2001 Nights: Lucifer Rising Conclusion
Mar. 23rd, 2012 07:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kamino_neko posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_dailyI know I said I'd do this over two posts, but as I was looking it over, I couldn't find a good place to cut it that didn't end in the middle of a scene or render one or the other of the posts pointlessly short. So, this'll be a bit of a big'n.
It's also a bit choppy, since there weren't as many huge swaths that could be cut as in the first part.
First part is here.
So, last time, there was an explosion...it tore a hole out of the side of the ship, near where Dr Fr Chavez was...
One more dead....
(Sorry, the next bit's in slightly weird order. I've rearranged it a bit so it flows a bit better out of context, but the sequence is intercut between Chavez and the rest of the crew, so the flow is hard to get right. It works better in the book.)
I'm sure the clues are clear enough that everyone's figured it out, right? So, altogether, now:
Antimatter!
So, eventually, Chavez is released from sick bay, and is told what they've determined about Lucifer. He says that that has revitalized him a bit. He and Cleaver discuss what's been done, and what's going to be done next.
While they continue arguing (Chavez pointing out the practical problems, Cleaver the potential uses), the people doing actual recording of the planet spot something in the rings. Something very interesting...
Life forms (long dead), frozen within the ice that makes up Lucifer's ring.
But, yeah, sorryicon_uk, that speech balloon in the last panel is exactly what it looks like.
No! Bad Pope! Bad!
So, the Vatican and some other religious groups start trying to put pressure on the various governments of Earth to stop the exploration. Pressure those governments refuse to give in to.
Meanwhile, back on the ship, Dr Fr Chavez is exercising the first of those professions...
And that's why the ice chunks that make up the ring have life forms frozen in them.
Who is that mysterious figure, and what is he doing?
And what is Chavez doing while this is going on?
Meanwhile, back at the lab...
Things get a touch...strange.
Then the water pipe blows, and a high pressure spray of water hits the twins. They drown.
Where Karloff is is in a pod, heading toward's Lucifer's ring.
Chavez and Cleaver take another pod out and try to intercept him, meanwhile, Chris tries to contact Karloff to warn him off.
He fails to contact him.
While he's flying, Karloff sees a fragment of anti-ice coming toward him...he thinks he's doomed. But, suddenly, a flash, and the ice is deflected away.
The same thing happens to Chavez and Cleaver's ship:
Did the electron shield fail them?
No, a comet from the oort cloud collided with Lucifer, leading to enough of an annihilation for them to see the flash, but not enough to harm them. (Karloff's fine, too.)
Cleaver, ever the scientist, started thinking aloud about the consequences of this.
... Chavez puts two and two together, and gets 'murderer'.
That last panel is Riu who came on the pod without Chavez and Cleaver knowing, since she suspected, having spotted Cleaver's attempt to stop the killing of the twins.
She talks him down, reminding him they're out there to stop Karloff from accidentally killing them all. So, they do that - putting on space suits, because they're currently in a very dangerous situation. But Cleaver can't resist arguing with Chavez.
He presents a theory. The gamma rays caused by the ancient comets hitting Lucifer, the ones that stopped it being an anti-sun...what if they were what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? And, more importantly...what if they were what caused the mutations in the proto-humans' DNA, that allowed them to evolve into us?
Can't answer that, can you, God Boy? Huh? Huh?
It seems he can.
So, Cleaver does some thinking, both moral and practical.
It's not clear if this was an accident, or if Cleaver decided to commit suicide, out of guilt. Either way, Chavez, Riu, and Karloff (and the entire rest of the ship and crew) are saved by his last action.
I leave the final interpretation up to you.
26 and a half pages out of 80.
It's also a bit choppy, since there weren't as many huge swaths that could be cut as in the first part.
First part is here.
So, last time, there was an explosion...it tore a hole out of the side of the ship, near where Dr Fr Chavez was...
One more dead....
(Sorry, the next bit's in slightly weird order. I've rearranged it a bit so it flows a bit better out of context, but the sequence is intercut between Chavez and the rest of the crew, so the flow is hard to get right. It works better in the book.)
I'm sure the clues are clear enough that everyone's figured it out, right? So, altogether, now:
Antimatter!
So, eventually, Chavez is released from sick bay, and is told what they've determined about Lucifer. He says that that has revitalized him a bit. He and Cleaver discuss what's been done, and what's going to be done next.
While they continue arguing (Chavez pointing out the practical problems, Cleaver the potential uses), the people doing actual recording of the planet spot something in the rings. Something very interesting...
Life forms (long dead), frozen within the ice that makes up Lucifer's ring.
But, yeah, sorry
icon_uk, that speech balloon in the last panel is exactly what it looks like.No! Bad Pope! Bad!
So, the Vatican and some other religious groups start trying to put pressure on the various governments of Earth to stop the exploration. Pressure those governments refuse to give in to.
Meanwhile, back on the ship, Dr Fr Chavez is exercising the first of those professions...
And that's why the ice chunks that make up the ring have life forms frozen in them.
Who is that mysterious figure, and what is he doing?
And what is Chavez doing while this is going on?
Meanwhile, back at the lab...
Things get a touch...strange.
Then the water pipe blows, and a high pressure spray of water hits the twins. They drown.
Where Karloff is is in a pod, heading toward's Lucifer's ring.
Chavez and Cleaver take another pod out and try to intercept him, meanwhile, Chris tries to contact Karloff to warn him off.
He fails to contact him.
While he's flying, Karloff sees a fragment of anti-ice coming toward him...he thinks he's doomed. But, suddenly, a flash, and the ice is deflected away.
The same thing happens to Chavez and Cleaver's ship:
Did the electron shield fail them?
No, a comet from the oort cloud collided with Lucifer, leading to enough of an annihilation for them to see the flash, but not enough to harm them. (Karloff's fine, too.)
Cleaver, ever the scientist, started thinking aloud about the consequences of this.
... Chavez puts two and two together, and gets 'murderer'.
That last panel is Riu who came on the pod without Chavez and Cleaver knowing, since she suspected, having spotted Cleaver's attempt to stop the killing of the twins.
She talks him down, reminding him they're out there to stop Karloff from accidentally killing them all. So, they do that - putting on space suits, because they're currently in a very dangerous situation. But Cleaver can't resist arguing with Chavez.
He presents a theory. The gamma rays caused by the ancient comets hitting Lucifer, the ones that stopped it being an anti-sun...what if they were what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? And, more importantly...what if they were what caused the mutations in the proto-humans' DNA, that allowed them to evolve into us?
Can't answer that, can you, God Boy? Huh? Huh?
It seems he can.
So, Cleaver does some thinking, both moral and practical.
It's not clear if this was an accident, or if Cleaver decided to commit suicide, out of guilt. Either way, Chavez, Riu, and Karloff (and the entire rest of the ship and crew) are saved by his last action.
I leave the final interpretation up to you.
26 and a half pages out of 80.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 03:01 pm (UTC)either way i love he way they interplay the religous symbolism with the story.
What?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 03:18 pm (UTC)It is, I believe, by current concept of the stuff, possible that there are regions of space in our universe that are made up of anti-matter - though if there are, they're further away than we can detect, since the gamma radiation caused by annihilation along the border between the matter and anti-matter regions would be seen, if it were close enough that we could.
(By which token, we'd have ID'd Lucifer a long time before this story, the same way. It's highly unlikely that it would have such little interaction with the matter that surrounds it.)
Eventually. It becomes a significant power source through the rest of the series.
In reply to the first part of the story, he made a comment about how it was refreshingly free of religious zealotry for a story about religion and cosmology. My reaction was 'oh, he's not going to be happy with the next bit...'
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 04:20 pm (UTC)But, the Pope has his position, and it's strangely anti-science.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 08:13 pm (UTC)a) still really like this art
b) more man-characters should spend time with their shirts pushed up to their armpits
c) the little that I did read reminded me sliiiightly of Event Horizon and I have enough fondness left for that concept that I will surely return to learn more when I have less of a headache!
Thanks for introducing this!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 08:30 pm (UTC)Heh, I knew that panel would go over well. (Especially since Chavez is pretty well put together...)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-23 11:38 pm (UTC)They discover that using the gravity drive opens up access to another dimension, but it's not the warp space they were looking for, it's a dimension of chaos and evil which is, to all intents and purposes Hell. Things go badly from there.
The design of the Event Horizon is somewhere between Gothic and Hellraiser, and it was pitched by the director as "The Shining... in space!"
So it's about science and faith colliding in a horrific way.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 12:42 am (UTC)Really enjoyed the art and story, though. Thanks so much for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-24 12:02 pm (UTC)Seriously, imagine every other religious/cultural denomination realizing the Vatican trying to impede/interfere with a scientific exploration on the basis of the name of the planet that to them, means nothing.