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From: "Ori Kowarsky" <orik@sprint.ca> Subject: (urth) Speak, Memory Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 21:30:27 Mantis and Mitchell A. Bailey raise some outstanding points regarding the connection between Sev's choseness and his eidetic memory. I am in complete agreement with Mitchell that Sev's memory is the key to his ability to be resurected. Of all the aquastors we meet in the series, only Sev seems to remain a functioning, self-remembering individual after revivification. Furthermore, those beings that Sev revives (I believe that they are all aquastors) have little or no sense of themselves outside of Sev's memory and perception of them; witness the difference between a known teacher like Malrubius and the soldier killed by the notule. More than the Claw, it is Sev who is the prism through which the Hieros (or the Hierodules) beam their aquastor ray. And I really do believe that it is that simple: Sev's perceived ability to raise people from the dead is the result of Yesod basically turning the aquastor machine on or off at will, explaining to some degree the fickleness of Sev's "power". He can do it when "they" decide it is useful to "them", and he can't when they don't. (This raises two side issues: 1) For the Kabbalists amongst us, Sev, like the Claw, is literally a gem or prism through which the holy, or reviving, light shines, and 2) the Hierodules Sev meets at Baldander's castle *knew full well* what the Claw was when he showed it to them. Was his belief or credulity the test that he failed with them?) But Sev's memory, though rare, is not unique, and I don't believe that anyone with photographic memory, in Sev's position, would be able to resurrect Thecla within them the way that he did. I think it's deeper than that. I think that Sev's memory is more than neuological. I think it's biological. I think it's genetic. I think Sev is Number Five. I posit that Sev is Number Five in the same way that Number Five was Number One, but with two important differences. He is a clone who propagates himself through sexual intercourse, using the female womb as an incubation tank. I posit that Sev is the result of the continuing experiments conducted by Number Five and Nerissa, using abo and ghoul-bear tissue, to create a self-actuating, self-replicating clonal series. Sev is the paragon of that series. This would help to explain the reaction he had to the alzabo ritual and the efficacy of Thecla's intergation: Not his memory, but his genetic make-up, which is/was part alzabo *before* the ritual ever occurred. This is the reason why Sev looks like the "spitting image" of Ouen. This is also why the face on the sarcophagus is Sev's -- it isn't Sev in the future -- it's "Sev" from the past! (The ship and the fountain on his coat of arms represent the splashdown from his arrival from Sainte Croix.) Now here is where things get weird: In Shadow, Jonas tells us of a woman who returns from the stars with nothing but as handful of black beans; she threatens that unless she is obeyed by the planet's rulers she will cast the beans into the sea and destroy the world. She is seized and torn to bits. We are invited to infer that these beans are, somehow, the origins of the giants who live under the seas and threaten the Commonwealth. I suggest that this woman was Nerissa, or her female heir, and that the beans were vials containing multiple embryos of Number 5. One of those embryos established Sev's bloodline. One of those embryos became Erebus (who, therefore is Sev, explaining his sponsorship of Sev). One of those embryos became Baldanders (who is Sev). How can I prove this? Sleeping in the same bed, they *share a dream*, surely something which is only possible among two beings who share an identical neurological construction and whose consciousnesses are on literally the same electromagnetic frequency. Their rivialry is the rivalry of brothers, as is usually the case in contests for the crown. One may interrupt and ask: How can Erebus be a perfect clone of Number 5 if he is so huge, same with Baldanders? How can Sev be the clone of Ouen if (we are led to infer, unless Ouen is merely stooped) Sev is much taller than him? Isn't the hallmark of a clone stasis? This is precisely the problem, the problem of stasis, that Number 5's Father remarks on in Number 5'sdream (the one of the boat which eerily prefigures both Tzad's ship and the ogre in the story of the Student). But what if, with the intergration of abo and alzabo genetics in with his own, Number 5 was able to create a version of himself which would be an immortal clone in what mattered -- ie. personality, hence memory -- but adaptable, either through genes captured in thr course of sexual breeding or else through self-directed bodily adaptation to the elements (ie. an efficient Lamarckian being), to maximize the chances not only to survive, immortal, but to succeed, to rule, to exceed one's original station in life, in other words, to break through thre wall encountered by Number 5's Father. It is this Lamarckian genetic morphology (morph-ability?) which makes Severain unique. He is given Ushas as a "stud farm" because *it is only through his biology that we can evolve a Green Man* (who is also Sev). And it is through the Green Man that we evolve the Hieros. "Someday they'll want us." Indeed. Ori *More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/