From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Nicholas=20Gevers?= <vermoulian@yahoo.com>
Subject: (urth) One-Two-Three for Me
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 00:29:37 

(Spoilers)
All right, taking up the matter of "One-Two-Three For
Me": I haven't assigned it a specifically religious
meaning. For me, the story corresponds closely to "And
When They Appear", perhaps occurring much later in the
same general future. The civilization whose remains
the protagonist of "One" investigates has, like that
in "And When", committed suicide, apparently from an
ennui born of the loss of meaning of all cultural
symbols (including, very prominently, God). In "One",
Jak's girlfriend summons up the figure (pusher and
psychopomp) that brought the killing drug to members
of the now-dead civilization, in effect placing the
order by phone. Death is preceded by ecstacy; the
people of the past couldn't even face Death square in
the face.

Jak's own culture is an experiment in averting this
syndrome: its members live rough outdoor lives, and
are supervised in certain crucial respects by AIs or
"bots". Thus their curious mingling of the primitive
(playing with sticks by the campfire) and the advanced
(interstellar travel). My suspicion, given the gloomy
tenor of STRANGE TRAVELERS as a whole, is that this
formula, which seems Godless, is also doomed to
failure.

Key questions: 
What is the significance of the numerical sequence
1-2-3? (Possible answer: it's the simplest possible
phone number, underscoring the past culture's
preoccupation with easy death.)
What is one to make of the appearance of the "pusher"
(what we hear of it)?

That's all for now.

=====

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