ATDTDA (14) p 403-405

[Mark Kohut]

Mike,
   
  Thoughts in process: An apocalyptic future, to answer "what kind of future?"....horses bring
  bad news in TRP's world, yes?...black riders buried synbolically in Lot 49..(?)...
   
  Sorta The Road with horses?
   
  Here's a puzzle to me--that somehow seems to need understanding per your last paragraph.
   
  1) Chums could before the machine move/fly in time, yes?
  2) Is entering the time machine a kind of (secular) incarnation, so to speak?....The eternally-young, outside-of-time Chums now ENTER earthly time?       Giving resonance to TRP's line
  that ends chapter one about the Chums?---
  "an earthly surface"...........revealed......"In time, of course"
   
  Does entering Time now, in your notions below, make them start 'thinking about all of the things they've done'....making [futuristic] plans.....they have, like Benny Profane and the WSC sorta lived in the moment until now.....non-autonomusly, as you observe, following
  their Command.........
   
  Now begins their Change?
   
  Mark 

mikebailey at speakeasy.net wrote:
  "It's a little ramshackle for a time machine, isn't it?"
(402) -- but they sign on for a supposed trip into the future

which is by turns puzzling (what kind of a future
features millions of humans walking - or, rather,
"ranging" - with millions of horses) and 
frightening/disgusting/disorienting
(screams and the smell of excrement and dead tissue,
and they can't see the walls anymore...)

and yet, they use their outrage as a bargaining chip
to get Dr Zoot's source, so they can find out more and
(apparently) do more time traveling.
They are hooked...but what's their motivation?

(like the 40-Year-Old Hippie comic -- "200 trips, and
they've all been bummers - but I ain't givin' up")

Just a word on the most common, mundane sort of time
travel - it's memory (or pointed toward the future, 
planning/imagining) - maybe for the Chums to start
thinking about all the things they've done, and 
making independent plans, is the kind of
time travel that begins to subvert their unthinking loyalty
to the Chums Command.






       
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