| [Note: A version without pictures was posted at 9:38pm CST, on 3/2/10. This version was posted at 11:24pm CST, on 3/2/10.] SUNDOWN: 'HIGH NOON' FOR QUANTUMLY ENTANGLED VAMPIRES IN THE HEAT-SINKING TEMPLE OF DOOM, MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL ON THE 'SHUTTER' ISLAND RPG, FINALE TRANSCENDING DUALISTIC 'GAMES'? A hearty thank you all around the horn, to the entire Lost creative combine for yet another adventure in the land of enlightenment. We'll start with some highlights from tonight's episode, then proceed to pondering what lies beneath the shadow of future plotlines.... 1. Yes, the meter is indeed running, as the impending merger of 'verses looms on the horizon (more on this, below.) 2. Once more, the episode starts by showcasing different parallel LAXland 'daisy chain' effects. I'll cover some different science-based scenarios below.... 3. And of course, the boomerang symbolizes the coming/promised 'merger' of the 'verses, as well as Sayid's return to the dark side.... 4. Yes, Sayid's brother did not going to the bank, but instead sold his soul to the loan shark 'devil', even if it's for a second dry cleaner.... Yet again, more dark-side imagery... 5. For every man there is a scale... Yes, as per the collective body of our musings to date, there is a MA'AT's scale for judging one's heart, and AMMIT's waiting in the wings with a protein craving.... 
6. Dogen not wanting to step outside the temple, lest he be killed by unLocke, certainly hearkens back to the Highlander series. And Smokey/unLocke as evil incarnate, confirming our greatest fears, indeed.... 7. Welcome back to the circus... and here's the clunking (tiger-like!) SMOKEY-et-machina sound. 8. Sayid stabs unLocke and he does not die! Is that because someone whose heart has tipped on the scales to your side, can't kill you, Smokey? Or haven't you any heart? Did Dogen know this would happen and he expected Smokey to kill Sayid? Back from commercial break... yeah, that's how it went down....  9. Deliver the message, and you can have everything you ever wanted....! Yeah, of course we've all figured this one out.... SMOKEY MAY JUST WELL BE A MAXWELL'S DEMON GATE-KEEPER to different/alternate/realities....! BOB from Twin Peaks would be proud, indeed. Pass the black oil, next stop... the EXTRA-DIMENSIONAL PORTAL? Or, if this 'Level II' interpretation does not pan out, we can always go with the Standard Model 'Level I' interpretation qua MIRRORVERSE PORTAL.. (more on this, below....)  10. Wash my hands, pontiously, of course.... We've all nailed him to the cross and cannot wash our hands of this, despite how hard we will scrub.... 11. 'Catch a falling star...' Yes, among the myriad implications for Lost, I'm reminded of the Nephilim connection, a.k.a. Fallen Angels/Stars, as I discussed in my Season 5 postings. 12. And the townfolk are leaving, just like in High Noon.... Will Sayid earn back his Badge of LIghtness and thusly tip the scales of his heart back to the other side.... 13. Poaching eggs.... The Loan Shark-cum-Devil is hunting 'out-of-season' for souls, of course.... 14. Sayid's brother's debt is forgiven, yet Sayid can't forget (and forgive?).... He is not yet able to accept Christ/the Light side. And Jin's in the cooler, on ice, how interesting... presaging unLocke's future SOUL-POACHING activities, on-island....? 15. Among other things, Dogen's son's baseball signifies the probabilistic nature of quantum reality.... 16. Choose to stay or go.... Is Sayid trying to 'turn' Dogen to the dark side, through 'immersion therapy', as he has experienced? Sayid as a baseball recruiter for the dark team... He just let it in Dogen... and the Temple.... Heh-heh-heh.... We've just witnessed SMOKEY gaining entrance through the back (spring) door.... 17. Ilana shows up with lightside backup.... But there  is no more time for Sayid.... Ilana pushing the 'OUROBOROUTIC' glyph.... 18. Catch a falling star.... Sayid joining the unLocke Nephilimic band of Fallen Angels, cast out of Heaven.... 19. Quite the spell Smokey had them under, especially SAYID... He is now a part of the darkside vampiric island clan.... 'High Noon' For Quantumly Entangled Vampires: Mirror Matter Heat-Sinks And The Frozen Donkey Wheel-  In my 2/9/10 "What Kate Does" posting, I noted the connection among: (1) the brown, brackish liquid used to revive Sayid in the spring-fed temple Healing Pool, and (2) and the liquid employed by Ben to 'call' Smokey.... When clear, the spring heals one in such a way that it 'binds' one closer to the light side; when the liquid is brown, however, the healing process binds one to the dark side, 'devouring' one's old heart in the process, as symbolically represented by AMMIT. Since Sayid failed the Philip K. Dick-inspired 'PINK LIGHT' test, and he was diagnosed as heading toward the dark side, inquiring minds want to know if there may indeed be a scientific basis for this type of transformation.... Interestingly enough, within the context of an emerging mirror matter interpretive convergence, the answer is in the affirmative and it opens some interesting possibilities for helping to explain an intriguing reference to Vampires made by Darlton in a recent interview concerning tonight's episode. And how about some additional synchronicitous Lost connections....? Yes, the Shadowlands author himself -- Robert Foot-- is integrally involved in the explanation:  "...mirror matter fragments can interact with ordinary matter non-gravitationally, via the photon-mirror photon kinetic mixing interaction [PMPKM].... the mirror atoms in the mirror matter fragment undergo frequent collisions with ordinary atoms and, on average, gain energy.... a mirror matter body embedded within ordinary matter equilibrates and efficiently emits mirror radiation.... we cannot detect the mirror radiation directly, however we can infer the existence of an energy loss by looking for its thermal effect on the surrounding ordinary matter. The point is that as the mirror body radiates its heat away into mirror photons, the energy is replaced from the ordinary matter surroundings which will become cooler as a result." [Source: Foot, R., & MItra, S. 2003. "Detecting mirror matter on Earth via thermal imprint on ordinary matter."  The PMPKM interaction is a scientifically-based mechanism providing a basis for understanding how mirror matter and ordinary matter interact and produce measurable effects. And how very interesting it is to note that the underlying nature of the interaction and the effects are VAMPIRICAL, i.e., the Mirror Matter particles by their very nature will 'suck' energy out of ordinary matter, producing a measurable heat loss..! One strong and obvious implication is that instead of using the more elaborate pink-light apparatus and procedure, Dogen could have simply applied a thermal instrument to measure Sayid for signs of heat loss arising from PMPKM. Indeed, perhaps on Lost there is a way to detect mirror radiation directly, and the secret lies in the PINK LIGHT Device.... Heh-heh-heh....  PMPKM opens a portal of insight into how dark and light matter may be interacting not only: (1) within dark side candidates, showing a quite literal/real/physical side to the struggle endured by Sayid and others in resisting the infective wiles of the evil one, but also (2) between the mirror-mattered ISLAND and those with whom it comes into contact.... Yes, here I am proposing that the very same mechanism we saw operating in a VAMPIRICAL fashion within Sayid's body may well be operating between the ISLAND, the Castaways, the Others/NewOthers, etc.  In addition to measurable effects in cooling the ordinary matter with which it comes into contact, I strongly suspect that prolonged PMPKM interaction effects-- perhaps even those involving prolonged exposure to the Pink Light (Faraday!)-- can affect the physical/atomic constitution of a person to the extent that they experience temporal disorientation, memory lapses, and even the fabled Billy Pilgrim spacetime UNSTUCKNESS syndrome... Indeed, as some have previously surmised, the very ontogeny of the island appears to involve processes and effects arising from the intermixing of mirror and ordinary matter.... Here I would not at all be averse to the theory that an ancient collision of a mirror matter body on some remote Pacific island on Earth gradually led to the current situation we're now  observing on Lost. Recall a primary measurable effect would be a cooling of the surrounding ordinary matter, and that is just what we have seen to be the case, in the inner recesses of the island. Exhibit A is, of course, the FROZEN DONKEY WHEEL....! Ben knew enough to wear a cold-weather jacket during his ill-fated attempt to move the island. That's because the FDW is located in very close proximity to a MIRROR MATTER BODY residing in the recesses of the island,  even years post-crash.... Interestingly enough, the very cooling effects produced by PMPKM operating through the prolonged contact of a comparatively large Mirror Matter body with the surrounding ordinary matter, may have contributed to achieving low temperatures conducive to the SUPERCONDUCTIVE MAGNETISM enabling the island to float freely and move around on the surface of the ocean.... The core of the island is thus functioning as a Mirror Matter Heat-Sink....  Building on the above discussion, it may therefore come as no surprise to find that the OCEANIC 6 wrestled with what might be likened to 'withdrawal' symptoms arising from leaving the island and severing the growing 'vampirical' bond among island and castaways, on a very real and physical level, mediated in no small part through PMPKM interactions.... And the discussion gets even more interesting when we consider one of the next logical steps in examining physical bonding phenomena on the island.... QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT....!  In the 2/20/07 "Quantum Connections" posting I noted the importance of Quantum Entanglement (QE) for understanding not only the psychic bond between Rose and Bernard--She knew he was alive-- but much, much more.... In the context of the current war for souls in the garden of good and evil, we should not be surprised to learn that literal, physical transformational processes are at work in dark and light candidates, and that non-local seemingly 'magical' connections among those within the same 'CLAN' are occurring, in no small part through QE. unClaire and unSayid sure seemed to be in QE sync with unLocke! 1 What Lies Beneath The Shadow Of The Mirror Matter Game: Is That All There is?  While there are signs in the air of an emerging interpretive convergence on a view that Lost is a game involving two players, an updated video game allegory for our conflicted human existence, torn as we are among classic existential dualisms (good vs. evil, fate vs. free will, the individual vs. the group, winning vs. losing, etc.), some of us are  still wondering..... Is that all there is to it? Is Lost simply a video game played over the course of a 108-day period, with liberal sprinklings of supporting literary references spread throughout, and dashes of mainstream and cutting edge science thrown in to divert our attention from the true game grid foundation undergirding the narrative structure of the show? Is Lost simply a Through The Looking-Glass, Mirror Mattered video game? Despite the obvious value in providing the current generation with an updated allegory for the human condition, some of us have been wondering if that's all there is to it... Is there more behind the curtain...? Yes, game references have  been liberally sprinkled throughout the show.... We get it and have gotten it, for quite some time. Yes, the dualistic, mirror twin tensions and dynamics have been entertaining to ponder and catalog... we get it.... And yes, we acknowledge that our lives are punctuated by dualistic themata coursing throughout our everyday choices, actions, and consequences... we get it.... What some of us are wondering is whether or not this is all there is to it.... Is Lost simply an updated binary, black-and-white, dualistic video game allegory with dashes of literary, historical, and scientific references thrown in for entertainment purposes and as diversionary measures? Doc Jensen once observed how unsatisfying it would be if someone were to jump out from behind a tree and opine about how the show was all about Zero Point  Energy.... Yes, I heartily concurred with the good Doc on that one... And now I would follow in Doc's footsteps by proposing that just as a ZPE lecture would serve us with an unfulfilling meal of insight into the fundamental nature of the show, so too would a series finale 'reveal' that the show is simply a video game equivalent, a two-player light-dark, black-and-white, binary competition to move the characters to one's side over the course of a 108-day period. Yes, that would be a hollow, bloodless meal to swallow, with Jacob or the blond boy divulging the core purpose and rules of the game to the assembled group of game characters in the series finale, followed by a statement that while they are making progress, they have not yet achieved a final end to the game, and thus they are doomed to participate in yet another replay of the game.... Then as a soft pink light suffuses through the assemblage, their memories are wiped clean and they are readied for another round of game play, not a bit unlike the lab rat in Faraday's maze.... What Lies Beyond A Black-And-White Dualistic Game: 'Drawing' A Transcendent Game Grid Resolution?  Mike(NY)'s interesting 'Mirror Matter Moon' theory-- riffing and expanding on Eye M. Sick's seminal mirror matter application to Lost2-- provides a promising means of transcending the simplistic black-white two-player game scenario by pulling a Wargames draw.... In this approach, the 'game' is transcendently resolved by each side mutually agreeing to a 'draw' by no longer playing the game, which in Mike(NY)'s view may be manifest in a future pairing or marriage of AARON and JI YEON, with Aaron representing the dark side and Ji Yeon representing the light side.  This view dovetails quite nicely with my Crisis On Infinite Earths (COIE) interpretation that Aaron's hybrid island/mainland ontogeny confers him with Alex Luthor-like powers in opening the island portal between the light and dark/mirror 'verses, and Mike(NY) warns about the dire consequencs of that action for letting the dark side 'monster' in to our light side universe through the island portal. If Darlton enact more of a COIEsque plotline, then look for Aaron to play a key light side role in helping to open the portal in order to 'stuff' the Dark Lord MIB/unLocke back into the dark matter/mirrorverse, then closing the portal to 'seal the win.' However, if they instead choose to go the route outlined by Mike(NY), then look for Aaron to play a central dark side role through helping the Dark Lord and his Anti-Monitor anti/dark/mirrormatter 'verse to fully spill into the light side 'verse, through the opened island portal, thusly threatening to consume and remake the latter into the reverse-spun image of the former....  Accordingly, Mike(NY)'s proposal on the 'Mirror Matter Moon' site-- that Aaron and Ji Yeon may pair up, with this merger effectively enacting a game-ending 'draw'-- provides one potential means of transcending the limits of a simplistic black-white either/or binary game scenario. Which of course begs the deeper question.... Is this the very resolution to which Jacob is referring in his statement: “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress."? Will Mike(NY)'s solution to the dualistic game of Lost provide a series-ending platform for transcending simplistic black-white framings of our everday lives? Is this 'higher order' acknowledgment and awareness just what the doctor ordered, when we consider Gandhi's remarks concerning the true battle between good and evil being fought within ourselves, within each of our hearts, in an ongoing basis throughout our entire lives. Hmmm.... our resistance to accepting a simplistic game interpretation of Lost lies not in some 'sour grapes' of wrathful resistance that we did not 'figure it all out'  first; no, the resistance is located not on the facile surface of that surmise, but rather, it is located on a far deeper level, in the very recesses of our fleshed and blood-coursed experiences. At these deeper levels, we observe the inherent flaws in a model that reduces our lives to stark binary, black-white moves and consequences, enacted robotically through the directions and machinations of some other higher beings, and we recognize that giant sucking sound as the vampire of a mechanistic, dualistic theoretical automata sucking the warm lifeblood out of our vital, vibrant, complex, creative, joyful, questioning, adventurous lives... leaving us feeling cold, hollowed-out, and unsatisfied, in the end.... As I noted in my 4/5/07 "Lost Legacy Theory" posting, creative works with staying power provide enough content to engage and intrigue us, but not so much  content that answers are provided to all or most of the key questions raised by the work. Here is it profitable to invoke Godel's Incompleteness Theorem as a means of recognizing the inherent power coursing throughout our rich, vibrant, colorful everyday lives, driving us to seek answers to questions, chasing after an infinitely-receding horizon of larger and larger question sets. Yes, this is the oft-stated maxim that the more we learn about ourselves and our place in the 'verse, the more we learn that we do not know; for every question answered, more are raised.... This is the inherent Heuristic drive of the species, the motivation to know and learn more about ourselves and our surroundings, and the drive to influence and remake the world around us, through progress in the sciences, the arts, and beyond....  It may be easier to forget-- in this day and age of trailers that hologrammatically give away the whole movie, with richly complex realities reduced to binary, black-white sound and vision bytes-- but we are wired as a species to inquire, to create, and to chase after that ever-receding horizon of the Final Answer to everything, the TOE. If we ultimately learn that Lost is simply a black-and-white two-player video game, with delimited and fully-proscribed rules and regulations, then our lack of satisfaction will stem not from 'sour grapes', but rather from a species-inherent sense of dissatisfation in finally finding the Lost TOE, when in fact we are wired to gain gratification from the rich, vibrant, vital ongoing heuristic process of chasing after the TOE....3 Yes, a TOE perched on an infinitely-receding horizon would be an appropriate graphic, here....  As the classic version of that televisionary masterpiece, The Prisoner, so aptly illustrates, creative works with staying power provide just enough content to engage and intrigue us, and leave expanses of interpretive territory open for exploration, driven as we are by the urge to read, write, and reread and rewrite ourselves and our ongoing experiences into the 'texts' presented to us in these works. In short, there is a direct relationship among the staying power of a creative work and the size of the interpretive territory left open for our rich, engaging, adventurous interpretations, and the size of this territory diminishes considerably as key questions raised by the work are answered in the work, and expands as these questions are left unanswered: "I suppose that [The Prisoner] is the sort of thing where a thousand people might have a different interpretation of it, which I think is very gratifying. I am glad that's the way it was, because that was the intention." Patrick McGoohan, quoted in The Official Prisoner Companion, by Matthew White and Jaffer Ali, 1988, Sidgwick & Jackson, page 1. Will we ultimately learn that Lost is merely a simplistic black-white video game with a known and set of rules and regulations, leaving us with a vastly delimited and constrained interpretive space, a greatly diminished potential for mining Lost as a source of renewed and renewable insights into our complex, colorful lives? I hope not, as this would not bode well for securing an enduring legacy as a creative work stimulating sustained interpretive and creative engagement, throughout the ages with each new generation of viewers to come.... What Lies Beyond A Black-And-White Dualistic Game, Part Deux: Heuristic Revelations Riffing On 'The Game', In A The 'Shutter' Island RPG? If there is one thing that Darlton and crew have demonstrated throughout the series, it is that they will change things just when we think we have figured it all out. Even the most established Lost theories have 'stubbed their TOE' now and again, when confronting curves thrown at them by Darlton, having to invent new 'rules' to adjust to the tapestry being woven, week in and week out....  Hmmm.... Is it really all that far-fetched to consider that maybe, just maybe, Darlton and crew may be setting us up for a 'Fall From Hubris' mirroring the consequences we're now seeing in the wake of Jack's prideful attempt to rewrite fate through the J2 Incident? Here I am including myself among all of us Lost pundits and fans, especially those of us who think we have figured it all out, and are sitting there watching the show with our TOE-in-hand.... Maybe, just maybe... Darlton will yank that TOE out of our hand in the series finale, unveiling a final 'shocking' reveal that truly will be shocking, transcending all of our cherished Lost TOEs and putting all of us in our place, an allegory reaching out and grabbing all of us by our veritable and collective 'collars', reminding us that while we are participating in this vast heuristic experience, ultimately it is THEIR story which is being told, in their way.... And so-- lapsing back into the hubris to which all Lost pundits fall prey-- what kind of game-changing 'reveals' might Darlton unveil to shock our Lost TOEs from our hands? As noted above, one possibility is to transcend a dualistic black-white game 'framing' via Mike(NY')s strategy of an intentional 'draw', enacted through an Aaron/Ji Yeon merger/marriage. This could indeed be the ending to which they are finally progressing, as per Jacob's remarks on the beach.... "WOPR observes that nuclear warfare is "a strange game. The only winning move is not to play". Will we as a species have reached a sufficient point in our evolution/enlightenment, gaining an allegorical equivalent of a 'draw of the game', to transcend simplistic understandings and actions based on black-white, good-evil distinctions, embracing instead the ongoing Quantum Superpositional struggle to wrestle with movements, vibrations, and vacillations among all possible states, in and throughout the course of our more complex, uncertain, and charmingly (quarkily) colorful lives....? Can we, as symbolized in a potential union of Aaron and Ji Yeon, learn to live with and transcend our own complex natures? "I am not a number, I am a free man...." Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner. 4 In addition to transcending a dualistic game framing through an intentional 'draw', another plot possibility is to drain more life back into the body through revealing that while the show has an underlying game aspect to it, instead of the  characters directed in quasi-automata fashion by higher order beings in a video game format, by following the lead of David Fincher's motion picture The Game, the season finale 'reveal' may disclose to us that we have been observing a radical new immersion-based, role-playing approach to group therapy, mirroring aspects of an RPG as well. 5 Recall that in The Game, Michael Douglas' character of Nicholas Van Orton was unwittingly immersed into a live-action, reality-based 'game' involving insider operatives. Hmmm... I wonder who is 'in' on the action, if Lost does turn out to be a riff on The Game.... And how curious indeed, that the purpose of the game was fundamentally heuristic-- to help Nicholas learn to come to grips with his father's suicide. Yes, the Quantum Suicide connections to Lost continue as we consider that at the end of the movie, Nicholas himself leaps off the roof of a building, mirroring exactly how his father committed suicide: "Stricken with remorse, guilt and exhaustion, Nicholas walks to the edge of the skyscraper's roof and steps off. He crashes through the glass ceiling of the ballroom. However, he lands safely on an airbag placed there for just that reason, and a doctor and rescue workers quickly restrain him and check him over, brushing bits of breakaway  glass from his face and eyes. Then he finds his family and friends awaiting his scheduled arrival, and The Game is revealed to have just been a complex game after all. None of his accounts have been drained; the gun was indeed reloaded with blanks; and his brother is very much alive. As they embrace, Conrad confesses that he arranged the extremely expensive Game as a way to shake his brother back to reality and to help him to learn to enjoy life again. As the party is in full swing, Nicholas meets several of the guests who were operatives in the Game. When he asks about Christine, Conrad tells him that she is outside and about to depart in a cab. Nicholas runs outside and talks to her about her part in the Game. She appears attracted to him, and invites him to have coffee with her at the airport before she flies to Australia for her next assignment in the Game. Nicholas' Game appears to finally be over (but he cautiously looks around, as he isn't sure).  If Darlton opt for a game-changing 'shocking' season finale reveal, one distinct possibility is some sort of a riff on The Game, perhaps even in tandem with a Star Wars homage, with Jacob disclosing to Jack that he is really Jack's father, as Jack readies himself to commit Quantum Suicide in order to merge the split 'verses back together, collapsing the quantumly superposed dead/live island back into a classically observable state, all while preserving the fated integrity of the ongoing weaving of the spacetime tapestry. Jack awakens from his 'suicide', only to find himself surrounded by the entire cast of Lost, yes, even Shannon, Arzt, and others are there.... As Jack wipes the scales from his eyes, he begins to realize that this was an elaborate, complex 'game'-cum-role-playing-therapy, aimed at helping him overcome his DEMONS....  Just who the 'insider-operatives/accomplices' were in the game, and who were the fellow therapy-recipients, would be a very interesting part of the 'reveal'. Of course, champagne and hugs all around, for all involved, in an RPG 'wrap party'. A final delicious touch would be to see Leonard Sims in the role of the main therapist overseeing the proceedings.... Yes, this game-changing type of 'reveal' not only would mirror The Game, but would also echo the reality-based, complex role-playing approach to therapy as showcased in Martin Scorcese's current film, Shutter Island.... No, I won't go beyond this in providing additional spoilers/details, but suffice it to say that Shutter Island is one more example of how Darlton might manifest a twist-based 'reveal' that would also provide an occasion to put all of us Lost pundits in our place through enacting a Fall From Hubris.... From Portal To Nexus, From Mirrorverse To Multiverse To Quantum Multiverse: Finding Adventures On Infinite Earths? In my prior postings I've superposed both a 'portal' and a 'nexus' function on the island. Viewing the island as a portal highlights the potential for characters to use the island to move from one place to another, as in the case of a Mirrorverse interpretation involving movement between: (1) a dark matter/mirrorverse, and (2) a 'white' matter/'ordinary' universe. This fits closely with mirror matter theories by Eye M. Sick and Mike(NY), especially with the latter's emphasis on the dark possibility of, and the dire consequences associated with, a portal opened between the dark and light 'verses, allowing the 'monster' full and free access to 'our world', enabling him to remake our 'verse in his Dark Lord image, mirroring the desire of the Anti-Monitor in COIE....  In addition to the possibility of a game-changing season finale involving a Wargames draw or a 'reveal' that the show is about an immersion-based role-playing therapy intervention ala The Game, a third potential game-changer loops back to cutting edge cosmological science, moving from what prominent MIT researcher MAX TEGMARK calls a LEVEL II view of parallel/multiverses to a LEVEL III view. Interestingly enough, Dr. Tegmark has published with one John Archibald Wheeler previously, and Lost aficionados will recall Doc Jensen's astute connections between Wheeler and a (decidedly!) bald John (Locke) serving in the role of a 'wheeler,' moving the island through pushing the Frozen Donkey Wheel... In a May 2003 Scientific American article entitled "Parallel Universes," Tegmark outlined the growing evidentiary basis for the existence of parallel universes and distinguished among different levels (types) of Multiverses:  Level I Multiverse: The simplest form of a parallel universe in which the different 'verses are spatially separated, i.e., the 'verses exist in separate regions of space. According to Tegmark: "Observers living in Level I parallel universes experience the same laws of physics as we do but with different initial conditions" (p. 42). This is one distinct possibility fitting with the Mirror Matter Lost theories, especially that of Mike(NY). Viewed from the perspective of a Level I Multiverse, it is entirely possible that MIB/unLocke grew up in a distant region of space from that of 'our' Earth, a region so far away that it constituted a parallel universe with different initial conditions, evolving to a state dominated by Mirror Matter, with dark mirror twins of our 'selves', and the potential for time reversal and more (nod to Eye M. Sick, here). If this level is invoked by Darlton, then the island portal would enable movement among 'our' light side Earth and a dark side Earth, located in a parallel universe in some distant region of space. Level II Multiverse: A more complex form of a parallel universe, building on the notion of Level 1 Multiverses by showing how there may be multiple Level 1 Multiverses in existence, separated by empty space. This view gets even stranger than the first one, as different Level I Multiverses vary not only in their initial conditions, but also in their fundamental aspects, including the very dimensionality of spacetime....! This is a second possible vantage point for understanding what has been happening on Lost, especially dovetailing with  conjectures regarding the potential for beings to move to higher dimensional planes of 'enlightenment' (and to lower planes of 'endarkenment'?) The existence of 'verses defined by different spacetime dimensionalities offers a possible explanation for psychic powers and opens up the possibility that the island portal may generate an opening not between spatially distant regions within the same spacetime dimensional laws, but rather between regions defined by very different spacetime laws. So in this case, the light and dark sides not only could be defined in terms of their ontogenetic heritage arising from: (1) different initial conditions leading to a dark/mirror matter 'verse and an 'ordinary' 'verse, but light and dark differences could also be a function of (2) different laws of spacetime dimensionality, with dark levels (sliding down a slippery slope of endarkenment, to Hell?) of dimensionality, and light levels of higher dimensionality (climbing toward enlightened on a Jacob's Ladder?) Level III Multiverse: Even more intriguing is a Level III Multiverse which, unlike Levels I and II, does NOT involve the existence of parallel worlds far away from each other, in distant regions of space. According to Tegmark: "Quantum mechanics predicts a vast number of parallel universes by broadening the concept of 'elsewhere.' These universes are located 'elsewhere,' not in ordinary space but in an abstract realm of all possible states. Every conceivable way that the world could be corresponds to a different universe" (p. 47). Yes, if you are 'flashing' on the Quantum Superposition concept and seeing the island-cum-Schrodinger's-Cat as dead and alive, then you are taking the first step as a candidate Level III Multiverse observer. 
Tegmark continues: "According to the principle of ergodicity, quantum parallel universes are equivalent to more prosaic types of parallel universes. A quantum universe splits over time into multiple universes. Yet those new universes are no different from parallel universes that already exist somewhere else in space. The key idea is that parallel universes, of whatever type, embody different ways that events could have unfolded.... Most people think of time as a way to describe change. At one moment, matter has a certain arrangement; a moment later, it has another. The concept of [Level III] multiverses suggests an alternative view. If parallel universes contain all possible arrangements of matter, then time is simply a way to put all those universes into a sequence. The universes themselves are static; change is an illusion, albeit an interesting one" (p. 47). Yes, so what we are seeing unfold right now on Lost may just well be the concepts of Level I and Level II multiverses embedded within a larger construal of Level III quantum multiverses....! Extra credit points if you are now flashing on DAVID BOHM's Implicate and Explicate Order! If we move from the more simplistic Level I and Level II  multiverse interpretations to the world of Level III Quantum Multiverses, as observers of Lost we can now see how the island might just well be able to serve not only as (1) a Level I SPATIAL PORTAL among parallel 'verses located in distant regions of space, subject to different initial conditions, and (2) a Level II DIMENSIONAL PORTAL to 'verses subject to different laws of spacetime dimensionality; the island may also be able to function as (3) a Level III TEMPORAL NEXUS providing access to and movement between 'verses comprised of different matter arrangements/outcomes, enabling one not only to 'appear' to move forward and backward in time, but also to travel among any/all possible matter arrangements/outcomes, establishing the conditions and capabilities for a true Adventure On Infinite Earths..! Now THIS is the kind of crackerjack creative finale I'd like to see! Jack reunited with David, stepping into an island bubble/nexus enabling them to spend an  infinite number of lifetimes exploring the vast array of matter arrangements/outcomes. And yes, it would be nice if the nexus were equipped with a quantum computer to help steer away from undesirable outcomes, toward desirable ones, uncertainly of course. What an eye-opening and mind-expanding adventure that would be! Of course, this type of finale would showcase the indomitable human spirit for adventure, the veritably limitless potential for us to shake free from our inertial past lives and join together in a reinventive and reinvigorating 'walkabout' through the broad expanse of creative possibilities looming ahead on the horizon. What lies ahead for us, in the bright light of our futures? Time will tell....
Dr. Todd J. Hostager
_________________________________________________________________________ ENDNOTES: 1. The term "coven" is typically reserved for a group of witches, with "brood" and "clan" designating two distinct forms of vampire groups: "Brood: A group of vampires gathered around a leader (usually their sire). A brood may in time become a clan(qv),,,, Clan: A group of vampires who share certain mystic and physical characteristics." [Source: http://www.phrozen-neon.com/vampire/glossary.htm] 2. For more information about these fascinating Mirror Matter Lost theories, please see: 3. Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance makes this point quite well... 4. For more information on The Prisoner, please see: 5. I first wrote about potential connections among Lost and David Fincher's The Game in my 2/26/09 "Bentham" posting. | |