Kevin's Watch

Since the Worm of the World's End is also the Würd of the World's End, the Worm is to the natural Earth what the Weird of the Waynhim and ur-viles is to the meaning of those entities' own lives. The problem of entropy, inasmuch as it is based on thermodynamics, is, or so I've heard, the only physical law of cause and effect that entails in some important way an arrow of time. But suppose Jeremiah's one construct, that Möbius(sp.?) whatever-it-was IIRC, is a shape that can change worlds--i.e. is to become the new true name of Time itself. (If you've read The Neverending Story, you might recognize in this argument a representation that resonates in essence with the process of Bastian's mystical world "rebooting" through AURYN and the renaming of the Childlike Empress as Moon Child.)

Okay, this is a fantastic jump in logic maybe, but consider before I say what I am about to claim that The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis is probably a major inspiration for SRD--remember that he said once that the Narnia series was the one that "made the difference" most for him growing up or something. And considered from a meme-ish perspective, given that the creators of Lost laid claim to being inspired I think overwhelmingly by Lewis as well, and as many have noted there are striking similarities between certain significant plot elements in Lost and the Covenant novels, perhaps this indicates where we're about to end up, with my assertion that the absolute climax of The Last Dark will take place at the site of one of Jeremiah's doors. Or at least one of the ultimate plot points will be resolved thereby.

This is even more (not really) unreasonable reasoning, but suppose then that Jeremiah opens a door in Time itself? And the Worm of the World's End, instead of destroying the present, goes through that portal and loops in on itself throughout all Time, devouring only what it already devoured at the inception of the stars. IDK. Don't take that as a theory about what will or should happen. Just what might--yet might it? That is, is it true that nothing in what most of us (including me) have read is strictly inconsistent with claiming that Jeremiah can open a door using something analogous to that one construct of his, a construct used to symbolize the Arch of Time (as I believe some have proven or suspected)? Now if the Worm is somehow entropy and the thermodynamic arrow of time is quintessentially entangled (I don't remember correctly in what way) with entropy, then Jeremiah maybe can reshape the world of pure Time as a way to save it from itself.

ADDENDUM 1: And in relation to an eternal like "Diassomer Mininderain," what can be logically conjectured in the realm of possibility relative to the above theory about the range of Jeremiah's power?

ADDENDUM 2: Consider also the Seven Words. Were they called true words or something, too? I don't remember. But suppose Jeremiah wrote an Eighth, a Ninth, etc. Word. Or rather, could he do this?

I cannot help but remember that changing the past is BAD. The solution cannot lie that way. Sending the Worm back in time to meet itself certainly qualifies as changing the past.

wayfriend wrote:I cannot help but remember that changing the past is BAD.

That only holds for an objective linear timescape (if I may coin the expression). Doing so violates a linear causal functionality. But if time itself were not a straight line or even an arch but, say, a circle (a ring), well, causing something to loop in on itself, especially such a transcendental force as the Worm of the World's End, in such a context might be good. For however objectively real the Land may be, it is still in many ways much more subjectively real than the plain Earth that Covenant, Linden, et. al. hail from. From SRD's Jungian (and therefore implicitly Kantian) perspective, time might emanate from the archetypes (might be an archetype) unto the Land, constructing the Land somehow or representing in the dreaming imagination a quasi-physical domain representative in narrative content of the outcome of Time. So to change one's archetype of Time would correspond to reforming the nature of, say, the Worm, at least to the extent that the Worm's power is entangled with the structure of Time.

Every construct of Jeremiah in the real world has been significant, so I don't doubt that the Mobius strip construct in his bedroom is just as important, especially since Linden said that it was the one most uniquely "his." In fact, all the constructs related to him personally: they were clues of where to find him. The fairy castle in the doorway was like the watery ballroom near his location in Mount Thunder (another construct). And Revelstone (another construct) was where he first met her in the Land.

I'll have to dig around and find the post I made on this subject some time back, but going on memory I think I came up with a theory that the Mobius strip race car track was his own self-imposed "prison" in his mind. That's why the race car was so important, it signified his free will on the track. It also was the key to unlocking his mind from his own prison in AATE. So it may be no more than that ... or how he imprisoned himself may be a model for how to imprison others ... like the Worm or Foul. This could easily include a concept of time looping back on itself.

This would find a thematic resonance in Nietzsche's concept of Eternal Recurrence, a cyclic model of time. This theory actually had more to do with accepting reality the way it is (than say, a literal back-looping), i.e. willing that history would be the same even if it happened all over again, rather than trying to impose one's will--futilely--on the past because we can't accept what has happened. It's a way to carry one's attitude of authenticity even into time itself. And Donaldson is clearly (even explicitly) concerned with theme of existentialism. So this is a distinct possibility. But as WF says, it wouldn't involve a desire to change the past. I don't know if that's bad, but it's certainly unaccepting/denial/inauthentic.

[Edited to add:

Friedrich Nietzsche (Oct 15, 1844 -- August 25, 1900), the great German philosopher, having posited that god is dead, was left with the problem of then explaining the meaning of life. Why do we do what we do? What is the purpose of our existence? Though he dealt with this question in a number of different works, he asks us to answer the question for ourselves in his Theory of Eternal Recurrence posed in the work The Gay Science (1882).

The Theory of Eternal Recurrence

Nietzche writes, "What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, `This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moon-light between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, `You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!'"

Writing on the theory, Peg Tittle says, "Nietzche actually considered it to be "the most scientific of all hypotheses" (The Will To Power, note 55) because it follows from the denial of a god: 1. if there is no god, there is no creation or beginning, and, therefore, time is infinite; 2. the number of things and arrangements of things is finite; therefore, 3. events must repeat themselves, infinitely - hence, eternal recurrence...Furthermore, he says, `The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?"' will either crush you or lead you to transform your life - what if one were to live life as if it were to recur eternally"(What if).

Instead of answering the question, What is the meaning of life, Nietzche asks one to pose the question to oneself, What is the meaning of MY life? How differently would one live if one did, in fact, face each day as though one would have to live it over inummerable times? What different choices would one make? Would one really agree to sentence oneself to an eternal life of drudgery and boredom and disappointment when, by making other choices, one could live a life of real meaning and excitement and vitality? The Theory of Eternal Recurrence, which Nietzche himself thought people would be horrified at the prospect of, provides one with a moment's pause in life in which to reflect on exactly how one is spending one's time on earth and how one values that time. The meaning of life then becomes living life itself to the fullest, experiencing all it has to offer; whether one then gets to live it over again eternally isn't really the point -- the point is to live it now.

link

It's really quite beautiful. In a world with no Creator, where you are the Creator yourself, you can choose to see the demon delivering this message as a "god" or "angel" instead (similar to a point made in the movie Jacob's Ladder, as WF has pointed out in the past). Instead of a world without meaning, where your actions will disappear into the murky past and be forgotten, you can view your life as if it were to eternally recur, and frame your decisions based on this perspective. In a mobius strip world, what kind of "prison" are you going to sentence yourself to?

/Edit]

And so a Worm forced to devour itself would form a circle right? And create a new "Ring of Time"?