The students felt able to move freely around the text to follow a thread that interested them, to end a boring thread, or to stop reading altogether. The realization that neither I nor they could identify a definitive beginning, middle or end crystallized a freedom in the form which clashed provocatively with the unchanging text of the lexias "Even although the author surrenders to the reader's exploration, all of Jackson's text is already created." (CR) The text was both fixed, and unfixed, at the same time.

For some readers, ranging from those pulling As to those struggling for Cs, fluidity dominated. They felt the freedom to 'do what I wanted with the text' (O.) gave the piece its power, even if it came close to the precipice of 'losing its way.' For others, again ranging across all grade levels, the illusion of freedom masked a more subtle servitude.

R, a sophisticated writer and thinker who had found the use of technology-enriched reading and writing alienating, summarized many of the more inchoate classroom comments in her final exam. essay. Discussing the reading of hypertext, she wrote:

...the power the authors are giving to the readers allows for the readers' own creativity to interact with the work, and in a sense the reader becomes a kind of author…The once definite line between the author and the reader is growing more vague, but this is done deliberately by the author…It's not a questions of who has the power, but who controls the power, who delegates the power, and in the case of hypertext, it's the author.

On the whole, the classroom consensus echoed R. If Shelley Jackson were a 'dead' author, the students of 201 had no doubts about her supernatural control over the living. But they also believed the text triggered the reader's creativity, a discussion which led slowly to a new definition of the relationship between reader, author and text.