Time, Not Cloning

Brian · 29 Jul 2013, 16:01 · from 2013-July.txt.gz

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From: brian at studiobl.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Brian?=)
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 16:01:49 +0000
Subject: (urth) =?iso-8859-1?q?Time=2C_Not_Cloning?=
In-Reply-To: <c9e2349328bf7fe0dab8e17ca7da664d.squirrel at webmail.prismnet.com>
References: <20130729135412.1764.qmail at server281.com>
	<c9e2349328bf7fe0dab8e17ca7da664d.squirrel at webmail.prismnet.com>
Message-ID: <20130729160149.22602.qmail at server281.com>

I don't honestly know how time would work for the Yesodis.  I'm imagining a
situation where you are in your "prime" timeline when Severian dies on you.
 So you get a replacement from a thread where he hasn't died.  Why not
switch yourself to that thread?  I don't know.  Maybe your current timeline
is right where you want it except for the unfortunate demise of Severian.
So you borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor and bring it back to your
house, not move into your neighbor's house because they don't happen to be
out of sugar.  I would accept cloning, except there seems to be a lot of
time related technology in the books.  Vertical motion through certain
spaces seems to cause travel through time, the Last House seems to be a
very "time-volatile" locale, the displays in the House Absolute Garden
where you seem to be in two times at once, etc.  I suppose the prostitutes
(boy I can't remember any of the exact terms from the books) imply cloning,
and that's enough to allow for cloning to be the method by which Severian
is replaced when necessary.

   	-------Original Message-------
 From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at clueland.com>
 To: Brian <brian at studiobl.com>, The Urth Mailing List
<urth at lists.urth.net>
 Subject: Re: (urth) Time, Not Cloning
 Sent: 29 Jul '13 15:13

 On Mon, July 29, 2013 08:54, Brian wrote:
 > Jeff,
 >
 > I meant that when a Severian died (drowned, for instance), the Yesodis
 > replaced him by pulling a Severian from another time line.   If they had
 > manipulated "their" time line to "undo" the death, there would not be
 > multiple corpses.  And their is no "other Severian" to struggle with ,
 > because a new Severian is only obtained when one dies.

 I'm still not seeing why a particular timeline is privileged above the
 others and made the recipient of their Severians when he keeps dying. Do
 the other timelines not have Yesodis watching over them? If it's the same
 gang of Yesodis watching over several Urthly timelines, why do they need
 to move a live Severian from Urth A to replace the one that died on Urth B
 ? Why don't they just concentrate on keeping the one from Urth A alive
 there, since he is in the identical circumstances until that moment?

 --
 Jeff Wilson - < [LINK: compose.php?to=jwilson at clueland.com]
jwilson at clueland.com >
 A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab
 < [LINK: http://www.tamut.edu/cil] http://www.tamut.edu/cil >
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