(urth) Short Story 60: Forelesen part 1

[Marc Aramini]

The names Abraham, edna, Adam, and Emanuel must have some significance to
the garden / fallen man imagery as well.

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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