Author notes

150 - Slither

El Cid

on Feb. 16, 2017

This is where the text starts getting seriously thick. The dialogue for these next few page went through a blender several times, so a lot of the panels don't have the original dialogue I'd planned out when I did their artwork.

If you haven't read the beginning of this chapter yet (or just don't remember it anymore), then you're probably scratching your head right now. What the heck is Jetta talking about? No worries. This recap should fill in the blanks for you:





As Jetta points out, Nina's cover story was way too flimsy to have made it through a thorough background check. And let's not forget, when Kai first met Jetta in Chapter 1, she subjected her to a face scan, full body search, and even forced her to get rid of her dress because it was a smart garment that might run malicious code. Even then, she only let Jetta pass because Rana vouched for her. So Kai is no slouch; someone like Nina shouldn't be able to get that close to her boss unless she allowed it.



You may be wondering why the heck are there standing seats on the train? No, it's not to conserve space. I've seen plans for some airlines to roll out standing-room-only flights in order to cram more people in, but that's not the idea here (and that's a dumb idea anyway).

When I was thinking of what kind of seat design a bullet train on Triton would have, I realized that probably no seat design would work all that well. Given the low gravity, even the slightest bumps would be enough to bounce you out of your seat like popping popcorn kernels. Of course, you'd have a seatbelt or some form of harness to prevent you from flying away, but you'd still spend a lot of time hovering over your seat with the harness pulling you back down. That sounds awkward and uncomfortable. I couldn't find anything useful on seating designs for a moon train so, just going on my own hunch, I figured probably the best seating arrangement would be some kind of standing seat like you see on roller coasters. And standing's not nearly as uncomfortable anyway when you weigh like a tenth what you would on Earth.

I'll also confess the modeling job on the standing seats was something of a failure. They look okay, so long as you don't look too closely at them, but the harness design makes no sense whatsoever, and probably wouldn't do you much good, at least not without an additional safety belt or two. So don't look too closely at them! Here are a few WIP pics, for no particular reason:





There's one more page coming this week, most likely on Saturday. We're now just (*gasp!*) three pages away from the end of the chapter. Madness, I say!