Escape From Terra - by Sandy Sandfort, Scott Bieser and Lee Oaks! - Big Head Press, publishing Thoughtful Stories since 2002

Strip 2 – Life in UWRS

Panel 1
Medium-close shot of Guy at desk looking at some paperwork, while speaking to someone via a headset he’s put on. POV could be from monitor or from a point either side of the monitor, we want to see his face.

This is the face of a man who hates his job even more than he realizes -- and yet has the sort of pride in himself that he undertakes to do the best he can at it. His eyes seem to express a permanent annoyance.

It’s also a bit warm in the office – he has taken off his jacket and has loosened his collar. He has a bit of sweat on his brow.

Caption: His day began as usual – he sat in row 5, cube 3, reviewing audit lists, processing settlements, scheduling prosecutions.

Panel 2
Wide shot of cubicle area. We see around a dozen occupied cubes but not necessarily the people in them, other office drone types of variouis shapes and sizes walking about or stopped in a cube doorway talking to its inhabitant. Everyone is in “shirtsleeves” (some of them wear armless shirts), all of them wearing their badges, a few fanning themselves with whatever papers they’re holding.

Caption: The UWRS offices were air-conditioned, but the temperature was set by law at 26°C.

Caption 2: Guy preferred winter, when the legal maximum was only 14°C – you can wear extra clothes in the chill…

Panel 3
Medium shot of Guy in his cube talking to some woman clerk – he’s handing her some paperwork. She is a 90-kg woman wearing clothes that used to fit when she weighed 55 – a stretch tank-top that’s not large enough to conceal the brassiere that doesn’t support well, and a pair of Post-Office-cut shorts – wide-cut legs that go to about an inch above the knee. It looks like she’ll burst out of them any second. Her ID Badge dangles from one of her shirt-straps.

He is sitting with his head at roughly her rib-cage level and looks at her sagging breasts with even more annoyance.

Caption 3: In the summer heat, there was a limit to just how much clothing you could take off.

Strip 2 - Click on page above to goto the next page. -- First Seen: 2008-09-26
Escape From Terra is updated with new pages every Monday through Friday.

What Comes Next

The war is over, but This Means War has a ways to go. Novo Paolo/Bubbleopolis is still in a nebula/stellar nursery, no one knows what happened to the planet Sharen (center of the Intergalactic Council), and the status of the now-surrendered Invaders is yet to be resolved. What will they do when they learn their homeworld is basically destroyed? Will Alyss and Li be re-united? How about Diana (the real one) and Otto?

These questions will be resolved in the next few weeks, before This Means War part 3 wraps in late May.

After that, I plan to go BACK in time about 400 years, to when Alyss and Li left their home in the Sol System to colonize a new world on the far side of the galaxy. As one might expect, hijinks ensue. New subtitle yet to be determined, start date sometime in around the start of July. Stay tuned!

A Little House Cleaning

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The Transcript For This Page

Strip 2 – Life in UWRS

Panel 1
Medium-close shot of Guy at desk looking at some paperwork, while speaking to someone via a headset he’s put on. POV could be from monitor or from a point either side of the monitor, we want to see his face.

This is the face of a man who hates his job even more than he realizes -- and yet has the sort of pride in himself that he undertakes to do the best he can at it. His eyes seem to express a permanent annoyance.

It’s also a bit warm in the office – he has taken off his jacket and has loosened his collar. He has a bit of sweat on his brow.

Caption: His day began as usual – he sat in row 5, cube 3, reviewing audit lists, processing settlements, scheduling prosecutions.

Panel 2
Wide shot of cubicle area. We see around a dozen occupied cubes but not necessarily the people in them, other office drone types of variouis shapes and sizes walking about or stopped in a cube doorway talking to its inhabitant. Everyone is in “shirtsleeves” (some of them wear armless shirts), all of them wearing their badges, a few fanning themselves with whatever papers they’re holding.

Caption: The UWRS offices were air-conditioned, but the temperature was set by law at 26°C.

Caption 2: Guy preferred winter, when the legal maximum was only 14°C – you can wear extra clothes in the chill…

Panel 3
Medium shot of Guy in his cube talking to some woman clerk – he’s handing her some paperwork. She is a 90-kg woman wearing clothes that used to fit when she weighed 55 – a stretch tank-top that’s not large enough to conceal the brassiere that doesn’t support well, and a pair of Post-Office-cut shorts – wide-cut legs that go to about an inch above the knee. It looks like she’ll burst out of them any second. Her ID Badge dangles from one of her shirt-straps.

He is sitting with his head at roughly her rib-cage level and looks at her sagging breasts with even more annoyance.

Caption 3: In the summer heat, there was a limit to just how much clothing you could take off.