{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/14", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 14, "subject": "Aquastors, eidolons", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1997-04-17T19:04:57+00:00", "last": "1997-04-18T04:49:00+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Charles Dye", "address": "raster at highfiber.com" }, "date": "1997-04-17T19:04:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Aquastors, eidolons", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is mantis, speaking to the Whorl list. I've moved it over to Urth\nfor no better reason than that I'm more familiar with that work:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Whoops--in my previous message, \"coo coup/fish & fowl,\" I used the\nword \"eidolon\" when I should have used \"aquastor\" (even though I\nthink that they might be used interchangably by the commonality of\nthe Commonwealth, for my own sense of mental cohesion I like to keep\nthem separate: \"eidolon\" as beam-to-the-brain ghost, and \"aquastor\"\nas physically manifested ghost of hologrammic silvery dust)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I tried to make this distinction myself once, and I came away with\nthe impression that \"aquastor\" and \"eidolon\" were two words for the\nsame technology, or perhaps just slightly different implementations.\nI don't have the reference here, but I definitely recall Barbatus using\nthe word \"tangible\" to describe eidolons. There's certainly room\nfor disagreement on this, but my interpretation is that aquastors\nor eidolons are manufactured from locally available matter, held\ntogether for a time by sheer force of mechanical will, and revert\n(usually!) to the original material when the mind's control lapses.\n\nThe material used to construct aquastors should be finely divisible,\nreadily available, and ideally should have interesting electrical\nproperties." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "[Since \"quaesitor\" in early Roman times was a criminal investigator\n(mainly homicide, I think), I continue to wonder if \"aquastors\" are\nghost detectives--that is, investigators of the living on behalf of\nthe dead. Or there are the \"quaestors,\" deputies of magistrates,\nthat grew through the years of the Republic from a population of two\nto forty until Augustus reduced them to twenty: this job was the\nentry-level magistry sought by ambitious young men. In context of\n\"aquastor\" this suggests a hierarchy and government of the dead.]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is so poetic, and so nicely reasoned, that it hurts me almost\nphysically to disagree. But ... Michael, I think you've outwitted\nWolfe on this one! Aquastors dissolve to mist when released. If\nyou read \"mist\" literally instead of as a bit of poetic description,\nyou get a much simpler (but less beautiful) derivation for the word\n\"aquastor.\"\n\nraster at highfiber.com\n\n(\"Mental cohesion?\" Punintentional?)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1997-04-18T04:49:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Aquastors, eidolons", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Reply: Item #7172613 from RASTER at HIGHFIBER.COM@INET#\n\nRaster,\n\nFirst of all, we both agree that the words seem to be used\ninterchangeably as a synonym for \"phantom.\" And I'll bet I can get\nyou to agree that the originating mind can be organic as well as\nnon-organic (\"mechanical\" is not quite right, since even our puny\npresent thinking engines aren't mechanical in nature), so we agree\nthere, too. (Next: grappling with the idea that the range of these\nphantom projecting deus ex machinas is measured in =time= rather than\n=space=.) As for aquastors being made of water, that's in the Lexicon,\nbut, somehow unsatisfied, I continue to poke around for other layers.\n(I think Gene Wolfe once mentioned that they were like tulpas--see short\nstory \"Melting\"--which makes perfect sense. But they aren't called\n\"tulpas,\" they are called \"aquastors,\" and he doesn't usually make up\nwords. Or so I've been led to believe. )\n\nThe bit of Barbatus talking is probably from within the pyramid in\nURTH, where Severian is =finally= coming to grips with the idea that\nhe died back at the beginning of the novel. Another part is where\naged Eata says he thinks the Severian before him is a ghost.\n\nHowever, for my pointers I took precedence within the text: and the\naquastor definition is given in CITADEL on the ride from behind enemy\nlines to the beach, I believe. In Cyriaca's charming sketch of\nposthistory, she tells of a time when ghosts that nobody else could\nsee were beamed into people's heads directly as guardian angels--thus,\nsomething different from the solidified hologram being assigned to\n\"aquastor.\"\n\n(Did you catch this a few months ago as a new science factoid: I'm\nfuzzy on the details, but it seemed to be just that--a solid-o-gram\nprojector that spits individual atoms into place, not only negating the\nneed for mist/smoke that a hologram needs to be cast upon, but also\nmaking an ersatz shell 3-D form. I must be garbling an awful lot but\nI'm not making it out of . . . water . . . )\n\nBack to Barbatus: without the text in front of me, I think you are\nright in the sense that B is (maybe) saying that an eidolon can become\nan aquastor, and that a sufficiently powered aquastor can gain more and\nmore substance until it is as independent and as real as humans are.\n(Kinda like the phantom warriors of Barsoom, if you recall.)\n\nIn psychic terms they're made of ectoplasm!\n\nRe: Mysteries of PEACE, when I asked if Ms. Gold had an accident I\nmeant was she killed, and if so, was it because she was pregnant.\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }