POST 10 - THE EYES HAVE IT - THE STORY WE’RE STICKING TO

Many months ago, before the internet was polluted by us, The Lost Experience players, when you googled Geronimo Jackson practically the only thing that popped up was this baby picture of Jed and Vanessa Jackson’s infant son Geronimo, born 10/05/04. It’s still up and you can see it here: Geronimo Jackson. We all immediately declared it a strange, out-of-game coincidence. Today, on the final day of TLE, we at the AC return to this starting point and offer our final theory--or perhaps prediction is a better descriptive in this case.

We now contend that the infant Geronimo Jackson is very much in game and that he is the real prize in both TLE and Lost because he represents the first successful outcome of a long underway genetic experiment to hybridize humans with an alien race.

Our theory holds that the key Lost survivors—most likely Kate, Jack and Sawyer—are past participants (perhaps unwitting) in genetic experiments, but they have rebelled against the dark forces and have hidden Geronimo. Their Lost experience is in fact an attempt by the alien race to discover the whereabouts of the hybrid child.

Who are these aliens? We’re not sure, and we believe they’re hard to spot because they are able to manipulate the way we view them through mechanical means, a third-eye projector worn on their heads, and that they have implanted devices in the Lost survivors that dictates what they are seeing and experiencing on the Island—if they are on an island, that is. Chances are good that they’re hooked up to some kind of holodeck machine located in as yet undiscovered underground or under-bubble location.

What makes us believe that in the Lost world you can’t believe your own eyes? Consider the many strange things that the Losties have seen—polar bears, Rousseau, hatches, talking birds—just to name a few. And how did our castaways react? They did what any of us would do, they confronted each challenge and moved on, and it all seemed logical enough given the crazy nature of their experience. We believed what they saw, too.

Then along comes Henry Gale (or the fake Henry Gale). Henry Gale in a hot air balloon like a character out of a novel. He’s creepy in the extreme, but he makes a very interesting observation. When Locke invites him out of his cell to have breakfast, Gale looks at all the Dharma goodies and wonders where it all came from? How old is it?…Locke and Jack don’t know. And Henry says, “You don’t know much do you? I’d be asking lots of questions: Where this stuff came from. Who it belongs to? What it’s for?”

That gives one pause. It gave us pause. It did not give Locke or Jack a minute’s concern. Almost nothing does. They do not question their take on reality at all. They accept that they are living in the middle of a mystery where all the heroin you’d ever want falls from the sky; food arrives in the middle of a jungle on pallets. If you need a pregnancy test kit—even though you’ve been told your husband doesn’t have the right stuff—there is one handy. If you need to resolve things with your dead brother, or the crazy guy from the loony bin, or if a giant bird calls your name…you accept it. If you were dying of cancer or couldn’t walk until you landed on the island, you put the past behind you, stand up, and move on. None of that can possibly be happening. Yet they take it at face value. Isn't it surprising that new people keep showing up on an island that is so far off the map, as Henry Gale said, even god doesn’t know where to look? Yes, but what's really surprising is that no Lostie has ever asked how it can be real. We predict that in Season Three they will challenge the status quo and question their reality.

If we had to venture a guess about the aliens’ origins, we’d currently subscribe to the research done by Ronnie O’Rourke at Lost Dogon Lost and her further finds at Violet Earth Academy - A History of this Galaxy and the Orion Wars. Crazy as the Violet Earth folks sound, the scenario they describe in fact matches up with a lot of the clues in the storyline of Lost and embedded in the images used on the show and in TLE. Here are some highlights from the Violet Earth's cosmology:

• ET Alchemists choose Earth as a base from which, working in under the direction of fallen deities, they genetically engineer a race of reptilian humanoids using a reptilian and/or saurian DNA base. …Some remain physical and migrate into existing underground caverns, whereas others … possess powerful world leaders in order to assimilate their physicality- that is part poltergeist, reptilian, and human... all integrated or superimposed as one entity. Many of these remain on the surface of the planet, and develop methods for "blending in" with the human population [molecular shape shifting, technotic projection, laser holograms, superficial bio-phasing, etc.]. Several of these escape to Antarctica [at the time a semi-tropical continent] and develop a powerful empire.

• Sorcerer-scientists on the island- continent of Atlantis open up a rift in hyperspace as an experiment with crystal-based electromagnetic manipulation goes out of control, releasing electromagnetic 'subspace fallout' for thousands of years to come. These 'Atlanteans' try to escape the global cataclysm by taking refuge in the underground caverns below the east coast of North America and western Europe.

• The 'Greys' are a frankensteinian combination of reptiloid, insectoid, humanoid and even plant- like DNA combined with sophisticated cybernetics and implant technology which links them into a group-mind, ultimately controlled and incarnated by fallen verities themselves -- Satanaku's attempt to imitate God and 'create' a race of his own. It is not a creation however, but merely a perversion of that which has already been created.

So how does this theory fit in with TLE? Remember way back when Jimmy Kimmel interviewed Hugh McIntyre about the show Lost and he responded, “The writers of Lost have decided to attach themselves and create us as part of their mythology….Ok, we don’t know why they’ve done that…the show is a creation of fiction.” We all scratched our head about the weird wording of that answer, which raised questions about what “real” and what was not in TLE.

Today, as we wait for DJDan’s last broadcast, I think perhaps we should have taken Hugh’s words at face value, although perhaps they are the only things beyond the The Lost Experience title we should take literally. I think that this summer’s activities have not actually created a new reality in a different time frame than the Lost characters are experiencing on the island, but allowed us to share the experience the same kind of dubious reality that the characters on the show have been going through.

We started TLE individually, like Jack, engaged in an uncertain adventure. We’d have to go where it led us and there was apparently no way to figure out much on our own. So at the beginning, everybody was wildly searching for answers, researching, theorizing, decompiling and decoding. Groups got together to try to strategize and help each other, and a lot of clues and answers were forthcoming. However, because it all happened in cyberspace, we really didn’t know if it was a player solving the clues or one of TPTB handing us the answers. It kept us very busy, and was fun, so who cared where the stuff was coming from?

Just like the Lost island’s Others, we contend that Rachel, Mittelwerk , ROT and DJDan have been manipulating the way we see things, creating an adventure that is no more real than the one that the Lost survivors are experiencing. We’ve got Apollo bars, they’ve got Dharma mac and cheese, in either case, the source of the bounty is equally mysterious.

If you’ve ever watched Mythbusters, you’ve probably heard the slogan: “I reject your reality and substitute my own.” This notion, that reality is subjective, is key to understanding our argument. What is the nature of reality? What makes the world around us make sense to us? We say it’s agreement. We don’t challenge our own take on reality as long as we’re backed up by the group. If, for instance, we ask, “Does anyone else see this picture of a clown’s head in what’s supposed to be a map?” And everybody else says, “No,” then we might as well be lost on an island. Because how do we know the clown is really real if we're the only one who sees it? It’s very difficult to buck the group’s agreement on the nature of shared reality.

We suggest that the folks who’ve been playing TLE and the castaways on the Lost island are caught in the same trap: They can’t figure out what’s going on, but they’re in a crisis situation—Anna Lucia and Libby dead! We can’t see straight because Sri Lanka is dying! And just like the Losties, we don’t stop to think, we move on….heedless, feckless, clueless.

Having said all of that, never in a million years would have guessed that Lost was a Matrix kind of situation, which is what we now believe. We think that our Lost guys are on the grid, in the box, hooked up. When you look at the fuzzy image Jack is looking at above (The image looks like the black smoke in the season three promotional photo. The above image has had the contrast manipulated in Photoshop.), you can see that the holographic image is projecting from his eye. The eye. THE EYE. It’s been right in front of us all the time. They’ve been yelling at us to consider the eye. And they’ve told us repeatedly that nothing is what it seems to be. However, when in fact it turns out that nothing is what it seems to be, it’s easier for people to imagine (and we heard this on a fan podcast), that Henry Gale was sent in his balloon by daddy Widmore to follow Desmond in the yacht race, then it is to consider that perhaps Henry and his balloon aren’t quite real. That’s what we think, but we’ll have to wait for Season Three to find out if our version of the Lost reality is 20/20 or cross-eyed crazy. Oh, and before we forget, happy birthday little Geronimo. You’re about to turn three! Hope you get a puppy!