I've just had some new insights, which may necessitate editing the post or even writing an additional one; I've started to think that the "Martha in the Mirror" section above is much weaker than the rest of my sequence, and I might have the idea now of how to fix that.

In the meantime, I've not received as much feedback (negative or positive) as I'd hoped, and I'm wondering why. If you could help me out with the following poll, I'd appreciate it...

(As usual, please only vote an option up, not down, so I can get an accurate tally. The last option is a karma equalizer for you to vote down so that I'm not grabbing free upvotes.)