[UA] Your Alex Abel.

[Timothy Toner]

-----Original Message-----
From: Bryant Durrell <durrell at innocence.com>
To: UA at purpletape.cs.uchicago.edu <UA at purpletape.cs.uchicago.edu>
Date: Sunday, February 21, 1999 10:23 PM
Subject: Re: [UA] Your Alex Abel.


>On Sun, Feb 21, 1999 at 10:39:39PM +0000, John Sullivan wrote:
>> My Alex Abel is a little more positive than many you'll find on the
>> list.  I see him as someone whose early drive for wealth at any cost
>> was born from bitter cynicism about a world that consistently failed
>> to live up to his expectations.  When he became aware of the occult,
>> and the ability of his wealth to translate into real power in that
>> sphere, he saw it as a very redemptive experience.  He's very bitter
>> about his own complicity in that world, angry at himself for becoming
>> just another shark in the pool.
>
>I'm more or less with John.  Once upon a time, maybe Alex would have
>done something slimy -- but he's had his revelation and he's realized
>the *stakes*.  He wants to create a good world; he can't afford to be
>a bad person when he ascends to the Clergy.

Ah, but good is subjective, is it not?  There are so many great points that
have been already stated, that I can only seek to mix and match with what
was previously voiced:

1)  Mona's dead.  It's a mercy killing, as far as he's concerned.  Knowing
what people can do to other people unintentionally through the not so tender
ministrations of entropics and astral parasites, Abel will probably want to
break whatever chains may exist.  He'll give her the money, then have Mona's
will altered to give it all to Ruby in the most favorable way possible to
complement his future plans.

2)  Ruby is damaged goods.  But so's the Occult Underground, right?  He
won't let the child of a viper so close to his throat, unless of course
we're willing to make him into a tragically flawed figure.  Uh-uh.  It's
possible for her to be redeemed, just as he was redeemed (in his mind's
eye), so it's time to play God, and force some controlled stressors down her
throat, to see if she's a survivior.  If not, she's swept out of the
madness, and she lives the rest of her life in relative comfort.  If she is,
then she's rescued by TNI, and shown, piecemeal, the war they're fighting,
and her mother's complicity in it -- to the point where she was willing to
sell her daughter.  All evidence, of course, carefully spun into a silk
cage.  And the moment Ruby turns on Alex, she's to receive a 12 gauge
lobotomy.  In every other way, Alex treats her like a company to be
acquired.  He'll call in divination experts to chart out her life if he does
and doesn't get involved.  Alex is willing to let this little chaos into his
life, because he believes that if there isn't some inherent chaos, then
nature, abhoring a vaccuum, manufactures some.  And then at some point, when
she's excelled at every obstacle, and becomes every bit the doting daughter,
he regrets what he does, and reveals the very weakness that killed Ruby's
mother -- the signal to do the same to Abel.