{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3671", "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": 3671, "subject": "FLF: Whitten's ages", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2002-12-13T08:14:13+00:00", "last": "2002-12-13T08:14:13+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2002-12-13T08:14:13+00:00", "subject": "(urth) FLF: Whitten's ages", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "mantis wrote:\nMy timeline fragment shows that the 53-year-old deserter did =not= go\nstraight back to 1803, he went back to 1807. Maybe he did this to\nacclimitize himself to 19th century life before going on the 1803\nexpedition.\n\nI suspect that HC interview Whitten is the one who is about to go to 1803,\nafter having lived 7 years of experience in 1807-1818 (with vacations in\n1979-1982)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I could agree with that but for Whitten's ages--real and apparent--at two\ncritical stages. The first is his self-stated age (60-70) at the time of the\nHC interview. But he looks so much like the 82-year-old the four lived with\nfor a few days in 1983 that they all recognize him immediately, but hadn't\nrecognized him shortly before then as the 53-year-old general. The HC Free\nhas undergone at least ten years of hard living somewhere, somewhen. And he\nclaims not to know from his own personal experience that any version of\nhimself has gone to the Lewis & Clark expedition. Unless he's lying, for no\nreason I can see, then this 60-something-year-old man will have to start\nusing a gizmo to go back in time in order to merge with younger versions of\nhimself, to make himself both look and feel younger. Which leads to the\nsecond critical stage. Because the first item in Wolfe's timeline states\nthat the Ben Free who joined up with L. & C. *looked* younger than 60,\nwhereas Free-in-the-cockpit looked older than 60. But Wolfe also states that\nhe was in fact age 60 at the time he joined L. & C. That's the problem;\neither Free was wrong about his current age at the time of the HC interview,\nor Wolfe made a mistake somewhere, either in the text or the timeline. (I\nknow of two mistakes in the timeline, but they are minor and don't really\naffect the chronology.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That is, the three Whittens of 1983 are:\n\n1) Buck Whitten (age 53) duffle coat/prior to desertion.\n\n2)Free Whitten (age 60-something) High Country interview/years after\ndesertion but still prior to Lewis & Clark.\n\n3) Ben Free (age 80-something?) after Lewis & Clark, with cataracts and\nshot dead in 1983." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The main problem I have had in trying to make a timeline for Free from his\nsequential perspective is, I think, the same problem we are having trying to\nfit Wolfe's timeline to the text. It centers, I think, on the last item in\nhis timeline, the date of Whitten's desertion. Wolfe makes mistakes, yes,\nbut not one that big. I think the problem is that we have assumed that\nJanuary 24, 1983 was literally, sequentially only two days after the HC\ninterview. In a time-travel story, that ain't necessarily so, and probably\nisn't. It's just a date on the calendar. But, it is a *safe* date. That is,\nit is safely three days *after* Ben Free was killed. He wasn't likely to\nshow up and make Whitten disappear again. But it is also safely close enough\nto the date of the house's partial demolition that it was probably still\nstanding. The wall containing the gizmo would still be there, the gizmo\nWhitten used to desert to a known safe time, while taking his portable gizmo\nwith him through it, so he could get back when/if he wanted to.\n\nTo be clear: I think that Whitten, after an unknown period of time (years?)\nwhile he continued to work for the OSS and look for Ben Free, when he\ndecided to desert, used the portable gizmo to travel to January 24, 1983,\nfrom whatever time period he was then in. He had deduced where Free's\n\"ticket\" was, just as the text says, and used it.\n\nI'm still working on when/where he went after he deserted, but if the above\nis right it means that Whitten was probably older than 53 when he deserted.\nI think it very likely that he was more than 53, and the text seems to\nsupport that idea. I don't think the General Whitten the four spoke to\nFriday night was anywhere near resolved to deserting three days later." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But Roy, if I understand it correctly, Whitten is the one (and likely the\n=only= one) who detected some shadowy time-travel going on:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And the organization isn't looking for a renegade, as far as I can tell." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It depends on what is meant by the organization. Whitten's group was\ncertainly looking for him. Kip even had the FBI involved. Her daddy's\ndisappearance is what set her off and caused her to throw \"caution to the\nwinds\" in her search for the renegade, Free. From the cockpit interview:\n__________________\n \"And when he came back I disappeared, as far as Kip and the rest were\nconcerned. Kip thought Free had done it, and she must have been frantic. We\nhad people monitoring the papers and the television news fulltime . . .\"\n__________________\n\n-Roy" } ] } ] }