On dream travelers

Roy C. Lackey · 10 Feb 2011, 19:59 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:59:55 -0600
Subject: (urth) On dream travelers
Message-ID: <00ad01cbc95d$1d451800$89d24a0c@rclackey>

Most of the following was written months ago in the context of another
argument, but I decided it just wasn't worth the effort to pursue at the
time. I trot it out now because it has some relevance to current
discussions.

I am going to lay out some not-so-random textual conditions imposed on those
who dream/spirit travel.

The first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of the
subject makes the journey, not the flesh. This is explicitly stated by
Silkhorn the first time he went to Urth with Jahlee and Rigoglio. This may
seem just too obvious to mention, but maybe not. "We are spirits here.
Watch." (IGJ, 320) He then proceeded to shape a sword that looked like the
one Horn had on Green, out of nothing. Other weapons, garments, the gold he
gave the _Samru_ captain on Urth, etc., were not real, none of it. These
objects could also be made to disappear, like the slug gun Hide had in
Maliki's village on Green. The ability to conjure objects out of nothing was
not peculiar to Silkhorn; Hoof and Hide also did it.

The spirit travelers themselves are not real, not real in the sense that a
stone or slug gun or table are real. Physical objects such as these cannot
be transported between the start and destination locations. One of the
consequences of spirit-only travel is that the travelers -- whether human or
inhumi -- can eat food at the destination location , but it is a pointless
exercise because they have no digestive system. This is *expressly* stated
by Silkhorn, in a paragraph too long for me to copy out, on page 266 of
RTTW.

Another consequence of spirit-only travel is that the travelers, because
they are not real, can and do violate other natural laws of physics. This is
demonstrated many times in the text, such as when Jahlee walked right
through the locked door of her cell in the Matachin tower (ibid, 267), and
when Silkhorn and Hoof walked right through the Curtain wall at the Citadel
to get to the necropolis (ibid, 395).

We have the examples of Rigoglio and other humans who died at the
spirit-travel destination, but their bodies back on Blue did not die, they
just lost their animating spirit. We have no example of an inhumi who died
at the spirit-travel destination, but Fava's body on Blue did.

When Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi
shape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream
(EXODUS, 381). This demonstrates that Quetzal did not get to the LSW by way
of spirit travel; his body was his real body, not a spirit-travel body.

There is no textual justification to suppose that the rules that govern
spirit travel were any different for the Neighbors.

-Roy

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