{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/330",
    "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": 330,
    "subject": "Nutria's first hint",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-02-01T02:12:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-02-01T02:12:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0006-0490@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-02-01T02:12:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Nutria's first hint",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #6848705 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02#"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Yeh, I've seen you say this more than once, but I don't\nrecall the evidence, let alone proof.  Inquiring minds\nwant to know...."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Well gosh, Nutria, that's a helluva way to ask about something that,\nin all honesty, seems to me to be so blindingly obvious that I guess\nI never bothered to publish it anywhere.\n\nBy preface, let me point out for what seems to me to be the umpteenth\ntime yet I understand it cannot be so . . .\n\nA science oriented mind, reading the scientifantastic fabulations of\nTHE DYING EARTH, might well ask itself--\"But how can this be?  How\ncan the sun be guttering and about to go out?  Since at =that= late\nstage of stellar evolution it would have =long= since grown to such\nenormous size as to sterilize if not vaporize the innermost planets,\nincluding the Earth itself?\"\n\nAfter all, these are the facts as we currently understand them.\n\nWithout further ado, then, here is your first hint.  (It's free--the\nones that come later will cost you.)\n\n\"Increate, it is known to us that those who will perish here are no\nmore evil in your sight than we.  Their hands run with blood.  Ours\nalso. . . . by thy will they may, in that hour, have so purified\ntheir spirits as to gain thy favor.  We who must confront them then,\nthough we spill their blood today . . . You, the hero who will\ndestroy the black worm that devours the sun; you for whom the sky\nparts as a curtain; you whose breath shall wither vast Erebus, Abaia,\nand Scylla who wallow beneath the waves; you that equally live in the\nshell of the smallest seed in the farthest forest, the seed that hath\nrolled into the dark where no man sees. . . . have mercy on those who\nhad no mercy.  Have mercy on us, who shall have none now\" (II, ch.\n4).\n\nBut wait--I would almost swear that I did see this obvious fact\nprinted somewhere . . .\n\n\"The time scale of the tetralogy is never made explicit, as the\ncharacters possess no clear idea of their history, and only a few\ndetails--such as the fact that Urth still has seven continents--can\nbe adduced to suggest that theage of the Commonwealth lies millions\nof years (as opposed to tens or hundreds of millions in our future.\nThe sun is faltering, an event not expected for billions of years,\nbut we know (from Typhon's account of his reign) that this proved a\nsudden, unpredicted calamity, and two further references--at\nMorwenna's execution and in Dr. Talos's play--suggest that it is\nbeing consumed by a tiny black hole\" Feeley, \"The Evidence of Things\nNot Shown,\" NYRSF No. 31, March 1991, pg. 8.\n\nDrat, he gave away some of the other hints!\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}