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TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING A NARRATIVE OF EVENTS of the year 2454 Written by MYCROFT CANNER, at the REQUEST OF CERTAIN PARTIES.
Ok, this whole entry section was a delightful way to set the book’s tone.
“Sensayers help people think about where the world came from, and whether there’s a plan or somebody in charge or just chaos, and what happens when people die. Carlyle here is a sensayer. They can help you think about those things. Especially death.”
It isn't about the WHAT of your belief, more its about the ACTION of belief.
Do made-up dead people go to the afterlife?”
I have a personal superstition that books are microverses in and of themselves. So... Maybe?
Also: such a meta question from a fictional character.
they
Mycroft's pronoun is they. Good to remember.
A darker armband, black-edged Imperial Gray with the Square & Compass on it, declares him a Familiaris Regni, an intimate of the Masonic throne, who walks the corridors of power at the price of subjecting himself by law and contract to the absolute dictum of Caesar’s will.
Ooh, Masons are still a thing. Interesting.
This heresy, this bash’, which Cullen shortened from i-basho (a Japanese word, like ‘home’ but stronger),
Good to see this explained.
Are you disconcerted by this scriptlike format, reader?
Ain't no such thing as the fourth wall.
“The folklore is that the sakura cherry tree blooms pink because its roots drink the blood of the dead, so the premise is that a dedicated reporter is so steeped in ink their veins would stain the blossoms black.”
Very cool mythos work here.
Mukta
Possibly from a Sanskrit word meaning "freedom."
i don’t just have the system send cars when you call, i have to teach it to anticipate who’ll likely call cars when, so it can preroute them sensibly.
Very similar to what I’ve heard of Uber’s surging drivers to specific areas.
Also, Eureka reminds me of "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick.
Has Bridger created pretend soldiers, or re-created real people who really lived and died?”
A la “The Indian and the Cupboard.”
No nation, whatever its power, can be called great when it imposes tyranny upon its citizens—worse, upon people it claims as its citizens, not because they have enjoyed the fruits of its soil, or benefitted from its protections, but because by chance their grandparents were born within that blotch of color on a map it calls its own.
To that end, I hereby call on all Spanish citizens—no, on all people who consider Spanish identity an important part of who they are, to show their support for that ideal by renouncing their citizenship, becoming floating citizens of the EU for twenty-four hours, and then reapplying to become Spanish citizens again, this time by choice. What we choose means more than what is handed to us by chance.
This concept of floating citizenship is really cool. It reminds me of Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe.
As you command, good reader, I obey.
Good Reader isn't the audience, but a character.
Humanist elections have no short list of candidates. All may vote for anyone they please, and everyone who receives even a thousandth part of the voting pool receives in turn that portion of the power.
Reminiscent of Hyperion.
It feels right to say vizor, not visor, lazer, not laser.
I’ve had the very same thought.
thirteen years ago,
Bridger is 13 — possible connection to the Canner device?
“Mycroft!
It should be mentioned that Mycroft is the name of Sherlock Holmes's older, smarter brother who has some sort of shadowy job for the Crown. Moriarity was Sherlock's greatest nemesis.
Books, even made-up stories, can’t all have happy endings because they reflect the real world, and the real world isn’t always happy.”
Foreshadowing?
“Factually untrue, but as a wish I understand it, and shall endeavor to help it approach truth.”
A fair assessment of the society as a whole. It claims to be a utopia, but in reality there’s a lot of turmoil under the surface. They’re trying to approach utopianism, but they haven’t done it yet. Most likely no society ever will.
Mycroft
I’m beginning to think that Mycroft was some sort of nobility before his criminal enterprise. Why else would he be allowed to take on such high end jobs that involve so much trust?
“They have some kind of insider advisor or legal position in five Hives besides the Masons! Europe, the Cousins, Brill’s Institute, the Mitsubishi, and us too.”
No, this seems like a huge conflict of interest to me. But, I guess if J.E.D.D. Mason is a declared foreign advisor, it isn’t an issue? It also speaks to the antiquity of the geographical nation-state lens that I this world through.
I smile at the compliment, generous reader, but you are wrong. I have told you, the protagonist must determine whether this is comedy or tragedy. Surely the boy whose powers can reshape the universe itself will determine that, not this tired slave, a tool for others’ use, whose days of independent action are long done. I am the window through which you watch the coming storm. He is the lightning.
nickname for J.E.D.D. Mason,
Nicknames are a personal pet peeve of mine. This would drive me up the wall.
Bridger did not answer.
Are Bridger and J.E.D.D. Mason somehow related? They are very similar.
She seemed a witch to me in all senses then, a good witch, bad witch, weaver of curses, stalker of children, solver of problems, healer, black widow, conjurer, the devil’s whore who chews through mortal mates, an old maid too, young but on course to bloom into that unmarried, ungrounded, uncontrolled old crone which drove past societies to purge with fire or bind in nunneries those thorny women wedlock could not hold.
I wonder about the nature of their relationship. Mycroft obviously has a deteriorating sense of respect for Thisbe. But considering their conflicting statuses in society, I suspect this was bound to happen.
Yes, Mycroft, it was. Remember, thou art mad.
Interesting interjection about Mycroft's reliability. Also a reinforcement of the fact that Mycroft is actively being censored by a very particular reader.
Are you smiling?”
Well, then. How much of this is real and how much is hearsay?
You can understand the high risk of retributive violence if the word got out.
In other words, not a utopia at all.
I am sure of only one thing, reader: there is Providence. There is a Plan at work behind this world, and a Mind behind that plan, Whose infinite workings I cannot hope to penetrate. I could tell you what my old self thought was the purpose of my crimes. I could tell you what I think now. But only our Creator truly understands the ends to which He turns His instruments: why He had me kill those seventeen people, not sixteen, not eighteen; why He sent Bridger this bloodstained guardian; or why He chose that night of March the twenty-fifth to reveal to His devoted priest Carlyle Foster that, in
...more
So Mycroft has come to some sort of religious belief system.
Martin Guildbreaker, glaring over my shoulder as I write, insists Latin is only for Masons, and must not be translated.
More signs of narrative censorship.
(I have translated the Latin, but since I’m doing so in secret from both Martin and Mycroft, you’ll have to bear with my mediocre skills.—9A)
Who is 9A??
What’s the point of having the laws if there’s no consequence in breaking them?”
Good question.
The Marquis is parodying Eighteenth-Century scientific logic. If you want to throw away his Proof of the Naturalness of Sodomy, you must also throw away Saint Thomas Aquinas’s proof of the Existence of God from Design.
My familiarity with Marquis de Sade's work begins and ends with the movie QUILLS, but I understand the approach taken here.
Women’s liberation happened, what, four hundred years ago, but there’s still residual bias even if no one wants to admit it. There are always more biologically male political and business leaders than female, at least outside you Cousins.
You mean it’s purposeful? They incapacitate an enemy using theology?
Can theology be seen as a kind of violence? It's easy to see the argument as aesthetically appealing. Rene Girard's mimetic theory points out how religion is built on releasing social tension through the use of scapegoating -- Christ being the ultimate example of such. Encoded into the group-favoring paradigm of religion, there is seen an us-versus-them mentality. One can definitely use religious thought to point out differences between others, make them seem foreign and undesirable. When confronting someone with such encoded language, it's easy to see how this could be made an intrusion of mental violence.
I haven’t checked my messages today.
"Today" is such an arbitrary term when global travel is so easy. I'm almost surprised Palmer has continued to use it in it's modern context.
However you raise your kid, you’re pushing them in some direction, shaping them with languages if nothing else; so long as the direction you push is going to make them productive and happy, there’s no justification for interference.
productive and happy being key terms.
Next, all as one, the mighty, angry Earth would descend upon Utopia, as Catholics used to descend on Protestants and vice versa to ‘save’ the others’ children.
"Save the children" is one of the most noxious and abused battle cries.
I am not named for Mycroft MASON. Rather, we both were named for Mycroft Holmes, elder brother of the fictional detective. Mycroft was smarter than Sherlock, almost omniscient, and with his greater wisdom mocked his brother’s attempts to champion justice. Mycroft Holmes spent his days gazing out through the windows of the Diogenes club, watching the infinite tapestry of urban life, and doing nothing, save when government commanded.
As I mentioned earlier.
I'm steadily becoming convinced that this book is very Wolfean in nature. It's dense and in some spots hard to work through, but all the pieces are explained very clearly. I wonder if Marc Aramini has done any reading of it.
I prescribe a good French restaurant.
A balm for many ills!
another secret for the spellbook.
WITCH!! Mycroft is going to get craftier, trying to code the references in more so that Reader misses them.
Science is figuring out where the universe is going!
It sounds like he’s afraid of sociocultural stagnation and the willful propagation of ignorance.
Guildbreaker: “The history of vaccination. You’re a very passionate lecturer. You made me tear up at one point.” Weeksbooth: “It’s the material, not me. An achievement like that would move you to tears if it were written in bad verse on the back of a napkin. That is, if you’ve any scientific passion left in you. Some people don’t.”
COVID-19 has a ton of people interested in vaccinations.
Dog!
He’s trapped here, and once I prove this universe is ruled by a horrible and callous Being, He’ll lose all hope of ever being able to fix it like His own.»
This is getting rather Gnostic.
Sade warns that he who would use Reason as a key to open one door opens many, and he who would make Reason a scythe to fell injustices must beware what else the blade might cut.
