(urth) Short Story 60: Forelesen part 1

Marc Aramini marcaramini at gmail.com
Sun Sep 14 13:58:59 PDT 2014


Well the new universe could have been created based on frick's business
model.  Frick has praisers in the form of sycophants. builders who move the
universe could be the cloud highway pillars or the construction
workers. the people like fields and freeling who love sports metaphors but
have turned them to business cliches are those amused by sports/streams, we
have a sold garden (all the wood that is charred in model pattern products
could have been from that apple tree I suppose)... Edna's name means Eden,
etc.
The returners seem to be in the cappy dillingham Emmanuel forlesen vein,
asking the same questions and having the same concerns and winding up in
the same desk. Someone will take forlesen's place from the gh group.

So confounding ...


On Sunday, September 14, 2014, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Sep 14, 2014 at 2:10 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > The red book’s cover shows people surrounding a winged being. The left
> side
> > is printed in scarlet in a language he doesn’t understand, though he does
> > not believe the translations match up very well. The black print
> describes
> > the twelve natures of Death and the Dead:
> >
> >> Those who become new gods, for whom new universes are born. Second
> those who
> >> praise. Third those who fight as soldiers in the unending war with evil.
> >> Fourth those who amuse themselves among flowers and sweet streams with
> >> sports. Fifth those who dwell in gardens of bliss, or are tortured.
> Sixth
> >> those who continue as in life. Seventh those who turn the wheel of the
> >> universe. Eighth those who find in their graves their mother’s wombs
> and in
> >> one life circle forever. Ninth ghosts. Tenth those born again as men in
> >> their grandson’s time. Eleventh those who return as beasts or trees. And
> >> last those who sleep.
> >
> > ... Forlesen picks up a hitchhiker named Abraham Beale dressed in a very
> old fashioned manner and leaves Forlesen with the impression of a cricket.
> He says Forlesen is awake while so many of the other drivers are asleep.
> >
> > ...He meets a woman who looks like Miss Fawn whose voice he recognizes
> from his car – Miss Fedd used to work in traffic. Forlesen says he is
> afraid to read the ending of the brown book, and she says it is the red
> book he should fear: “It's the opposite of a mystery – everyone stops
> before the revelations.”
>
> Thoughts on this classification? Going through them:
>
> 1. new gods: no, Forlesen is powerless and the universe is old
> 2. praisers: no
> 3. soldiers: no
> 4. sportsmen in paradise: no
> 5. paradise or hell: no the former, maybe the latter
> 6. 'those who continue as in life': maybe, but there's a similar later
> category
> 7. turning the wheel of the universe: maybe
> 8. eternal returners: no, no wombs or natural life is involved,
> especially not if this is Frick
> 9. ghosts: no, Forlesen seems pretty physical
> 10. reincarnation as animals or plants: no
> 11. eternal sleepers: no, although Beale implies a lot of the other
> people are sleepers
>
> That leaves:
>
> - in hell
>
>     I don't like this one because hell is being opposed to 'gardens of
> bliss'; there would be no ambiguity about being in a garden of bliss,
> so likewise there should be no ambiguity about being in hell. One
> suffers horribly being tortured. If Forlesen's life is Hell, then it's
> a rather refined and existentialist sort of hell...
> - turning the wheel of the universe
>
>     I have no idea what this might mean.
> - 'those who continue as in life'
>
>     This fits best.
>
> Fawn says it's the opposite of a mystery. In a mystery, you have a
> question for which you lack an answer (who/how/why dunnit) and you
> reach the answer at the end (it was the butler with the knife because
> his pay was cut). So here we must have an answer (here are the 12
> kinds of dead), and lack the question.
>
> The obvious question here is 'what am I?' If Forlesen wanted to know
> who and what he is, why doesn't he read the books to the end,
> especially after her comments? Perhaps he doesn't want to know.
>
> --
> gwern
> http://www.gwern.net
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