{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3769", "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": 3769, "subject": "DOORS: time flow datapoints", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2003-01-18T06:31:35+00:00", "last": "2003-01-21T13:55:06+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2003-01-18T06:31:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) DOORS: time flow datapoints", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy wrote:\nThe numbers are inconsistent. When Green came back to our world it was April\n15, 1989. (Based on the date 6/6/88 in the file on North that Green found,\np-128. It was January in the Otherworld when Green left. After Yule.) April\n16, he was put in the booby hatch. He got out during his second summer there\n(207-08). Then three Christmases went by after he went back to work. (210)\nThe next February he was transferred to the uptown store. Sometime after\nDaylight Savings Time stopped, but before Christmas of that year (November,\n1993?), he rediscovered Tina and went through a \"door\" in the arcade and was\ncollared by the woman from the haberdashery. She had been holding the pants\nfor \"four months\". (236) That would make it still May, 1989 in the\nOtherworld. Four months passed in the Otherworld, about 55 months in our\nworld for Green." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Right, I've been puzzling over that \"3 Christmases\" thing. At first I\nthought it was less than one year (since Green is extra loopy at that stage\nand \"Christmas\" as he is describing it is more a feeling than a calendar\ndate), but then his later comments about being middle aged make it seem\nalmost as if 10 years have gone by, but then I thought it was 3 years\nexactly. Then he is transfered and spends most of the year at the new\njob, so it is up to five years (around 4.5, as you say).\n\nThen when I took the \"four months\" of O-time and tried to reverse engineer\nit, it looks like this:\n\n4 (months) * 28 (days) * 8.25 (O-time multiple) = 924 days = 2.52 years\n\nAnother datapoint is Laura Nomos (nomos means \"a lawed one,\" i.e., a\nlawyer!) and her fur coat in storage for 26 months (169). This suggests\n790 (days) / 8.25 (O-time multiple) = 96 days (3 months). (I don't know,\nbut wouldn't storage be usually for longer than that? Maybe not: maybe\nstorage is only for Summer?)\n\nAnyway, that's as far as I've gotten.\n\nIf the O-time multiple is constant, then the calendar years could never be\nsynchronized: the North file year of 1988 could never be seen by a guy who\njust came from Earth 1989 (unless, hmmm, it was a very old file).\n\nIt would be interesting if the O-time multiple ebbs and flows.\n\nOTOH, here is a disturbing thought which you will probably dispell: what if\nthere are more than just two worlds? I only bring it up because Green, at\nthat 5-street intersection, seems to see five different corridors and then\nto experience different versions of the Otherworld, just as different\nversions of \"Earth\" seem to crop up.\n\nTo whit: when Green walks past the doll hospital again and sees that there\nis already a new doll in Tina's bed (10) -- it looks something like a\ndimension splice has happened. That whole business of the doctor saying\n\"Mr...?\" (4), when we are later told this was his seventh visit (192)\n(which might resolve if in one Earth that was his first visit, as it seemed\nin the context of page 4, and in another Earth that was his seventh visit);\nand the photo of Dr. Nilson and a Lora Masterman who is not the Lora\nMasterman he later meets.\n\nThen there's North's \"C-One\" term for \"Nixon world.\" This is clearly\nmessed up on the surface, since \"C\" is the door to the wing that Green is\nin (suggesting that North is just insane and making things up from\nimmediate input). But the inclusion of a number (and the reality that\nthere is dimension-crossing going on) makes it seem like there is a\nsequence of more than just two worlds (i.e., C-1 to C-5).\n\nFurthermore, it is pretty well established that there are personal analogs\n(\"panalogs\"?) running around: a person Green meets in Otherworld has a twin\non Earth, often in the same situation (I'm thinking of the mental hospital\npatient twins in both worlds: the bush message system guy is the chess\nplayer (207)); Fanny is like Ella (181, 182). North has five names (128);\nFanny has three, or four if we count \"Fanny\" -- could each be a different\npanalog rather than just a simple alias applied to the same, single\nindividual? That is, does North have all these names because his panalogs\nhave always come crashing into this particular dimension of the five?\n\n(I kept watching for Fanny's sixth finger to show up or be hidden. I\ndidn't see either -- did you?)\n\nPart of the fun of TAD is the Philip K. Dick-style warping of reality and\nmadness. On one reading, Dr. N is involved in a conspiracy to mess with\nGreen's mind (\"the madman is right: paranoia validated!\") with forged\nphotos, false memory creation (\"you've been here seven times before\" \"huh,\nI only remember the last time\"). On another reading, it all makes sense in\na Wonderland sort of way. But what I'm talking about is a more sfnal way,\nmaybe.\n\n(I like the way that the chess set at the Earth hospital is missing the\nwhite queen and two black pawns (206): a nice way of showing the Graves\nscenario.)\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2003-01-21T13:55:06+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) DOORS: time flow datapoints", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mantis writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Another datapoint is Laura Nomos (nomos means \"a lawed one,\" i.e., a\nlawyer!)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's interesting that nomos is one of the words that Lovecraft combined to\nform \"necronomicon,\" the meaning of which Gold discusses in Peace. \nI discovered a website discussing the etymology of necronomicon\n(isn't google amazing?) .\n\nhttp://64.156.188.97/yh/geous.htm \n\nOne of the translations offered is \"The Management of the Dead,\" which \nconcurs with Gold's \"The Book that Binds the Dead.\" \n\nAnother (which the website rejects as inaccurate) is \"The Book of Dead \nLawyers.\"\n\n-- Stone Ox" } ] } ] }