(urth) Astral travel in time

[thalassocrat at nym.hush.com]

On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 06:01:15 +1000 Dan'l Danehy-Oakes 
<danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> To accord Silkhorn the ability to change the
>> past, as Andrew has already suggested, opens up a Pandora's box 
>that,
>> once opened, not only can't be closed again, but potentially 
>lets out more
>> possibilities than the box could ever have held to begin with. 
>Where does
>> Silkhorn's power to change the past come from, and where does it 

>stop?
>
>Okay, to begin with, it probably isn't "his" power, but that of 
>the
>Outsider, Whom he serves. I doubt he even knows he does it.

Just in the context of SilkHorn & Sev, my Big Hypothesis is really 
based on Sev's "iterative" world-line, not on any specifically 
SilkHornian past-changing ability. 

In the New Sun context, the Sev we know has been constructed by the 
Hierogrammates or whoever by layering different histories on top of 
each other (at least two histories, anyway). Or if not layering, 
then replacing one history by another - but I like the layering 
image better, partly I guess because you see the same mechanism in 
Free Live Free.

My hypothesis is that SilkHorn astral-travelling to Urth launches a 
new future Sev world-line, perhaps radically different to the one 
in New Sun. The instigator of the change is no doubt the 
Outsider/Increate, intervening with SilkHorn as his agent. 

Totally making up stories: Perhaps the Increate also finds the 
eternal Hiero/human reproductive cycle distasteful, and from now on 
it will be replaced by something different - perhaps no longer a 
succession of universes, but just one, with a definite end. Etc etc 
etc. (Why he let things get out of hand in the first place - 
dunno!)