And When They Appear

Adam Stephanides · 20 Sep 2000, 15:25 · from urth-v0029.mbox · original

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) And When They Appear
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:25:37
Message-ID: <urth-v0029-0218 at digest.urth.net>
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Peter Westlake wrote:
>=20
> Tony Ellis recently offered the comforting observation that Mouse,
> inoperative but still containing a deadly blade, is under Sherby's
> pillow at the end.

I'm not comforted, since he's already been molested (Charlie tells him
"'We'll take off our clothes and have some fun, Chris.  _Then_ we'll go
to bed.'" (195, emphasis mine)) and there's no indication that he knows
the blade is there (the owl-slicing is "the first time [the blade] had
been used since Mouse had been made" (170) and Sherby doesn't see it).=20
Besides, the most horrific moment is not the molestation, but Sherby's
throwing a rock at Smoky.

> Look for "The mirror crack'd" in the most recent
> archives for that article and James Jordan's follow-up.

Thanks for pointing this out; I'd forgotten about it.  Now that I've
read the story, I have a couple of comments.

On Tony Ellis's point about hiding in the freezer: yeah, that had
niggled at me.  We're told explicitly that Sherby can't open the door by
himself (170); Eddi says that House will open the door when it's safe,
but if House is destroyed, how can it (of course, the AI core might
survive, but it might not, and apparently it doesn't)?  And even Eddi
(House) thinks there's a good chance of Sherby freezing to death before
being rescued: the best he can say is "If you snuggle up with Smoky, you
might stay alive until they leave." (188)  It looks like Sherby's
refusal to take House's advice saved his life, although it wasn't based
on any rational calculation.

On Jim Jordan's point that by leaving House, Sherby will be able to meet
Jesus (or Yeshua, as he's called in the story): but according to Eddi,
the real Yeshua is in House too (185).

--Adam

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