Strip 425 -- First Seen: 2010-04-23
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

Launch Alert!

Ready for launch! The Kickstarter campaign to print the next volume of Quantum Vibe: Novo Palermo - Part 1 will take flight in just a couple of weeks on Oct 19th, 2026.

Your reward for backing our campaign starts with a personalized signed copy of the perfect bound printed collection of the online strip. You may also choose the ebook edition, a PDF downloadable from DriveThruComics.

And back by popular demand, coasters, magnets and stickers. Click on the art on the left, to go to our pre-launch page where you can check on updates and sign up for notifications on our campaign.

QV on a short break

QUANTUM VIVE is taking a break for a few weeks, as we prepare for Part 2 of the Novo Palermo story, and also for a Kickstarter campaign for Part 1, which will start in September.

In the meantime, Not-Safe.Space will continue, as a murder mystery begins and the relationship between Eithne and Diana develops in unexpected directions.

Not-Safe.Space is a NSFW strip but more than half the pages are SFW so I've set those to *not* require a Patreon membership. Readers should be able to follow the story without seeing the NSFW pages. If I've done this right.

The Transcript For This Page

Panel 1
Half-page tall panel. Establishing shot of the Lunar Youth Rescue Tower. The structure is 500 storeys, or one mile, high. It is a glass-and-steel cylinder, tapering slightly towards the top. To the extent you can at this scale, it should look dingy.
The tower sits on the Lunar south pole, so we see the Sun near one horizon and the Earth near another (we're not likely to see both in the same panel at once, except near the time of the eclipse, which will come several pages later). When we see the Earth, it appears to be 'upside-down,' with Earth's southern hemisphere pointed up.

Caption: For our readers, some background:

Caption: 'Lunar Kiddie Slammer' was one of many slang terms for the United World Youth Authority's juvenile work farm at the Moon's south pole.

Caption: The official name was the Lunar Youth Rescue Tower.

Caption: Originally, the mile-high glass-and-steel cylinder was a resort run by the UW government. At that time, it was called the Macroscian Tower – actually a rather clever name.

Panel 2
First of two panels stacked on the right side of the page next to the tall panel. Here we have an aerial view of the tower, casting a shadow at least three times as long as the tower is high.

Caption: 'Macroscian' means someone who casts a long shadow, and also means someone who inhabits a polar region.

Caption: The name was chosen by a committee of academics – the general public couldn't pronounce it and had no idea what it meant.

Panel 3
Inside a suite high in the tower. A trio of tourists are gazing through a wall-sized window at the Earth, near the Lunar horizon. We can't see their faces, but their body language (scratching heads, crossed arms, etc.) indicate they are not exactly pleased.

Caption. The tower was a commercial flop, for many reasons.

Caption: Not the least of which being that when tourists viewed the Earth from the Lunar south pole, they complained it was 'upside-down.'


Panel 4
Another group of tourists seated around a table in a lounge, all looking exhausted. A waitress is serving drinks.

Caption: For political reasons, the Tower operated on a single time zone, UTC, aka Greenwich Mean Time.

Caption: This was fine for European tourists, but the vast majority of guests were from the Americas, or Asia. They suffered from artificial 'jet lag.'


Panel 5
The hotel suite from earlier has been transformed into a vegetable garden. Sunlight streams through the large window. An pair of attendants are examining a sample soybean plant they've pulled from the 'ground.'

Caption: After the Macroscian Tower failed as a resort, it was converted into a vertical indoor farm.

Caption: As it was bathed in perpetual sunlight, it produced bumper crops of grains, vegetables, dairy and meat.

Panel 6
Same scene, except now the attendant has been replaced by a trio of young teens wearing prison-style jumpsuits, harvesting what is now a carrot crop.

Caption: When the UW Youth Authority needed more 'correctional facilities,' they cut a deal with the Tower administration to turn the tower into a juvenile prison, in exchange for 'free' labor.

Caption: Thus was born the Lunar Youth Rescue Tower.

Panel 7
Distance shot of another, even taller tower.
Caption: Two years later, the Macroscian Tower was surpassed by the Ten K tower, a privately-developed residential, business and tourist complex at the Moon's north pole. At ten kilometers, it dwarfed the Macroscian Tower six times over.