Reply to message 9
By: Fredric Rice
To: Curtis Johnson
Re: The Judas Mandala
St: Local
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The Judas Mandala by Damien Broderick, page 129:

    "I wonder... Sriyanie, what you're saying rungs a lot of
    bells.  The disruption of time, the merging of minds...
    Is it possible that Timestop has been discovered before,
    without the technology of Transit?"

    She sat forward, "Almost certainly, Maggie.  But it's
    been lost again, over and over.  There are a few hints in
    myth."  She raised her voice slightly.  "Can we hear that
    quote from the Christian Apocrypha?"

    "Certainly, Sriyanie," a fine, resonant voice said from
    the air.  I jumped.  Sri smiles, and touched my arm.  "I'm
    sorry," she said.  "It's just an information retrieval system.
    Go on."

    The voice had been keyed to English; it alarmed me
    somewhat that the thing clearly had been listening to our
    discussion.  I told myself that it was merely a mechanism.
    Hard to believe as the rich tones, beautiful as Oliver's,
    said, "The passage is from the Protevangelion and relates
    to Joseph's brief epiphany as he sought a widwife for his
    semidivine spouse,. Mary.  'As I was going,' Joseph states,
    'I looked up into the air, and I saw the clouds astonished,
    and the fowls of the air stoopped in the midst of their
    flight.  And i looked toward the Earth and saw a table
    spread and working people sitting around it, but their
    hands were upon the table, and they did not move to
    eat...  And I beheld sheep dispersed, and yet the sheep
    stood still.  And the shepard lifted up his hand to smite
    them, and his hand continued up.  And I looked unto a
    river amd say the kids with their mouths close to the water
    and touching it, but they did not drink.'

    "It is the prevailing opinion of the Eighth Level
    theoreticians," added the machine, "that this fragment, though
    embedded in myth, recalls a genuine achronic event, lacking
    the techniques of discontinuity, the unknown illuminus was
    not able to extend his consciousness into sustained orthogonal
    duration."