Subject: (urth) Speak, Memory

From: Ori Kowarsky <orik at sprint.ca>
Date: Thu, 22 Apr 1999 21:30:27 +0000

Mantis and Mitchell A. Bailey raise some outstanding points regarding the
connection between Sev's choseness and his eidetic memory.  I am in complete
agreement with Mitchell that Sev's memory is the key to his ability to be
resurected.  Of all the aquastors we meet in the series, only Sev seems to
remain a functioning, self-remembering individual after revivification.
Furthermore, those beings that Sev revives (I believe that they are all
aquastors) have little or no sense of themselves outside of Sev's memory and
perception of them;  witness the difference between a known teacher like
Malrubius and the soldier killed by the notule.  More than the Claw, it is
Sev who is the prism through which the Hieros (or the Hierodules) beam their
aquastor ray.  And I really do believe that it is that simple:  Sev's
perceived ability to raise people from the dead is the result of Yesod
basically turning the aquastor machine on or off at will, explaining to some
degree the fickleness of Sev's "power".  He can do it when "they" decide it
is useful to "them", and he can't when they don't.

(This raises two side issues:  1)  For the Kabbalists amongst us, Sev, like
the Claw, is literally a gem or prism through which the holy, or reviving,
light shines, and 2) the Hierodules Sev meets at Baldander's castle *knew
full well* what the Claw was when he showed it to them.  Was his belief or
credulity the test that he failed with them?)

But Sev's memory, though rare, is not unique, and I don't believe that
anyone with photographic memory, in Sev's position, would be able to
resurrect Thecla within them the way that he did.

I think it's deeper than that.

I think that Sev's memory is more than neuological.

I think it's biological.

I think it's genetic.

I think Sev is Number Five.

I posit that Sev is Number Five in the same way that Number Five was Number
One, but with two important differences.  He is a clone who propagates
himself through sexual intercourse, using the female womb as an incubation
tank.

I posit that Sev is the result of the continuing experiments conducted by
Number Five and Nerissa, using abo and ghoul-bear tissue, to create a
self-actuating, self-replicating clonal series.  Sev is the paragon of that
series.  This would help to explain the reaction he had to the alzabo ritual
and the efficacy of Thecla's intergation:  Not his memory, but his genetic
make-up, which is/was part alzabo *before* the ritual ever occurred.

This is the reason why Sev looks like the "spitting image" of Ouen.  This is
also why the face on the sarcophagus is Sev's -- it isn't Sev in the
future -- it's "Sev" from the past!  (The ship and the fountain on his coat
of arms represent the splashdown from his arrival from Sainte Croix.)

Now here is where things get weird:

In Shadow, Jonas tells us of a woman who returns from the stars with nothing
but as handful of black beans;  she threatens that unless she is  obeyed by
the planet's rulers she will cast the beans into the sea and destroy the
world.   She is seized and torn to bits.  We are invited to infer that these
beans are, somehow, the origins of the giants who live under the seas and
threaten the Commonwealth.  I suggest that this woman was Nerissa, or her
female heir, and that the beans were vials containing multiple embryos of
Number 5.

One of those embryos established Sev's bloodline.

One of those embryos became Erebus (who, therefore is Sev, explaining his
sponsorship of Sev).

One of those embryos became Baldanders (who is Sev).  How can I prove this?
Sleeping in the same bed, they *share a dream*, surely something which is
only possible among two beings who share an identical neurological
construction and whose consciousnesses are on literally the same
electromagnetic frequency.  Their rivialry is the rivalry of brothers, as is
usually the case in contests for the crown.

One may interrupt and ask:  How can Erebus be a perfect clone of Number 5 if
he is so huge, same with Baldanders?  How can Sev be the clone of Ouen if
(we are led to infer, unless Ouen is merely stooped) Sev is much taller than
him?  Isn't the hallmark of a clone stasis?

This is precisely the problem, the problem of stasis, that Number 5's Father
remarks on in Number 5'sdream (the one of the boat which eerily prefigures
both Tzad's ship and the ogre in the story of the Student).  But what if,
with the intergration of abo and alzabo genetics in with his own, Number 5
was able to create a version of himself which would be an immortal clone in
what mattered -- ie. personality, hence memory -- but adaptable, either
through genes captured in thr course of sexual breeding or else through
self-directed bodily adaptation to the elements (ie. an efficient Lamarckian
being), to maximize the chances not only to survive, immortal, but to
succeed, to rule, to exceed one's original station in life, in other words,
to break through thre wall encountered by Number 5's Father.

It is this Lamarckian genetic morphology (morph-ability?) which makes
Severain unique.  He is given Ushas as a "stud farm" because *it is only
through his biology that we can evolve a Green Man* (who is also Sev).

And it is through the Green Man that we evolve the Hieros.

"Someday they'll want us."  Indeed.

Ori

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/