{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2485",
    "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": 2485,
    "subject": "5HC: a timeline with no dates",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-12-05T15:46:05+00:00",
    "last": "2000-12-05T15:46:05+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0152@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "2000-12-05T15:46:05+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) 5HC: a timeline with no dates",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Every time I re-read ‘A story’ in 5HC, I find myself piecing things\ntogether again from scratch and from the few notes I’ve pencilled in the\nmargin of my worn paperback. I made this little timeline to give myself\na solid base to work from, and I thought I might as well inflict it on\nthe rest of you, too. It has no dates, but lots of quotes to show that\nI’m not just making all this stuff up.\n\n1. “`We were mostly long, and lived in holes between the roots of\ntrees.’” Millions of years ago, a native species existed on St. Anne. It\nwas telepathic, but by our standards mindless. It may have had the power\nto change its shape: “’When we came some of you looked like every kind\nof beast…’”\n2. A human spacecraft from a prehistoric civilisation on Earth splashes\ndown on St. Anne: “’It is possible that our home was named Atlantis, or\nMu…’”\n3. “’The first heard the songs of the second and sent them out again –\ngreater, greater, greater than before.’” The native species\ntelepathically receives and amplifies the thoughts of the newcomers.\nThis has two effects:\na) the humans feel something they have never known before, perhaps the\naboriginal ‘dreaming’ Sandwalker and his people share, and are seduced\nby it: “’We had no songs when we came here – that was one of the reasons\nwe stayed…’”\nb) awakening to sentience, the native species is enthralled by the\nnewcomers: “’We [the humans] so impressed your kind that you became like\nus…’” If they are shape changers, they begin to actually look like men.\n4. Over time, the human arrivals lose all trace of civilisation, all\nmemory of earth. The ability to use tools atrophies. They become the\nHill People, and the Marsh Men.\n5. The native species becomes the Shadow Children: \"mock men\". Stoned\nout of their tiny telepathic minds on a narcotic plant that makes them\nfeel like God, they see themselves as the mighty star-crossing humans,\nand Sandwalker’s people as the “native animals”. Their communal\ntelepathy makes this self-perpetuating.\n6. On earth, the 20th century comes and goes.\n7. The Shadow Children project a telepathic shield, hiding St. Anne and\nits sister world from detection by passing spacecraft.\n8. Sandwalker’s story takes place. The Shadow Children remove their\nshield.\n9. A human spacecraft from a future civilisation on Earth splashes down\non St. Anne."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Tony Ellis\nOn-line Editor, PC Format magazine\n01225 442244 x2349\nhttp://www.pcformat.co.uk"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}