(urth) Time, Not Cloning

[Jeff Wilson]

On Wed, July 31, 2013 18:22, David Stockhoff wrote:
>
> On 7/31/2013 7:03 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
>> On Wed, July 31, 2013 17:18, David Stockhoff wrote:
>>> Severian's real-time mother and the projection machine are separated by
>>> chiliads at least.
>> 1. Not necessarily, there are any number of still-functional ancient
>> machines around the Citadel and the House Absolute and other places,
>> plus
>> "new" installations overseen by Typhon and Inire that still do their
>> thing.
>
> You mean that are capable pf projecting NEW eidolons? That's what I
> meant. Katherine is not exactly likely to be "new"---she's part of an
> ancient ritual. But if the machines can project new eidolons, Katherine
> can be switched out at intervals.

It's possible the ancient machine is set to project an eidolon of what the
audience expects to appear, so of course an archetypal Katherine is
produced when the Brothers are gathered in the ruined chapel to see her
appear. I don't recall anything that would require projectors to use
pre-recorded images, though it is possible the misty phantasms in
Baldanders' castle are the result of an incompletely-repaired projector
that is laboring to project it's last imprinted aquastors that dissolve as
fast as they materialize, thus the mist and the inhuman shapes.


>>
>> 2. Whenever the projector is, Malrubius and Triskele are within range,
>> and
>> they only lived 5-15 years later than Sev's birth mother.
>
> Do you assume they are projected by Urth projectors, or Yesodi?

They could be either at different times. The archipelago dedicated to
Urth's galaxy is said to be short on resources and Aquastor-Malrubius
remarks that the ship he arrives on was not easily obtained IIRC. It makes
sense that Inire and henchmen might be using ancient Urthly gear where
they can. If the projector was made by thinking machines to communicate
with thinking humans by thought, it may be that the projectors can pull
eidolons from one another's memory stores as well as from living minds, so
Malrubuius and Triskele could indeed be passed from one projector to
another, like the cell tower idea I mentioned.

It also strikes me that the curious apes that Severian sees watching him
are readily identified by him and I don't recall him encountering any
unknown apes other than the man-apes in the mine at Saltus. This makes me
think he is familiar with them from the BeastKeepers' tower and their
murals and dead piles, the same as Triskele. So perhaps Inire et all uses
the ancient projetor(s) at the citadel to make living ape aquastors to spy
on Sev. They are not exactly covert, but presumably much less outsanding
than a three-legged-dog or an old man dressed as a torturer, and apes'
hands are about as good as human in adjusting other old machinery for
whatever nefarious or blessed purpose.



-- 
Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >
A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab
< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >