Subject: (urth) PEACE: the Coldhouse unicorn

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 19:36:48 +0000

If we are considering Charlie Turner as a "unicorn" then we might also
consider the ghost of the coldhouse prank as one, too.

This immediately makes a lot of sense, really: since we are told that the
motive of Dan French in telling the tale to the reporter is to distract the
reporter from his "muckraking" goal.  The coldhouse prank, as it is used,
is literally a red herring used by one character against another!  Motive:
to keep the reporter from getting information truly damaging to the company
and/or morale.  Method: a wild goose chase (which itself finds a funny echo
in the story of the Sidhe that French tells Weer).

Weer might not have been the culprit, after all -- in fact, the whole thing
could be just an urban legend, an event which never really happened yet is
spoken of enough that employees are familiar with it.

Over the years we have spent a lot of time trying to figure out the Weer
angle of the coldhouse prank (motive, timing, etc.), and in doing so we may
have been as misled as the reporter, if the ghost is another unicorn.

Quick switch back to the sepia photos:  part of the problem is a
time-splice, right?  Because Weer expects his secretary to answer his
summons and is surprised by this strange woman, it is as though he thought
he was at the point in time when he had just received the letter and photos
from Charlie Turner, when actually it is much later . . . perhaps later
enough that the photos, formerly fresh, are now clearly aged, and his
secretary has been replaced.

=mantis=

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