{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5065",
    "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": 5065,
    "subject": "The Most Beautiful Woman on the World",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2008-06-21T12:34:04+00:00",
    "last": "2008-06-21T12:34:04+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<485CF53C.2020700@gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dave Tallman",
        "address": "davetallman at msn.com"
      },
      "date": "2008-06-21T12:34:04+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The Most Beautiful Woman on the World",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Here is my take on the story \"The Most Beautiful Woman on the World\" \nfrom \"Endangered Species.\"\n\nThe setting seems to be a Mars terraforming mission. A rift and a \nconnected valley have been filled with an Earth-like atmosphere and a \ncolony has been established there. More changes are expected: \"Do you \nthink they'll ever really make it rain?\"\n\nThree men are in a shack with the wind howling outside, telling stories \nby candlelight. They are Garcia, Hoong, and Davis. Garcia starts a story \nwith \"Let me tell you of a man I knew once,\" but it's immediately \napparent it's about himself.\n\nDavis has a story that must be pulled out through questions and \ndeductions. It's very odd that the others know that he's in trouble \n(\"I'm surprised she doesn't try to help you now...\") without knowing any \nof these details. Are Hoong and Garcia just humoring a madman, trying to \ndraw out something he only imagined?\n\nDavis seems to have cut off his own hand when he thought he was cutting \noff Sigrid's. /\"Everything they saw was mine, and there wasn't a mark on \nher.\"/ He struck the table with \"his fist.\"\n\nAfter Davis tells his story, there is a sudden change of subject back to \nGarcia's story of Catalina and the stallion Estampido. \"The silence \nthickened until it seemed to fill the dark corners of the shack... \nGarcia shook himself as though wakening from an evil dream.\"\n\nGarcia resumes his story as if Davis had never spoken. This \nconversational reset is as strange as the one in \"The Packerhaus \nMethod,\" and I think it has a similar reason: the loss of memories.\n\nThe key is back where Davis describes what Sigrid said about her \nhusband. \"She said he acted, too, as if he hadn't told her about his \ndreams at all; now he told her again, beginning back when he was a kid.\" \nThe leaper seems to have the power to alter memories as well as to make \ndreams real. When the group starts to get too close to the truth their \nmemories are reset. This has probably happened more than once. Davis \nasks \"Did I tell you?\"\n\nGarcia's story itself is suspect. His supposed background as a \nmisogynist Mexican horse rancher doesn't fit with his current life as an \nintelligent scientist on a Mars terraforming mission. I think it may be \ndrawn from his own fantasies and \"macho\" cultural memories, just as the \ngeologist's were. Hoong may be headed down that path as well, since he \nstarts writing his name with Chinese characters. They will be of no help \nto Davis or themselves.\n\nThe shack itself is probably not real. The leaper can make illusions \nthat appear solid if they are believed in enough. These three men have \nbeen drawn into a private hell, like the three people in \"No Exit.\""
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}