Is Agia a Robot?

David Stockhoff · 18 Jun 2010, 19:17 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:17:23 -0400
Subject: (urth) Is Agia a Robot?
In-Reply-To: <311585F1-22C0-4306-8809-7D039B4C3713 at liftingfaces.com>
References: <AANLkTik8q4okRfHDUjNPoRh68A6eWmfNwUq7cf5HfOQd at mail.gmail.com>	<c04b2f980ef1e79f2e8882a1572cac65.squirrel at brunians.org>	<AANLkTin7JGoBQj11fEpFR059H0C66bZNjEmMLEqZPnC4 at mail.gmail.com>	<4C1B32C6.5030907 at io.com>	<a2a9234fa189632637dbf500b34ecc88.squirrel at brunians.org>	<4C1B7A59.1090406 at verizon.net>	<f33ba678b6152753adbcf652dbeb9483.squirrel at brunians.org>	<FEFD6649-58AB-45D7-ADF1-BBCDC5AF4892 at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1B8EE9.6090706 at verizon.net>	<36006D71-A703-4BE6-AB12-C541923ADD88 at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1B97F1.7020902 at gmail.com>	<6F357DDC-786A-45FC-8C3B-1BB454062421 at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1BB20D.4040700 at verizon.net>	<B62D2A47-885D-44CE-8E06-6F05A20BBF49 at liftingfaces.com>	<4C1BC1B5.40302 at verizon.net>
	<311585F1-22C0-4306-8809-7D039B4C3713 at liftingfaces.com>
Message-ID: <4C1BC643.7060305 at verizon.net>

I agree. I was just saying the behavior and appearance of the poppet are 
completely different from the behavior and appearance of Agia. I think 
all this can be accounted for without violating anything we know about 
Urth. Stretching it, maybe, when I propose a ruthless "facedancer" 
ship's robot in a woman's skin.

Ryan Dunn wrote:
> Let me try this from a different angle. The amount of detail and description Hethor (and Severian (and Wolfe)) give regarding this missing poppet obviously feels like the reader should take note, and try to see if the mystery can be solved.
>
> Right?
>
> If not Agia, who else might this missing woman be?
>
> Or is this story a foreshadowing of the monsters Hethor will later let loose?
>
> ...ryan
>
>
> On Jun 18, 2010, at 2:57 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>
>   
>> Well, that sounds like a very feminine revenge plot, or like a woman who actually feels something for Hethor. I don't think so. I see Agia as having been homicidal and power-hungry for a long time, regardless of her physical makeup.
>>
>> Here's a thought---would Agia-as-robot have any such human feelings? Does she feel love for Agilus? The halo scene suggests so. I don't know whether the gnostic twincestuous god-rulers scheme requires love or even allows it, or if it matters. (It does in the pieces of gnosticism that survived as alchemy.) I ask because it's possible that the love between A/A is real and that it is actually holy in the God-is-love sense---a bit of the Outsider leaking in.
>>
>> Another thought: did Agia land, escape, and find Agilus? Or is Urth and Agilus her home base? Would it be possible, given what we know of time travel in the Urth universe, for a twin pair to stay close in age if they want to, when one is a star sailor and would stay young? Probably, since she can reverse direction and return to him.
>>
>> If Agia is a robot, that problem goes away, as she can always look like Agilus at any age. But she can still sign onto ships that take her back to when Agilus is alive---she could be physically younger than Agilus, or could spend decades with Agilus in the process of living hundreds of years to his thirty or so.
>>
>> Stop me if I'm starting to sound as crazy as the rest of you.
>>     
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
>
> ---
> avast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.
> Virus Database (VPS): 100618-1, 06/18/2010
> Tested on: 6/18/2010 3:03:28 PM
> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2010 ALWIL Software.
> http://www.avast.com
>
>
>
>
>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net