More Morel Thoughts

One line in the book that I felt linked directly to the idea of "Invention of Morel" and the movie "Groundhog Day" being somewhat similar was when the says, "Even if we left tomorrow, we would be here eternally, repeating consecutively the moments of this week"(76). When I read this I instantly thought of Bill Murray stuck in his endless February 2nd. I don't have much more to go with that one since we discussed it in class.

After reading the narrators findings on the projections that not only the people were recorded and projected but also the state of the buildings at the time of recording are projected I found some faults in his ideas of what to do with the projections. The narrator writes, "It is impossible to open the doors-even the unlocked ones-(because if they were closed when the scene was recorded, they must be closed when it is projected)"(79).  This poses quite a few problems for the practical use of these recordings.  Because a successful projection depends on the surroundings of the projections being exactly the same as they were when recoded, Morel's machine brings up many problems of limited use. First of all, these projections can only properly function in a completely unchanging, and predictable environment.  If the projections were to keep trying to function while there were changing variables it would bring up problems.  At the simplest level of change, the projections would be interacting in a time when perhaps the weather is not the same as when the images were recorded.  The narrator even observes this when he recalls that the images danced on the grassy hill during a rain storm as if it weren't there.  These small levels of change do not pose a threat to the success of the enduring projections, however when you get into longer term, bigger changes more problems occur. One example is if an image is recorded walking on a beach that is eroded or under water during time of projection, what becomes of that projected person? Are they simply projected walking on the water or is the ground projected over a moving ocean? This thought brings into play so many problems of projected images, overlying other images and eventually overlying the real earth.  To a living observer, they would not be able to tell what was real and what was a projection, making life almost impossible. Could a living person eat projected food? If so why not make unlimited supplies of food that was there in the past. Could cars run on projected fuel? Maybe only if the fuel was projected as running through an engine. The possibilities of this invention are limited but if it were possible to work out the kinks it would make the possibilities endless.

The last bit of this book that troubles me is when writing about the limited life of the projections the narrator mentions that a projections eternity is based completely on the functioning of a real machine. He also writes, "And what if Morel had thought to photograph the motors"(91).  This idea of making safety back ups of back ups of what is perceived as life is dangerous, because it makes such a clutter of information that it would be difficult to follow. Not only would this be near impossible to manage but to make a recording of a machine that is projecting you would need a manual operator to make sure that the back up machine records and stops at the correct times.  I can think about all of this and try to follow Morel and the narrator's ideas but in the end all it does is blow my mind.