Strip 65 - Click on page above to goto the next page. -- First Seen: 2008-12-12
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The Transcript For This Page

Strip 65

Panel 1
Very large panel, taking up a bit less than a third of the page. Leave room for a tall, narrow Panel 2 to the right side. Leave a space in the upper left corner for the EFT logo.

We’re in another large mining pit, but this one is lighter in color – roughly the consistency and texture of chocolate-chip cookie – and filled with machinery, all doing various tasks.
1) Grazers, machines about the size of large SUVs with big, disk-like maws (about 2-meters across) on the undersides which grind against the pit “bottom”; 2) attached by umbilicals, Sifters, machines about the size of boxcars which separate the various carbon compounds out of the asteroidal “soil” – these have 2-meter-wide output hatches along one side for each of the various compounds, and several “forklift” robots move among the large machines taking 2-meter-square chunks of compressed material out of the Sifter hatches and moving them to various other hatchways located at the end of Transit Corridors arrayed around the periphery of the pit.
There are also a small number of other small machines scattered around the pit, but it’s not clear now what their functions are. Make up a few gadgety things from 1 to 3 cubic meters in size and scatter them around.
Also at the periphery of the pit, and attached to a Transit Corridor, is a block-house containing the control center and convenience rooms for the Carbon operation. The exterior is about 30 meters long, 15 meters wide and 5 meters tall.

Lorna (from inside the block-house): The key to this Carbon Operation is the Sifters, which take the material ground up by the Grazers and separate the carbon compounds from the other materials and compress them into cubes of specific carbon matrices which are sold to fabs elsewhere at Ghetty or shipped to Ceres or Mars for their needs.

Panel 2
Inside the Operations Room. Close-up on Lorna:

Lorna: Midgit Mining’s books are posted for the shareholders, and as Kent here points out, almost everyone who works here, including me, owns shares, and gets a percentage of net profits.

Panel 3
Medium-sized panel, have the female joystick Operator – “Fran” -- in the right foreground, Kent the keyboard Operator in the middle-ground, and the tour in the background behind him

Kent: Except for Fran here, who’s on a two-year contract, saving up to build a Seastead.


Kent (2): They pay ya good enough here, Fran?

Fran: If they know what’s good for ‘em, they do.

Panel 4
Smaller panel. Fiorella leans towards Guy (wearing his default slightly-annoyed expression) and speaks softly.


Fiorella: It looks like the downtrodden here don’t let themselves get trodden.


Panel 5
The tour is back in another Transit Corridor. Bert is dawdling behind just a bit, looking preoccupied. Guy and Lorna are talking – Lorna is getting defensive.

Guy: Your company also publishes its accident record, which is far from unblemished. You had three deaths and five serious injuries here in the last year.

Lorna: They were all newbies whose own foolish mistakes caused those accidents.


Panel 6
Still moving through the Corridor, Guy and Lorna continue their discussion. Lorna is starting to lose her patience.

Lorna: Agent Caillard, we work in space, which is a harsh, unforgiving environment. People make mistakes, and people die.

Guy: What a callous philosophy.

Lorna: It’s not philosophy, it’s reality. We…


Panel 7
Smaller panel, filled with black except for the sound effect.

SFX (very large): WHOMPH!!