# Why the Whorl left early *The Whorl list — 4 messages, 3 voices, 13 Apr 2001* > 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. --- ### Nicholas Gevers *13 Apr 2001, 07:46* Thanks to everyone who responded to my utopian theorisings; I was testing the waters with some ideas for a paper on TBSS... One point: I think that GW intends us to understand that the Whorl leaves very quickly after Silk and Co return to it after RTW. Reason: Silk-in-Mainframe and the corporeal Silk don't want Pas descending to Blue with Mainframe and all, for the reasons Silk gave Remora and because the Whorl needs Pas and Mainframe where they are. Thus: emergency departure, far swifter than M'to would have thought possible. --Nick Gevers. --- ### Michael Straight *13 Apr 2001, 17:55 · follows Nicholas Gevers* > On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, [iso-8859-1] Nicholas Gevers wrote: > One point: I think that GW intends us to understand > that the Whorl leaves very quickly after Silk and Co > return to it after RTW. Reason: Silk-in-Mainframe and > the corporeal Silk don't want Pas descending to Blue > with Mainframe and all, for the reasons Silk gave > Remora and because the Whorl needs Pas and Mainframe > where they are. Thus: emergency departure, far swifter > than M'to would have thought possible. But if Silk-in-Mainframe is enough in charge that he can get the Whorl to leave early, he's probably enough in charge to prevent "Pas" from escaping to Blue. But then I'm of the opinion that "Passilk" implies that the only Pas left in Mainframe is a Pas that is mostly controlled by Silk's downloaded persona anyway. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Adam Stephanides *17 Apr 2001, 08:53 · follows Michael Straight* > on 4/13/01 4:55 PM, Michael Straight at straight at email.unc.edu wrote: > On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, [iso-8859-1] Nicholas Gevers wrote: >> One point: I think that GW intends us to understand >> that the Whorl leaves very quickly after Silk and Co >> return to it after RTW. Earlier, I posted an argument that the Whorl does not leave very quickly, but decades after Silk and Co. depart (to be pedantic, we don't know when they arrive at the Whorl, or if they do at all). >> Reason: Silk-in-Mainframe and >> the corporeal Silk don't want Pas descending to Blue >> with Mainframe and all, for the reasons Silk gave >> Remora and because the Whorl needs Pas and Mainframe >> where they are. Thus: emergency departure, far swifter >> than M'to would have thought possible. > But if Silk-in-Mainframe is enough in charge that he can get the Whorl to > leave early, he's probably enough in charge to prevent "Pas" from escaping > to Blue. Indeed, how could Mainframe be gotten onto a loader and off the Whorl without the cooperation of the Whorl's human inhabitants? (If you argue that the godlings could do it, then conversely they would also have the power to prevent the emergency repairs.) Also, given the level of technology on Blue, it will be a generation at minimum before the colonists there are capable of powering and maintaining Mainframe. If it were to come down now, they might not even be able to preserve its physical integrity, since they can't stop the landers from being looted and rendered inoperable. In fact, I'm not at all sure what Horn means when he says that Mainframe will come to Blue. We don't know, either, on what grounds he says this; it's not in his conversation with the surgeon. --Adam *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Michael Straight *17 Apr 2001, 11:24 · follows Adam Stephanides* > On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Adam Stephanides wrote: > Also, given the level of technology on Blue, it will be a generation at > minimum before the colonists there are capable of powering and maintaining > Mainframe. If it were to come down now, they might not even be able to > preserve its physical integrity, since they can't stop the landers from > being looted and rendered inoperable. > > In fact, I'm not at all sure what Horn means when he says that Mainframe > will come to Blue. We don't know, either, on what grounds he says this; > it's not in his conversation with the surgeon. I read this as metonymy (like when Jews refer to G-d as "Heaven"); he means that the gods of Mainframe will come to Blue, presumably by posessing humans or animals, not that some (big?) physical computer will be brought to Blue. And based on Horn's comments about the possibility of getting a sacred window working on Blue, at least one of us (Horn or me) drastically misunderstands how the things work. That *would* require bringing Mainframe itself to Blue. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---