{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2055",
    "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": 2055,
    "subject": "More Infrequently Asked Questions",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1999-12-29T22:46:20+00:00",
    "last": "1999-12-30T11:34:48+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0658@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Talarican",
        "address": "chemmie at mindspring.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-29T22:46:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) More Infrequently Asked Questions",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I must be suffering advanced enigma intoxication, seeing riddles under every\nbed.\n\nII:VIII When Sev immerses himself at Saltus in his memory of the undines'\npuppet-show dream, just before being kidnapped by Vodalus' cultellarii, he\nhas a revelation: \"Then very suddenly I ... understood why it was that Abaia\nhad sent me this dream, and had sought to enlist me in the great and final\nwar of Urth.\"  He declines to explain his sudden enlightenment about the\norigin and purpose of his dream, preferring to go on with subsequent plot\nevents (the kidnapping). What did Sev now understand, and how did he extract\nthat enlightenment from the dream?\n\nIV: XXIII After the wounded Severian is rescued by the Autarch, he revels in\na memory (or hallucination?) of Master Malrubius lecturing \"Look to your\n'Q'\",  followed by a rambling complaint about his thankless and nearly\nfutile\nefforts\nto educate the apprentices, ending with the unfinished sentence \"There was a\nboy, but he...\".\nBut he what? (\" - but he betrayed the guild and was sent away\" -?)\nAnd was this an authentic memory of something the \"real\" Malrubius\n\"actually\" said to young Sev at some point?\nTo whom is the remembered Malrubius referring here?\nPalaemon, perhaps? Is Malrubius old enough to have taught Palaemon as an\napprentice? (Is Palaemon perhaps younger than we have been led to believe,\nhaving met with some injury during his sojourn which crippled and nearly\nblinded him? Became or was replaced by a cyborg or cacogen or some such, as\nhas been speculated before? Come to think of it, Palaemon shouldn't be much\nolder than fifty, at most sixty, in the year following Sev's exile, if\nPalaemon was a young man of Sev's age or a bit more thirty years previously\nas related by Winnoc)\nOr, as is strongly suggested by the text, is this a hallucination rather\nthan a memory, with Sev projecting his own recent disgrace backward into his\nrecollection of Malrubius, i.e. the boy referred to is Sev himself (the real\nMalrubius of course died years before Sev advanced to captain of\napprentices). Another possibility in this same vein is that Sev projects his\nknowlege of the exile of young journeyman Palaemon into this vision, as Sev\nhad already encountered Winnoc by this time.\nOr is this perhaps an eidolonic visitation by the Malrubius-persona of the\nHierodules' thinking engine which sends him Malrubious-aquastor later, in\nwhich case what purpose did it serve?\nOr some combination of all of the above?\n\nIII: XXVI When Sev and Typhon arrive in the cavern behind the eyes of Mount\nTyphon, Sev asked how they rose the mountaintop after seeming to fall DOWN a\nsteep descent in that floating luge or rollercoaster conveyance. Typhon\nreplied \"Why should gravity serve Urth, when it can serve Typhon?...\" Did\nthe old empire master antigravity? Could that have been one of its sins,\nantigravity being an \"unnatural act\", so to speak, like FTL?"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0659@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Peter Westlake",
        "address": "peter at harlequin.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-30T11:34:48+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) More Infrequently Asked Questions",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0028-0658@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "At 22:46 1999-12-29 -0500, Talarican wrote:\n\n... some excellent questions, and not the usual ones either ..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "III: XXVI When Sev and Typhon arrive in the cavern behind the eyes of Mount\nTyphon, Sev asked how they rose the mountaintop after seeming to fall DOWN a\nsteep descent in that floating luge or rollercoaster conveyance. Typhon\nreplied \"Why should gravity serve Urth, when it can serve Typhon?...\" Did\nthe old empire master antigravity? Could that have been one of its sins,\nantigravity being an \"unnatural act\", so to speak, like FTL?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "They must surely have learned to direct gravity at will, or been able\nto fake it convincingly. There would be plenty of room for machinery\nin the mountain, too.\n\nI don't think it should be seen as a sin, since the flyers aren't.\n\nSpectacled Bear."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}