The Tail Section

Kate Crosses The King

Lost News — April 9, 2007 at 10:54 am by Santa

Kate Crosses the King
By
 Kermet Merl Key
(aka MerlboroMan)

"Go now, there are other worlds then these."
Jake Chambers, The Gunslinger
 
            I am not the first person to suggest that LOST may be dealing with multiple universes or realities. John Terry, better known as Christian Sheppard to LOST fans, suggested to the official LOST Magazine that the Superstring theory, or M-theory, was at the heart of LOST.
 
I have a theory about the whole island. It is the Superstring Theory. The only thing that makes sense to me is that this is parallel reality. In the Superstring Theory, I think there are 11 separate realities that can co-exist at the same time. This island represents a co-created reality of all the characters that are on it.
 
The Superstring theory, used as a universal theory, is described by Michael D. Lemonick and J. Madeleine Nash as:
 
Based on the notion that, matter is made, not of particles, but of tiny, vibrating loops of energy called strings. The strings exist in a world of up to 10 spatial dimensions, all but three of which are too minute for us to perceive. Strange though it sounds, most physicists agree that it is the most likely candidate for the long-sought theory of everything that could finally unite relativity and quantum mechanics, the two great but mutually incompatible ideas of 20th century physics. (Cosmic Conundrum, Time Magazine)”
 
Okay the, so what does all this have to do with “crossings” and, in particular, those crossings concerning one Kate Austen, better known in our reality as Evangeline Lilly?  Let me warn you the explanation you are about to read is long and filled with various quotes so if you feel that this might be a waste of your time stop now because there will be no forthcoming apologies.
 

Still here? Good.
 
Let’s begin by asking, which reality is real?
 
In our reality, the one you, the reader, and I, the writer, share, Evangeline Lilly is a television actress who got her first speaking role on television in our beloved series LOST. Prior to LOST she had been on only a few other television shows including guest appearances on Judgement Day, Smallville, Tru Calling, and Kingdom Hospital. Of those four shows only Smallville and Kingdom Hospital are noteworthy regarding any possible “crossings.” On Smallville our Kate may have crossed paths in the reality of a young Superman with deceased “ LOSTie” Boone Carlyle (aka Ian Somerhalder), who appeared multiple times as Adam Knight. But the show really worth looking at is Kingdom Hospital where Kate was simply a non-speaking patient known only as “Benson’s Girlfriends.” Here, Kate crosses paths with Dr. Stegman, played by Bruce Davison. Bruce Davison is better known to LOST fans as Dr. Brooks, Hurley’s care-taker at the Santa Rose Mental Health Institute in the episode entitled “Dave.”
 
The only things the Santa Rose Mental Health Institute and Kingdom Hospital have in common are that they’re both hospitals….oh, and some of the patients see people that may not be really there. The Kingdom Hospital is built on the site of mill used during the American Civil War where many children died in a fire. This tragedy is doomed to repeat itself through out history as the hospital is surrounded by the super natural energy of the event. However, what is most noteworthy about the Kingdom Hospital and its connection to LOST is its creator, Stephen “F’n” King (his real middle name is Edwin).
 
Anyone who considers themselves a fan of LOST knows the connection our reality’s Stephen King has with the LOST creators. He has even been mentioned quite frequently in connection with Others-leader, Ben Linus. Most recently, King’s book, The Gunslinger, appeared next to Ben when John Locke (the man who got me thinking about these crossings) entered his room in “The Man from Tallahassee.”  Now, what is truly significant about this “crossing” is that while LOST producers admit the influence of Stephen King’s work on their show, it is in Kingdom Hospital that we see a more direct connection to the reality of his book The Gunslinger. According to Answers.com:
 
 
There are several references to some of King’s other works, including the Dark Tower series. The drink "Nozz-A-La", which Dr. Hook refers to as a "Nozzie" in one episode is a drink in the alternate reality The Stand takes place in and [the one] that Roland’s ka-tet comes across on their journey to the Dark Tower. However, at the end of the finale of the show, the Nozz-A-La machine has become a Pepsi machine (Kingdom Hospital, Answers.com).
 
This is a most startling discovery. For it leads me to the heart of what I believe each and every crossing is dealing with and I think is best summed up in a very long quote from Stephen King’s first book in the Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger. When the Gunslinger finally catches up with the Man in Black, the Man in Black begins:
 
The universe (he said) is the Great All, and offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a non-living brain - although it may think it can - the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.
The prosaic fact of the universe’s existence alone defeats both the pragmatic and the romantic. There was a time, yet a hundred generations before the world moved on, when mankind had achieved enough technical and scientific prowess to chip a few splinters from the great stone pillar of reality [emphasis mine]. Even so, the false light of science (knowledge, if you like) shone in only a few developed countries. One company (or cabal) led the way in this regard: North Central Positronics [ emphais mine, could this company, in LOST reality be the DHARMA intitiative? Perhaps the Hanso Foundation, or even Mittelos? Or a combination of the three?], it called itself. Yet, despite a tremendous increase in available facts, there were remarkably few insights.
"Gunslinger, our many-times-great grandfathers conquered the-disease-which-rots, which they called cancer, almost conquered aging, walked on the moon - "
"I don’t believe that," the gunslinger said flatly.
To this, the man in black merely smiled and answered, "You needn’t. Yet it was so. They made or discovered a hundred other marvelous baubles. But this wealth of infomation produced little or no insight. There were no great odes written to the wonders of artificial insemination - having babies from frozen mansperm [emphasis mine]– or to the cars that ran on power of the sun. Few if any seemed to have grasped the truest principle of reality: new knowledge leads to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search. Do you see? Of course you don’t. You’ve reached the limits of your ability to comprehend. But nevermind - that’s beside the point."
"What is the point then?"
"The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size [emphasis mine, could the island be something…more?]. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.
"You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?
"Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.
"If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell ( or find a door), [emphasis mine, perhaps even a hatch] what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?
"Perhaps you saw what place our universe plays in the scheme of things - as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our universe and our own lives, turning everything yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps it’s already begun to happen. We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up.
"Think how small such a concept of things makes us, gunslinger! If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for such a race of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see… what must the nature of such a God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity? [emphasis mine, nothing particular to do with LOST, I just think it’s a damn good question]
"Imagine the sand of the Mohaine Desert, which you crossed to find me, and imagine a trillion universes - not worlds but universes [reconnecting the Superstring theory here]- encapsulated in each grain of that desert; and within each universe an infinity of others. We tower over these universes from our pitiful grass vantage point; with one swing of your boot you may knock a billion billion worlds flying off into darkness, a chain never to be completed.
"Size, gunslinger… size.
"Yet suppose further. Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met at a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. [emphasis mine, OR AN ISLAND?] And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top, gunslinger? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a room? [emphasis mine, or again, a hatch?]
"You dare not."
Do you dare? Or does Jack or Locke dare? Is it possible, that as much as when Stephen King wrote the Dark Tower series, the creators of LOST did not create a mere television show but stumbled upon an ultimate reality? Perhaps they stumbled upon a reality in which the nexus of all realities exists and in these “crossings” they “create” and the “crossings” that simply seem coincidental in our world (i.e. like actors from one show appearing as different characters together in another show, see my articles Crossing Mr. Locke and Crossings Exposed) are actually signs that indicate which reality is the nexus. Is it mine and yours or is it Jack and Locke’s?
 
Does this possibility help Doc Arzt’s theory about the significance of episode 3.14, “ExposÄ—” seem even more valid (i.e. a television show within a television show that gives clues about that television show…is your nose bleeding from the brain hemorrhage yet)? Join me next week as we explore the further mysteries of these and other crossings.
 
 
Works Cited
"Kingdom Hospital." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 2007. Answers.com 01 Apr. 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/kingdom-hospital
 
Cosmic Conundrum. 22, Nov. 2004. Time Magazine. 1, April 2007.
 

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