{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/440",
    "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": 440,
    "subject": "more perfect memories",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-03-25T15:48:50+00:00",
    "last": "1998-03-25T15:48:50+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0008-0661@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Parmenter",
        "address": "dan at lec.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-03-25T15:48:50+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) more perfect memories",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "From: \"Alice Turner\" <al at interport.net>\nOn another subject, It has always bothered me that Severian seems to take\nfor granted that his relationship with the inner Thecla is unique. But the\nalzabo drug would be expected to cause a similar effect in everyone who ate\nthat meal. Moreover, Vodalus & Co. have done this before, with other\ncorpses. I suppose that one could explain this by saying that the alzabo\neffect is ordinarily powerful but temporary (\"a fellow mortal who will live\nagain--strongly, for a time--in us\")---like an LSD experience, say---but\nthat the presence of the Claw, or something in his heritage, somehow\nimprints Thecla on Sev in a unique way. Nevertheless, this isn't explained,\nand it's weird to think of a couple of dozen or so people all experiencing\nThecla the way Sev does."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I thought that it was fairly clear that the reason that Severian\nretains Thecla's consciousness is that he has a perfect memory, and\nthus the fleeting experience of Thecla that the others share becomes\nsimply another stored memory.\n\nOr as Michael Straight put it:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "I wonder if there could be some difference attributable to Severian's\nmemory.  Perhaps for everyone else the sharing of Thecla is a fleeting\nthing, but since Severian can't forget, Thecla is always with him."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Except that all the autarchs are supposed to share all the memories of the\nprevious ones.  So we could still save the idea if the autarch's alzabo is\nmore powerful, so that autarchs always have the experience that Severian\nonly has with Thecla because of his perfect memory."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Severian tells us that some of the ancient Autarchs are lost to him,\nwhich only seems possible if the previous Autarch's did NOT have\neidetic memory, or at least SOME previous Autarch didn't.  It seems to\nme that by the end of CITADEL, Severian has 2 \"full\" consciousnesses\nresiding within him (that of Thecla and that of the previous Autarch)\nas well as the many others, who are dimmer.  This doesn't fit with his\ndescription in chapter 32 where he speaks of walking as if surrounded\nby an army.  He doesn't say anything at all about the old Autarch and\nThecla being more prominent or \"fuller\" memories.\n\nAlso, what about the possibility that Vodalus deceived Severian and\nthe whole thing was a sham?  Wolfe describes the Thecla corpse as\nbeing carried in and then briefly concealed to be replaced with a\nplate of meat.  In the same way that Severian was never actually aware\nof the Claw being planted on him, he never actually bit into Thecla's\nbody, at least not at Vodalus' banquet.  The aquastor Malubrius refers\nto himself and the Triskele having been drawn from Severian's\nmemories, couldn't Severian have drawn up Thecla's consciousness\nhimself from his own memories of her (indeed he alludes to this).  But\nif so, how would he remember things that he had never discussed with\nher?  Severian remembers things from her childhood and of course he\nremembers the door where the Exultants come into the antechamber to\ntorture the prisoners, but who is to say that these things were not\nrevealed to him by Thecla?  He certainly doesn't comment upon it.  I\ndon't advocate this hypothesis, but it has crossed my mind on numerous\noccasions.\n\nAnd what about those yellow robes, eh?\n\nD"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}