(urth) Drotte-Roche mixup

[James Wynn]

On 4/19/2011 6:49 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> Rose's hands appear to be gloves of a kind, that seem to work on both 
> bios and chems by covering the limb, not replacing it. That is, I 
> doubt Rose actually lost her limbs and needed new ones---she merely 
> lost the use of them due to extreme age.

On 4/19/2011 6:56 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> It is far more likely that an ancient sibyl would lose the use of her 
> hands than that she would get them blown off. Of course I'm just 
> realizing this now.

Rose lost her hands due to amputation required from some slow 
flesh-destroying disease. Leprosy, to take a guess. When she visited 
Blood at his foster home when he was a child, she only had one of them.

" 'I remember when she lost her arm,' Blood told her. 'She used to pat 
me on the head and say, you know, my, he's getting big. One day it was a 
hand like yours--'
'It was this one.' Maytera Marble displayed it." ~ Chapter 10, Calde of 
the Long Sun


On 4/19/2011 4:01 AM, soloviev at irit.fr wrote:
>  I don't remember where it was said, maybe it is your own
> deduction that they (Rose's hands) are not flesh, only
> "realistically veined", because they could be "grafted"
> to Marble? 

Who would graft them on to Marble? She did it herself. There is no 
reason to believe Marble had the medical knowledge to graft bio hands to 
her body.

" 'Is that really the same hand?' Blood eyed it curiously.
'Yes, it is. It's hard to change hands yourself, Bloody, because you 
have to do it one-handed. It was particularly hard for me, because by 
then I already had a great many new parts.  Or rather, I had RECLAIMED a 
great many old ones.' ~ Ibid (emphasis added. See the link below for why).

What I believe about chems and Marble/Rose is this:

1) Rose's prostheses are old chem parts.

2) The hands originally were used by old Maytera Betel, and that is why 
they were mocked to look old old ~ because there was a certain shame in 
where they came from.
(Whatever one believes about those hands, a speculative theory is 
required to explain why a prosthesis made for a forty-something sibyl 
--when Rose lost her first arm--would have been mocked to look old. No 
woman is going to prefer such a thing.)

See here for my full explanation of Rose's hands
http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/molybdenum.htm
And, yes, Roy does has a visceral aversion to my explanation, but I'm 
not willing to accept that the trouble passages he himself acknowledges 
are a result of Marble lying or being confused. Nor do I find it 
credible that the hands were mocked to look old in order to keep Rose 
humble).

3) I believe chems/robots were designed to be ensouled by 
mind-wiped/manipulated scans of humans. And that is why a) Rose's hands 
so happily absorbed her identity and memories, b) why the chems were so 
easily configured to receive the Ayuntamiento's consciousness, and c) 
why Marble remembers Urth's Short Sun but appears to have no actual 
memories of her service on Urth. This is also why female chems use 
perfume even though there is no reason to program such aesthetic desires 
into them.
And, finally, that is why chems are persons. As Rose-in-Marble said, "I 
am still a person, because I always was."

J.