Read: Wizard and Glass–the rest of “Riddles”

Time for another touchdown dance: We’re in Stand-world! Or at least I thought we were until the newspaper they found referred to President Reagan and Vice-President Bush. Weird, I thought. They crossed over into the world of the un-revised Stand? But I guess it’s not that either, not really–that version took place in 1980 and the revised one was 1990, but this is 1986. And we eventually discover slight but strange differences from the world we know: unknown fast food chains, car manufacturers, baseball teams and so on. The idea is that there are any number of different “levels” of reality, different worlds, all connected by the Dark Tower, and all breaking down. Things like The Stand‘s superflu can leak from one level to the next. It’s an amusingly diegetic way to explain the differences between the ultimate version, the original version, this version, and even “Night Surf,” the short story that contained the root of The Stand years ago.

It also strikes me as how King will justify the eventual revisions to The Gunslinger. Roland:

…in my world even the past is in motion, rearranging itself in many vital ways…

Okay. We’ll see.

Finally, it’s pretty rad that they’re (apparently) calling Flagg the Crimson King in this world.

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