Seven American Nights Forgery? The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 07 May 2008 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5009 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. ============================================================================== Dave Tallman — 07 May 2008, 05:32 The story ends with "Do you think this is his handwriting?...Perhaps. Perhaps." And perhaps not. This adds K+1 to the abstraction. Nadan's account is already unreliable because of drugs he may have taken, his excisions, and other omissions. What if some of the story is forged? We know the museum man has a machine that can forge handwriting, and another that can compose stories. It's not implausible that it could do so in Farsi. Suppose the U.S. government decided that Nadan needed to disappear. They might have planted the notebook to lay a false trail for the investigator. I don't think the whole thing is forged -- that would be too simple of a "closed loop." The notebook is not of American manufacture; it wouldn't be so easy to replace the whole thing. But if the forging machine can wield a pen it would be easy to add a misleading ending. Where does the forgery begin? The story of the glass of alcohol is fishy. Ardis would know that most Muslims don't drink, and could have learned from Bobby that Nadan himself doesn't. Knowing this, Nadan wouldn't have used that particular ruse. (By the way, the story seems like a twisted version of Cupid and Psyche). If my theory is true, the government also killed Ardis with his gun. She probably does have a deformity but the real Nadan never saw it. The Easter parade account also looks wrong. A Muslim wouldn't refer to Jesus as "the dead leader lifted up," since Jesus is respected as a prophet in Islam. This could have been forged in case the paraders remembered seeing them. This might have been the last time both were seen alive. The costumes for the party were both fairly concealing (armor and Egyptian robes), allowing an impersonation there. Further back than this, the story looks genuine. I believe at least the account of the room being searched is real. That's when the government agents took a copy of the journal as input for the forging machine. They may also have chemically analyzed the remaining eggs and taken the hallucinogenic one. They would want Nadan sober for his interrogation. What was the motive for the abduction? The museum man could well be a high-level government agent. The man with no lower jaw may have let slip a major rumor when he said "Someday we are great again." Given the way he talks, there's no phonetic difference between that and "Sunday we are great again." Perhaps a big forgery was planned for Easter Sunday that could change the fortunes of fallen America. If so, the appearance of the museum man at the play was no coincidence. He followed Nadan there and pumped him to see what he knew. A few days later, someone decided that Nadan knew too much... Does the forgery account for a missing day? I doubt it. Computers can at least count. I count seven full days if the first day of sightseeing went north but not all the way to the ruined capital buildings. There are a few hints that this is the case: 1) Writing with closed shutters and a candle (p. 340, Orb edition of IODDAOSAOS). Something outside beating on the shutters (A wild animal? Moths?) seems to indicate late at night. On the day he visits the ruins, he opens the shutters and the sun is just setting. 2) He's fearful and homesick that first day. The second day he's brave enough to go out to a restaurant and to the theater at night. 3) His attitude about going to the park changes. On p. 339 he wants to postpone it until he has seen other things. On p. 344 he is ashamed he didn't go that day. This seems more likely if they are two different days. 4) He says he spent the whole day at the ruins on p. 347. The other day mentions sleeping late, listening to musicians, and people-watching. His first writing for that day is at about 4:30pm (midnight Iran time with local daylight savings time p. 338) back in his room, which doesn't allow that much time for ruin explorations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Roy C. Lackey — 09 May 2008, 16:44 follows, by subject match Dave Tallman > Dave Tallman wrote: > Suppose the U.S. government decided that Nadan needed to disappear. They > might have planted the notebook to lay a false trail for the > investigator. I don't think the whole thing is forged -- that would be > too simple of a "closed loop." The notebook is not of American > manufacture; it wouldn't be so easy to replace the whole thing. But if > the forging machine can wield a pen it would be easy to add a misleading > ending. And in a subsequent post: > The reader of the forged account is supposed to believe that Nadan, > despondent over having loved a werewolf and possibly crazed by the > drugged egg, has set out alone for the interior of America. I believe he > was captured and killed by the F.E.D. instead. If the F.E.D., for reasons unexplained, wanted Nadan dead, and in fact killed him, they would have to have gone to extraordinary lengths in forging an account no one else had reason to believe even existed, and in so doing do something pointless and stupid. If Nadan had been killed by the U.S. government, the government would have no reason to suppose that a private investigator would eventually be hired by his family to investigate his disappearance, so there would be no need to "plant" a false account. Nadan would simply have disappeared without a trace, or been the victim of a random "crime" or "accident" in a rough and violent land. -Roy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------