Seal of Pas

Gerry Quinn · 28 Oct 2011, 17:18 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:18:32 +0100
Subject: (urth) Seal of Pas
In-Reply-To: <CAMwO0gyMMrQFH7m_1Dt+ydbmsLJu7+S_vOS_240pqtPfOyX4Sw at mail.gmail.com>
References: <SNT123-W17A419E8EF0B42F4E4843CCFD30 at phx.gbl><E88D3E82FDBA4F87AB682AD83F3534A9@Rover>
	<CAMwO0gyMMrQFH7m_1Dt+ydbmsLJu7+S_vOS_240pqtPfOyX4Sw at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BA0299ADB6564A06AB4B9D234E47EC61@Rover>



From: Gwern Branwen 

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
> > From a naturalistic perspective, the numbers shouldn?t have any significance
> > that we would understand in the story: they should encode the contents
> > and/or date of storage, serial numbers etc.

> It has been a while, but wasn't there just one sequence of numbers
> which made up a Seal of Pas? If the sequence doesn't change, then none
> of those 3 suggestions would work (serial numbers which don't change
> are not useful; it's unlikely that every single chamber would have
> been sealed at the same time (especially since a datestamp that big
> ought to be accurate down to really small units like nanoseconds) or
> would have the same contents).
We are only told the sequence on one such seal.  I think we are to infer that all the seals are different.  Silk later finds the dust from a broken seal of a cabinet that had contained human embryos, but he does not encounter, or at least doesn?t notice, any other intact seals.
The seal had about 36 digits.  I just interpret it as the equivalent of a barcode; we don?t know what information was on it but we can guess what *kind* of information was there.
- Gerry Quinn
 
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