Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Howard Tayler => Topic started by: ryos on August 22, 2009, 04:17:04 AM
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Sergeant Schlock is currently submerged in the Marinaris Reservoir. From the comic, it looks like he's pretty deep, and making no effort to surface.
The question is, how long can he stay down there? Well, OK, there are two questions here, and the first is easy. Based on Schlock's past extravehicular activities in space, he can survive, dormant and frozen in a vacuum, forever. So, I suspect he could stay underwater indefinitely.
What we don't know is how long he can remain active without oxygen. Does he require oxygen to function? He certainly needs a source of energy to drive his activities, and redox reactions make the most sense. How far do you suppose he can swim underwater before he shuts down?
What would be really cool is if he could use that chemical factory in his belly to split the water and survive off of that, or even just absorb dissolved oxygen, as fish do. Based on what we've seen from Schlock in the past, I see no reason why he shouldn't be able to do this. IF Howard decides to do this, color me impressed: these amorphs keep getting cooler and cooler, even after nine years.
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Wasn't he stuffed in pieces into a sewer line once? And he came back together and surprised everyone? Assuming that each little piece had to do at least a bit of swimming (expending energy) and seemed to get along, it seems likely that the whole amorph can pull some similar trick to handle being submerged.
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Oh, I'm sure he'd make an excellent swimmer. He could just ape a fish, after all. :)
It occurs to me that my "splitting water" idea is phenomenally stupid. He'd lose energy that way, not gain it. Adurrr. So, it's gills or nothing I suppose.
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There's plenty of oxygen under water (how do you think fish survive?). The only difficulty is the mechanism for transferring it from the water to the bloodstream of the creature in question. With Shclock's versatile metabolism, he can probably manage the transfer underwater, especially given the fact that he has apparently pulled this kind of stunt in the past (see: toilets in many forms, including fairly recently when he visited the dam).
Incidentally, splitting water to produce hydrogen and oxygen, and then metabolizing the oxygen, is indeed a very bad idea indeed. If you try it, the first and second law of thermodynamics get together and start chocking you.
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Besides, all schlock needs to do down there for energy is eat some fish, right? Now there's a scary thought...
Picture youself, idly swimming blissfully aware that something far more deadly than Jaws is lurking beneath your feet.
Yeah. Shlock could heandle underwater just fine.