# "THB" my original questions *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 08 Mar 2000* > 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. --- ### Michael Andre-Driussi *08 Mar 2000, 13:34* "The Haunted Bordinghouse," spoilers alert. Okay, so we have this house, and each face opens onto a different era. STYLE ODD NOTES 1. Neo-Classical boy climbing out window 2. Tudor window of Enan's room 3. Neo-Victorian Enan's world (circa AD 2100, 2200?) 4. Contemporary It seems odd that Enan's room is on the Tudor side; does this mean that the Tudor side is a staging area? What is the Tudor connection to this story? If Tudor is a staging area, then maybe Contemporary is a staging area, too; at which point the reader has been lured in, as well. (That is: you know why you are reading it--you are being recruited.) We have at least two battles-won-under-mysterious-circumstances: Hannibal's invasion of Rome c. 216 BC; Mexico's invasion of Granville c. AD 2000 (date guess--maybe somebody else can come up with better dating for Enan's era). So much is clear: Enan and a bunch of English speakers go and help save Rome; in return, the trans-temporal army travels to Granville to help save Granville. But ah! While the dark lady says that you can see Mexican bullet-holes in the Neo-Victorian face, it seems clear that the invasion must have actually happened in the Contemporary era; the invasion was one of the elements that forged the neo-Victorian world that Enan lives in. So the Neo-Victorian era is a staging ground for the wars: 1. Neo-Classical Hannibal's invasion 2. Tudor 3. Neo-Victorian staging ground 4. Contemporary Mexico's invasion Well, I can't help but think about the defeat of the Spanish Armada (AD 1587); another attempted invasion with overwhelming numbers. In talking about the Mexican invasion, the informant says there were suddenly a lot of boats around Granville, a detail that fits nicely with (or inspires me to dream up) the Armada as a third battle. Still a tad shaky. Here's something else: "Enan Bradford" sounds rather close to "Emory Bainbridge" of "The Ziggurat," which is strange. =mantis= ---