LOST: They're plugged into an Island Matrix—no alternate reality by cabinboy

OK. I don't love this, but I have come around to thinking it's a real possibility. An explanation of the nature of LOST2 as a shared hallucination.

My LOSTful jargon... LOST1 refers to the original LOST reality, home to all our friends on the Island in 2007. LOST2 refers to the new/alternate reality. Esau is my nickname for Jacob's brother, currently the Island's smoke monster, aka Locke-ness. Deal with it. OK. Moving on...

OUT OF SYNC TIME TROUBLE IN LOST2.

There have been discrepencies in the meshing and sync of individual character storylines in LOST2. I've been working/thinking around them, believing them to be reconcilable, but this concert business in "What They Died For" is just too much. We're meant to believe that the concert that David and Miles and Desmond refer to is the same benefit arranged by Eloise and Daniel Widmore on the day that 815 landed. Of course, they might have rescheduled and we just haven't been privy to it, but added to a list of other confusing and inconsistent synchronicities, it's all just too much. I cannot believe that the meticulous story weavers who have been at the helm for five seasons have made so many chronological offenses within the supposedly consistent reality of LOST2.

What am I talking about?

It's at least two days after 815 lands when Sayid takes out Keamy and his men at the restaurant and releases Jin.
It's only one day after 815 lands when Sun gets shot in the confrontation with Mikhail at Keamy's restaurant.
Those events are supposed to have occured on the same day.

By the time Desmond gets enlightened by Charlie, finds Penny, plays cupid to Hurley and Libby (at least two days), and then goes turbo on John Locke, it's at least four days after 815 lands.
And for John Locke to have gotten fired, met Rose, been placed at his new substitute teacher gig, and work it for at least one day, it's at least two days after 815 lands.
But Locke and Sun arrive at the ER atSt. Sebastian's at the same time.

For several episodes, I forced myself to buy the idea that the creators goofed, or just didn't think the discrepancy mattered compared to the meat of the story they were (inter)weaving. Or maybe some localized gravity well mucked with the flow of time for some of our players and not others, y'know, like when Luke was training on Dagobah while Han and Leia were captive in Cloud City?

But the simple fact is the days don't add up. Difficult to accept as inconsequential from creators who have been so careful to manage multiple life-, story-, and time-lines for so many seasons.

LIFE IS BUT A DREAM.

I KNOW that part of the point of following the safely landed 815ers in LOST2 is to demonstrate that they were all destined to play important roles in each others' lives, but there is a quality to the uncanny, serendipitous crossovers, and their timing (or mis-timing), that I can only describe, suspiciously, as "dream-like."

Early this season, I turned over the idea that LOST2 was not an Incident-created divergent reality, but rather, a Matrix-like simulation based on that idea, a virtual world created by someone, perhaps Esau, perhaps Jacob, perhaps Widmore, into which our Losties have been plugged to gain some kind of advantage or knowledge. At the time, this annoyed the frickin heck out of me. It seemed to require way too much tech and resources that we'd never had a clue about. I could imagine that the DI might have had another station dedicated to a much more sophisticated version of Room 23's b-mod technology, advanced enough to create a shared programmed virtual experience. But I figured that that was a huge reach, even for LOST, in the final short season. So, I rejected it, as much out of spite, honestly, as out of LOST illogic.

WHAT IS THE MATRIX?

Now, tho, a dozen episodes later, I believe that we've met entities or devices capable of just that. Able to engineer a Matrix-like scenario where our players are plugged into the same fabricated reality, living in it for days or months or years or lifetimes, or if not for that actual experienced time, then with implanted memories of that time. I'm now willing to say that a smoke monster would be capable. And if not a smoke monster, then the Heart of the Island. And, if not the Heart, then maybe thru the pooled concerted effort and power of the Island's Whispers, perhaps in a gambit supporting the Candidates in the eleventh hour against Esau.

SMOKEY. Locke-ness can't kill the Candidates, but I'll bet he can still scan and read them. We've seen him do some funky stuff once he's read a person. There's Eko's confrontation with Yemi; Ben's "judgement" by Alex; and perhaps Isabella's clunky ghost appearance to Ricardo on the Blackrock.

MAYbe, in a last ditch attempt to knock the remaining Candidates off balance, keep them from killing him, or preventing his escape, he rushes them, swallows them up in his smokey self, and uses the Matrix-mode of his scanning ability to create this shared hallucination for all of them. Not to kill them, but to stall them from doing or completing something they were just about to do that would have defeated Locke-ness on the Island.

Yeah. That sounds kinda lame, I know, but I hafta say, it no longer seems impossible, or even unlikely. In any case, I ask that you roll with the idea that our Losties are plugged into an Island Matrix, and that's what we're experiencing when we see their apparently alternate selves living life in LOST2. The Non-Player Characters within the shared virtual reality are constructed from the Losties' memories of them as well as the actual memories and experiences of anyone who's dead on the Island. The Monster has access to that. It doesn't seem like a stretch to me to say that the Heart of the Island, the spark of life, the source of all life, could draw on all of that as well to conjure up a seamless constructed and believable reality.

Given that, Desmond's zap in the generator shed was not a reality-jump, but another time-jump, a jump forward to when he's swallowed by the smoke monster.

And Juliet, caught at the heart of the Incident, also experiences a flash forward into her virtual NPC self in the Island Matrix. What she sees in that flash leads her to believe that, "It worked." Unfortunately, before she can describe her flash, she dies from the trauma of her physical injuries and perhaps exposure to the EM energies without Desmond's resistance.

THE HEART. Okay. If that's way too much power to give the Locke-ness smoke monster, it might be a vision conjured up by a dip into the Heart of the Island, but whose? Could it be all the surviving Candidates together? And why and how would Eloise set herself up as the nemesis in a bogus dream world? Perhaps because that's what you get when you use everyone's combined memories of her to construct her virtually, from scratch. She could be constructed based on her interactions with Charles, Desmond, Ben, the Losties who went to the Lamppost, and sadly, Daniel, whose body expired on the Island in 1977.

SMOKEY x THE HEART. Or maybe, when hardened-against-EM Desmond rassles Locke-ness into the Heart of the Island, the collision of a smoke monster with the energy that spawned it triggers the spontaneous creation of this what-if world that everyone on the Island experiences, subjectively, for their entire lives, but objectively, for just a moment. A moment in which Esau enters that world and lives a normal happy life as Claire's baby Aaron, leaving behind a vacant Locke-shaped vessel, ready for a John Locke Island Whisper to move into!

Yeah, a bit of crazier crazy talk at the end there, but I really am seeing this MATRIX-life scenario as a serious possibility now. It's not the awesomest thing, but after "Across The Sea" I think it's possible.

Oh, I forgot to address the Whispers as a possible engine for the Island Matrix.

WHISPERS. Magic. Done. =)

Tell me the unfolding of events and crossovers in LOST2 don't seem dreamlike and unreal. I dare you.

Ninja torturer-killer Sayid, tripped up by a garden hose? C'mon!

GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX.

That cut on Jack's neck that keeps bleeding. That's a virtual manifestation of an actual injury. He's been seriously wounded in that spot and nis body's nervous system is breaking thru the hallucination of the Island Matrix to try and snap him out of it, to let him know that he is hurt.

Reflections of oneself within the Island Matrix are psychologically confusing. On some very fundamental level, each Lostie expects to see his or her real self looking back at them, but instead, they see this other version, like themselves, but as a costume. The reactions within the Island Matrix range from confusion to enlightenment.

The Island Matrix may be taking steps to distract the immersed Losties from such inconsistencies and glitches, using NPCs (many constructs, but perhaps also actual Whispers) and coincidental events to do it. For instance, Miles is trying on his suit at the police station. Not unheard of, but a little conspicuous, enough certainly to prompt Detective Ford to ask if someone's died (aww... poor Sawyer), and Miles tells him about the concert, and is very insistent about how he's mentioned it all week. And when Jack wakes up and becomes preoccupied by his bleeding cut, his son David seems to make a point of getting in his face and space about making breakfast.

Anyhow, I can't wait until we discover that "You All Everybody," played by Charlie and mixed by Daniel and amplified over the sound system at this benefit will have embedded within it just the sonic frequency that will cause Esau to drop his David Shephard puppet form, revert to smoke, and then perish, dematerialized by the sonic pummeling. =)

If you enjoyed this mess, there's more crazy talk here.

Let the body blow comments fly.

Namaste.