While thinking about the mystery in the title (how we can presume after The Incident - the most important mystery of all Lost)and reading some cyberpunk and transhumanist stuff I got one pretty wild idea. Frankly, I don't treat it (entirely) seriously myself and I really don't think this is what we are going to learn in season 6,but I think it at least has some logic to it.
First, a little warning: if you hate any ideas of 'alien influence' on Lost, you're probably going to hate this.
Jacob and his nameless nemesis are aliens,but not your usual type of aliens. They are alien AIs that came to the Earth on unmanned (unalienned:) starship that crashed on the Island few thousand years ago. Technology of that ship,especially it's wormhole-based FTL drive is responsible for spacetime anomalies on the Island. The AIs are of classic transhumanist variety - really powerful guys,much more intelligent and scientifically advanced that humans and able to transfer their minds to different types of 'vessels',mechanical,organic and maybe even some others that our science don't know about. They either once have been single superconsciousness that somehow got fragmented (ala Wintermute and Neuromancer and then the loa in Sprawl trilogy) or have always been separate entities. In the second case, there've probably been a third one,maybe the leader and captain of the ship.that got killed,or 'irreperably damaged' during the crash. What's important is our two artilects have ver! y different purposes,representing two sides of one mind if they have once been such a mind,or simply resulting from their programming if they have been separate from the begining.
The one we know as Jacob is a scientist,he observes the indigenious lifeforms,paying special attention to the intelligent ones(humans) and waiting for the day when they will be sufficiently advanced to make first really opened contact. The other one is a guard who evaluates possible dangers and protects what's left of their opriginal mission. Long time ago he evaluated our species as dangerous and hopelessly destructive so he wants to protect his master's (or his own species' if they no longer have any masters) technology and unique anomally that the Island has become from falling into human hands.
Many centuries ago both AIs changed their original form (whatever it was). To better understand humans he's been observing scientist one transferred his consciousness into artificially created human-like (altough not aging) body and named himself Jacob. Guard did something very different and transformed himself into strange electromagnetic lifeform we use to know as Smokie,able to absorb memories of living and freshly dead humans and creating copies of recently deceased.
Gradually their objectives became more and more incompatible, their conflict growing stronger and stronger. What stopped them from fighting was their programming that made it possible for them to hate each other but somehow impossible to kill each other. However,as Morpheus nicely put it,rules of every system can be bend and broken you only need to know how to do it. I'm definitelly not ready to tell what's the nature of the 'loophole', but it surely involves Jacob's current organic nature andsomething much deeper, that have been in the programming from the beginning. Whatever it was, MiB finally found it.
How I stated in the begining I myself don't treat this theory 100% seriously (to be honest I'm much closer to 'ancient Romans appointed as guards of the Island by previous, Egyptian guards and bestowed with unbelievable powers' kind of thing)but I simply like the idea of AIs becoming sort of angelic and demonic beings.
First, a little warning: if you hate any ideas of 'alien influence' on Lost, you're probably going to hate this.
Jacob and his nameless nemesis are aliens,but not your usual type of aliens. They are alien AIs that came to the Earth on unmanned (unalienned:) starship that crashed on the Island few thousand years ago. Technology of that ship,especially it's wormhole-based FTL drive is responsible for spacetime anomalies on the Island. The AIs are of classic transhumanist variety - really powerful guys,much more intelligent and scientifically advanced that humans and able to transfer their minds to different types of 'vessels',mechanical,organic and maybe even some others that our science don't know about. They either once have been single superconsciousness that somehow got fragmented (ala Wintermute and Neuromancer and then the loa in Sprawl trilogy) or have always been separate entities. In the second case, there've probably been a third one,maybe the leader and captain of the ship.that got killed,or 'irreperably damaged' during the crash. What's important is our two artilects have ver! y different purposes,representing two sides of one mind if they have once been such a mind,or simply resulting from their programming if they have been separate from the begining.
The one we know as Jacob is a scientist,he observes the indigenious lifeforms,paying special attention to the intelligent ones(humans) and waiting for the day when they will be sufficiently advanced to make first really opened contact. The other one is a guard who evaluates possible dangers and protects what's left of their opriginal mission. Long time ago he evaluated our species as dangerous and hopelessly destructive so he wants to protect his master's (or his own species' if they no longer have any masters) technology and unique anomally that the Island has become from falling into human hands.
Many centuries ago both AIs changed their original form (whatever it was). To better understand humans he's been observing scientist one transferred his consciousness into artificially created human-like (altough not aging) body and named himself Jacob. Guard did something very different and transformed himself into strange electromagnetic lifeform we use to know as Smokie,able to absorb memories of living and freshly dead humans and creating copies of recently deceased.
Gradually their objectives became more and more incompatible, their conflict growing stronger and stronger. What stopped them from fighting was their programming that made it possible for them to hate each other but somehow impossible to kill each other. However,as Morpheus nicely put it,rules of every system can be bend and broken you only need to know how to do it. I'm definitelly not ready to tell what's the nature of the 'loophole', but it surely involves Jacob's current organic nature andsomething much deeper, that have been in the programming from the beginning. Whatever it was, MiB finally found it.
How I stated in the begining I myself don't treat this theory 100% seriously (to be honest I'm much closer to 'ancient Romans appointed as guards of the Island by previous, Egyptian guards and bestowed with unbelievable powers' kind of thing)but I simply like the idea of AIs becoming sort of angelic and demonic beings.
