Thesean_brushings According to Greek myth, Theseus, the son of King Aegeus of Athens, went to Crete and slew the half-human, half-bull Minotaur, kept by King Minos (son of Zeus and Europa) in his Labyrinth (built by Daedalus). The Athenians had been sending seven youths and seven maidens to Crete each year to be set loose in the Labyrinth and eaten by the Minotaur. This yearly reparation was Minos' revenge for the jealous Athenians having killed Minos' son because of his victory over Athens in athletic games. King Aegeus sent his son Theseus as one of the seven youths in the next year's sacrifice. However, King Minos' daughter Ariadne had fallen in love with Theseus and so provided him with an indestructible clew to unwind as he entered the Labyrinth. He handily slew the Minotaur and was able to exit the Labyrinth; "[Pointsman's] lonely Thesean brushings down his polished corridors of years" 141; See also labyrinth; Weaving the Web

THEY Jessica notes a coal-black Packard up a side street, filled with dark-suited civilians. Their white collars rigid in the shadows. "Who're they?" [Mexico] shrugs: "they" is good enough. "Not a friendly lot." (40)

"'They' embracing possibilities far far beyond Nazi Germany" 25; "They" conversation (Major-General), 33; "(They?)" 72; "he's begun to suspect, darkly, any number of Someones Over Here" 108; "an act of suicide […] which in its pathology, in its dreamless version of the real, the Empire commits by the thousands every day, completely unaware of what it's doing" 129; "The true king only dies a mock death. […] Any number of young men may be selected to die in his place while the real king, foxy old bastard, goes on." 131; "death-by-government" 176; 177; 195; "two orders of being" 202; "a clutch mechanism between [Slothrop] and Their iron-cased engine" 207; "Mothers work for Them!" 219; "if there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. . .It all comes down. . .to the desires of individual men" 228; "All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all." 230; 285; "They extinguish. . .not remind" 438; no physical locale, 251; "They would not be who or where They are without a touch of Dante to Their notions of reprisal." 350; "They sure must have the budget, all right. Look at this desolation, all built then hammered back into pieces" 374; "a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, […] removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: […] most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process" 412; "innocence and its many uses" 419; keeping Earth "for the numb and joyless hardons of. . .human elite" 521; "It is possible that They will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever" 539; "They need our terror for Their survival" 539; "There's something still on, don't call it a 'war' if it makes you nervous, maybe the deasth rate's gone down a point or two […] but Their enterprise goes on" 628; "necktie or cock" 637; "Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a They-system" 638; "They will come and shut off the water first" 694; 697; "Their mission in this world is Bad Shit" 712; "Which is worse: living on as Their pet, or death? 713; "It is our mission to promote death. . .holding down the green uprising." 720; "submission and dominance are resources it needs for its very survival" 737; See also entropy/closed systems; paranoia; Technology Phrase: Thesean_brushings \Link: page:141