What’s the level of the hivemind in Pluribus? Up to now, the present hasn’t provided a lot of a solution past merely “Hivemind good.” In the meantime, protagonist Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) is far more focused on undoing “the Becoming a member of” than determining why it occurred within the first place.
It’s nearly as if we’re probably not presupposed to care what the hivemind’s finish aim is — if it even has one. (Gilligan has additionally confirmed he doesn’t know precisely the place the present is finally headed, so he could also be leaving issues deliberately obscure.) Nonetheless, one element from Pluribus episode 6 has me pondering the collection’ endgame could possibly be a lot darker than I ever imagined…
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Pluribus episode 6.]
To rapidly recap a few of Pluribus’ latest surprising reveals: On the finish of episode 5, Carol discovers the hivemind is storing lifeless human corpses in a manufacturing unit, the place they’re being processed and consumed. In episode 6, she takes the knowledge to her fellow non-hivemind survivors, solely to be taught that they already know. Seems, the hivemind is so peaceable they’ll’t even harvest fruits, greens, or grains, not to mention kill animals. So that they’ve taken to consuming any nutrient sources which might be already obtainable to them — together with the roughly 900 million people who died through the chaos of the preliminary mass Becoming a member of.
This information is delivered with yet one more twist: Even with all these corpses on the menu, many of the hivemind will nonetheless die of hunger inside a decade if it could actually’t provide you with an answer. (Is lab-grown meat not an choice?)
This looks as if an enormous oversight! In spite of everything, if some alien intelligence created the hivemind within the first place, then beamed its recipe throughout the universe, shouldn’t they’ve taken the entire hunger factor into consideration? Why unfold the hivemind program if it’s solely going to wipe out whoever receives it?
Except that was the aim all alongside…
Give it some thought. What’s the level of the hivemind, anyway? Possibly the hivemind recipe isn’t a present from outer area in any respect, however a weapon. Possibly some alien species determined humanity poses a risk to the remainder of the universe and determined to do one thing about it. Reworking humankind right into a hivemind that starves itself to loss of life is a fairly intelligent technique to do exactly that.
To be honest, there are some holes in my principle. For one factor, it’s not like everybody on Earth goes to die, simply “most” of humanity. It’s additionally potential that the alien hivemind behind the unique sign doesn’t even take into account non-hiveminds to be clever, that means it wouldn’t care about what occurs to humankind. Or that the aim isn’t to wipe out humanity however to save lots of the dolphins or another endangered species. And even when this principle is true, what’s subsequent? A full-scale invasion of Earth? Or will the aliens transfer on to their subsequent goal and depart any surviving people to scrape by on their very own?
One of the best level of comparability right here could also be one other science fiction story: The Three Physique Drawback, a trilogy of books written by Liu Cixin and tailored right into a Netflix collection by Recreation of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Within the second e book, The Darkish Forest, humanity figures out that the universe is definitely chock filled with clever civilizations all consistently hiding from one another and making an attempt to wipe one another out. This principle, additionally referred to as Darkish Forest, helps clarify why alien life has by no means visited Earth.
Within the books, Darkish Forest principle is finally used as deterrence in opposition to an alien invasion; an armed gadget threatens to reveal the placement of each of their residence planets to your complete universe if the invaders don’t completely retreat. Nonetheless, when that gadget is finally triggered in a last-ditch try to save lots of the Earth, it finally dooms humanity, resulting in our destruction by a third-unnamed extraterrestrial civilization that sends a weapon to destroy a few years later.
Is that what’s taking place in Pluribus? It’d seem to be a stretch, however in the interim, the Darkish Forest principle makes about as a lot sense to me as some other rationalization of the hivemind’s final aim.
Pluribus episodes 1-6 are streaming on Apple TV. New episodes air weekly every Friday.
