Strip 697 -- First Seen: 2011-05-06
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

Halfway there!

The Kickstarter campaign to print the next volume of Quantum Vibe: Novo Palermo - Part 1 is now halfway to our goal. We need your help getting the rest of the way there. Tell your friends, family members, and your pets to back our campaign.

Every little bit helps! The campaign ends midnight (US central time) November 18. So there's still time to get the word out, or maybe add another item to your current pledge.

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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
Re-establish the scene of Chang visiting Ed in Ed's recovery room.
Ed: Anarchy is not paradise. Just as in any society, there are bad people who do bad things.
Ed: The only advantage here is that these things are relatively rare. 'Evolution in Action.'

Panel 2
Begin flash-back sequence, we see Vinnie and Neil talking to the former owner of the Hôtel de Crillon, who happens to look a lot like this fellow: http://www.scottbieser.com/showntell/MeFromCamera1-28.JPG
Caption (Ed): 'Some of my friends tracked down the former owner of the Hôtel de Crillon, and asked him if he knew any secret ways into the hotel.
Caption: 'He said there were, and when he heard about Kate, offered to lead a rescue team.'

Panel 3
The Former Owner is standing next to a four-stack of monitors, on which we can see various parts of the hotel – a hallway, the cafe kitchen, a business office, a guest room (currently empty).
Caption (Ed): 'Then he dropped the bombshell. When hotel supplies began disappearing, he had tanglenet cameras installed.'
Caption: 'Turns out the cameras weren't just to stop theft; our boy is a voyeur.'

Panel 4
Looking past the backside of the monitors, at Vinnie, Neil, Former Owner and two other fairly muscular Belters, who are looking at the monitors with wide eyes.
Caption (Ed): 'We found Kate and your 'Special Services Operatives' in a storage room, just meters from the room where the secret entrance came out.
Caption: 'Chang, the rescue team … saw things.'

Panel 5
Pull in closer on the four rescuers. They are looking at the monitors with mixtures of shock, horror, and revulsion.
Caption (Ed): 'Just for their sick amusement, those animals were humiliating and terrorizing Kate.
Caption: 'They had her stripped naked and tied to the storage shelves. They did things ...'

Panel 6
Back to the present. Ed is finishing his somber story. Chang is looking not at Ed, but off into the distance, with a cold fear in his eyes.
Ed: Chang, my men are only human.

Panel 7
Chang is now looking at Ed with a blank expression.
Chang: So what you are telling me is that four of my soldiers went AWOL.
Chang: I guess they could be anywhere by now …
Ed: Yeah.