VT100 is a cheeky little bastard of a font – it looks good at certain really specific point sizes and like crap at all the rest. “Looks good at print scale” happens to translate into “illegible smear” in this case, so:

ICG 44E-NE37 HEMERA SENT: 598.08.21 - Repeat contact, HRV 4.18 in vicinity of GSV-368. Location exact. Initiating transfer to GSV-368.3.

That line (minus the SENT) and a few other snips sent over the course of the mission feature in the opening scene of The Dualist. This little log snip is, I think, the only dialogue overlap or repetition between the two books – and if it wasn’t there specifically as a concrete link between installments I would definitely have written something else. Locking myself into an IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAND!!! is starting to grate on me, and it’s something I’ll definitely be handling a lot differently in the future. At the least, portraying in more satisfactory detail in some future tech manual.*

If you’ve been reading the script pages, you’ve doubtless noticed that this one is a bit… sparse. And sketchy. I got about three panels (4, 1, 2 in order) into the first version of the page when I realized it wasn’t working and scrapped it. The final layout is a lot stronger, with 100% more Mortal Kombat references, better camera work, and splattery goodness. Also a vastly better “line of action” than the first-run layout – a bent L beats a top right to bottom left line on a lefthand page.

I got no words tonight – feels like I spent more time on the above text than I did on the page itself. Could be the heat, could be my sleep cycle getting skewed a bit over the past couple of days. Could be diet or hydration or something else.

Anyway, PAGE!. The next one’s rendered – I should be able to get to it at some point later this week.

* The "tech manual" is something I've been thinking on a bit recently - a small handful of short stories (8-16 pages each), each detailing some piece of ATC hardware or cosmology from a character's point of view. If it happens, it'll be a way down the road thing.

Mastering notes, 2016.12.07 – Changed the HRV in panel one.

2017.06.09 – Fixed the dialogue gutters in panel one.