We’re back! And, much like the economy, we’ve downsized.

While we had a great deal of fun whomping up the larger strips — Adam had a lot more room to play and still fit in all the words I insisted had to be there, somewhere, in some sort of order — they were also incredibly time-consuming to create at the level of quality we both wanted. And other, paying projects crept in, and there was those non-paying family members who kept hanging around… we had to step back and rethink the strip. We both wanted to continue, no question about that, but it would have to change for that to happen.

Hence, the smaller, non-color strip. But, good news: the format change saves us enough time so that we can start publishing three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) instead of two, which is something we wanted to do from the beginning.

If you’re just joining us - and hey! Hi! — you can catch up with the older strips here, or you can download them as a cbr file (Use CDisplay or these other cbr programs to read it). And we look forward to obsessing with you for years to come!

(Seriously, how old is the new Doctor, like, twelve? Who’s going to be his Companion, Winnie the Pooh? But I digress.)

New strips, new look, probably the same jokes. Sorry.

What’s that, over there?

Hmm …

“Thanks,” the man said. “Sign here, please.” He thrust a small pad at her and stood waiting. ParSec looked at Chavez, who shrugged. She signed the pad.

“Great, hang on.” He folded himself back through the hatch, in stages, and then backed out again while dragging a large box. The box had a frosted front and blinking lights. Blinking lights on a coffin-sized box, in Hy’s personal experience, were never good. “There you go,” the man said, slapping his hands together. The box had tiny wheels on it; it continued to roll a few more inches after he set it down. “You have a good day, now.” And he swung the hatch closed behind himself. Within seconds an engine fired up and the floor shook as the delivery ship disengaged and fell away.

Chavez was already bent over the box. “It must be cheaper to order frozen captains,” he said. “Maybe they buy them in bulk.”

ParSec leaned in to peer over his shoulder. “Captain? Ahem, Captain? Captain… what’s his name?

“Shipping label says ‘Parvo, V.’”

“Captain Parvo? Sir?”

“You should probably salute louder,” Chavez said. “I don’t think he can hear you.”

“Is he alive?” ParSec asked, wringing her hands. “How long before you can bring him back?”

Chavez leaned back on his heels and tapped the front of the box. “It’s set to decant him automatically in another hour or so,” he said. “Probably not a good idea to rush it.”

They contemplated the box. Through the frosted window a face could just barely be seen. A strong face. Possibly even a noble face. But most of all it was a surprised face, and whatever the surprise had been, it had not been a happy surprise one.

They leaned back. “We wait,” ParSec said.

“Agreed,” Hy said.

“Oh, yeah,” Chavez said.

Hy straightened up and brushed off her slacks. “You know, we could reset the timer. No, no, hear me out,” she said, trying not to giggle at the horrified look on ParSec’s face. “Just think how effective a frozen captain would be! He’d always give the orders we’d want to hear!

Chavez grinned. “He could work 24-hour shifts!”

“Plus he makes a great desk! Or bludgeoning object, in times of war!”

“He’ll keep our drinks chilled!”

Through this litany Lt. Commander ParSec’s face had cycled through some interesting colors of its own. When she took a deep and deliberate breath, it returned slowly to its normal icy-pale shade, only it wasn’t the friendly, let’s-go-skating kind of ice. Her face was the ice that children get trapped under, the ice that slowly creeps up over your continent when you’re not looking. “You are talking treason,” she said slowly, multi-ton chunks of glacier slipping into the sea with every word.

The other two brought themselves under control, barely, under her gaze. “Technically he hasn’t yet taken control of the ship,” Chavex pointed out, chuckling. “At this point, legally, we’re just being obnoxious.”

“Be that as it may, we need to get him to his cabin so he can defrost in private. Coming out of cryo can be a bewildering and vulnerable time, I would imagine, and I would be remiss in my duties if I knowingly allowed him to embarass himself and possibly undermine his authority before he even has any,” ParSec said stiffly. “I need to return to the bridge immediately and prepare for the captain’s arrival. Both of you, take him to his quarters.”

Hy dropped the hand from in front of her face since it was no longer needed. Badly-controlled smiles must often be concealed. Frowns can go where they please. “Excuse me? No, you need to call a valet or somebody, I don’t do heavy lifting. Also, I don’t work for you. We had this discussion.”

‘Yes, we did,” ParSec said, in tones that suggested that the discussion in question had not been complete in and of itself and may in fact have only been Round One.

“There are clear defined lines between the military and civilian duties and responsibillities on board the Venture,” Hy said, in icy tones of her own. Somewhere a small ski resort was in danger… “And I handle the civvy stuff. That is definitely military.”

“But you have to–”

Hy stood up ramrod straight and managed to look ParSec in the neck. “What? What do I have to do, since I am not under your jurisdiction and do not take your orders? I’m not going to go through this every time you want something. Hauling capsicles is your problem, not mine! Got it? Are we clear?”

Gradually, cracks formed in the permafrost. ParSec mumbled something.

“What?”

“Understood,” ParSec said, glaring. The two women settled into a glaring match; ParSec had the reach and uniform for it, but Hy was winning on sheer rage.

“Hey Hy, can you give me a hand with this thing?” Chavez asked cheerfully.

“Oh, sure, doc,” the mayor said immediately, to ParSec’s complete astonishment. Hy looked back up. “What?”

“You just said–”

“I don’t take orders. Polite requests often work, though. Consider that as an alternate option, I’m sure it’s mentioned in one of your op manuals somewhere.” Hy bent to help push the crated captain.

ParSec stood stock still for a moment, possibly convincing herself that murdering both of them would be wrong and would soil her uniform, and then stormed off.

Venture was both a ship and a town, and like most combo devices it wasn’t a very good either. As a ship it lacked maneuverability and possessed what attacking forces, were they any, might call a “target surplus.” And as a town… as a town it made a great ship.

The good ship Venture wasn’t really as cramped as it could have been, it just seemed that way if you wanted to walk through it or wave your arms or anything. Once she got past most of the open areas and into the corridors Hy barely had to duck at all through most of the hatches as she sped through them at a dead run to get to the subway, which was waiting patiently for her thanks to Greta. A few early rising hydroponics farmers were sitting there and carefully not grumbling at the delay as their mayor stepped aboard and the doors closed. Hy watched the town’s streets whip by. It was possible to walk through the entire town to get to the ship’s functional areas, but it would take more time than she had. Today was a big day, new captain or no new captain.

By the time the farmers got off she had them laughing and sharing jokes with her. Farmer Zeke (Dr. Ezekial Anastene, B.E. [Agriculture]) and Farmer Joe (Dr. Joseph Milo Franz, M.Tech [Agriculture Biotechnology]) shook her hand, asked again about Hy joining them for dinner one of these nights, and stepped off into the carefully crafted morning sunlight. The subway sped on.

Fields and 2/3 scale barns gave way to a dense forest, followed by an intricate network of pipes that served as their water condensation system. Into each life, some rain must fall, usually on the half hour, every hour, between 3 and 6 p.m. And then those slid by and all that was left was countless rows of gray hallways and storage areas.

“Approaching the town airlock,” said the voice in her head.

“Thanks, Katy.” Hy stood up and walked quickly off the car to the waiting stairway. Two flights down, a last check to make sure her hair was pretending to be in order, and she pushed through the double doors just as something big clanked against the massive airlock door set into the far wall. There were two crewmembers waiting there, and on average they were at attention. One was a tall, cruel Nordic beauty carved of crystal ice and steel who was standing straight enough to be used as a tunnel support. The other was an old fat guy.

“Lt. Commander ParSec, Dr. Chavez,” Hy said, smoothing down her blouse.

“Mayor Alistair,” ParSec replied.

“Hey, Hy,”  Chavez said. “Ready for the unveiling?”

“Unveiling?”

“Of our new commanding officer, the captainareeno, he of noble brow and heart so true.”

ParSec grimaced. “A little decorum if you please, doctor.”

“You’re just testy because you won’t be in charge anymore. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be just as tightassed as you are. Probably more so; you’ve been in lower gravity for the last few months. You’re losing some of your tone.”

Hy turned away so ParSec wouldn’t see her grin. Next to the hatch the lights on the control panel finished their sequence and went green. ParSec stepped forward smartly and, with a slight grunt the others pretended not to notice, spun the wheel. There was a hiss and a smell of ozone, and the door swung open to reveal a man. A tall, muscular man, Hy noticed. A very attractive man.

She grabbed a tunic at random, thought about possible media coverage of the experiment, and put it back to select another with a careful eye towards fit, style, and recent cleansing. Hy dressed quickly, trying not to look at the empty spot on the bed where Arcus was now rolling about to create a giant Arcus-filled blanket tortilla. Her husband Ambrose was already hard at work somewhere. Sewage management waited for no man or mayor, apparently. Hy sighed, trying not to feel hurt that he was paying more attention to human effluvia than he was to her. Everyone in the town was hustling to get the bugs out of their systems while diasters were still easily contained, and making their byproducts swiftly and smoothly wend through the mysterious processes that turned crap into vegetables was, at the moment, much more important than spending time with her. Dammit.

Besides, soon she’d be leaving him behind to deal with slightly different human byproducts. She thought about Ambrose crawling through the sewer mains and smiled to herself. Their jobs weren’t that dissimilar, actually. She just turned crap into government.

A new voice — a young, female, and worried voice — shrieked out of thin air, causing her to jump and drop the brush she’d been using to hack through the worst thickets of hair. “Hy? Hy!”

“What is it, Greta? And I warn you, if it isn’t an incoming missile the next time we pass over the Andes I’m flushing you out.”

“It’s an incoming missile.”

Hy dropped the brush, again. “What?”

“Sort of. It’s a call from Admiral Buchanon.”

“Don’t put him through!” Hy shrieked, frantically checking to make sure nothing unmayorly was poking out of her tunic. “Dammit, he’s going to expect pants…”

“It was just audio,” Greta said. “He said to tell you that the new captain’s on his way up.”

Hy relaxed and concentrated on pretending to be someone awake and full of coffee. “Great. When he gets here tell him to wipe his feet. I’m going to get Arcus ready and get to the capsuling, meet me there in half an hour and be sure to get some good pics for the media pool. Try to avoid my right side, my hair’s decided to launch a solo career this morning.”

“No no no no no, the Admiral said you gotta! Really important, he was very clear about it. His voice sounded funny but Katy IDed him as being him. Captain’s ship docks in twenty.”

Hy stopped with a sock in each hand. “How? We’re not down the street by the liquor store, Greta. This guy’s been in a can for, minimum, 28 hours and Buchanon’s just letting us know about it now?”

“There’s this old saying, you know, about messenger-shooting being a bad thing?”

“Never heard of it.” She finished pulling on something respectable. “Did the good admiral mention what I should be doing? Giving him a guided tour? Getting him drunk and tattooed? What?”

“He, uh, he said something about ‘reviving’ him.”

“Excuse me?”

“And releasing him from custody. I’ll be there in a sec to get Arcus ready while you’re gone, good luck, say hi for me, bye now!” There was a click.

Hy looked at the bed, which was pulsating gently. “Used to be if you talked to the air, they put you in a nice padded cell and fed you jello,” she said.

“Can I have some jello?” the blanket pile asked plaintively.

“Ask your Auntie Greta. And you might want to hurry,” Hy muttered, heading for the door. “You won’t be seeing her very much after today. I’m pretty sure she’s more than eight years old.”

“Eeeeyaaaaooouugh!” she yelled, sitting up hard enough to wrench her back. Hy Alistair, mayor of the newly-formed and completely airborne town of Venture, waited a full minute to compose herself and let her heart rate drop back down until it was merely tachycardia. She was in her dark, stark bedroom, full of metal and plastic and shiny fake wood, with no window anywhere and only a single small picture frame displaying a sunny sky on an otherwise featureless wall. The bed itself, with a small table to either side, was the only thing suggesting “bedroom” in the first place; otherwise a casual observer might have guessed “storeroom” or “shipping container” or “closed-off end of an abandoned corridor.” Not what you would expect to see in a picturesque town that had heretofore only appeared in her dreams. She closed her eyes and let herself dwell on that fantasy town. Damn appealing, even with the scary grass monster which probably represented her deeply suppressed fears of leadership or failure or…

At the end of the bed her daughter Arcus was still pulling at her foot and giggling.

—Or her fear of being convicted of a capital crime. Venture had laws against murdering eight-year-olds, right? She was certain she had seen that in the bylaws somewhere.

“Mom?” Arcus said. “Greta’s been calling you.”

“And this was sufficient reason to tear my foot off?”

“It was the only part of you I could see. You were all buried under the covers like a hibernating bear, roawr!” Arcus snarled and lumbered forward like a tiny, blond-haired bear cub. Then she squealed in a very unbearlike manner when Hy grabbed her and pulled her under the blankets, which led to a very undignified tickling encounter between two rolling piles of blankets. “Ack! Mommy!”

A different voice chimed in. “Mayor Alistair?”

One of the piles stopped. “What?” it said, muffled.

“It is 6:30 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, October 10, 2043,” the voice said. “In approximately one hour the first contingent of settlers is due to enter hiatus. It is a historic day for Venture and for humanity.”

Hy heaved a mighty sigh. “And?”

“You said you’d want to shower first.”

Instead, she eased off her shoes without looking down and let the ground caress her bare feet as a promissory note for later. Maybe she could come back and roll naked on the clover, would that be too scandalous? More to the point, did she care? Thousands of tiny leaves tickling her skin… Maybe later, in the moonlight, when the grass was even cooler and no one would see her. Mayors have an image to uphold, after all.

They began arriving then, individually and in family groups. She stepped reluctantly back into her shoes; the first few people noticed and grinned at her for it. She touched their hands as they approached. More people gathered, walking up the hill from the picturesque town below, laughing and holding hands. Children ran and played as they came. Songbirds flew around them to nestle in the trees. Lovers held each other. The meadow quickly filled with people and still they came until finally she looked out over a sea of smiling faces. For one crazy second she thought about jumping up into their arms and rolling over and over on top of their heads, and she chuckled when it occurred to her that they’d probably let her do it.

She knew them all, every one. She’d counseled them and cried with them, married them and refereed their games, worked shoulder to shoulder with them, loved with them. And when most of her people were standing in the meadow - and she knew just which ones would be rushing up late, the scamps - she spoke to them. “I want to thank you all,” she said loudly, tugging her foot away from a few blades of grass that had wrapped around it, “for wasting such a beautiful day to come listen to me yap.” They laughed, relaxed, and shook their heads to indicate that this was the best possible way to spend their time. She basked in their love and respect for just a moment before continuing.

“But today marks the first anniversary of the town of Venture, and I wanted to thank you all for the best year of my life. Production is miles ahead of where we planned, we’re well ahead of schedule with our crops, we’ve had no divorces or fights, we have several new marriages, and we now boast six of the cutest babies in the universe. And it’s all thanks to you!”

They cheered her then, and her heart swelled with pride. Her husband stood in the front row with his arms around their daughter. Beyond the crowd she could see the town shining in the sun like a precious jewel, and she raised her arms to encircle them all. There’s both art and craft to running a town, she knew, and damn but she was good at it.

Her foot had gotten wrapped in the long grass again. She pulled at it while trying to make it look casual. “And this year will be even better! Now that we know what we can do, it’s time to surpass ourselves and make Venture the best place to live in the whole–” She stumbled slightly, breaking her rhythm. Stupid grass. The rows of beaming faces waited patiently for her to go on. “The best place to live… son of a…”

This time she was pulled to one knee. She looked down, finally, to see thick grass wrapped tightly around her foot and reaching halfway up her leg. “Sorry,” she called out, with a very believable laugh, as she pulled at it with both hands. “Looks like I can’t quite control everythi– yeeouch!” The grass was pulling harder now, painfully, and she realized with a shock that she could see it wrapping around her like hundreds of tiny green snakes, circling her waist, coiling around her chest, squeezing her ribs. She clutched at it frantically as she felt her feet being pulled into the cold, dark ground.

“Guys? Somebody wanna… help! Help!”

Had there been signs, with Kelly? Some subtle indicators he might have noticed had he not been blinded by love and six-inch-long skirts? She had seemed to favor pony tails a lot, but that could have been a Japanese thing. And she did disappear between 6:30 and 3:30 each day but she had assured him that was the early shift at the pesticide taste-testing facility where she worked but would never let him visit.

Tuckby was now waving his arms like a pissed-off windmill and raving something about time-space and induced causality-suppression and yadda yadda yadda. Her skin was awfully clear. And she did have that habit of waiting outside when he bought booze… No, this was insane, it was one of Buchanon’s tricks. Parvo’s job was fine, Kelly was waiting for him, he wasn’t going to get railroaded into volunteering for some idiotic science project with Dr. Wabbit Season, here. Parvo took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and started listening again.

“–which is why doing so would be the most dangerous thing imaginable, with consequences for our entire solar system, so don’t ever, ever do that,” Tuckby finished, wild-eyed and breathing heavily.

“Sure, no problem, doc,” Parvo said. “But look, I’m really not going to JUMPING JUDAS IN A JELLYBEAN BASKET!” he yelled, pointing. Behind the doctor the table had… done nothing at all, really. One second it was empty, the next there was a small wire cage containing a briefly contented ferret, which immediately became a very agitated ferret at seeing and smelling humans who had, as far as the ferret was concerned, just appeared. Sunflower hurled herself to the far end of the cage and proceeded to evacuate her bowels and bladder with alarming alacrity and volume, following her biological imperatives and imparting a valuable metaphor about science in the process.

Tuckby clapped his hands together. “Ah, there’s my girl! Just like we last saw her.”

“When… when was that?” Parvo asked.

“Six months and one day, exactly. We had originally set it for six months but when the time came near one of my techs hit the snooze button instead and, well, it threw us all off.” Behind him one of the techs looked away, whistling, while the others mumbled and glared at him.

“But she’s in perfect shape, so you should be just fine.”

“That’s great to hear, doc.” Parvo shook his hand and turned to face Buchanon. “What the hell is he talking about?”

The older man produced a cigar which he proceeded to light despite the many posted signs explaining why what he was doing was wrong on a moral, physical, and scientific level. He took his time. Once a few acrid blue puffs were floating between them, he grinned at Parvo. “Do you know why we’ve never reached the stars, Vince?”

“Budget cuts?”

“Besides those. We’ve never gone to the stars because we don’t live long enough. And we need to. We need to spread humanity out as far and as wide as we can, because even with the remarkable strides we made toward turning our planet into a paradise there’s always that chance of global disaster. We need the stars, Vince. But at our best speeds it would take hundreds of years to get to the closest one, and bad things happen when you put a colony of people in a can for a few dozen generations. So we need a way to put people on ice, so to speak, for the trip.”

“Right, cryo, no big deal.”

“Cryonics is an excellent answer if your question is ‘how do I freeze this dead guy?’ It’s not so good if you want to defrost one. Ice forming between body cells, ischemic injuries, a certain amount of accidental breakage, cryo just isn’t an option yet. But this device lets us put people in stasis, on hiatus, for as long as we want so we can send ‘em wherever we want. So that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Parvo was getting a very bad feeling that the smell in the room wasn’t all from Sunflower. Of themselves his hands started balling into fists. “And what is that, exactly, Admiral Buchanon?”

“Install a Tuckby HyperConditional Interimator in a generation ship. A ship with a working colony, set up and ready to go. A ship that needs a fully qualified captain.”

Parvo blanched. “No! No! A thousand hells of no,” he said frantically, backing away through the techs with his hands held up in front of him as if to ward off evil. “No way are you sending me anywhere, much less to another star.” He grabbed the littlest tech and held him up as a whimpering shield.

“Come on, Vince, it’ll be just like taking a vacation in Barbados, if Barbados was 26 trillion miles away. There’s sunlight there, I know you like sunlight–”

“Get away from me!” Parvo began swinging the tech in a wide, shrieking arc in front of himself. “I’ll use this, this–”

“Rothman!” the tech screamed.

“–this Rothman, if I have to. He’s armed and ready!”

“Agh!” Rothman yelped.

“Vince, put the man down. We don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“You know, I really kinda do,” Parvo said, easing himself backwards toward the far door.

“He really kinda does!” Rothman yelled.

“But we both know you’ll do this,” Buchanon said calmly. “Because you’re an adrenalin junkie, and you need this.”

“I’m a what?”

“You crave excitement, adventure, derring-do. You have a need for speed that working at a restaurant, however nice, just won’t give you. Eventually you would have discovered a conspiracy amongst the waiters or rushed off to save the life of a princess who was abducted during the soup course. You can’t help it.”

“You’re lying! I crave boredom! I demand sameness and regularity and conformity! It’s relaxing, dammit!”

“When two guys tried to rob the place, why did you beat them up, track down their boss, beat him up, and then assault his family and his entire 25th reunion party? Instead of, you know, calling the cops?”

“I love my job!” Parvo said, a bit helplessly.

“So why did you come here?”

Parvo stopped still, releasing the Rothman to cartwheel into a work center. There was a spray of sparks and a brief scream. “What do you mean? You sent a message.”

“And you could have sent one back, or called me, or e-mailed, or just ignored it. You’re right, I have no control over you. Instead you took the first chance to leave your beloved job, did an interballistic jump instead of a conventional plane or even a bus, and came here to punch me.” The admiral, all elegance and assuredness, stepped forward to look Parvo in the eye. “You want this, Vince.”

“Tell me, old man.”

Buchanon smiled broadly and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re going to save the world.”

“Uh huh,” Parvo said.

“You’re right to scoff, sir. Many have trod this road and been waylaid by false paths, spurious reasoning, or the budget cuts of weak-kneed fools! But only I have reached the end of that long and difficult trail to discover the closely-guarded wonders to be found at the end!”

“Can you just dial back the mad scientist thing a little bit, you’re flicking drool on my coat.”

“Behold!” Without warning Tuckby spun and dashed back to a small table directly underneath the massive device. It was burnished steel, about the size of a footstool, and contained… nothing. There was even a dramatic spotlight aimed at the table, to highlight the nothing. The lab techs and assistants stood around with an eerie, worshipful silence. Buchanon gripped Parvo’s arm and dragged him over to look at the nothing. They looked at it for a long moment as Tuckby beamed with pride.

“Well, I’m impressed,” Parvo said.

Tuckby stopped in mid-rave to look at the table. “Why? There’s nothing there.” Abruptly he lowered his arms and looked at Parvo more closely, then smiled in a totally different manner. “I’m so sorry, son, my mistake, are you here for one of the special tours? Admiral Buchanon, is he allowed to have candy,” he asked, patting his pockets, “or should I–”

“AAAAGH!” Parvo screamed. He rose to his full and impressive height, his chest filling with enough air for another fully righteous and desperately-needed scream. Tuckby and his techs all stepped back, cowering before the wrath of…

And Parvo released it. Unclenched his fists. And smiled. “Dr. Tuckby, I apologize for my brusque demeanor but I’ve just had some very troubling news about a loved one that I’m still trying to assimilate. If you would be so kind, would you please demonstrate for me your amazing new discovery?”

The room breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Of course, of course, let me show you,” said Tuckby, flushed with the endorphins that a near-death experience brings. He snapped his fingers at the terrified techs, who scurried to various positions behind protective plasteel barriers around the room (except for the smallest, shame-faced lab tech, who had to go change his lab coat). Lights flashed. The massive monstrosity over them began to hum and spin slowly.

“Nice,” whispered Buchanon, smiling straight ahead.

“I’m going to kill you with fire,” Parvo whispered back, smiling just as brightly.

Tuckby took up position behind the table. The spotlight added a dramatic effect to his appearance which was, sadly, still Fudd-like. “One week ago, there was a cage containing a ferret on this very table. Using my formulas and the Tuckby HyperConditional Interimator, the inner workings of which are known only to me, I have sent it into… hiatus.”

Several smartass comments rose to mind, but Parvo was deeply into “get this over with yesterday” mode and held onto his snark with an iron mental fist. Too bad, there were some good ones. He also figured anything he asked at this point would make him look unbelievably stupid, so he settled for raising an eyebrow.

“Simply stated, Mr. Parvo, the ferret is currently skipping past this entire week. When it appears, in…” He looked at his watch. “…two minutes and seven seconds, no time at all will have passed for her.”

“Her?”

“The ferret. We call her Sunflower.”

“Of course you do. So, this is time travel?”

“Oh no, no no no, of course not. Time travel is impossible, mere science fiction fantasy and wish-fulfillment. No, we are men of science here.”

“Of course.”

“What we’ve done is push a bubble of reality out of our universe. With a ferret in it.”