Serial Experiments Lain E7: “Society”

Present day, lol.

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Voiceover quote for this episode is "I'll tell you, but it's just between you and me. I'll tell you what's happening in this society, what's beginning. Just because you don't know." Very considerate of you, Lain. Anyway, after Rudolph gives us the episode title in his true voice, we open on a surprisingly normal-looking morning over Lain's neighborhood. No ghosts, no blinding white glare, and only one shadow has any traces of blood in it. The destruction of her hive seems to have done a world of good for the surrounding environment, or at least for her perception of it.

A tangle of charred and broken wires hangs off the side (or did that used to be her bedroom window?) of Lain's house. Then, we're shown a flashback (I think?) of Lain in her pre-bombing lair, talking to a binary chatter entity about how her Wired self is becoming less and less like her actual self. Suddenly, she notices her sister watching her from the surreptitiously-opened bedroom door and making little babbling noises under her breath. Lain asks her what's up, and she just gives her a haunted stare before closing the door again.

It's really starting to seem like Lain's psychosis has been passed on to her sister now. Or, perhaps, like Lain has come out the other side of the "insanity" stage of a transformation, and her sister is still in the process.

Lain tells the thing in the Wired that her sister is acting strangely, and then seems to have an argument with it over its assessment of the situation or recommended course of action. Then, a warning pops up on her screen, and suddenly we're in the Wired watching the shifting blobs of light. A quiet male voice slowly gets louder, bragging to us about how he can project his consciousness anywhere in the world no matter where his physical body is, and the blobs of light coalesce into low-rez people walking up and down a virtual street.

Then the resolution improves, and we see that the people are real. The guy is walking down an actual street wearing an AR headset that looks like it might be from the same family as the units those men in black wear.

He's also wearing a crapton of equipment on his back. Including an umbrella, for some reason; it's a pretty clear day.

Then, we're in a corporate office with a big, expensive door. A woman in white comes in and tells the man behind the desk that it's time for the motor company's banquette. She crosses her legs sort of seductively at him, but before she or he can say anything else his Navi announces that he's got mail. The woman excuses herself, and he pulls up the mass of twisting 4-D objects he was just emailed. A grin breaks out across his face, and he asks what game "you" want to play this time.

Hmm. Is he a Knight? Maybe they still have physical bodies after all, or at least some of them do.

Cut to Lain's school, where she's coding on her tablet-thing in the middle of class. Then to some fat guy laying on a floor mattress surrounded in junk food, who cackles as he does something implicitly illegal on his laptop. Then, Lain on the school balcony, looking down at the nearby residential neighborhood and repeating to herself that reality isn't real at all.

Okay, is this after her bedroom got blown up, or before? If the former, I feel like that should have had some fallout for the characters.

Whatever the case...Arizu approaches Lain as she watches the rooftops, and tells her that she's been getting worried about her again. She and the other girls have been taking her out more to help get her out of her shell again, but Arizu gets the impression that Lain has just been miserable hanging out with them.

Lain reassures her that this is not the case, and the exchange a deeply heterosexual arm-wrapping before Arizu, seemingly convinced, tells her she's glad to hear it and leaves again. Lain smiles after her, also seemingly earnest.

I gueeesss this is a good sign?

That evening (or not. One evening or another. I don't know if this story is being told in order, or if it actually is doing the time-is-a-jigsaw-puzzle thing, or what) a newscast reports that hackers have broken into the Japanese ministry of information and released state secrets all over the place. Because of the chaos, this update might reach the listener today, tomorrow, or...yesterday. Okay time is all fucked I guess idek. While this is being said, we see some pixelated birds flying through a pixelated wetlands environment that soon gives way to more typical Wired nonsense. Some voices discuss this shocking turn of events, suspecting that the Knights - or, as they are now named in full - the Knights of the Eastern Calculus may have struck again. That's a more tryhard mystic sect name than I was expecting; it's downright 1920's occultism lol. Then someone says that they heard someone is after Lain, and several other voices ask who the hell Lain is. The voice that answers sounds...culty.

Someone asks the Lain-worshiper if they're one of the Knights of the Eastern Calculus. He falls silent, and then the screen goes black in a sudden roar of static. I'll take that as a yes.

Then we go to the deliveryman who brought Lain her Navi back in episode 2 (at least, I *think* it's the same guy), delivering a much smaller device to a middle aged woman. He's very brazenly checking her out, and strikes up a conversation about her new order in an attempt at getting in her pants. She sees through it pretty quick, but seems to actually be open to said attempt.

He gets cockblocked when her kid comes home from school, better luck next time.

Said kid starts playing a video game, and asks his mom if he can go over to his friend's house later. She tells him that he shouldn't bother; he can play with his friend over the net, and the Wired is the same thing as real life, so there's no need to leave the house. #parenting. As she says this, she looks down at the package she's just unwrapped. It has a weird tesseract-like insignia on it, that we've seen on a few randos' monitor screens throughout the episode so far. I'm guessing that's the Knights' logo and/or Rudolph's holy symbol. Mom is infected.

Cut to Lain coming home and finding the MIB parked outside of her house again.

On the bright side, some of the liquidy blotches oozing out of the shadows underfoot today are purple instead of blood red, and some of the shadows are even still empty, so that's progress!

This time, the cyborg agents ask Lain to come with them. They insist that they won't force her if she doesn't want to, and reassures her that they won't harm her "physically." That would be a little too specific for me, if I were in Lain's place, but they offer to explain who they are and wtf is going on if she comes, and that tempts her. Also, one of them removes his headset (okay, those are removable then) to reveal the state of his eyes underneath.

It looks like he's got the same messed up irises as the guy Lain ran away from outside of her house way back when, only they aren't twitching like that guy's was. Maybe these agents have had some sort of stabilizing treatment?

Cut to a frenetic, red-toned corner of the Wired, where a man's voice is exclaiming that he doesn't want to be here. Turns out it's the guy with all the junk on his back talking into his AR headset. He's bragging about his reality-hacking abilities, and begging to be allowed to join the Knights, as surely he must be qualified. A window displaying the word "accepted" pops up in his AR vision, and then his world fades out to reveal a flickering void of darkness and static, with Lain staring at him. She gives him a sinister smile, and he reacts in confusion and fear.

Back to Lain's physical incarnation, as she gets out of the two agents' car and follows them into a high rise. Both of them have taken their headsets off now. They lead her up a few flights of stairs and to an office door.

Tachibana. That's the company that made the Navi her dad got her, before he started feeding it Knighttech and it grew into a building-eating cyberpolyp. So these guys are either corporate, or with another hive mind that's taken over/pretending to be a corporation.

Behind the door is a bare, brightly lit room, where a middle aged man is trying to get an older model Tachibana navi to work again. He asks Lain if she can help.

This is a test, obviously. And Lain passes it easily, rewiring the jumpers and circuitboards into a configuration that not only lets the machine boot up again, but seems to have improved it. And, as soon as it comes on, Lain is faced with AR Wannabe Knight Guy, begging her for acceptance and enlightenment and babbling praises for her power, serenity, and that "game" she was playing with "those kids."

The version of Lain that he sees is giving him a sinister smile, and then insults him. The version of her watching/listening to the screen in the Tachibana office looks scared and nervous.

Either the Tachibana guy is using some sort of elaborate filter trickery, or there's something really weird going on with Lain's technopathy.

Actually...huh.

Lain seemed to be suffering from mental illness of some sort from the very beginning of the show. From the second episode onward, there were also strong hints of something along the lines of dissociative identity disorder, with her friends, some clubgoers, and various Wired people seeming to distinguish between the "normal" version of Lain, and another, more exciting one.

If psychic powers exist and can work across the Wired, and there's some sort of hivemind/personality assimilation thing going on...maybe a technopath with multiple personalities could be projecting different identities into the Wired while others take turns controlling her body? A lot of the weirdness is down to one of her personas being infected/assimilated/indoctrinated by Rudolph, with the others being ignorant or actively opposed?

That would explain quite a lot, actually.

So, if I'm right, one of Lain's other personas is interposing itself between her end of this audiochat and backpack guy's. This might also be why the Knights were simultaneously cooperative/worshipful of her, and obscurantist and defensive; they know there's more than one of her. Of course, why they'd try to kill her I'm really not sure; just fear of one of her other personas becoming more of a liability than "their" part of her is an asset, maybe?

The Tachibana guy turns it off, and then gives a very prescient for 1998 speech about the effect the internet has on politics. He claims that rather than uniting the world and wiping away national boundaries like everyone predicted, the Wired has just created an even more convoluted set of ideological and identitarian boundaries and tribes. Yeah, that's basically the next 20 years of lessons social media taught us the hard way. He also, in a shockingly prescient for 1998 way, predicts the likes of the chans.

A lot of people seem to think that the Knights of the Eastern Calculus are just a particularly dedicated and destructive example of Hackers On Steroids, but Tachibana Guy doesn't think that that's it at all. He also says that Lain's Wired presence is highly abnormal, and that the Knights seem to have taken an extreme interest in her.

No acknowledgement of them having tried to kill her, eh? Yeah, I'm becoming more convinced that that wasn't actually them. Her cyberpolyp included Tachibana products, so they could have hidden a bomb in there themselves as part of some kind of long con.

Anyway, Lain starts shutting down, stuttering and clutching her face. She continues to protest her innocence and ignorance of everything as Boss Tachibana asks her if she knows what the Knights are doing and what her intended role in it is. She goes into full deer-in-the-headlights mode.

Go back to backpack guy, still walking around the city as evening falls and seeing the world through his AR visor. He's continuing a conversation with someone (possibly a version of Lain, possibly another knight or related entity), telling them their secret is safe with him, and asking them if they're a true believer in the grace of Rudolph. He himself doesn't believe in Rudolph, but he claims to be ready to be convinced. Suddenly, he's confronted by three figures, either in meatspace or just in his goggles. One of them I *think* is the Mother Of The Year we met earlier.

He runs toward them, confusing the woman on the left for Lain, and then there's just static.

Cut back to Lain's interview with the Tachibana guys. The room that they're in looks different now; darker lighting, and I'm pretty sure the furniture and wall features have also changed. The interviewer and his agents are refusing to give Lain their names, claiming that they don't matter, and then asking her if she and Lain of the Wired are actually the same entity or not.

She keeps stammering pathetically, until he asks her another string of questions.

Are her parents actually her parents?

When Lain is surprised by the question and insists that of course they are, he asks her when their birthdays are. And how they met. And when her sister's birthday is. Lain begins crying, as she is unable to answer any of those questions. He asks about her own birthday. The hospital she was born at. She doesn't know. She almost literally doesn't know anything.

Either she has knowledge compartmentalized into different identities, or there's something even weirder than I thought going on.

Then, after crying for a bit, Lain suddenly goes wobbly. Like she's about to collapse. But then she just stands up straight, tears gone, expression and intonations completely changed, and tells the guy to shut the hell up, because it's none of his business and this conversation is boring her now. He asks if he's now talking to Lain of the Wired, and she as good as admits it.

Okay, looks like I was right. She's got multiple personalities. The version of her that drifts through life as if she's been clonked on the head is only one of them, and it may not have access to most of her memories, explaining why it's so blank and passive.

Boss Tachibana comments on her being able to switch herself out without a device handy; this is a sign that the boundaries between Wired and reality really are breaking down. Looks like I was right about that too! Confident!Lain just says that that should make things more interesting, and tries to leave the room.

Wow, she really is like Shiki.

The agents start to stop her, insisting that she's too dangerous to be released, but Boss tells them to let her go (and names one of them as "Karl" in the process). Maybe, he muses, they should just back off and wait to see what happens next.

Lain leaves. Cut to Mother Of The Year playing a videogame with her son. There's a circuitboard stuffed in the garbage disposal of her sink. Presumably either from the thing she just had delivered, or from the backpack guy's headset.

Speak of the devil, we then go to backpack guy facedown in the grass next to a highway somewhere. Either dead or unconscious.

His dying AR display is showing the Knights emblem matching the mark on the discarded circuitboard. The end.


Lots of pieces floating around, but some of them are maaaaybe starting to fit together. While I can't say that this story didn't lose some of its poignancy for me when it went off the deep end with psychic powers and secret societies and stuff, there's a new kind of strength in what it's doing. The interaction of dissociative identities with the global information highway alone is pretty thought provoking, and the supernatural stuff just makes it more intricate. And now there's the question of not only who Lain is, but also even what she is.

Whatever else is going on here, though, it still started with a mentally ill girl not being given the help she needed by her inattentive family. That, no matter where the story goes from here, will remain a powerful statement.