Either everyone shows up, or the Captain is going to have an outrageous party with his imaginary friends.

(P.S. Stan will be there!)

I don't know about answers, but Lamont has a lot of interesting questions.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Wait, another cliffhanger? You're killing me here ...

I'd have thought you'd be used to it by now, Anemone! :D

There are five more strips to tie up loose ends in Episode Two. What questions do you hope will be answered next week, Pioneers?

What's in the book?

Is Phobos really Lamont's father?

Gillsing: You've already heard some of the book—all that stuff about Entropy that Lamont was reading just before meeting Rex in the Scientific Society observation chambers.

Oooh, predictions. I expect a confrontation between Lamont and Phobos, a.k.a. the First Scientist, highlighting the differences in their characters! Also the Westward is in the past, will play some role in the history of the octoturtles, and Wells will go crazy some more. Hooray!

Dang. Meh Aloe beat me to the punch. The octo-torti aren't agents of entropy. They're merely extremely pissed at something the folks of Westward did in this very distant past they're now in, and want revenge. I'm going to guess that Phobos eats an octo-torti that was much beloved amongst its people, and that started this whole multi-eon murderous grudgery.

Also, as long as they're in the past, Lamont will at some point re-visit the Epiphany planet and accidentally drop his Mysterious Nazi Coin somewhere on it surface. :P

Okay, so what do you think caused Westward to travel back in time? That seems to be a consensus.

An overload in the flux capacitor.

Well now I don't think they travelled into the past at all, or else you wouldn't have agreed to it so readily! You're just setting up another twist, I'm sure of it! :P

But if the time travel thing is true, then I'd have to guess... Phobos planned the whole thing, as part of his nefarious entropy-controlling plans! Maybe. Or maybe it was just the gravitational field of the artefact that somehow warped their trajectory through Escherspace? Gravity and Escherspace seem to not like each other, which IIRC is the reason the artefact caused them to stop in the first place...

You're right about Escherspace and gravity; Escherspace produces a massive gravity distortion at the points of departure and arrival, which is why Westward usually has to travel for months to get away from planetary systems.

It seems logical...huh...seems inexplicably funny to use that word in reference to anything related to Westward. Anyhow, it seems logical that if Escherspace can connect vast distances that it can also connect vast times. But to jump across time would take considerably more energy, such as, oh, say, however much energy you'd get if one redirected a nuclear chain reaction into an Escher jump.

The difference in the star positioning seems to indicate a significant passage of time, and the ghost octo-tortoise's disbelief of how long it had been dead, (though it's not entirely clear that is what it was disbelieving), would suggest that backwards is the direction that the Westward has traveled.

Also, upon rereading, it is doubtful that the octo-torti are agents of entropy, what with the line about doing "what is necessary for the good of the many." It can hardly be considered to be good for the many if the universe reverts to an inert lump of mass. Unless you happen to like that sort of thing.

Very good points, HumalaDuck. For nearly every one, there is an answer that will be revealed in the course of the story. In some ways, you're close to the mark. :)

Ahh, so it's one of those books. The kind that takes a relatively simple idea and then expounds upon it until it can fill an entire book. Or is there more things in that book that may be of interest?

As for the suspected time travel, perhaps they now travelled far into the future, where they'll do something that the octo-torti will want to prevent by going back in time and placing their Escherspace trap right in their path? Or perhaps it's impossible to actually travel back in time, but still possible to receive visions of the far future, thus making former present-time octo-torti want to stop the Westward.

Ahh, so it's one of those books. The kind that takes a relatively simple idea and then expounds upon it until it can fill an entire book. Or is there more things in that book that may be of interest?

Yes. ;)

The questions are piling up. The clues are being laid in front of us.