| [Note: This was completed and posted to the internet at 9:14pm Central DST, on 4/20/10. A version with pictures will be posted a bit later tonight.] THE LAST RECRUIT: LOST IN 7 DAYS CHRONOSPHERIC CRIMINALS ON THE LOST IN SPACETIME ISLAND PRISON SHIP,
PUTTING THE "IS" IN VALIS,
SHEDDING OT/FST LIGHT ON PLATO’S CAVE Accolades around the horn to the Lost creative combine for another heuristic adventure in the land of mirror twin, yin/yang alt/verse enlightenment. As usual, we'll start with some real-time highlights and commentary on tonight's episode, then proceed to pondering what lies beneath the shadow of future plotlines.... 1. Team Flocke and Team Jack, around the campfire.... "Let's catch up...." Jack wants to know what you are, Flocke... Yes, that's the right question.... Flocke says that Locke was a sucker for believing he was brought here for a reason.... Was Locke duped, or is Flocke the super-duper? Are they really in prison? (More on this, below....) Smokey/Flocke admits to masquerading as Christian Shephard.... 2. "We don't have to be trapped here anymore...." Is the island really a PRISON....? 3. Now to the Flash Sideways Timeline (FST)... Ben and Locke are on their way to the hospital.... Now SUN sees Locke and recognizes him. Additional evidence for a looming merger of the timelines, only instead of a (quantum) physical merger.... it is looking more and more like the merger will involve a collapse of the spacetimelines from the standpoint of a joining of previously split CONSCIOUSNESSES.... (More on the consciousness connection, below.) 4. Back to the island... Claire following Jack and Flocke.... For a fleeting moment, Claire looks all nice and sunny, that is for someone on the Darkside! 5. CLAIRE touches Jack... "You're with HIM (Flocke) now....! Hmmm.... In addition to mirror-inverting Jacob's touching mainland excursion at the end of Season 5-- with Jacob touchingly 'infecting' the chosen New Kids On The Block candidates with the LE lightside virus-- Claire's act of touching Jack is certainly looking like a darkside ALEful viral infection, consistent with my Season 6 postings to date.... Heh-heh-heh....! 6. Hurley and Sawyer talking about the sub.... Per my posting last week, I was wondering when the sub would come up as a secondary/alternate way of getting off the island. 7. Yes, the DARKSIDE reference IS indeed apropos, and I've been touching on this in my postings throughout the season.... Is the accompanying ANAKIN reference pointing to Desmond potentially turning to the Dark Side? Will Charlie Hume therefore be pegged to play the LUKE SKYWALKER role in the final episode, THE END? Will that episode play out, in part, some 20 to 30 years in the future, with grown-up AARON, JI YEON, and CHARLIE H. taking part in the war of good and evil? (See my P.S. below for a Smokey/Vader redemption take on this, riffing on the 'Prodigal Son' storyline....) 8. "Of all the gin joints..." Yeah, Sawyer riffed on that classic Casablanca line when talking with Kate about coincidences.... 9. Miles with the surveillance tape, showing Sayid... Sawyer tags him as their bad guy.... 10. "We're all different now..." (Jack to Kate).... Now Zoe and the Widmore crew are at Base Camp..... Yes, the gang's all here.... Flocke smashes the phone given to him by ZOE... Yes, looks like the looming war is about to heat up.... 11. FST.... Desmond meets up with Claire at the adoption agency (lobby).... Des recommends Claire get legal counsel... "could get in a situation that's irreversible" Heh-heh... 15th Floor, the numbers again... The lawyer is ILANA, and she knows Claire... they've been looking for Claire... 12. Yes, this episode continues to 'flash' on the importance of synchronicitous coincidences.... CONSCIOUSNESS.... spanning the 'verses.... 13. Flocke holding a prewar confab, as Widmore's forces have forced their hand. Sawyer reveals his deal with Widmore to Jack... Yeah, SAYID's an ALEful zombie.... And we'll see if Flocke's Army of Darkness 'undead' assassin follows through by pulling the trigger on DES.... 14. "So what did he offer you..." (Des to Sayid) "Where is she now" Yes, Des is right... What will you tell her that you did, to be with her again... Cheating death, thwarting FATE, this all bodes ill for Sayid, seduced by the sly 'ol silver-tongued devil... 15. Sawyer 'HOSES' Sayid... cool move, man.... FST Sawyer... "Thar she blows"... Is that comment presaging a looming nasty explosion in this episode, culling the castaway herd? Yeah, Sawyer's in true form tonight.... Burt Reynolds... SMOKEY and the BANDIT...! 16. Claire's been drinking SMOKEY/FLOCKE's 'kool-aid'.... Yes, the brown ALEful tainted water of Darkness, as per my Season 6 postings... Of course, the oblique reference to Jim Jones and his grape kool-aid of death is apropos.... Dying to be saved, but at what cost, for what purpose, and with what (zombified) results? 17. Sayid tells FLOCKE to go and check him, if you'd like, namely that he did kill Desmond... Is Sayid's zombification waning in the light of day, with him turning toward the lightside, so he's out-duping super-duper Flocke? 18. Now Kate's playing the Flocke/devil game of holding what you want in front of your face, dangling temptation in order to change your allegiance.... Certainly an important theme in Lost is the tension and the struggle between one's allegiance to PRINCIPLES and one's allegiance to self, significant others, wealth, power, etc.... 19. Yes, again we hear the GOING HOME theme... The island may very well turn out to be an ages-old PRISON after all, with Smokey/MIB locked in the CERBERUS role as the hellhound guarding the gate to the underworld, chained to the island, hence the clunky metallic sound when Smokey's on the prowl... (Please see my posting from last week, re: the Smokey/Cerberus connections to the island.) 20. FST, now Jack and David are arriving at the building with ILANA the lawyer and the adoption agency Claire was going to. They're there to hear the reading of Christian's will. Looks like JULIET will turn out to be David's father, after all.... And now Claire's revealed as Jack's half-sister in the FST.... 21. Sawyer's taking his 'turncoat' band to Hydra Island, to meet up with Widmore. Sawyer's PURPLE shirt.... royalty... kingly.... in charge? 22. Hmmm.... If Jack is right about Flocke wanting them to leave, then Flocke may well be (quite justifiably) worried about having someone assume the role of ISLAND PROTECTOR again, filling the void of Jacob, the Prison Warden.... This could thwart key aspects of Smokey's dupeful plan to manipulate castaways into gaining an escape from the islandprison, holding him and his evil bottleverse minions chained/corked.... 23. Jack jumps ship, at Sawyer's earnest behest. Is Sawyer channeling La Fleur laced with liberal doses of that good 'ol bad 'ol man on a mission....BEN? Jack changed his mind.... Yes, the theme of consciousness again comes to the forefront, as per my prior Season 6 postings, the VARIABLES in the equation are being locked into lightside or darkside VALUES.... 24. FST... Sun's in the hospital, and the baby's fine... David has to wait while Jack does the procedure... Locke's the patient, dural sac's obliterated, meaning that Locke no longer has any protection for his SPINE! Jack DEJA VUs FST Locke... 25. Sawyer and turncoats land ashore and are greeted by Zoe and crew at gunpoint. Now we see the scene from a reversed perspective, with HANDCUFFS hanging prominently from the belt of one of Widmore's 'soldiers' in the looming war. The additional PRISON/CRIMINAL-related images keep on a'comin.... Heh-heh-heh.... (More on this, below....) 26. Yes, someone did indeed get their voice back, Frank! Tearful Sun and Jin reunion.... Good stuff! 27. "Deal's off" (Zoe to Sawyer)... Now Widmore's shelling the island, and Jack is knocked out.... Flocke to Jack... "Don't worry... Now you're with me" Be afraid, Jack, be very, very afraid! Psychic, Seer, Oracle, Eater: Everybody Loves Hugo's Homespun, Deep-Fried, Soulful Soothsaying- Yes, Hurley's ability to see what's really happening most definitely extends beyond a Sixth Sense-ability to see Michael, Jacob, Charlie and other players who have ascended to a higher rung/level on the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment (JLE) island-enabled game of life, progress, redemption, and ultimate resolution of Cosmic Daddy issues.... And knowing Darlton and company's predilection for deliciously twisty plot turns, I would not at all be surprised to learn that interspersed within the silver-tongued devilish lining of FLOCKE's verbal seductions are Easter Egged Ova of truthful insights not only into the nature of the island, but also the direction of future plotlines to come.... The 'merger' of the Flocke and Jack bands in tonight's episode ripples outward with richly relevant reverberations on multiple levels, and as we dive more deeply into the lower levels of implicate meanings, we can see how kernels of truth sown into the narrative of prior episodes have seeded the story tapestry with insights now ready to bloom.... Yes, Hurley's multiple references to DINOSAURS, and Flocke's multiple references to CAPTIVITY/IMPRISONMENT may very well be coming together in some rewarding and twisty ways, as we hurtle forward to the series finale.... I would not be surprised to see the opening sequence for Episode 6.15 begin by graphically depicting that first flashful, Big-Bang Incident producing the daisychain of events leading to the Universe as we know it. Flashforwarding in highlight-reel fashion, we witness the birth of life on Earth, and the 'progress' toward higher forms of sentience ala Flannery O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge.." Now we're in the Age of the Dinosaurs, and as we see Brontosauri grazing and T. Rex's terrorizing, a loud, rumbling noise shakes the scene.... Dinosaurs look up to see a fiery, flaming asteroid of doom hurtling through the sky, finally impacting the ocean, sending waves of destruction outward, spewing ash and dust into the atmosphere.... thusly cooling the planet, establishing favorable conditions for REBOOTING the daisychaining game of life, stacking it against the Dinosaurs in favor of progressive sentience development in mammals, leading to primates and eventually to the rise of brainy Homo Sapiens... Cue "Thus Spake Zarathustra".... Did the island serve much the same function as the MONOLITH in 2001: A Space Odyssey? And will Aaron, Ji Yeon, and Charlie Hume fulfill their roles as the STAR CHILDREN, manifesting as they do an evolutionary leap beyond the species proper, the New Kids On The Block, helping to lead us into the Promised Land of a bright new future....? An asteroid scenario may indeed be deployed by the Lost creative combine as a means of explaining where the island came from and what it is. But is it just any old asteroid? Is it simply a lifeless, energy-less husk of mineralized matter? Here is where the energy pockets may come into play, bridging to a larger and more complex view of what the asteroid (and the island) really is.... Building on my prior postings, especially my 4/13/10 Everybody Loves Hugo piece, I would not be surprised to learn that the asteroid was not simply some cold chunk of matter striking Earth in a random manner.... No, here is where Flocke's recurring references to IMPRISONMENT, CAPTIVITY, and PRISON may come into full relief and revelatory fulgence.... You see, the asteroid was no mere hunk of dead matter; no, it was a Dark and Light matter/energy-pocketed PRISON, specially-designed and built to house a very special sort of cosmic criminal.... namely, the EVIL ONE and his dark 'red wine' evil bottleverse minions.... As I've previously suggested, the asteroid may serve as both a figurative and literal instantiation of Lucifer's FALL from the good graces of GOD, punishment for attempting to resolve Cosmic Daddy issues through the ill-advised 'end run' strategem of attempting to become a god unto oneself..... Back to Earth.... Episode 6.15's opening sequence may finish by showing us the aftermath of the asteroid's impact, ending the Age of Dinosaurs, setting the stage for the rise of mammals, primates, and Homo Sapiens.... Cut to the first commercial break.... Back from the break, we may see what's left of the asteroid's smoldering core, floating on the surface of the ocean, with smoke and dust swirling up and about and crackling Teslic noises providing a crude soundtrack as the matter/energy prison settles into its new home, a base camp of future operations to come. Years, decades, millennia flash by, and the inevitable layers of accumulated of organic and inorganic matter on the island provide additional material resources enabling it to transform into a literal Garden of Eden PARADISE.... Back then, as now, the island's unique energy properties produced a range of seemingly magical effects, from spinning compass needles to Rose-reminiscent island hotspots of healing power and more, including disappearances and reappearances of objects, animals, and persons, a powerful source of awe and wonderment for ancient inhabitants, foreshadowing the Orchid Hatch Casimir-enabled DHARMA experiments. Through energetic and other means-- perhaps even VIRAL-- primates who came into contact with the island were genetically altered in ways contributing to progressively greater sentience, not altogether unrelated to JLE game of life, of course. Shades of the 2001: A Space Odyssey Monolith, indeed.... One day while in the Garden, Eve is tempted by the Evil One and she partakes from the Tree of Knowledge, a tree grown from and nourished by the spring-fed waters flowing from one of the underground island energy pockets. This sets up the Fall of Humanity, our first 'infection' with the ALEful brown tainted virus, inserting its Dark Matter/Energy into the very fibre of our existence, and we are sinful, proud, selfish, wrathful, and more.... Ancient inhabitants are drawn to and seduced by the island's 'magical' powers, giving rise to the development of a mystery cult worshiping the 'gods' who reside on the island, creating rich oral narrative tapestries of deities representing various forms of islandpower (dark and light), as well as key aspects of daily life (solar and lunar cycles, etc.) In addition to those inclined toward mystical matters, other ancients explore the island with a proto-scientific interest, examining the material/energetic side of things from an analytical perspective. Here we see those whom Flocke referenced in his exchange with Desmond at the well, prior to pushing him down that rabbit hole.... These were proto-scientific inquirers and ancient engineers in the vein of Archimedes and the Antikytherans, looking to uncover the source of the spinning compass needle phenomenon, and more. Through excavating the well site and beyond, the ancients exposed the island's underworld of energy pockets to the light of day, with inadvertently dire consequences. Here is where the myth of Heracles may come into play, as the Evil One/Smokey may have first become un-leashed from the islandprison as a result of ancient excavations, and subsequently 'chained' back to the island through use of ancient/arcane wisdom and technology. This is likely the period in which the FDW and other ancient tech devices were implanted on the island, as I proposed in my 4/13/10 posting, presaged by other postings in prior years..... Through their excavations, did the ancients upset the balance of the energy-pocketed PRISON mechanism holding the Dark Lord Evil One in place? In addition to keeping the Evil One imprisoned, in last week's posting I proposed that the excavations also may have inadvertently uncovered and activated the location of an islandportal to the evil bottleverse of which Jacob has spoken, a literal gate/portal to HELL, a Gehennic Lake of Fire bottleverse imprisoning the Evil One's minions. One of the more intriguing implications of viewing the island in FLOCKE's terms-- as a very real and literal PRISON-- is that it begs the nontrivial issue of who will serve as its WARDEN, overseeing the proceedings to insure that the islandprison's integrity remains intact, such that the Evil One remains chained as CERBERUS/Smokey, guarding the portal/gate to the Underworld Hellverse..... How interesting that the need for a warden/protector may be necessary in no small part due to the curiosity of the species, resulting in an exploration of the island's mysterious powers by ancient mystics and proto-scientists, inadvertently unearthing and exposing its dark secrets to the light of day, disrupting the buried/sealed integrity of a prehistoric, energy-pocketed prison holding Smokey and the evil bottleverse captive for eons. And the mystery cult/sect worshiping the island's powers may have also had a role in loosening the chains of darkside captives through rituals invoking their presence (shades of OUIJA boards, witchcraft, and Aleister Crowley!) Back to the past, the island Deep Flashback backstory, and Episode 6.15.... As I proposed in my 4/13/10 posting, in 6.15 we may indeed see MIB and Jacob at play on the island, chased at some point being by Smokey, with trees a'poppin and with MIB finally ending up falling into that veritable Alice In Wonderland 'rabbit hole', while Jacob frantically tries to hold onto MIB's hand, but it's slipping away.... And of course, this mirrors LOCKE's near-rabbit-hole experience in Season One, only this time MIB is not so lucky and he falls down into the rabbit hole.... In the process, MIB is fully and intimately exposed to Smokey Darkside essence, most likely through falling into a mucky, brown-tainted ALEful pool of water at the bottom of the rabbit hole, where he is infected just like SAYID was, and the evil essence virus moves in AMMIT-fashion, consuming his lightside humanity, moving toward the heart... and he is taken, shaken, and stirred.... Meanwhile, Jacob scurries around on the surface, looking for any means to help bring his brother back to the light of day... He frantically cuts down a vine and returns to the Smokey hole, lowering it while he calls to his brother. MIB wakes from his FALL, and he grabs the vine and is pulled back up to the surface.... Like Sayid, MIB goes through a prolonged period of zombified transformation... In the end, he is able to channel Smokey (or rather, Smokey is able to channel through him) in a manner not unlike BOB in TWIN PEAKS.... Yes, Leland Palmer was similarly 'infected' with a darkside brown ALEment of evil in Twin Peaks, not-so-ironically when he was young and foolish enough to let the evil playmate in.... And the BOB/Twin Peaks-cum-Smokey opening segment in The Substitute making more and more sense, beyond mere homage.... Heh-heh-heh....! Episode 6.15 continues by disclosing how Jacob learned about the true nature of the island, what really happened to his brother, and why he must now devote his life to serving as the island protector, which really translates into SERVING A LIFETIME SENTENCE AS PRISON WARDEN.... This knowledge may have been imparted through consultation with fellow members of an island mystery cult. And yes, Jacob is now the warden, and Smokey/MIB is the prime inmate, the Cerberus chained to the island, guarding the gate/portal to the Underworld Hellverse.... Flocke's remark to Desmond in Episode 6.11 is making more and more sense.... Recall Des' comment about wanting to be freed, as he had no place else to go... And Flocke's remark- "That's the best argument I've heard against captivity." Of course you caught the dark irony of that statement presaging, as it did, the Evil One's deeper, deceitful plan to enact his Cerberus side through recruiting the Lost castaways as captives, luring them into island imprisonment through the ruseful guise of appearing to help them find a way off the island! And how interesting to consider that if the island/asteroid is a prison built by God to send the Fallen Lucifer and his minions to Earth, and the history of contact by our species with this tempting GARDEN OF EDEN prison has led to our own FALL, that in no small way we are the descendents, the sons and daughters, of Fallen, Sinful CRIMINALS.... Hmmm.... Is the Earth just one big penal colony, with us as its prisoners, formed in a fractal/emergent manner from First Contact with a prehistoric, ancient asteroidal penal colony Fallen to Earth, housing Lucifer and his Darkside Minions? Is AUSTRALIA, therefore, not simply a random or convenient choice by the Lost creative combine, arising as it did as a nation from criminal roots as a PENAL COLONY, housing an overflow of undesirables in Great Britain...? Lost In 7 Days: Chronospheric Criminals On The Lost In Spacetime Island Prison Ship- What do you get when you combine the following narrative ingredients and mix well, in the hearts and minds of a cutting-edge creative team: (1) a 'protector' overseeing and insuring the fundamental integrity of a facility aimed at keeping the Evil One and his dark minions imprisoned, (2) an ongoing struggle between the protector and the Evil One, who is an intelligent, deceptive, and seductive 'tempter', (3) the ability to travel through time, using power and technology not yet fully understood or disclosed, (4) the ability to alter timelines and send information across timelines in and across time, even back to the past, and (5) an acknowledged prospect for making progress as a species....? Sounds a lot like LOST, right? Actually, these very same narrative elements (and more) are found in another ground-breaking show-- 7 DAYS-- which played on the UPN channel for three seasons, from October 1998 to May 2001: "The plot follows a secret branch of the United States' National Security Agency who have developed a time travelling device based upon alien technology found at Roswell. As the opening of the show says, the Chronosphere, or Backstep Sphere, sends one human being back in time seven days to avert disasters. The show's name refers to the fact that the Backstep Project can only backstep seven days because of limitations imposed by the fuel source and its reactor. As the fuel source is limited, there is a strict mandate that they only Backstep for events relating to "National Security". The backstep team and the equipment are stationed in a base called Never Never Land, which is in a secret location somewhere in the desert of Nevada." [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_(TV_series) ] Although from this synopsis the show may sound more like a cross between Time Tunnel and Alias than Lost, on closer inspection some eerie parallels begin to emerge. Like DESMOND in Lost, the protagonist in 7 Days-- Frank Parker, played by Jonathan LaPaglia-- travels through spacetime and is privileged with the ability to recall not only what happens in new timelines, but also what happened in the original timelines from which the interventions/alterations occurred. Yes, this decidedly Dr. Manhattanesque ability 'riffs' on and materially instantiates MINKOWSKIAN spacetime: "Significantly, the natural laws of time travel within the series operate to prevent cohabitation of a timeline by more than one version of a person or object: anything arriving from the future replaces its past self. Paradoxically, the effects of the future upon the new arrivals remain in place, creating a paradox that allows information to be sent to the past. For this reason, the on-duty chrononaut is typically confined to base as the absence of the chronosphere and/or its pilot is used as a means of determining a backstep has taken place (and to prevent civilians from seeing Frank vanish into non-existence when replaced by his future self)." Darlton and company's ingenious 'riffs' on the above themes have taken the cohabitation problem and solution to the next logical level, with DESMOND's TRAVELS focused not so much on sending his whole body through spacetime, but rather on sending his CONSCIOUSNESS through 'Minkowski Land,' spanning alternate timelines/verses.... Paralleling the natural laws of preventing temporal corporeal/bodily cohabitation observed in UPN's 7 DAYS, in Lost we see that any CONSCIOUSNESS arriving from: (1) the FUTURE, or (2) an alternate TIMELINE (i.e., arriving from a SIDEWAYSverse), will replace the past or 'original' consciousness for the duration of time that the Future or Sideways consciousness is present in the past or in the original timeline.... And while this is occurring, the past or original consciousness is pushed/moved to the future or the sideways timeline. Through this approach, DESMOND is able to move his consciousness (and thus transfer information) in at least two powerful ways: (1) He can 'flash' VERTICALLY along the same timeline, moving backward and forward in spacetime, on the same timeline; and (2) He can 'flash HORIZONTALLY across different timelines, moving SIDEWAYS from one altverse to another. It remains to be seen if he is able to flash in a third combinatorial fashion, based on the above, flashing forward or backward in time, across different timelines/altverses.... The 6.12 'Hurley' episode unpacked some intriguing ways in which persons other than Des may acquire 'flashes' of insight into and information about alternate timelines. In my 4/13/10 posting I noted five such approaches for piercing the 'reality veil' separating alternate timelines/verses: * EM * Water * Mental Illness and/or Brain Damage * Mind-Altering Techniques and Drugs/Medications * Love (esp. Kissing, touch/water-based) What LIBBY and DESMOND may be showing us in the 6.12 episode is a new form of consciousness manipulation, intimately involving the quantum physical nature of the multiverse.... In short, we may have witnessed the first glimpses of a new species -progressive power to not merely flash consciousness/information across 'verses through a SUBSTITUTIONal mechanism; no, we may have instead been shown some sneak peeks of a new form of CONSCIOUSNESS, beyond a Richard Alpertian 'Be Here Now' approach, to Being Here AND There, Now.... enabling the species to spacetime travel across different verses and dimensional planes not with rockets, machinery, or esoteric devices, but rather with the power of an expanded consciousness.... And how might this occur? Through.... EM, Water, Mental Illness, Mind-Altering Techniques and Drugs, and Love.... Will the looming merger of the OT/FST timelines be achieved through an EM burst? Through castaways joining hands while submerged in the clear water, spring-fed temple healing pool, figuratively and literally baptizing a new conjoined 'reality' into existence? Or will the merger result when a mentally ill Lenny Sims dissociative dreamworld of multiple timelines/altverses is 'resolved' in a clarifying manner through changing his meds to a new, more powerful and effective, prescription? Flashing on a Riverworld connection, those fabled That 70's Show hazy confabs in Eric Foreman's basement, and the Lost Carlos Castaneda connection, will we instead see the castaways sitting around a campfire, ganja smoke swirling about in a mesmerizing manner, leveraging mind-altering drugs to contact and merge with the alternate timeline? Or will we instead see them fall into dyadic embraces, using the power of love to kiss away the splitverse disunion? Did the Beatles have it right, after all.... ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE...? Even Patrick McGoohan flashed a winking, knowing nod to this, in the fast, frenetic end to the Portmeirion 'Island-equivalent'/Village/Prison in the classic 1960's televisionary masterpiece, THE PRISONER.... We all recall Jacob's telling beachside exchange with MIB regarding the fundamental nature of the game in play on the island.... MIB:” I don't have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?”
JACOB: “You are wrong.”
MIB: “Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.”
JACOB: “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.” My 5/14/09 "The Incident" posting riffed on the New Kids On The Block (NKOTB) Easter Egg by noting parallels among Arthur C. Clarke's classic sci fi novel, CHILDHOOD'S END and what Jacob may be strongly implying in the final comment above.... Progress of the species.... Rising and converging.... Moving higher up the Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment, thusly achieving greater awareness, higher-order consciousness, transcending matter-fettered mind, progressing toward the Omega Point reality? Yes, this does indeed loop back to 7 Days connections: "In the final episode of the first season (Episode 21, "Lifeboat"), it was revealed that the Roswell crash was actually an alien craft transporting convicts to a penal colony in another solar system when it developed a malfunction and crash-landed on Earth. The aliens were preserved and kept in a secret holding facility deep within Never Never Land, but one of them (nicknamed "Adam") came back to life and attempted to cause a nuclear power plant meltdown. These aliens are referred to as " Greys" and were said to originate from the Zeta Reticuli system. Donovan explained to Parker in the pilot episode that in order to cross the vast distances between stars, the aliens have developed a propulsion technology that bent space and time (similar to a warp drive). The NSA have been reverse-engineering the technology left behind from the crash, but was still unsuccessful at replicating a warp drive for faster-than-light travel. They have, however, harnessed the alien fuel source, Element-115, to bend spacetime and the end result was the ability to time travel (explained by Donovan in Season 1, Episode 1). It would appear that the aliens, who were used to faster-than-light travel, had developed cognitive functions that made them aware of multiple timelines and realities. This was revealed in the first season finale in which the alien Adam was aware of the timelines before and after Parker's backstep (Season 1, Episode 21 - "Lifeboat")." Hmmm.... In the final episodes of Lost, will we learn that Desmond-- along with the NKOTB Aaron, Ji Yeon, Charlie Hume, and Walt-- are just the right stuff in terms of what the ultimate, person-behind-the-curtain game players are looking for, as evidence we have sufficiently progressed as a species, literally now BEYOND the species to perhaps even a new Genus (ala Arzt's comment to Ben in the altverse school lab)....? Certainly tracking Desmond's own progressive development and expansion of spacetime consciousness transference powers suggests this may be the case. I shudder to think of the possibilities latent in the NKOTB generation. As I suggested near the end of my 5/14/09 posting, powerful spacetime abilities may be needed to avert a looming planetary catastrophe in the form of another hurtling asteroid, or even a gamma ray pulse emanating eons ago from some distant supernova, now threatening to 'cook' the Earth.... And how interesting, again, to note that FLOCKE's recurring verbal riffs and references to themes of CAPTIVITY/IMPRISONMENT may carry more than mere figurative/symbolic weight on the show, especially if we learn in THE END that the island's true origin was literally as a PRISON, holding captive a race of more highly 'progressed' alien criminals who possessed more highly evolved cognitive (and other) functions yielding MINKOWSKIAN spacetime awareness of (and movement among) multiple timelines and realities, ala 7 DAYS, with Smokey/Flocke playing a 7 Days 'DARK ADAM' role.... Higher order, extradimensional inmates, trapped within an energy-pocketed islandprison.... Hmmm.... I wonder how they would try to convince lower-order beings such as ourselves to enact a course of action that would ultimately free them from this prison, enabling them to 'return home' and wreak havoc as criminals are wont to do....? Might these very same devious inmates, possessing Minkowskian spacetime cognitive faculties/awareness, with access to energy pockets providing a convenient power source, attempt to seduce us through lies and deceptions, appealing to our very hopes and dreams in an FST manner, setting us up not only to destroy our only means of exiting the island (blowing up the plane and the sub), but also luring us into releasing additional lightside energy found in concentrated pockets on the island.... By so doing, would we inadvertently imprison ourselves as stranded captives on the island-- thus realizing the nightmare of being trapped with the Evil One on the island, as presaged Hurley's incisive remarks in Episode 6.12-- while also unknowingly releasing the Evil One from his Cerberus-chained, Hellgate-guarding fate, uncorking the dark bottleverse in the process...? In addition to the 7 Days connections, Lost links to Alex Proyas' classic 1998 sci fi film DARK CITY are instructive here, with particular reference and relevance to themes of unknowing imprisonment, the use of corpses, and the importance of SOULS: "....the Strangers are endangered extraterrestrial parasites who use corpses as their hosts. Having a collective consciousness, the Strangers have been experimenting with humans to analyze the human soul in the hopes that some insight might be revealed that would help their race survive. Schreber reveals Murdoch as an anomaly who inadvertently awoke during the midnight process when Schreber was in the middle of fashioning his identity as a murderer. The three men embark to find Shell Beach, which ultimately exists only as a billboard at the edge of the city. Frustrated, Murdoch tears through the wall, revealing a hole into outer space. The men are confronted by the Strangers, including Mr. Hand, who holds Emma hostage. In the ensuing fight, Bumstead, along with one of the Strangers, falls through the hole into space, revealing the city as an enormous space habitat surrounded by a force field.... Dark City is a retelling of the Allegory of the Cave used by Greek philosopher Plato, who conveyed the allegory as a fictional dialogue between his teacher Socrates and Plato's brother Glaucon. In the film, the city inhabitants are prisoners who do not realize they are in a prison. John Murdoch's escape from the prison parallels the escape from the cave in the allegory. He is assisted by Dr. Schreber, who explains the city's mechanism as Socrates explains to Glaucon how the shadows in the cave are cast. Murdoch however becomes more than Glaucon; Loughlin writes, "He is a Glaucon who comes to realize that Socrates' tale of an upper, more real world, is itself a shadow, a forgery." Like 7 Days and Lost, Dark City focuses on the core theme of people existing as unknowing prisoners, sleepwalking through their everyday lives in clockwork, chronos fashion, unaware of the full nature and extent of their imprisonment. Mirroring the function of the surface appearance of the island in Lost as a lush Garden of Edenic paradise, the true identity of the prison in Dark City is hidden beneath the perceptual veneer of a 'surface reality' metropolis, and how interesting it is that both 'prisons' are demarcated from the outer world by a FORCE FIELD, which is not altogether surprising as an element in the design of a prison..... The Allegory of the Cave reference is shared by Lost and Dark City, with the SHADOW/FORGERY Flash Sideways Timeline (FST) now serving as a Season 6 manifestation of that ages-old heuristic device sprung from the mind of PLATO. 1 This 'prison-based' allegory will only gain in importance, as we head toward the final conclusion of the series in THE END, including the potential for a final 'big reveal' in THE END of an 'alien/extraterrestrial-imprisonment-and-testing-of-humanity-on-the-island' subtext undergirding the foundational narrative structure of Lost, using shadow/alternate timelines and realities as the basis for tempting tests of our ability to see 'truth', determining in the process whether we as a species have sufficiently progressed to a higher-level, more expansive consciousness able to perceive multiple timelines/realities.... The Return Of The Archons: Putting The "IS" In The VALIS? Themes of unwitting imprisonment, living one's everyday life out in a numbed, zombified state, controlled by a darker unseen force played a prominent role in The Return Of The Archons, an episode of the original STAR TREK series: "The Enterprise has entered orbit around planet Beta III in the star system C-111, on a mission to discover the fate of the starship Archon and its crew which disappeared 100 years previously. Sulu and Lt. O'Neil are sent down to investigate. The town in which they find themselves, and its inhabitants, look as if they're from the late 19th century midwest. The people are polite, tranquil, almost zombie-like. But the two crew members are being pursued by a menacing robed figure (a "Lawgiver", it transpires) carrying a tube-like device. Just before Sulu is beamed out he is hit by an invisible field from the tube and rendered docile, like the rest of the population. After materializing on the Enterprise, Sulu, in a dreamlike state, accuses his crew mates of being "not of the Body". His says "They knew we were Archons" and mumbles "Landru, Landru". Yes, this certainly reminds one of the ALEful transformation of SAYID from lightside candidate to darkside Team FLOCKE assassin. Sulu's response mirrors Sayid's state in Sundown, as well as the eerie Quantumly-Entangled collective mind 'of the Body' group dynamics observed in that episode. "Back in their cell, Kirk and Spock conclude that Beta III's society is so soulless that it must be being controlled by a computer. Kirk decides that the machine must be deactivated.... The Lawgivers on guard are overpowered and Marplon leads Kirk and Spock to the Hall of Audiences to communicate with Landru. The projection appears again. Kirk and Spock blast through the wall behind it with their phasers (returned to them by Marplon) to reveal the projector itself – a powerful computer created by Landru, before his death, to run the idyllic society he helped establish. But although Landru fed his knowledge and aspirations into the machine he could not give it his wisdom and the computer ended up trying to make the population conform to its own standards of perfection. Individuals who resisted its conformity were absorbed or terminated. The computer's own prime directive to create a perfect, harmonious society led it to deprive the people of their freewill and creativity. When Kirk explains this to the computer it reacts by destroying itself and thus releasing its grip on the planet's inhabitants." Here we see glimpses of yet another intriguing potential plotpath Darlton and company may deploy as a frame-breaking, plot-twisty, O. Henryesque 'reveal' in the upcoming series finale, THE END. In addition to learning more about the nature and functions of the island as a prison, we may also witness a 'person-behind-the-curtain' reveal showing us that there is no 'person' or higher-order organic or energetic sentience behind it all.... instead, it may simply turn out to be an ancient machine, an ages-old computer designed and built by some alien race, eons ago, laying at the very core of the island, powered as it is by the surrounding pockets of energy.... Yes, this type of a 'reveal' would really, really, put the "IS" in the VALIS, namely "Intelligence System," as well as its currently popular computing-related lexical form as "Information Systems". Hmmmm.... The more I think about it, the more it would make sense that the island could very well be a computer-based experiential TOY designed and built by some ancient advanced alien race, and the island simply 'bounced' like a kid's ball, away from the alien child's backyard, off to some other spacetime place in time, to our neck of the woods in the Milky Way galaxy, finally landing on Earth.... Forcefully splashing into the ocean at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, sending countless amounts of debris into the upper atmosphere, producing a 'winter' effect that cooled the planet sufficiently to precipitate the Fall of the Dinosaurian era. How ironic it would indeed be, if the rise of mammals, primates, and ultimately our own species, turned out to be critically dependent on the happenstance loss of a toy by an alien child....? Armed with artificial intelligence/sentience, equipped with progressively superior matter-energy manipulation capabilities to our own, such a toy would be capable of generating ALTERNATE ROLE-BASED GAME PLAY SCENARIOS for the enjoyment of the children/players. And it is these alternate scenarios that we as observers perceive as alternate timelines/verses/realities. Accordingly, the islandtoy is a sophisticated REALITY GENERATING, SPACETIME MANIPULATING device, a 'toy' of which Minkowski would most certainly be proud.... 2 Contact with the islandtoy spurred ancient peoples not only to develop mystery cults worshiping its 'magical' powers, but also prompted proto-scientists/ancient engineering geniuses to excavate accumulated terran matter/dross covering the 'toy' and implant their own 'controls' onto the toy (the FDW, etc.), enabling them to play with it and leverage some of its powers. Of course, one of the artificially-intelligent toy's sentient subroutines involves an 'evil' entity avatar, a shape-shifting entity that can move from a black smoke manifestation to a form that creates a literal matter-energy copy of another being, subject to restrictions in the fine print of the game play, however. Thus in tonight's episode we see Flocke telling Jack what we already suspected for some time now.... A 'copy' can be created of a person by the islandtoy, through the operation of the evil subroutine, if the person died off-island and their dead body is subsequently brought to the island, with prominent cases in point being Christian Shephard and John Locke.... One day while playing on the islandtoy, MIB was sucked into the evil subroutine's 'rabbit hole' function and the alien toy assimilated MIB into its evil subroutine, altering MIB's matter-energy profile-- the very nature of his being-- in the process. Hence, now MIB can shape-shift to Smokey, and vice-versa. Jacob finally freed MIB from the rabbit hole, and subsequently they were taught the operating rules of the game aka the guidelines for using the TOY.... Perhaps they triggered the playback of a hologrammatic, avatar-based manual for using the islandtoy. Quite understandably, over the years, decades, and centuries, Jacob and MIB tired of playing with this alien, Minkowskian spacetime-reality-generating toy, a sentiment we've all shared as the bloom and the fascination inevitably fade from playing with that shiny brand new toy we got as a kid, for our birthday. Yes, based on the apparent nature and age of their clothing, we may learn that Amelia Earhart and her navigator are the skeletons in the cave, hiding from Smokey as one of the many visitors-cum-game-players brought to the island over the years. And while Lost may ultimately be revealed as a game, I'm now wondering if it is an even simpler, more species-humbling form of a game, namely an Alien Child's TOY.... And how supremely and humbly ironic it would be, were we to learn that the conditions for our very ascension as the top species on Earth, and perhaps even our looming salvation from some cosmic doom now hurtling toward our home planet, were all made possible through the chance loss of a higher-order, extradimensional child's toy.... Will this be served up as a final-course, Twilight Zone-twisty, O. Henryesque 'reveal' in THE END? Time will tell.... Dr. Todd J. Hostager P.S. For a real mind-bending twist in the series finale-- riffing on the Star Wars Anakin/Darkside reference in tonight's episode and hearkening back to my 'Prodigal Son' plot possibility-- it would indeed be interesting to see a role-reversal play out, with Smokey/Flocke playing the Prodigal Son role and rebuking his dark Vader ways, laying down his life to save others at the last minute, thusly redeeming his own life and saving his soul ala Anakin Skywalker.... all while Jacob's wrathful higher-dimensional self succumbs to the Darkside... and we know he's gone bad when his eyes begin to glow fiery red and he is cast into the Smokey pit and chained ala Cerberus, now guarding the gates to the evil bottleverse... Heh-heh-heh....! ______________________________________________________________ ENDNOTES: 1. Yes, Plato's Allegory of the Cave has loomed largely in the background of Lost for quite some time.... Plaudits to the Lost creative combine for using a 'real' cave on the island to cue a figurative/symbolic basis for narrative expositions into the nature of reality, fate, free will, and truth: "Plato imagines a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Plato, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners." Darlton and company have, in a delightfully delicious manner, taken these themes to a higher narrative level in Season 6 through using the Flash Sideways Timeline (FST) as an intriguing, observable manifestation of the shadowy glimpses of the coulda's, woulda's, shoulda's that all-too-often pierce the veil of our everyday lives.... Yes, among other things, the FST is prompting us to reconsider what is really real in our lives, and whether we are focusing on living here right now, on this plane of existence, or whether we are instead living like prisoners in the cave, our attention diverted to the shadowy realm of coulda/woulda/shoulda living, in a self-imposed form of an FST, chained to pondering and regretting past possibilities gone by. Living life to the fullest, instead, involves a combination of ongoing openness to the importance of both: 1) a present-focused Alpertian Be Here Now approach, and (2) an appreciation of future-focused Minkowskian spacetime life potentials and possibilities.... This is the leading, bleeding knifeblade edge of living in the moment, aware of past choices but focused more on the moment and the future possibilities emerging in full bloom, flashing in front of our very eyes.... Not Fate either/or Free Will, but rather a both/and higher-order realization of openness to seeing how a confluence of Fate and Free Will can take us on far more interesting adventures than we have ever imagined.... DESMOND not only gets it, he gets it right.... "See you in another life, brutha (and sista)!" The flashing light of narrative and existential insight provided to us in the heuristic comparisons and contrasts of the OT and the FST helps us better understand and appreciate the nature of our own imprisonment in the shadowy caves of our everyday lives. And while we may not have achieved Desmond's literal ability to flash among the verses of light and shadowy realities, we certainly can take stock in his catchphrase philosophy, desiring not to Quantum Suicide ala Riverworld, from this life to another, but rather to embrace life and live it to the fullest, embracing a Minkowskian Fate and Free Will approach to authoring our own threads in the ongoing collective process of weaving an ages-old cosmic tapestry, comforted in the knowledge that we too will See each other in another life, kindred bruthas and sistas.... 2. The use of WILLIE WONKA music in the 6.13 trailer shown at the end of last week's episode once again refers us to intriguing connections to Roald Dahl's classic children's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In addition to underscoring links to children and childhood-- consistent with a view of the island as an alien child's toy-- the Wonka connection also directs our attention to tests of morality embedded within a game-of-elimination format, focused on discerning a proper successor for Wonka as head of the chocolate factory. Yes, as others have already noted, the obvious link to Lost is that Wonka's on-site auditions for a replacement is analogous to Jacob's search for a successor in his role as island protector. More ominous, however, is the chilling prospect of an ELIMINATION-ROUND format for Lost, with Hurley's prediction of deaths to come being realized as we hurtle headlong toward the final episodes of the series.... Will we see most of our cherished band of castaways eliminated in the coming episodes, with one person left in the end, rising to take up the mantle of island protector? Or will we see that-- like Charlie Pace, Michael, and others before them-- those who have been eliminated will remain as game players on the island, operating on a higher plane of existence in the multi-runged Jacob's Ladder of Enlightenment game? And in the final closing episodes of the series, will we see a last T-Zone twisty 'reveal', with Hurley, Libby, Sims, and others sitting in the Santa Rosa psych ward rec room, flashing on, in, and through multiple 'versic realities, fueled by mental illness augmented through medications? Looking around the room, we see shelves and tables housing books, toys, comic books, etc. And what lies in the shadow of these rec room resources? An odd hand-me-down bricolage of archetypal narrative raw materials... From a musty old T. Rex/Godzilla plush toy to a Green Flash comic book, and more.... Of course, book titles would range from Lord of the Flies to Stranger in a Strange Land, from Paradise Lost to Watership Down, from VALIS to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, from The Brothers Karamazov to Shadowlands, from Alice in Wonderland to Everything That Rises Must Converge, from A Separate Reality to Finnegan's Wake, from A Wrinkle in Time to A Brief History of Time, and more.... These are the rich narrative resources to which the patients have been exposed, providing them with a powerful set of raw materials from which to weave a collective tapestry of 'reality'. In the closing moments, we see a group therapy session with Dr. Brooks probing claims by Hurley, Libby, and Sims of a looming threat to the continued existence of life on Earth as we know it.... Is this just another chapter in the continuing saga of their shared delusion of life on a magical, lush paradisical island? Or are they particularly-well-equipped as oracles of our impending doom, through powerful abilities to pierce the veils of the alternate verses, seeing what really lies beneath the shadows of our everyday lives, chained as we are to our 'normal' view of one verse? Who is really the blind, with the sideways blinders on? Hmmm... What if you knew the truth of what was looming on the dire horizon to come, but your status as a mental patient in a psych ward straightjackets you in a Catch-22 of unbelievability? Will all be Lost as we fail to consider what may lie ahead for us all, in THE END....? | |