{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1564",
    "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": 1564,
    "subject": "Time Is On My Side",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-22T15:53:20+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-22T15:53:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0007@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Parmenter",
        "address": "dan at lec.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-22T15:53:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Time Is On My Side",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>\nIn several essays and countless conversations, people have wondered \"Why\nSeverian? What qualifies him?\" And often, after listing his various\nstrengths and weaknesses, his first known special talent is hit upon as\nbeing somehow the most significant: \"It must be his Memory.\"\n\nIt may be, but I haven't seen anyone pursue that thread--it is usually a\nstepping stone to someplace else, or a side attraction.  (Or maybe I'm just\nforgetting something.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I've pursued that thread, though perhaps not as vociferously as others\nhave pursued other threads.  One idea that I found very compelling for\na while was based on a conception of human memory as a sensory organ\nrather than a storage medium; essentially, that Severian has the\nability to directly experience moments of his own past as if they were\nthe present.  He speaks at several points of being lost among his\nmemories, replaying particular favorite moments and experiencing them\nas the present.  Why couldn't Severian's memory be the instrument of\nhis access to the corridors of time?  Doesn't Dorcas speculate that he\ndid a time-splice, bringing her back to the point where she lived?\nObviously there are seriouis problems with this hypothesis, but I\ndon't think it should be dismissed out of hand.\n\nAnd with multiple Severians and time streams, well, is it any surprise\nthat Severian's \"perfect memory\" seems to be anything but (for a while\nwe were collecting examples of inconsistencies in Severian's\naccount)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Let's pretend, for the sake of this experiment, that his memory is the\n=only= thing that qualifies Severian. (I.e., it is not that he is a\ntorturer; nor that he is the person on throne when the timer runs out; nor\nanything else.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "But wait!  Just having a good memory *isn't* enough.  Ouen \"doesn't\nforget much\" right?  But he didn't qualify.  "
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "The same rules for raising ghosts =seem= to apply to resurrecting corpses\n(which makes sense, of course, since in resurrection one is raising the\nghost and reuniting it with the body). But the various resurrections are\noften complicated by other things: who remembered Typhon for his\nresurrection (well, I would say the Claw); the Jonas ghost riding in the\nMiles body (actually this finds a possible solution in the outline above);\nwho remembered Dorcas (well, \"Charon,\" obviously); etc."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I thought Jonas-in-Miles was haunted by a memory of Jolenta?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: Peter Westlake <peter at harlequin.co.uk>\nI'm much more convinced by Severian's own explanation, that\nthe torturers are the only people who can be relied upon to\nDo What Needs To Be Done."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Yes, remember that Appian's love of mankind was too great, though that\nseems a bit contrived.  So what was needed was not just a torturer\n(plenty of them around, even with the guild's decline, and hey, all\nmen are torturers, right?) but a torturer with a perfect memory.\n\nI've always found it strangely sad that Severian gets to spend very\nlittle time as a righteous healer.  Even when he heals Jader's sister\nand then walks triumphantly among his former prisoners (after giving\nthem a bath), he himself remains in awe of the Claw, having not yet\nlearned that the claw is merely a \"focus\" (in the old Champions gaming\nsystem sense) rather than an actual relic of power (like say, Green\nLantern's ring).\n\nLex Shellac"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}