Tartaros's Blindness

Robert Borski · 21 Feb 2001, 22:21 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: "Robert Borski" <rborski at charter.net>
Subject: (whorl) Re: Tartaros's Blindness
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 22:21:42
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0330 at digest.urth.net>
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El cucaracha having written:

<Tartaros is not only blind, was not only born blind, but is utterly and
incurably and inalterably
blind; even when riding/in possession of Auk, he cannot see through Auk's
eyes but must ask Auk to describe things.>

Pardon my naivet=C3=A9 here--I am an end user, not a code jockey--but aren'=
t the
gods of Mainframe, unless they're riding someone or something--computer
programs? And if the sibling "programs" of Tartaros--i.e., Scylla, Molpe,
Sphingx, etc.--can process visual information, then it should be no great
matter to splice the appropriate compiler sequences into Tartaros. That it
hasn't ever been done before seems strictly a dictate of Pas's--perhaps
reflecting his own bias against a defective son. As Scylla at one time puts
it, "Daddy had this thing about a male heir." Certainly an impaired
child--especially a first-born son--may have been disappointing to Typhon,
perhaps even reflecting on his own notions of virility. But look at who it
is that sides with father Pas when the revolt takes place in Mainframe:
Tartaros--"the only unwilling god," as he puts it--and what better reward
for the son who had every reason to be bitter, but remained true, than
restoring his sight?

That Tartaros was born blind, and remained so for the entire first voyage of
the Whorl and then some seems incontrovertible; that he must die the same
way, given the super technology of Wolfe's Short Sun milieu, seems more than
a little suspect.

Robert Borski

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