Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 07:49:48 -0800
From: Michael Andre-Driussi 
Subject: (urth) FLF: plan B, plan A

Roy quoted and wrote:
>>My timeline fragment shows that the 53-year-old deserter did =not= go
>>straight back to 1803, he went back to 1807.  Maybe he did this to
>>acclimitize himself to 19th century life before going on the 1803
>>expedition.
>>
>>I suspect that HC interview Whitten is the one who is about to go to 1803,
>>after having lived 7 years of experience in 1807-1818 (with vacations in
>>1979-1982).
>
>I could agree with that but for Whitten's ages--real and apparent--at two
>critical stages. The first is his self-stated age (60-70) at the time of the
>HC interview. But he looks so much like the 82-year-old the four lived with
>for a few days in 1983 that they all recognize him immediately, but hadn't
>recognized him shortly before then as the 53-year-old general. The HC Free
>has undergone at least ten years of hard living somewhere, somewhen. And he
>claims not to know from his own personal experience that any version of
>himself has gone to the Lewis & Clark expedition.

I don't see the contention yet.  "Ten years of hard living" (in 1807-1819)
-- check.  "Has not yet gone on Lewis & Clark expedition" (1804-1806) --
check.

> Unless he's lying, for no
>reason I can see, then this 60-something-year-old man will have to start
>using a gizmo to go back in time in order to merge with younger versions of
>himself, to make himself both look and feel younger. Which leads to the
>second critical stage. Because the first item in Wolfe's timeline states
>that the Ben Free who joined up with L. & C. *looked* younger than 60,
>whereas Free-in-the-cockpit looked older than 60. But Wolfe also states that
>he was in fact age 60 at the time he joined L. & C. That's the problem;
>either Free was wrong about his current age at the time of the HC interview,
>or Wolfe made a mistake somewhere, either in the text or the timeline. (I
>know of two mistakes in the timeline, but they are minor and don't really
>affect the chronology.)

Still no contention visible to me: "Designated implosion zone for
rejuvenation treatment prior to rigors of L&C expedition" (in 1807-1819) --
check.


>To be clear: I think that Whitten, after an unknown period of time (years?)
>while he continued to work for the OSS and look for Ben Free, when he
>decided to desert, used the portable gizmo to travel to January 24, 1983,
>from whatever time period he was then in. He had deduced where Free's
>"ticket" was, just as the text says, and used it.

Okay, so you are back to Plan A, that we were working at before:

When Whitten "disappears" on January 22 (the "second time") he doesn't
implode (so HC Whitten is correct that duffle coat has not imploded), he
just goes into the past (say 1943-1951) via the portable gizmo and manages
to age seven years (the numbers look good) completing his investigation on
how he is Ben Free.

Then he gizmos ahead from HC 1951 to HC 1983 in order to do the interview
with the four.

After the interview, he shuttles down to the ground (same flight with
Ozzie?) and deserts on January 24, leaving for the 19th century.  Having
aged seven years in two calendar days.

=mantis=



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