{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1567",
    "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": 1567,
    "subject": "Speak, Memory",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-22T21:30:27+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-22T21:30:27+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0026-0010@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Ori Kowarsky",
        "address": "orik at sprint.ca"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-22T21:30:27+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Speak, Memory",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Mantis and Mitchell A. Bailey raise some outstanding points regarding the\nconnection between Sev's choseness and his eidetic memory.  I am in complete\nagreement with Mitchell that Sev's memory is the key to his ability to be\nresurected.  Of all the aquastors we meet in the series, only Sev seems to\nremain a functioning, self-remembering individual after revivification.\nFurthermore, those beings that Sev revives (I believe that they are all\naquastors) have little or no sense of themselves outside of Sev's memory and\nperception of them;  witness the difference between a known teacher like\nMalrubius and the soldier killed by the notule.  More than the Claw, it is\nSev who is the prism through which the Hieros (or the Hierodules) beam their\naquastor ray.  And I really do believe that it is that simple:  Sev's\nperceived ability to raise people from the dead is the result of Yesod\nbasically turning the aquastor machine on or off at will, explaining to some\ndegree the fickleness of Sev's \"power\".  He can do it when \"they\" decide it\nis useful to \"them\", and he can't when they don't.\n\n(This raises two side issues:  1)  For the Kabbalists amongst us, Sev, like\nthe Claw, is literally a gem or prism through which the holy, or reviving,\nlight shines, and 2) the Hierodules Sev meets at Baldander's castle *knew\nfull well* what the Claw was when he showed it to them.  Was his belief or\ncredulity the test that he failed with them?)\n\nBut Sev's memory, though rare, is not unique, and I don't believe that\nanyone with photographic memory, in Sev's position, would be able to\nresurrect Thecla within them the way that he did.\n\nI think it's deeper than that.\n\nI think that Sev's memory is more than neuological.\n\nI think it's biological.\n\nI think it's genetic.\n\nI think Sev is Number Five.\n\nI posit that Sev is Number Five in the same way that Number Five was Number\nOne, but with two important differences.  He is a clone who propagates\nhimself through sexual intercourse, using the female womb as an incubation\ntank.\n\nI posit that Sev is the result of the continuing experiments conducted by\nNumber Five and Nerissa, using abo and ghoul-bear tissue, to create a\nself-actuating, self-replicating clonal series.  Sev is the paragon of that\nseries.  This would help to explain the reaction he had to the alzabo ritual\nand the efficacy of Thecla's intergation:  Not his memory, but his genetic\nmake-up, which is/was part alzabo *before* the ritual ever occurred.\n\nThis is the reason why Sev looks like the \"spitting image\" of Ouen.  This is\nalso why the face on the sarcophagus is Sev's -- it isn't Sev in the\nfuture -- it's \"Sev\" from the past!  (The ship and the fountain on his coat\nof arms represent the splashdown from his arrival from Sainte Croix.)\n\nNow here is where things get weird:\n\nIn Shadow, Jonas tells us of a woman who returns from the stars with nothing\nbut as handful of black beans;  she threatens that unless she is  obeyed by\nthe planet's rulers she will cast the beans into the sea and destroy the\nworld.   She is seized and torn to bits.  We are invited to infer that these\nbeans are, somehow, the origins of the giants who live under the seas and\nthreaten the Commonwealth.  I suggest that this woman was Nerissa, or her\nfemale heir, and that the beans were vials containing multiple embryos of\nNumber 5.\n\nOne of those embryos established Sev's bloodline.\n\nOne of those embryos became Erebus (who, therefore is Sev, explaining his\nsponsorship of Sev).\n\nOne of those embryos became Baldanders (who is Sev).  How can I prove this?\nSleeping in the same bed, they *share a dream*, surely something which is\nonly possible among two beings who share an identical neurological\nconstruction and whose consciousnesses are on literally the same\nelectromagnetic frequency.  Their rivialry is the rivalry of brothers, as is\nusually the case in contests for the crown.\n\nOne may interrupt and ask:  How can Erebus be a perfect clone of Number 5 if\nhe is so huge, same with Baldanders?  How can Sev be the clone of Ouen if\n(we are led to infer, unless Ouen is merely stooped) Sev is much taller than\nhim?  Isn't the hallmark of a clone stasis?\n\nThis is precisely the problem, the problem of stasis, that Number 5's Father\nremarks on in Number 5'sdream (the one of the boat which eerily prefigures\nboth Tzad's ship and the ogre in the story of the Student).  But what if,\nwith the intergration of abo and alzabo genetics in with his own, Number 5\nwas able to create a version of himself which would be an immortal clone in\nwhat mattered -- ie. personality, hence memory -- but adaptable, either\nthrough genes captured in thr course of sexual breeding or else through\nself-directed bodily adaptation to the elements (ie. an efficient Lamarckian\nbeing), to maximize the chances not only to survive, immortal, but to\nsucceed, to rule, to exceed one's original station in life, in other words,\nto break through thre wall encountered by Number 5's Father.\n\nIt is this Lamarckian genetic morphology (morph-ability?) which makes\nSeverain unique.  He is given Ushas as a \"stud farm\" because *it is only\nthrough his biology that we can evolve a Green Man* (who is also Sev).\n\nAnd it is through the Green Man that we evolve the Hieros.\n\n\"Someday they'll want us.\"  Indeed.\n\nOri"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}