Editing 2577: Sea Chase

{{comic
| number    = 2577
| date      = February 4, 2022
| title     = Sea Chase
| image     = sea_chase.png
| titletext = There are two rules on this ship: Never gaze back into the projection abyss, and never touch the red button labeled DYMAXION.
}}

==Explanation==
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[[Cueball]] and his shipmates are being chased by a pirate ship. To escape, they use a switch that changes the Earth's map projection to Goode Homolosine, which is famous for having huge gaps. Apparently, this actually alters the Earth's physical structure to match the map projection, moving the two ships from feet away to thousands of miles.

In this comic, Randall returns to one of his pet subjects: map projections. Unusually, this time it is from the perspective of people living - or, in this case, sailing - upon the world that is quite literally being mapped.

Two sailing ships, of circa 19th century design, are engaged in abclose chase across the Atlantic. The ship being chased, however, has a plan to escape. And the means to do so. At a crucial moment, Cueball is told to flip an incongruous large switch that (like several other artefacts in Randall's universe) alters the nature of their reality.

Whereas beforehand the world is directly represented upon a simply contiguous map, it is now changed to a 'projection' (which is actually the new reality) in which the flattening of the world mitigates localised warping of angle/distance/area by introducing discontinuities in relatively 'unused' parts of the mapped world, such as the centre of the Atlantic.

By precisely timing the change, the pursuer now finds themselves on the wrong side of the very real gap, allowing the pursued ship to escape whatever fate they were trying to avoid. Though there is still an oceanic connection, it requires sailing down the edge towards the tropics, rounding the rent in the planet and heading back up, vastly further than Cueball's ship needs to travel to reach (presumably) any European port in which they can safely moor.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}


[[Category:Maps]]