[652] In our prison of stone and glass

aw man, this one brought me down.

How do you program love for a specific person into robots made several generations after her death though? I'd really like to see how Diego made that work.

The first medium?

Good point. I forgot about that.

So Jeanne has always found herself torn between Gillitie and the Court, ever since they were first split in two.
And now she's stuck there.

And now we know what happened to the Court buildings we saw on the Wood's side of the ravine when Coyote dug it (back in Chapter Twenty). I liked Diego's mention of their fate in response to Jeanne's sad comment on how the Court's inhabitants are cutting down all the trees on their side of the ravine - it shows again that both sides have behaved equally badly (as Jones pointed out in Chapter Seventeen).

And this conversation has managed to make the Court seem even creepier - it hasn't gone all the way down the path that it seems to be headed (to do that, it would have to dispose even of the human population - say, by transplanting their mentalities into android bodies and then disposing of the original flesh-and-blood bodies), but it's gone well down that path. (Note that we've seen barely any living animals in the Court, aside from a few insects and spiders. None of the children even seem to have any pets - unless you count Annie with Reynardine, which is an unusual example.)

Well, at least she seems to be neutral as is required from the mediums. She is however yet to reveal any of the other talents that the previous mediums has.

This might be very far fetched, but maybe she is the reason why they have mediums in the first place. From where they got the idea of a neutral mediator in a time where the two worlds where so separated that they tried to extinguish one and another from each side of the ravine.

Only a woman with a heart of stone.

Oh, but Todd, that's exactly what did happen. Jeanne was Diego's first experiment in taking a person's soul and putting it into an android body, and it killed her. The result, of course, was Jones. When the Court caught wind of it they put a stop to the program, but the robots have pined for the loss of Jeanne ever since.

Oh wait, this isn't the Wild Spec thread! Nevermind though, I said this in the Wild Spec thread months ago...

Yes, a cactus to hug. That'll cheer her up.

Do we really know yet whether Jeanne was neutral, or if she wishes she had chosen to stay on the forest side, or if she just misses some aspects of the forest?

Also, painful words (and possible destruction of toys?!) in 3...

I'm loving the slowly evolving mystery here. The tension is rising like the music in Jaws, building to an explosion of exposition.

I'll bet that the bridge to to Wood was not constructed until after Jeanne's death, and was probably built as a direct result of said death.

So, she's not bored, but exasperated. Though still "far out of the bandwagon". I claim my half of a cookie!

As a side note, we see the Court in an awkward moment of its childish tantrums.

This page tells us a lot about the chronology.

Remember what coyote said - He scored the land, dividing forest and court. The court did something to the waters so nothing could cross. Later, a bridge was made on the court's terms. (Pages 491-493)

Diego was present at the formation of the court. This means that *all* the following happened within one generation:

1) The Bismuth seed creates the court.
2) Coyote & Ysengrin & Reynardine arrive
3) Coyote divides the court and the forest, creating the Annan waters.

My impression had always been that a long time passed between (1) and (2).

Maybe we'll find out how the bridge was created. Jeanne seems to be a good candidate for a human who "grows weary of their life... and when they shun their humanity, [Coyote] welcomes them [in the forest]"

Or a woman in love with someone else...

Also, we know that she was not someone who "grows weary of their life... and when they shun their humanity, [Coyote] welcomes them [in the forest]" since she is neither there nor anywhere.

Also also: is it established how far ago was all of this? Why no other medium has ever been 'contacted' by Jeanne before?