Adam wrote about ENGINE SUMMER, including this bit:
1 quoted line
The other clues fit in with the suspicion aroused by this one. Near the start of the fifth facet of the second crystal, Rush asks "Do you know this story better than I do?" and the angel replies: "Go on. It's not for my sake you tell it." At first this seems to have an obvious meaning: Rush tells the story for the sake of the city of angels as a whole. But on further thought, this doesn't really work. If the angel knows Rush's story, then so does the city. If the angel is talking about how this Rush will tell the story, then she doesn't know this either. So for who else's sake could Rush be telling the story? In light of the preceding clue, I submit that the answer is Rush himself; and ultimately Rush's host, who will thus be able to prolong his "possession" by Rush.
There is also the obvious metafictional answer: it is not for the angels, nor their city, but only for the reader of ENGINE SUMMER. This ties in with the large and complex "reader/text" mode (where Rush is like a text and the recording angel is like a reader; and they are all fictions in a story, trying to work out another story, for a reader who is above and beyond them). Unfortunately this has a side-effect of implicating the real reader with the torture.
"Why are you torturing me?"
"To entertain the reader. Look, it is working--she smiles!"
=mantis=
Sirius Fiction
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