From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis@sirius.com>
Subject: (urth) re Copperhead stuff
Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 13:04:08 

<fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><bigger><bigger>Roy,


The Changer was experimented with by the General at least, we agree.
What would be the results of such experiments, aside from more
monsters?  If you beamed an inanimate object, what would you get? 
Would a chair become a Platonic Chair? <<g> 


The suicide note is deeper than the obvious sex scandal, we agree.


The Press and the public know little about the crash and nothing about
the Changer and Jane Doe, agreed.


Jane Doe as Lilith is a very strong thread, agreed.


Roy wrote:

>Why? She merely did unto him exactly what he was going to do unto her,
only

she did it first. What, exactly, did she do to merit such a fate? How
did

she sin? Where did the "glorious" man get the moral authority? The
redhead

was entirely blameless in the matter of her appearance in this
universe. If

"Dhoss bhoyes" fight and die because they lust after her, how is that
her

fault? I mean, just what the hell was she supposed to do about any of
it?

Surrender, just lie down and say "Do with me as you will"? Evidently
she

already tried that. Commit suicide to save their souls? What?<<


Part of our problem here is, I think, the clash between modes of
causality, ancient/magical versus modern/realistic.  For example, we
know the Temptation story, and how The Serpent was the agent of it, and
then after it was done, The Serpent was made snake-like (a detail that
links it to "How the Crow Became Black" and other animal explanation
stories like that).  That magical thinking that shows how essence
preceeds existence: how Serpent, because of his primordial nature,
behaved in a certain way and was rewarded or punished by being turned
into the shape/condition which we associate with "serpent."  (What was
The Serpent before it was snake-like? In realist terms, it is a
puzzler; in magical thinking, it makes no sense.)


Okay.  So the NP beams a copperhead and Jane Doe rises up.
Realistically it doesn't make any sense--Jane doesn't act like a snake,
for example. She acts like a sex kitten with a destructive agenda,
which would be "early Lilith" I guess (as opposed to "Lilith, =mother=
of monsters").  That is, Lilith and the godlike man are both
archetypes: once released upon Earth they automatically do the things
that they are archetypally famous for.  Like a cartoon cat and cartoon
dog suddenly put into the real world--you know exactly what they are
going to do with regard to each other, without any of the nuances of
real life cats and dogs.


So I'm not sure about the continuity from one form to another. The
godlike man is not the NP, since the NP is in the Eden place; the
godlike man probably doesn't have any of the backstory (that is, I
don't think that the godlike man knows everything that the NP knows).
He is, I suspect, reacting to Jane Doe the way he always does at a
certain point in his story: like a dog to a cat. (And Jane isn't
rustling through the leaves of D.C., looking for something to eat
before hibernating . . . or is she?  Hmm.)


As for equivalence of the action: well, the NP is trying to restore the
previous condition, trying to send her back or at least away; she is
trying to avoid that, and is willing to further the interdimentional
contamination/chaos by sending the NP away. So if she did anything
beyond that, it was pushing the wrong button! (Well, she had maybe a
fifty-percent chance <<g>)


So the short answer: she could have co-operated ("submitted" sounds so
heavy-handed) and allowed herself to be beamed back to her homeland.
Instead she opted to sow more confusion but it backfired a bit. 


Meanwhile, there is the repeated trouble in Spokane. That and the
question of "how long to the next election," these are the points that
sound like "National Crisis" to me.  Especially the way that the
"election" conversation plays out: the security guy seems to be certain
that the NP has or will soon have dictatorial powers, the NP (like
Caesar?) is refusing that crown by insisting that there will be
elections. Or so it seemed to me.


More geography: Jane is five hours away. So where is the story set? 
Hard to say. Jane is not in Washington D.C., it seems, but she might
not be too far from it (maybe they tried to move her away but she has a
way of crossing the distance anyway). The NP is at some sort of Camp
David retreat, but it might be the family ranch or whatever. Jane and
her handler Karen were removed from the D.C. area for the trouble that
had already happened (the murder, at least), and Jane secretly slips
away to cause more mischief, so that Karen doesn't even know--cannot
suspect. 


This story occupies the Wolfe-space we might term "Tabloid Wolfe." 
Like CASTLEVIEW, and "The Ziggurat," and "A Cabin on the Coast," and
more.  So the other experiments with the Changer probably created a Big
Foot, a Bat Baby, and other tabloid staples. <<g>


=mantis=

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