Author notes

256 - Rise and Shine

El Cid

on Sept. 29, 2018

Guess who's back!

And if you can't guess, then you must be a new reader. I'd recommend you go back a few pages… um… let's say page 230. That should be a good spot to get the overall gist of what's going on. We'll wait for you to catch up!



Okay, so everybody's all caught up now! So, yeah. It turns out strangling a spacer is very hard to do, because when they switch over to hibernation mode, they don't need nearly as much resources (air among them) to stay alive. It's really helpful for conserving supplies on super long space voyages… and apparently also for when demented AIs try to kill you!



And now quibbles…

That was a dumb idea! If Ula had left the garrote around her neck instead of releasing it, wouldn't she have died?

It would probably take hours for her to die from asphyxiation, assuming she doesn't have a backup power source somewhere, and she set her 'wake up' timer for well before that would ever happen. So, no. She'd be fine.

But, what if Ula had cut her head off after she passed out?

That would be bad.







I remember writing in a blog (you can tell this was a long time ago, because I had a blog) an article titled 'Where Are All the Flying Cars?' in which I lamented that none of the cool Blade Runnery stuff we'd expected to see in the 21st century had come to realization. But it seems I may have been throwing in the towel a decade early. Tech startup company Opener is planning to release a consumer-targeted flying car some time next year. It's a single-passenger electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle with a range of 25 miles and top speed of 62 mph. It's basically a giant drone that can accommodate a person inside it. And apparently you won't even need a pilot's license to fly it, since it's mostly automated (it has a convenient 'Return to Home' button that will take you back home and land automatically). They say these things should sell for about the price of an SUV, but we'll wait and see about that.

So, are you planning to buy one? Two? Personally, I have mixed emotions about it. It's great that technology is finally catching up with our imaginations, and I'm sure if they catch on, they'll keep getting more sophisticated. But for now, at least, I'll pass. I live in a sprawled out city, and 25 miles barely gets me anywhere. And if everyone's zipping around in little people drones in the future, that's just one more thing to worry about crashing through your roof in the middle of the day.