AEG: Margaret

Dave Tallman · 23 Jan 2009, 14:12 · from 2009-January.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:12:46 -0700
Subject: (urth) AEG: Margaret
In-Reply-To: <002c01c97ac2$24157580$47d04a0c@rclackey>
References: <002c01c97ac2$24157580$47d04a0c@rclackey>
Message-ID: <4979D05E.6050708 at gmail.com>

Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> I'm still not sold on the reality-warping bit, partly because no one, not
> even Cassie, seems to notice the discrepancies you have mentioned.
>   
Another possibility (one I don't like as well) is that Kingsport is a 
haunted, Lovecraftian location where this kind of location and time 
shifting happens all the time. In ''The Festival" a visitor to Kingsport 
is shifted back in time without realizing it. In "The Dream Quest of the 
Unknown Kadath," Randolph Carter sees Kingsport as it used to be. I 
don't have a problem with people not noticing the shifts, since memories 
are probably shifted correspondingly. In "Dark City" this sort of thing 
is the norm -- the city shifts and memories are edited by the 
controlling beings of the place.

Here are a few more location puzzles:
1) Cassie lives within walking distance of a Baskin Robbins, on the 
corner of 15th and Madison (23). This suggests a part of the city with a 
grid layout, with numbered streets running N/S and streets named for 
Presidents running E/W. Arbor Street doesn't fit the pattern.

2) The eastern part of the city is older, dating from colonial times 
(294). The city probably grew west from the harbor. The eastern part has 
places with cheaper rents (293).

3) Ian Mersey comments on the shooting: "Hear 'bout the bloke who got 
shot in Pine Crest Towers?" (87), seeming to assume they would know the 
place. Is it a famous location, or perhaps close by? Both Cassie's 
building and the Towers have doormen.

4) Who is Mersey, anyway? He talks with an old-fashioned English style. 
Chase knows him, enough to trust him to smuggle him out of the building 
(100-101). Is he a time-traveler from a "Liverpool ship"? How did he 
just happen to end up working in the building where Cassie lives?

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