Comic for Monday, February 3rd, 2025
Comic!
To save you time… the two people in the first part of the comic are new characters. They are the same ones we partially saw last page, but aren’t previously occurring characters. I mention it because they are unnamed, and one of them I realize retrospectively sort of looks like another character, but that’s just due to art style.
Given how Mari addresses Kally, one may be lead to the assumption that she knew Kally when Kally was young. I would note that’s not the case though; we actually saw in Minus Years the first time Peter and Kally met, and we saw when Peter first left for Palindra in a flashback feature Mari previously. They’ve (clearly) met before, but it would have been after Minus Years. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given we’ve seen that Kally had met Miko before when Miko was still in Central.
I realize typing this that Kally and Naomi would have been speaking in Malsan here, while Mari would be speaking in Central. Since that might matter, I may update the text later with <>; just sort of forget when transcribing it here since its been awhile since it mattered.
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The broken airlock was how they got in rather than how they got out right?
It was mentioned earlier how a Pathfinder trying to transport somebody onto a space station would almost certainly dump them into the open space instead of the station. They never asked about if someone could transport them close enough to the station that they can then enter through an airlock. If you’re expecting to wind up in space then you can bring a spacesuit and movement apparatus.
And if you’ve got the timing & positioning down, heh, you don’t really need the suit – they pop in a dozen or so meters from the airlock, jet in, the lock cycles…
A mask, a propulsion device, somewhat accurate placement and good timing. Probably some additional factors like appearing on the side of the station opposite the sun or other highest risk sources of radiation, but that’s not the hardest part to plot out, just a narrower set of circumstances
No comic this week; there was supposed to be, but as we tick past the due date it seems less and likely, so we’re at the point where postponing till next week makes more sense.
There will, eventually, be a comic. But not this week. Sorry been a little busy this month. Should be back on track soon; I do have the arc outlined and ready, I just need to actually sit down and draw it, but have had not much drawing time recently.
Remind me, do we know anything about Peter’s aunt?
And if we do/n’t, why aren’t we theorizing why she’s noteworthy to the guy reporting?
Pretty sure any mention of the aunt leads to an immediate interruption; as though the multiverse itself (or the author) were keeping that information from us…
Given https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-march-22nd-2018/
Miko’s mother’s last name is Taki or Shimzu since Miko’s name is Shimzu Taki. This would depend on whether we are using first name first or first name last. Miko’s mother presumably married a man with the same last name as Miko.
Miko’s mother is the sister of Kyle and Aaron
. . .
Looking at https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-april-9th-2018/
Miko has the following dialogue: You keep talking about how clever we are, but you keep assuming how stupid we are. Do you think that we never wondered why there was an empty world just sitting there? or where your sister went? Or what’s on the far side of Utopia?
There were a few other relevant pieces of information in the web comic, but I can’t find them at the moment. However, there appears to be the equivalent of a whole other web comic covering what mission Miko’s mother was on when she vanished and what happened there. There was also the issue of how Miko received brain damage and how Peter originally met Mium
It’s implied Miko was wheelchair bound, and underwent an experimental procedure involving a brain implant. Almost certainly volunatarily. Either because she wanted to be a Mage and/or to walk.
Said procedure left her in a coma. Peter was able to wake her up before the story began. With it heavily hinted as being before he went rogue. There’s also the possibility that she was only wheelchair bound after she was woken up. Which still matches with her taking the risk for the ability to be a Mage.
Assist from likely being her mother, there’s nothing that ties Miko’s implant to Peter’s aunt disappearing.
Going to https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-april-9th-2018/ , it says that Query was integrated into her implant to allow Miko to come out of the coma. I suspect that the details involving Miko’s injury and recovery are still TBD in PastUtopia’s mind.
That’s a much more parent-friendly version of the story than I got.
My version reads more like, during the war, a number of influential parents agreed to have experimental implants put into their kids. The kids didn’t consent and may not have even been old enough to speak enough to. That said, they probably were old enough to “consent”, in the sense that they could verbally agree, but not actually consent in the sense of understanding what they were agreeing to.
It’s not stated explicitly whether there were any other kids who had worse experiences than Miko. Considering that they didn’t really understand the technology, it stands to reason there probably were. But Peter’s clever enough to know that directly reminding people of stuff like that is not a good way to get them to do what you want.
Both Peter and Miko got implants. The process went better for Peter than Miko. It’s not clear to me whether Miko’s coma started immediately, or was a result of her trying to use her implant without knowing what she was doing. I don’t think the comic explicitly mentioned what put Miko into the wheelchair, but it seemed to me he was blaming his parent’s generation for that also. Maybe immediately post surgery, Miko wasn’t totally unresponsive, she just couldn’t walk, and then stuff got worse.
So Mium synced with Peter to break the cuffs and to breakdown the bullet?
Like he did with Miko:
https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-december-15th/
The team chasing him were probably chasing a Peter-decoy. Like this poor guy:
https://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-october-22nd-2018/
The decoy led them to the broken airlock. Peter on the other hand… he could be anywhere.
Still so many questions.
Suddenly wondering if Mium, who was pretending to be Peter, is now pretending to be Marigold.
I’m actually wondering if Mium might have disguised himself as Hanson for maximum chaos.
Probably followed by a swap in the chaos for the role with Peter.
Text corrections:
3rd panel: “connected *to* black site labs.” (word added)
4th panel: “if we do not give them *something* in the next five minutes” (instead of anything)
Updated, thanks!
Considering that Mari taught classes in Malsan she could’ve feasibly recognized the language and used it in consideration to Naomi. Wouldn’t have had to be speaking in Central.
Mari can speak Malsan, I was just noting that she wasn’t at the moment, and I should have marked it, but forgot (only realizing as I was writing the update), since I don’t typically mark languages unless there are two in the same scene.
Well, we’ve confirmed the gun actually fired and Mium was probably involved in probably multiple aspects of the event. And now we have a motive for Hansen to break protocol and attempt to execute Peter.
Mium likely pulled the same tricks he’s done before, disintegrating solid objects, getting defective cuffs labeled as functioning in the system, and getting them assigned specifically for issue for this operation.
Dunno. I sort of suspect maybe Peter survived. 😉
Marigold, a clever lady who on occasion has taken advice from Query/Mium is here to act like she’s close friends with Kally shortly(?) before her transfer to Palindra. She’s totally just here to get a couch to crash on, that’s all, definitely
Why would she need somewhere to crash? She lives on the station after all.
My bet is she had multiple reasons. Including seeing an old friend, and meeting Peter’s new friends. Plus whatever Mium and Peter have cooked up. Showing up there is a pretty good alibi after all.
Meanwhile, no one who knows Peter will be surprised at either someone trying to kill him, or him escaping in some BS way. That’s a Tuesday for him.
My bet is Mari is there to invite the two to dinner. Then Peter turns out to be in the most obvious place possible. His parent’s home.
Good news is Fairway will probably be annoyed at Peter’s enemies and impressed by Peter’s boldness. Those inquiries which were being blocked are going to have said blocks removed fairly quickly.
If Marigold gets a transfer to Palindra, she will no longer be living on the station.
That having been said, I would expect her to be an organizer of the refugees from Central. She would probably get accommodations from that role. That said, it’s possible she’ll need to move early to make sure those accommodations get set up before people move, and if so, she could need a staging location.
That said, it felt to me like it’s more likely that she’s establishing herself as Kally’s close associate for their audience. After all, Kally already knows exactly how close her relationship is with Peter’s sister, and any attempt to ingratiate oneself with someone in that manner feels rather sitcom-ish. Also, as mentioned, it establishes that she is here, rather than where she just perpetrated stuff with a bit of a time delay.
No, I don’t know what she set up, but it’ll be going off soon. And if things go south with that, she’ll probably need the help of her favorite witch and her favorite witch’s purple gorilla to get away cleanly, so it’s probably a good idea to hang out with them.