short story 11: trip, trap

Darth Ed · 04 Apr 2012, 15:13 · from 2012-April.txt.gz

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From: darthed77 at gmail.com (Darth Ed)
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 11:13:05 -0400
Subject: (urth) short story 11: trip, trap
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On Apr 3, 2012, at 11:36 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:
> There is a point where Finch WANTS to kill the traki, but knows that he cannot (previously he mused on what "ego": "my body seemed a cast, an almost intert but painful prison from which the essential 'I' struggled to escape, adn while the essency of my being thus twisted to get away it forced my lips and larynx to say that it did not appear to me that I had escaped" (p 254)
> 
> His "i" does escape - to get Garth to do the job he cannot do:
> 
> The traki claims: "YOU WILL NOT KILL ME, THE SLAYER IS NOT IN YOU"
> Later, Garth starts capitalizing things like Finch does because for a time they were a gestalt, though Finch passed out to avoid "killing" the traki.  The spirit with longish hair that gets Garth leads him to the battleground - controlling Finch's body.

I'm not sure we can trust the text so closely. I agree with your analysis that the story is very much about ego and that Finch and Garth have to put aside their egos and work together in order to defeat the traki. Everything you wrote makes perfect sense. It's just this "spirit world" business that doesn't make any sense. That and the statement that there's blood on Finch and Finch's sword but no visible wound on the traki. I suspect the "spirit world" stuff is a lie concocted by Garth and Finch probably together, possibly inspired by some kind of head injury to Garth or exposure to a psychopharmacological substance. If there's blood on the sword and on Finch, then the most likely scenario is that Finch killed the traki with the sword and the "spirit world" story is a way to cover up that fact. The lie, if it is a lie, is win-win for Garth and Finch. Garth impresses his Protector for defeating the traki, and Finch doesn't get a bad reputation in the academic community.

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