On dream travelers

Roy C. Lackey · 12 Feb 2011, 05:58 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 23:58:11 -0600
Subject: (urth) On dream travelers
References: <00ad01cbc95d$1d451800$89d24a0c@rclackey><4D55A29E.4000201 at gmail.com>	<4D55AB95.2080001 at gmail.com><004901cbca5d$c5f18460$e8d14a0c@rclackey>
	<4D55F6A0.2030704 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <001901cbca79$d7a41760$c5cd4a0c@rclackey>

James Wynn quoted and wrote:
> > Roy-
> > Yes, the bodies of dream travelers have weight and seem to otherwise
behave
> > as if they were real, but they are not real. Remember the part about no
> > digestive tracts. Rigoglio's spirit-travel body received a mortal wound
on
> > Urth, but there was not a mark on his real body back on Blue. I dare say
an
> > autopsy of Rigoglio's spirit body would have revealed anomalies as
glaring
> > as the lack of a digestive tract, to say the least, if that body even
> > continued to exist after Silkhorn left.
>
> Let's say rather that they are different. Not real implies that they are
> merely virtual. They don't need to eat but they DO bleed. The Rajan is
> attacked by inhumi after his blood and he remarked that his hands were
> cut from his climb. If an astral body can be harmed, it implies that
> they have something in them that can be harmed. They have flesh that can
> be damaged by objects.

Yes, they can be harmed, but let's be real. No digestive tract means, among
other things, that there is no ability to produce blood and its nutrients.
Without blood and a circulatory system to move it, the body dies, brain and
all. Spirit-travel bodies are not real in the sense that they are not the
same as normal human bodies -- human bodies do not work that way. Even if
you can grant some for-the-sake-of-the-story magical dispensation of
biological realities, it could not go on for very long. That spirit-travel
body would soon die without new fuel to power it.

The stated reason that the inhumi are just as real as humans during spirit
travel is that their spirit bodies are manifestations of how they perceive
themselves to be in their hearts or souls or whatever, and even then that
only holds true for inhumi who have previously fed on human blood. A "wild"
inhumi from the jungles of Green would not appear to be human if caught up
in spirit travel; it wouldn't even understand the concept. The inhumi soul
or spirit must come by way of human blood, in some mystical religious sense,
much as Christians partake of the essence of Christ in Catholic ritual.
(*Please* let this not start another tiresome religious debate! I think you
know what I mean.)

In other words, the bodies of spirit travelers have much more to do with the
spirit than the flesh; the flesh is a manifestation of the spirit, and harm
done to the flesh of a spirit traveler is on the spiritual level. That is
what happened to Rigoglio.

 > > Roy-
> > Not even from the perspective of other people are spirit travelers
entirely
> > human; humans can't walk through locked metal doors like Jahlee did in
the
> > Matachin tower, as I cited, and both Merryn and Severian saw her do it.
>
> That is irrelevant. Astral bodies have powers that corporal bodies do
> not, that is true. However, astral bodies can be touched. There is no
> indication that people touching them sensed something wrong.

I don't know for sure. During one of Hoof's astral warps to Urth, he started
making little things out of nothing. That violates natural law, in and of
itself, but then he went on to *make* Hide: "Then I looked around to see if
anybody was watching, and I made Hide." (RTTW, 363). Real humans can't make
people. Because Hoof had the attention span of a gnat, he wasn't able to
hold his brother there for long, but he did it, and Hide hadn't even been on
Silkhorn's boat when they went to sleep. Afterward, Hide said he had no
knowledge of any such thing having happened to him (ibid). Was Hide really
there, or was he there only in spirit because his brother *willed* him to be
there?

-Roy

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