On Fri, 15 Jun 2001 21:47:36 -0400 "Dana Shilling" dshilling@worldnet.att.net writes:
Is too! Is too! The next guy probably won't have as much personal interest, and may be from the first team or the Junior Varsity. Besides, Travis is a willing participant in Federation tyranny, not just some poor bastard of a draftee (a faceless group that Blake seems to have *no* problem about killing).
Oh, now here's room for thought - what reasons might Blake have that he either doesn't realize he has or doesn't want to admit to for not killing _Travis_?
1) Class prejudice? an Alpha not wanting to kill an Alpha?
2) Leftover conditioning? It seems like it would easier to make him gun shy towards something real he could actually remember (nearly killing a specific Federation officer) than abstract, faceless troopers he hadn't fought against at that time.
3) The hard fact that Blake knows this is something he _can't_ do, not and remain true to himself? He wants to kill Travis almost as badly as Travis wants to kill him. Maybe it's necessary and maybe it's smart - and maybe it shouldn't cost more than any of the other deaths, but it does. Like when Travis let go his concern for Maryatt, a man who was already dead when he got the news and who would have been beyond his power to save. Nothing he could do would make a difference, yet it made him different to choose to do nothing.
4) Some kind of guilt? What if, somewhere in his lost memories, Blake had been friends with Travis? A sort of Avon and Blake friendship, perhaps, the two of them always arguing and never agreeing, but it all seemed to have an underlying respect. Until. Blake may have been conditioned to forget it but, somewhere inside him, he still knows.
For this to work, I'd guess both of them have either been a bit confused about what actually happened or are not mentioning parts (quite possible in both cases). After all, Travis seemed uninterested in hunting down Citizen Blake when he was a good and law abiding zombie. Hmm.
OK, it's a stretch, but just because of the new wrench it throws into Blake's relationship with Avon, I'm going to think about it.
5) I know this is another stretch, but what if Travis isn't Travis but somebody they conditioned to _believe_ he's Travis? Hence, the injuries that don't quite fit the story. Blake, with his swiss cheese memory, may not consciously know - but this does put him and Travis in a very exclusive club. Maybe he unconsciously recognizes the symptoms.
Oh, speaking of swiss cheese memories, for anyone who hasn't read Anne Perry's Monk books, the main character is an amnesiac who had the great disadvantage of knowing exactly who he is - sort of. As the author put it, we judge ourselves more harshly than we would other people. That's how Monk judges himself but without remembering the reasons and justifications for the actions (in the first story, he's investigating a murder and starts building a case against himself). I wonder if Blake ever does that? Condemns himself for the things he did and didn't do without knowing why he made those decisions?
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