story 53: The Death of Dr. Island unanswered questions

Jeff Wilson · 12 Nov 2013, 16:15 · from 2013-November.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at clueland.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 10:15:07 -0600
Subject: (urth) story 53: The Death of Dr. Island unanswered questions
In-Reply-To: <A83A83EB-DB73-4182-B9E0-70E3944B3067 at yahoo.com>
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	<A83A83EB-DB73-4182-B9E0-70E3944B3067 at yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <71f1eae8e9c8450114c2eff48e36b97c.squirrel at webmail.prismnet.com>

On Tue, November 12, 2013 05:19, Marc Aramini wrote:
> Also, there is a scene where Nicholas looks in the Easter Egg his mother
> brings him in flashback, and both present Doctor Island and past mother
> seem to be speaking to him about his reaction to the sky scene he sees in
> the egg ... Which becomes the sky of Dr. Island.  This fade out would work
> well in a movie, but what does it show here, and why this conflation of
> past and present with that kind of interaction?   Is this like the
> psychodrama?  And what's the deal with the other people on the island we
> never see?

I think the other ppl are to account for the other slices of space around
the point where the wrap-around effect converges. We don't see them
because they are literally inaccessible, and the whole setup seems to be
to justify the scene where Nicholas is able to touch himself but it feels
like another person touching him - an outward parallel to his internal
division into two people. This parallel may have seemed more profound at
the time of writing when split-brain characters were still novel.

The easter egg links to Jupiter, described thusly numerous times by
various authors. The bands of distinct colors of clouds parallel the bands
of different colors and shades of dyed shell. There is a bit of an
inversion though, in that the easter egg is opened and we look inside to
see a sky scene, but of course from inside Dr Island we still see the
outside of Jupiter.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - < jwilson at clueland.com >
A&M Texarkana Computational Intelligence Lab
< http://www.tamut.edu/cil >

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