{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/619",
    "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": 619,
    "subject": "fountain online",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "1998-05-15T00:04:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-15T09:00:04+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0011-0047@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-15T00:04:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) fountain online",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "While the white fountain is heading towards Urth as some kind of\nprobability wave function in TBOTNS, Apheta's comment, if taken at\n100% veracity (granted: how often do we grant that?), proves that\nSeverian doesn't yet have an energy link to it until after he leaves\nYesod.\n\n(Unrelated detail:\nIf the white fountain arrives 50 years after main events of TBOTNS,\nand it is travelling less than light speed, then it must be relatively\nclose-by in TBOTNS.  If speed is 99% c [speed of light], then\ndistance is 49.5 light years; if speed is 50% c, then distance is\n25 light years; if speed is 20% c, then distance is 10 light years;\nand so on.)\n\nThe idea that Severian is an unconscious energy vampire is one of\nthose revelations that casts a look back at the past (the previous\ntext) and a look ahead (to the remaining text of URTH).  The Mother\nEarth link tends to look and feel like . . . oh, what's his name?\nThe son-of-Earth wrestler that the Greek Hero could only defeat by\nlifting him off the ground [de-feeting him, in a way] from whence\nflowed the Earth energy.  So Severian lying dead on Sanguinary Field,\nthere's an Earth case, maybe.\n\nGives new meaning to the term, \"living off the land.\" <g>\n\n\"Ah, here comes journeyman Severian, bringing the wasteland in his\nwake; drawing the green from the grass, milking the blush from the\nrose, drinking the spring rain from dull roots.\"\n\n(But I think this energy use is \"limited\" to the miracles of healing\nand resurrection attributed to the Claw, rather than simple survival\nwithout food.  In the past I too wondered about the long, lean\nstretch from the shores of the lake to the point where Severian was\ngoing to cut a haunch of dead destrier, but in the end I concluded\nthat he could do it without super powers.  Just imho, fwiw.)\n\nAnd just when we'd gotten rid of the Claw-power paradox, here comes\nanother \"destiny device.\"  In Yesod, when all of Severian's victims\nchoose to fight for him against the sailors, they are said to be\naquastors drawn from his mind.  Ah, but we know how slippery =that=\nis now!  (I.e., the ghosts are real.)  And Apheta refers to them as\nthe unborn, since their universe is over.  So what we have is: the\nTrial educates the souls of all of Severian's victims, giving them\nall the predestination from beyond (or \"outside of\") time, so that\nas they are born into Briah there is a part of them that knows; but\nSeverian in TBOTNS doesn't have their knowledge and thus they\n(victims) serve as his teachers in this hidden way as well as in\nthe more obvious ways regarding compassion, mercy, etc.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0011-0050@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-15T09:00:04+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) fountain online",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0011-0047@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Fri, 15 May 1998 m.driussi at genie.com wrote:\n(But I think this energy use is \"limited\" to the miracles of healing\nand resurrection attributed to the Claw, rather than simple survival\nwithout food.  In the past I too wondered about the long, lean\nstretch from the shores of the lake to the point where Severian was\ngoing to cut a haunch of dead destrier, but in the end I concluded\nthat he could do it without super powers.  Just imho, fwiw.)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "It's been too long for me to remember where that passage comes, but could\nit serve as a kind of Christ fasting 40 days in the wilderness episode?\nDoes he face either major temptation or something that could be called the\nbeginning of his ministry afterwards?\n\n-Rostrum"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}