Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-3999524-20141211184047/@comment-188432-20141212060604

I'm not understanding your point, I don't think. To me, the passage — in my version it's actually on 93 — is further proof of the fact that Delgado/Pratt/Beavers are the same incarnation.

The way I see the math is this:
 * Roberts is one body.
 * Ainsley is the second body.
 * And the half body (so still part of the same regeneration) is Pratt/Beavers. Because it's not a different regeneration. It's the latter half of the original Delgado.

Alternately, the passage could mean:
 * Delgado/Beavers/Pratt is one
 * Ainley is the second
 * Roberts is the half, because he's sorta half slug creature

Or:
 * Delgado/Beavers/Pratt is one
 * Roberts is the second
 * Ainley is half, because he's literally the combination of Delgado/Beavers/Pratt and Tremas.

Any way you slice that math, 2.5 doesn't allow for Delgado/Beavers/Pratt to be two distinct entities. If it were 3.5, you might have something. But not 2.5.

I think it's probably helpful to try to read this book as contemporaneously as possible. The modern interpretation of regeneration as the physical act only is just that: modern. It's not what was commonplace before the new series returned. Regeneration routinely meant body or incarnation, and that's, in my opinion, what's the case here. Forget about everything else: it would be internally inconsistent for this novel to — in one place — say that regeneration wasn't possible under these circumstances, but then suggest elsewhere that regeneration in fact occurred. Isn't it reasonable to assume that the writer remembers what he wrote a few dozen pages before?