Day of the Orchid

Well it's been a long break for me at the Lost Bullet Points. Fortunately, Ange has been doing a fantastic job with the book club information and keeping the site alive. However, we now have a nice juicy bit of information to digest and discuss thanks to the special orientation video revealed to the public at this years Comic-con. The back story is that this is footage that was discovered in a warehouse and so is not the complete orientation but gives us some hints about the nature of this, the sixth Dharma station. There is a lot to discuss here, so first let's start with the movie.

Okay, now the facts:

• In this video we have our usual orientation scientist, this time using the alias of Doctor Edgar Halowax. Another Candle related alias.
• Doctor Halowax does not appear to have a prosthetic arm in this video.
• The doctor is uncomfortable with this non-scientific part of his role. It seems he would much rather be working out of the lime light.
• He is wearing a Swan station lab coat. He has also worn this for the orientation for the Barracks and of course the Swan (He wore a brown suit jacket for the Pearl orientation and a Flame lab coat for the chess computer video).
• Those recruited for this station were not informed of it's purpose before arriving there and they were asked to tell friends and family the official line of it being botanical research. This was apparently done for their security, so it seems that even knowing what this station does can be dangerous for people.
  
• The true scientific field researched at the Orchid is something "Highly volatile" and "Potentially dangerous". The suggestion is that it is safe enough providing the "elaborate safety measures" are observed.
  
• Both rabbits in the video are "number 15", which as we know is one of the numbers of the Valenzetti Equation. We know that if they could change a number in the equation they would have succeeded in the goals of the Dharma initiative.
• Having the two rabbits come into contact with each other would be very very bad. In what way we do not know.
• When the second rabbit is spotted the doctor asks, "When did you set the shift?" the answer to this is, "Negative 20," and it seems this was either done for a duration of "9 minutes" or it was done 9 minutes ago at the point that the doctor asked, "How long?" to the lab assistant. The lab assistant pleaded that, "...they are still learning."
• The unique properties of the island created a "Kind of Casimir effect". This is a biggie and we will look at it in more detail later. It is worth noting that the doctor seemed to be using the term as a way of describing things to other scientists, the effect may be Casimir like but it isn't necessarily what we are dealing with.
• The additional scenes in the video not actually from the location shoot of the orientation included what appeared to be a clip of the barracks video (in which the doctor had a very still arm but it can't be confirmed it was prosthetic). There is also a clip from the brainwashing video which had the "God loves you as he loved Jacob" on it. Which suggests that did have an origin with Dharma, for some reason.
  

Before I move on there is one curious thing I want to bring up about the recruitment for the Orchid. If they are claiming it is botanical research, wouldn't it be difficult to get the right people for what they are actually doing? I expect the family of a quantum physicist would probably question why he was jetting off to a secret location to take part in a botanical study. So what kind of field would be both believable for the cover story and also useful for the genuine purpose of the station?

Okay, moving on, at the start of the video you will notice a mix of voices creating what is called a "cocktail effect", that is to say it's hard to make out what any one voice is saying. I took a sample of this and messed about with it a bit to try and make some sense. The clearest voice is a woman's whisper. There is also a short bit that appears to be in reverse. Here are the links to the files, see if you can make any sense of them. I will not yet post my opinions on what they say as I don't want you to be listening for anything in specific. If there is something important here I expect it is in the woman's whisper. Note that because there was a big sigh over the top of the end of her whisper it may not be a complete sentence you're hearing.

Here is the Full Audio
Here is the whisper slowed down
Here is the potentially backwards bit reversed
and finally here is what is left, basically some guy mumbling.

So what of our good doctor and his various bits of film?

• He continues to use Candle related aliases. Is one of them his genuine name? It seems a little foolish if your going to use aliases to use ones that hint at your real name. However it does kind of depend on why he's using the aliases and how much he really needs to protect his identity. The names could instead hint at his role in the initiative. Candles provide light, but then a lot of things provide light. However candles are also used as a way of telling time and are often part of ceremonial practices and rituals.
• What 's the deal with the Swan lab coat? Could it be that he was based at the Swan (at least pre-incident), but as one of the most senior scientists he was chosen to do these orientation videos?
• With the various sci-fi possibilities on the island it is impossible to get a time line on our doctors videos. We know that there are two videos where he seems to have two functional arms, but with the islands healing capabilities that doesn't mean they were the earliest of the videos. He could have started off with one arm and had it grow back. You never know.
  
• It seems unlikely that the doctors arm flickers in and out of existence but what complicates things is the Barracks video. His left arm is very still, but that doesn't mean it is a fake arm. Yet frames of that video ended up mixed with the Orchid video. Of course this video was "recovered" recently, so that doesn't mean that the spliced in bits were recorded around the same time. Logic would seem to suggest that the Barracks, Swan and Flame recordings were done post incident as they have an extra element of outside danger involved in them. The Pearl and Orchid would then be the earliest videos.
  
• For those people wondering about the Pearl being on VHS while the swan is on reel to reel, the answer is that the reel to reel wouldn't be effected by the magnetic field generated at the swan and was therefore a superior storage medium.
• The Pearl video is interesting though. If the doctor was working at the Swan then it would seem silly for him to be on the Pearl video if indeed the pearl was designed to monitor the Swan. That suggests three possibilities 1) The lab coat is a coincidence, maybe they just made too many Swan coats. 2) The Pearl wasn't intended to monitor the Swan, many stations may have had ping pong tables and showers and it is likely Ben knew how to change what was being monitored to the Swan so as to keep an eye on the Lostaways. 3) The Pearl was the very first video and was shot before the doctor began his work at the Swan. I have always wondered about the Pearl experiment. Perhaps it was just to test loyalty more then anything else (i.e. if they went back to the barracks after their 8 hour shifts and started telling people about the "fake" experiments).
  
• Whatever his main role it does seem clear that Candle is a senior scientist for Dharma, he is well aware of the goings on at the Orchid as he was bossing people around when things started to go wrong and he really wasn't impressed with the problems brought up.

What's the deal with the name?

• Well, aside from working well with the stations cover story it is again something from Greek mythology. The name Orchid comes from the Greek word for testicles. Yep, you heard that right. This is the testicle station.
  
• In Greek mythology Orchis was the son of a nymph and a satyr that succumbed to his lustful urges during a feast of Bacchus (the god of wine) and attempted to rape a priestess of his temple. Bacchus had him torn to pieces by wild animals and his body scattered around the world. From these parts came the Orchid plants. His genitalia were thrown into the ocean, which then in turn gave birth to Aphrodite.
• Greek women thought they could control the sex of their unborn children with Orchid roots. If the father ate large, new tubers, the child would be male; if the mother ate small tubers, the child would be female. This doesn't entirely fit with the other facts we have so far about this station, but it definitely fits in with the fertility themes of the island so it may be something to go on. It should be noted however that so far the names of each station have not had enormous relevance to the stations purpose as we currently understand them.

What about this Casimir effect?

• This has a huge amount of possibilities and it should be noted once again that we may not be talking about an actual "Casimir effect" but instead something that could be compared to it as a way to describe it to another scientist.
• According to Wiki: This is a physical force exerted between separate objects, which is due to neither charge, gravity, nor the exchange of particles, but instead is due to resonance of all-pervasive energy fields in the intervening space between the objects. It get's a lot more complex too.
• The actual Casimir effect has only been observed on a very small scale, which is probably why the islands properties create only a "kind of" version of it. There are a few articles flying around that talk about how the Casimir effect relates to Nanotechnology. However because this is something that has been brought up and dismissed several times by the writters of lost it is probably not worth getting too involved in.
• There is a lot of reference to electro-magnetic energy within the literature about this effect. So if we take into account the islands natural field and add the field created by the swan perhaps we have a Casimir effect on a much larger scale. Of course the Swan and Orchid station existed simultaniously (as we can tell from the logo on the lab coat) so that would still leave us wondering what that has to do with the Orchid station or rabbits.
  
• One of the other things the Casimir effect relates to is "Zero point energy", which is something that will be VERY familiar to sci-fi nerds like myself. Some scientists (and a lot more writters of science fiction) believe that tapping zero point energy would open the doors to powerful perhaps limitless energy sources. This is kind of the holy grail of scientific energy research. Most scientists don't believe this is possible but it hasn't stopped a few from trying to harness this energy. As many of you probably already know, this is a central element to the technology of the sci-fi show "Stargate".
• Another interesting point is that the quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time. This is where the science all starts to go way over my head, but if we are talking science fiction and an effect that is only similar to the Casimir effect then we are opening a lot of doors with this. We have seen two rabbits with the same number that cannot come into contact with each other. So it could be that the effect can create a kind of negative version of an object. This pressumably isn't an actual anti-matter version as in theory it would just destroy itself by comming into contact with the matter surrounding it. But it could be maybe some kind of "bad twin". Can you say, "I'm captain Kirk!"
  
• Following on from the above, the negative mass concept and the mention of a "negative 20" shift could relate to some method of trying to offset the Valenzetti numbers with this effect. We are heavily into sci-fi by that point however.
• The other thing to note about this locally mass negative region of space time and the Casimir vacuum is that this is a big part of a theory about potential faster than light travel (the idea being that within the field of effect of the Casimir vacuum the speed of light increases and thus bends Einstiens laws on such things). This is complex, but essentially what it could mean is that you could send information back in time by using the effect. I left this until last as it seems the most likely link. However it should be pointed out that recent studies have ruled out this effect. But given that we are in a realm of highly theoretical physics here it could certainly be a plausable basis for the function of the Orchid.

Final Bullets:

• Precognition, and messing in the timelines is an ongoing theme of Lost. We haven't seen any actual time travel, but we have seen the transmission of information from the future into the present and perhaps from the present into the past. For a long while I've suspected that they Lostaways were needed to come to the island and had their destinies manipulated by forces unknown (perhaps even themselves) to end up there.
• If the Swan station was part of this large scale Casimir effect, that could explain (kinda) why Des got his precognative abilities by being at ground zero when the station was taken offline.
• It occured to my while writting this, that we do not know that the conclusion of season 2, the events off the island, actually happened at the same time as the events on the island. It could be that the anomoly actually appeared to the outside world later then we thought and it was only after the events of the Season 3 finale that Penny was actively looking for Desmond like that. Although why Penny was at the other end of that communication I do not know. It could simply be that the station was set to communicate with Mr. Widmore as he may have been involved with Dharma, and it just turned out it was Penny that picked it up.
• If there is a physical time travel element, then that could explain what the negative 20 shift was about. It could be that the rabbit itself was sent back in time 20 minutes and so it is the same rabbit and the reason they couldn't touch was due to Doc Brown's law of time travel (as seen in Back to the Future 2). I think understanding the language used between the doctor and others when the second rabbit appears is important to understanding the purpose of this station. When was the shift set = -20, for how long = 9 minutes. It does make an amount of sense for the rabbit to be sent back in time 20 minutes for a duration of 9 minutes. If this was the case then obviously they messed up as this rabbit didn't appear 20 minutes in the past of where they set him, but instead into the future.
• If a person was to be shifted to a negative mass, perhaps he would appear somewhat like Jacob does and perhaps have an amount of precognative ability or capability to time travel in some form.
  
• I am really not sure about proper time travel in Lost as I think that may be too science fiction based, but sending messages through time or having some kind of sensory perception that sense the future perhaps that is more digestable to the general public.

That's all folks. Hope that hasn't caused more confusion then before you read it. Feel free to comment with your own observations and theories. I will return later on with a summary of what we learned from the Comic-Con panel and the conclusion of season three and where it may lead us for the next season and don't forget to check out Ange's fantastic book club posts. Until then...

Namaste and good luck.