SLSL, 'UtR' Who won?

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/23/2003 4:55:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
jbor at bigpond.com writes:


> I'd say that's pretty accurate, the product of research or knowledge beyond
> the Baedeker. There's more than a hint in the story that the contest 
> between
> Porpentine and Moldweorp goes much deeper than national rivalries, that 
> they
> are working for more powerful and less visible interests (i.e. what will
> eventually become "They" in GR).
> 
> 

Perhaps, but there is a sense of something more sinister beyond "They"
as in: "But they- no, it- had not been playing those rules. Only statistical
odds. When had he stopped facing an adversary and taken on a Force,
a Quantity?" (134-5).

It's unclear if Moldweorp has also achieved this level of illumination. My
guess is that only Porpentine has looked this deeply inot things. The 
question for me is how much Victoria, and to an extent, Bongo, have 
become agents of "it." 

Is Bongo's switch real? Do the wires really connect to his brain, ennabling
him to cut off potential emotions when necessary; keeping it "simple,
and clean," avoiding Porpentine's pitfall, or, is it just a ploy, like a 
tongue
bar, to remind him to be cold- "a boyish gesture"?

I think the latter, but the switch is a motif that comes into play later
in V. from a different angle- Sphere's musical flip-flop. Pointsman's
investigation of the ultra-paradoxical abreaction strikes me as the 
most explicit GR connection. Whether real or prop the presence of
the switch seems to reflect a very masculine need for control, the 
quest for which leads to being even more an agent controlled by It.

Victoria seems the feminine inversion of that. She seems to embrace
It, and seeks to transcend the fate of Propentine and Goodfellow by 
giving up all notions of control, and merging with It.

"They" might be just another comforting paranoid delusion.
The real question revolves around the inevitability of It, whatever 
It might be.

respectfully
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