{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1671", "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": 1671, "subject": "Jonas datapoints", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-06-08T13:44:35+00:00", "last": "1999-06-08T17:24:08+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "1999-06-08T13:44:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Jonas datapoints", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What did Jonas learn from the nth generation prisoners of the antechamber?\nFirst I will attempt to gather all the points.\n\n\nItem 0.1: at the end of SHADOW, Jonas begins to tell a tale, presumably to\nimpress Jolenta (much as the tales are told in the lazaret much later). It\nseems to suggest that he is very wise in archane lore, and/or he is much\nolder than he looks. (The tale remains unfinished.)\n\n\nItem 0.5: From Chapter X, CLAW: \"I learned (or rather, I thought I did)\nthat his father had been a craftsman; that he had been raised by both\nparents in what he called the usual way, though it is, in fact, rather\nrare; and that his home had been a seacoast town in the south, but that\nwhen he had last visited it he had\nfound it so much changed that he had no desire to remain.\"\n\nComment: Jonas' hometown a place on the coast.\n\n\n=In the Antechamber=\n\nItem 1: \"I couldn't break away from the women who had me, at first.\nAfterward, those people couldn't break away from me.\"\n\n\nItem 2: \"I must escape from here . . . If I don't, I will kill myself or\nlose my reason.\"\n\n\nItem 3: (details about the group: several old women, a man of about fifty,\nanother about thirty, three other women, and a flock of children)\n\n\nItem 4: (the group's questions about river, fashions, and food)\n\n\nItem 4.5: (that the oldest women are \"seventh\" generation\nprisoners--daughters of seventh generation prisoners)\n\n\nItem 5: \"They are remarkable people in some respects. Externally they have\nbeen shaped completely by this place where they have spent all their lives.\nYet beneath that are [. . .] Family memories, I suppose you could call\nthem. Traditions from the outside world that have been handed down to\nthem, generation to generation, from the original prisoners from whom they\nare descended. They don't know what some of the words mean any longer, but\nthey cling to the traditions, to the stories, because those are all they\nhave; the stories and their names.\"\n\n\nItem 6: \"The name of the first prisoner . . . was Kimleesoong\"\n\nComment: Jonas learned this from the prisoners and it is significant to\nhim, but means nothing to Severian.\n\n\nItem 7: \"Kim Lee Soong would have been a very common kind of name when I\nwas [...] a boy. A common name in places now sunk under the sea. Have you\never heard of my ship, Severian? She was the _Fortunate Cloud_.\"\n\nComment: Obviously Jonas did =not= learn this from the prisoners--he is\nspeaking from past experience. He is bringing it up to give Severian some\ncontext as to why it is important to him. The suggestion is that Jonas'\nhome culture (see Item 0.5) had a lot (perhaps a numerical majority?) of\nAsians; and of course, that the first prisoner of this generational group\nwas Asian (or at least had an Asian name). As a \"time marker,\" the \"sunk\nunder the sea\" bit would seem to indicate a greater interval than \"seventh\ngeneration\" prisoner (140 years?), or even the age of the antechamber if\nbeginning with the Age of the Autarch (1000 years).\n\n\nItem 8: \"We must get power to the compressors before the air goes bad . . .\nI feel weight! It must be only the lights.\"\n\n\nItem 9: \"Jonas was cursing--at least, the tone of his voice told me he was\ncursing, though the words came in tongues unknown to me\" and later Jonas\nbegins \"talking to himself in a nasal, monosyllabic language I did not\nunderstand.\"\n\nComment: Jonas curses and mutters in his (presumed) native tongue, which is\na foreign language to Severian. It may or may not be Asian.\n\n\nItem 10: the little girl mentions \"the navigator\" in conversation with\nSeverian.\n\nComment: this is the first indication that at least some ancestors of the\ngenerational prisoners might have been the crew of a starship. The girl is\ntalking to Severian, not Jonas. We aren't sure of the kin-group of the\ngirl--she might or might not be a member of the same group that was talking\nto Jonas.\n\n\nItem 11: \"Do you know what this place is called, Severian?\" etc.\n\nComment: Basically the antechamber is a waiting room where coffee and\ndanishes are still served twice a day. There is a lot of detail on what\namounts to what we moderns call a drop ceiling; these hints might be toward\na real, specific building we should recognize, or a category of building.\nDentist's office? Aerospace museum? Or is the House Absolute in fact\nanother spaceport ruin? The \"wells\" that dot the garden could be 20th\ncentury-style launch silos.\n\n\nItem 11.5: \"Once I read a history. I don't suppose you know anything about\nit. So many chiliads have elapsed here.\"\n\nComment: This is a clear time marker. Many thousands of years have passed\non Urth since Jonas first departed.\n\n\nItem 11.7: Nicarete says, \"This prison is not supposed to be a prison at\nall. Long ago--I believe before the reign of Ymar--it was the custom for\nthe Autarch himself to judge anyone accused of a crime committed within the\nprecincts of the House Absolute . . . Important cases were delt with\nquickly, but the offenders in less serious ones were sent here to wait\"\n\nComment: the antechamber has a time marker of one thousand years.\n\n\nItem 12: \"I have to talk to somebody, so it has to be you even though\nyou'll think I'm a monster when I'm done.\"\n\nItem 13: \"We crashed. It had been so long, on Urth, that there was no port\nwhen we returned, no dock. Afterward my hand was gone, and my face. My\nshipmates repaired me as well as they could, but there were no parts\nanymore, only biological material.\"\n\nItem 14: Speaking of Jolenta, Jonas says \"I have never loved before, never\nin all the time since our crew scattered.\"\n\nComment: So it seems that after the crash, Jonas' crew scattered. From\nwhere to where? Who knows--there are seven continents. But they crashed\nupon a caucasian fellow, fwiw, not a xanthoderm.\n\nItem 15: Regarding the source of biological material, Jonas says \"He was\non the ground. We killed him by accident, coming in. I needed his eyes\nand larynx, and I took some other parts.\"\n\nComment: Presumably this is the confession that he supposes will make\nSeverian think him a monster. But Jonas' stories are always being\ninterrupted, so who knows.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mark Millman", "address": "mark_millman at hmco.com" }, "date": "1999-06-08T17:24:08+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Jonas datapoints", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tuesday 8 June 1999, mantis wrote:\n[snip!]\n\nOr is the House Absolute in fact another\nspaceport ruin? The \"wells\" that dot the\ngarden could be 20th century-style\nlaunch silos.\n\n[snip!]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have always contended that Father Inire's\nHypogeum Apotropaic is a former bomb\nor fallout shelter, but I suppose it could also\nbe a former launch bunker--it would still be\nunderground and protected (or, more ac-\ncurately, protective).\n\nMark Millman" } ] } ] }