{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2425",
    "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": 2425,
    "subject": "PEACE Office, Dishes,Smokes",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-10-27T00:49:08+00:00",
    "last": "2000-10-27T00:49:08+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0064@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Roy C. Lackey",
        "address": "rclackey at stic.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-10-27T00:49:08+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE Office, Dishes,Smokes",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It occurred to me that there should have been no duplicate office in Den's\nmuseum-roomed house. There seems to have been one, as real as any of the\nothers, but I still have a problem with the fact that there was. There\nshouldn't have been, not if he was still using the one at the plant. The\nother museum-rooms, with the exception of that of his old apartment, all\ndated to his youth; they no longer existed in the real world, which is why\nhe had them recreated.\n\nThis leads me to suspect that Den may not have used the office at the plant\nbecause he _couldn't_, that he was not the CEO of the plant for long, at\nleast not in terms of overseeing the daily operations of the plant. He may,\nlike Blaine, have ceased to function as president but remained the Chairman\nof the Board, for health reasons which may have been related to a stroke. In\nfact, he may not have died after hearing the Sidhe story, just had another\n\"attack\", which he survived, but which left him incapacitated enough that he\nretired to his crazy house, perhaps living for years longer than we thought.\nThis may or may not be related to the fact that he did not live entirely\nalone there.\n\nWhen his mother died, Den mentioned going through her things and finding a\nphotograph of Mab Crawford and his grandfather. Speaking of Mab, he wrote:\n\"She had something then of the appearance of a nurse, very much a nurse\nchosen to please an old man, a nurse who could giggle and pout until he had\ntaken his medicine, a sort of walking regret. I cannot imagine her last\nillness, or someone taking care of her.\" (27-28) Immediately before this he\nwrote: \"And now that I am older--myself as old now, I suppose, as he was\nthen . . .\"\n\nWell now, Den is an old man comparing himself to his ailing grandfather, and\nhe had a few walking regrets himself. He claims to have woke up the morning\nafter Sherry died with his stroke symptoms. Hmm.\n\nWho was living in Den's house? I mean, Den certainly had servants in his\nmansion, at the least, but there was someone else, too. Someone wondered\nhere recently about Den possibly living with some female, though he never\nmarried. There is only one fairly oblique clue in the text, on page 11: \"I\ndon't think I have ever seen anyone wash dishes in our kitchen. There is a\ndishwasher there--they always used that, scraping the plates first into the\nsink, to go down the disposer, making the sink a kind of garbage can.\"\n\nTwo pages earlier he was talking about Princess Foaming Water, Hannah,\nwashing dishes in the kitchen of his mother's house, so he was not talking\nabout that house. The pronoun \"they\" almost certainly refers to servants,\nbut what of the plural possessive pronoun \"our\"?\n\nA less solid clue is his reference to the few articles in the drawers of his\ndesk in his duplicate-office room (162). Among them are \"a few stale\ncigarettes\". Den admits to smoking an occasional cigar (108), and there is a\npicture of Dan French giving him a cigar lighter for his 50th birthday (79),\nbut Den never mentions smoking cigarettes. In fact, I recall him mentioning\nonly two people who did, Olivia and Louis Gold. So, whose cigarettes were\nthey?\n\nIf Den had a stroke related to Sherry's death, after becoming president,\nwhere was Sherry that he would even know of it? And why should her death\nprovoke a stroke? She was about 25 years younger than him; did she die of\nnatural causes? Was she in his home the night she died, living there in much\nthe same capacity as Mab served his grandfather?\n\nRoy"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}