Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 08:58:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Michael Straight 
Subject: Re: (urth) Silk-23 skidooby doo

On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:

> >I don't think this works.  For one thing, the only way I can swallow Horn
> >steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the obvious during his return to the
> >Whorl (that he is a spirit posessing Silk's body - an almost commonplace
> >idea given Horn's experiences) is that Silk himself is preventing it in
> >order to avoid facing up to Hyacinth's death.

This is my strongest objection to the theory, which you didn't respond
to.

> No, not exactly.  Look, Pig is carrying Silk, right?  And has been for some
> time.  Searching for Silk for some time, too.  So that whole thing was set
> in motion some time ago.

I guess I'm not clear on this point.  My understanding of Pig's story was
this:

Pig and other mercenaries are looting a manteion and Pig kills an auger
(which would put them somewhere in the cultural sphere of Viron, so it
can't be that long ago).  Silk sees this in the window and posesses Pig
(why?).  Pig is then blinded (by who? why?) and Silk is stuck.  This is
the reason for Horn's mission of mercy, not that Mainframe needs the bit
of Silk in Pig, but that the bit of Silk is unhappily stranded in Pig and
wants to escape just like Scylla wants to esacape from Oreb.

My take was that this all happened fairly recently, long enough ago that
Pig has gotten used to navigating blind, but not long enough for him to be
resigned to his blindness (although how much of that is Silk prompting
Pig so that he can escape?)

> Passilk-n would be based upon Silk-23, wouldn't it?  Living 20 years in VR
> heaven, apart from mortal-Silk's ordeals, or kept on tape, I'm not sure
> what.  (I mean, they just show him like a puppet for a second -- less than
> "visiting day" at Mainframe.)  In another post today I mentioned that I
> don't see any Pas elements in the Narrator, myself, so I'm not comfortable
> with Pig carrying Passilk rather than Silk.

Maybe so.  I hadn't thought Silk could run around Mainframe by
himself.  We know there is a composite entity Passilk, and we hypothesise
a pure Silk-23 in storage somewhere.  But then there are references to
Silent Silk and Silver Silk as possibly distinct from Passilk, so maybe.

But then, wasn't part of your original evidence for PigSilk --> HornSilk
the bit where HornSilk declares that there is a sense in which Pas has
come to Blue?  That would imply PigPasSilk --> HornPasSilk.

> I thought Silk-23 was recorded at the pool in the hotel, at the happiest
> moment in his life.  I thought what happened on the airship was he was
> shown the scan (which he had not been aware of before), and rather than
> cheer him up, it made him feel even worse.  So bad that he nearly . . .
> well, you know.

Is there textual evidence for this?  My recollection is that Kypris offers
Silk divination on the airship.  So I imagine a split at that point.  
Human Silk shudders at the very idea and walks away.  Digitized Silk
discovers it's an offer he can't refuse.

By your reading, Kypris makes the offer after she's already digitized
Silk, and to a later Silk who never gets digitized.  What would she have
done if the later Silk had said, "Sounds great, beam me up!"  Erased the
earlier Silk and replaced him with the later one?

-Rostrum


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