The wraith's plan was to interface with Hal through Ortho Stice

theory

Where readers stand

minority

minority — but with the corpus's best draft-to-text evidence chain; Swartz's ending (Hal about to play the possessed Stice) presupposes it (a reception datum only: the reconstruction corroborates what it presupposes, so it never counts as text evidence — see the wraith-stice-lyle adjudication).

In plain terms: the wraith's plan was to reach Hal by working through his teammate Ortho Stice.

Where the text lands: that an interface with Stice is underway is genuinely unresolved (and depends on accepting the wraith reading); that it is specifically aimed at Hal is a stretch; and the question looks built to be unanswerable. Among readers: a minority reading -- but with the corpus's best manuscript-to-text evidence chain.

An early draft made Stice a wraith-figure outright, and the text gives the wraith a need for a physical opening plus the built-up, never-resolved Hal-Stice contest. No page states the plan, and the attribution's load-bearing step is an inference. See Ghosts and Wraiths.

The question

This reading answers the crux the wraith's use of Ortho Stice (draft "Wraithster").

The ruling

Weighed in the adversarial ledger The Wraith, Stice, and Lyle.

The evidence

What this reading rests on, by kind of witness:

In the text

the wraith's need for a physical hole (Gately's wound; the Papineau coffin-holes story); the heavily built-up-and-withheld Hal–Stice contest as kept scaffolding of a cut resolution

In the drafts and archives

the 1993 naming

Scenes in evidence

Where this reading's evidence sits in the novel, in reading order:

Sources

Who takes this reading, and how far they go:

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