d better leave both thoughts where they are and get some sleep. I’m gonna need it.
Night-Gaunt
As things are normal the USA loses 600,000 people on average a year vanish.
No dragnets are called, just a statistical number because of the probable’s involved including vanishing on the trail and being lost, and changing one’s name and others may account for that from all over the vast country that is the USA.
How many did the aliens take from at least 195 locations around our planet.
Maybe whole small towns became deserted in one night.
You can bet a few places and organizations will notice. That and objects being seen in the areas of said depletions of humanity. Entire families gone forever.
Cable shows with clear recordings of said ships coming and going.
The Stribs were shown to be clumsy as in not caring will leave more data.
Happy hunting humans of Terra.
Muzhik
@Night-Gaunt
Your last line, “/iHappy hunting humans of Terra./-i , has a built-in ambiguity, rather like the meme that says “/bLet’s eat Grandma | Let’s eat, Grandma | Grammar saves lives!/-b”
As in, “Good luck in hunting those pesky humans of Terra”,
or,
“Have a good time while hunting (those Stribs), you humans of Terra”
Personally, my money is on the humans of Terra. The Squibs may be evil and uncaring, but they’ve got nothing on those people who invented the adhesive that holds price labels on items in the store.
Muzhik
Let me rephrase that:
Your last line, “Happy hunting humans of Terra. , has a built-in ambiguity, rather like the meme that says “Let’s eat Grandma | Let’s eat, Grandma | Grammar saves lives!”
That should work better.
Muzhik
Huh. The formatting software will accept the italics formatting (an “i” surrounded by angle brackets), but not the bold formatting (a “b” surrounded by angle brackets). Or at least not in the same comment.
Muzhik
O, BTW, Thanks Mr. Baldwin, for creating this marvelous universe and such amusing characters!
Efogoto
Hear, hear!
tlhonmey
Heh. Bonus points if you make Choan the villain of the next spacetrawler story arc. That one definitely has collected up a scary amount of power and has apparently read the evil overlord list entries about being happy and polite and dressing in cheery colors to sow confusion.
Poor Ruddock, lonely and then ignored. Wish I could scritch you behind the ears buddy.
The authorities are bound to notice that many houses being crushed and the occupants disappearing. Covering this up without revealing galactic society will be tough.
You are quite correct. The 195th country/territory in the world in terms of population is shy of 100,000 people. The house crushing style of landing favored by the Stribs, let alone the abductions, ought to have left an impression.
An impression on the people, maybe. On the _landscape_, definitely.
They would certainly not take evenly from each country. Countries with a lot of deeply rural citizens, or densely packed would be logical. And maybe people in sparsely populated areas.
On the other hand, they selected people not likely to be missed. Seems they (galactic’s) know more about us than we do. Fooled by adoption and by identical twins. So do they have detailed information on everybody in China and India and the Amazon or Congo.
We may find out, eventually.
They crushed *my* house. I noticed. And they left my radio station intact (above the workshop). So the entire Earth amateur radio community would know about it in short order. And I am going to buy the galactic equivalent of a Space Caterpillar D11 and drive over every one of their oversized puppy like heads. See how well they truly like crushing incidents.
Hahahahahaha! 🙂
Stribs aren’t part of galactic society though so I doubt they care. But just to be rigorous: houses crushed and occupants missing from neighbouring houses.
Look at Ruddock. He hasn’t moved a milimetre, and are his eyes even wider opened than before? Since his conversation with Aitana has been rudely interrupted, perhaps he’s wondering whether limbic fizzlers would go well with robotic mice, whether his new ship would know how to make them and whether they would help alleviate his loneliness.
He’d just feel useless anyway. They already have enough guns and booze over there.
Missing people and a trail of smashed houses? In Oklahoma we would just wonder how we missed the tornado.
That brings a whole new meaning to “O-o-o-o-o-klahoma! where the wind comes sweeping down the plain …”
@Efogoto — you seriously thought it had any other meaning? 🙂
So … the lazy circles the hawk makes … are at 200 miles per hour getting whipped around the funnel? Huh.
There’s actually no such thing as a tornado. All that damage has been done by spaceships with holographic disguises.
Let’s crunch some numbers here:
Just went back to the beginning. Assuming Aitana’s parents are the last ones taken from Earth, and assuming each ship will pick up the same number of people, then there are 195 ships holding about 2,000 people total, plus or minus 50.
And they want these humans to build settlements on planet “Gentlekindness.”
Right.
They’d better have some real whoop-a$$ tech to throw that housing all together. Because even with mind control 2,000 strangers are NOT going to be even remotely able to assemble all the housing and infrastructure by themselves.
Plus, even after the Stribs have started their dastardly plan, they’re going to have to make regular “beer runs” to Earth to pick up replacement people, to replace those lost due to accident, illness, or (eventually) old age. Because 2,000 people probably isn’t enough for a stable breeding population of humans without running into some inbreeding down the road, esp. since not every one of the couples being collected were ones that would willingly impregnate/be impregnated by some random human with the correct genitalia.
So these Stribs may have all the cool tech toys, but they really don’t think things through, do they? Of course, we already knew that, didn’t we?
According to the symbiont, there are hundreds of stasis chambers on one ship alone. Even for the low plural vales of 200 or 300, that gives 39,000 to 58,500 humans across 195 ships, assuming they all have “hundreds of stasis chambers”.
Maybe they grabbed a bunch of random people to do menial labor in addition to the specifically chosen parents.
Never mind the captive humans. How are the Stribs going to relocate all their kids to the human-colonized planet?
I just erased my next thought, which would have been telling. Instead I’ll just ponder whether Ruddock is now thinking of having the Strib computer build him a bar-bot. For his own entertainment or just to pickle the three surviving officers. Or perhaps he has another idea, needing as he does some sort of companionship. A robot Emily, perhaps.
No, I think I’d better leave both thoughts where they are and get some sleep. I’m gonna need it.
As things are normal the USA loses 600,000 people on average a year vanish.
No dragnets are called, just a statistical number because of the probable’s involved including vanishing on the trail and being lost, and changing one’s name and others may account for that from all over the vast country that is the USA.
How many did the aliens take from at least 195 locations around our planet.
Maybe whole small towns became deserted in one night.
You can bet a few places and organizations will notice. That and objects being seen in the areas of said depletions of humanity. Entire families gone forever.
Cable shows with clear recordings of said ships coming and going.
The Stribs were shown to be clumsy as in not caring will leave more data.
Happy hunting humans of Terra.
@Night-Gaunt
Your last line, “/iHappy hunting humans of Terra./-i , has a built-in ambiguity, rather like the meme that says “/bLet’s eat Grandma | Let’s eat, Grandma | Grammar saves lives!/-b”
As in, “Good luck in hunting those pesky humans of Terra”,
or,
“Have a good time while hunting (those Stribs), you humans of Terra”
Personally, my money is on the humans of Terra. The Squibs may be evil and uncaring, but they’ve got nothing on those people who invented the adhesive that holds price labels on items in the store.
Let me rephrase that:
Your last line, “Happy hunting humans of Terra. , has a built-in ambiguity, rather like the meme that says “Let’s eat Grandma | Let’s eat, Grandma | Grammar saves lives!”
That should work better.
Huh. The formatting software will accept the italics formatting (an “i” surrounded by angle brackets), but not the bold formatting (a “b” surrounded by angle brackets). Or at least not in the same comment.
O, BTW, Thanks Mr. Baldwin, for creating this marvelous universe and such amusing characters!
Hear, hear!
Heh. Bonus points if you make Choan the villain of the next spacetrawler story arc. That one definitely has collected up a scary amount of power and has apparently read the evil overlord list entries about being happy and polite and dressing in cheery colors to sow confusion.