This Irradiation of Identities

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 1 December 2015.

Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis by Henry Fuseli

Liza,

This is the most beautiful thing that has ever emerged from the primordial swamp of the project.

Quick take on one solitary question from your minor masterpiece: Yes, I do believe that Steffi, Victoria Woolf, Shakespeare's and Leif Erickson's Sister are "the same person." Possibly incorporating aspects of you and/or Allison (no offense: Will and I became a Nietzschean dichotomy).

I put "the same person" in quotes because what Steffi has done is achieve indefinitude, the end goal of Knology and the process catalyzed by the Lodestone.

And no, I have never considered the Benefactor part of this irradiation of identities, although the fact that Will seems to think so makes me wonder. What Steffi achieves is the ability to engulf, usurp, subsume, sublate other identities into her all-comprehending framework. Eventually, even Farthington disappears in this way.

In that sense, she is Charybdis. In another sense, she is Scylla, in that she is endowed with these multiple heads or identities.

I always thought the the Benefactor was some kind of evil avuncular character.

Okay, I need about 5 weeks to process this. Wow.