Who’s really Lost? Maybe the viewers
Mad marketing genius delivers scary shot of reality to the show’s most passionate viewers
“ Did Josh Holloway get too close to the truth?” The mysterious email arrived one evening as I was, coincidentally, exploring: www. thehansofoundation. org.
I paused the grainy Dharma Initiative Orientation video, found ( via hidden link) under a list of “ Active Projects.”
“ Who is this?” I typed. “ What do you want?”
According to reports, Holloway — who plays Sawyer on Lost ( ABC, CTV, 9 tonight) — was the victim of a home invasion earlier this month in Hawaii. Masked men broke into his house. He was asleep with his wife. The bandits got away with cash, credit cards and Holloway’s Mercedes- Benz, which was later recovered.
Within 42 seconds, my email chimed: One new message.
“ Don’t ask stupid questions!” read the reply. “ Holloway and Harold Perrineau ( who plays Michael) know too much about The Initiative — the real Initiative! They thought they were ‘ actors!’ They thought this was just a ‘ show!’ You need to investigate.”
I felt cold and sick and scared. So I poured a martini, closed the shutters and, using a secure line, called a highplaced source in Oahu.
“ Selenici?” I said. “ What do you know about Perrineau and The Initiative?”
“ I can’t talk right now,” whispered Selenici. “ I’ll call you in 108 minutes. But go to www. oceanicflight815. com. Click on the barcode. The password is: theislandiswaiting.” So I did. Soon I was staring at a page from a production draft with hand- written marginalia. Stamped on the script was the name of Javier Grillo Marxuach, one of Lost’s writers. What the hell? I thought, removing copies of Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw
from my bookshelf. This doesn’t make any sense.
Sharon, my assistant, walked into the office. She had some startling news:
“ On the night Holloway was robbed, Perrineau was followed for nearly 30 minutes by two unidentified men. Perrineau was on his way to Daniel Dae Kim’s house.”
I jumped out of my chair. Bloody hell!
“ You know what this means, right?” I asked Sharon. “ Two incidents, three actors . . . . The 23 Enigma.”
Sharon looked terrified.
“ Discordian Law?” she asked. “ Can it really be?” But we both knew the answer.
“ Did we hear from Kris or Arun or Paulo?” I asked. “ Any luck?”
“ No,” sighed Sharon. “ They tried to bypass www. di9fftr731. com but each IP was repeatedly denied access.”
“ Okay,” I said. “ Do we have any peanut butter? Or potato chips?”
I scrolled through some old files. Some time ago, a source had forwarded a message captured at www. oceanicair. com/ inflightmagazine. htm.
After following a “ Book Flight” link, he stumbled upon some embedded text:
“ I survived a horrific plane crash and am stranded on an island somewhere northeast of Australia and southwest of Hawaii. In the event that I am never found, please forward word of my fate to my parents.”
Poor bastard. And now Holloway is robbed. Perrineau is followed. I’m sure Kim’s house must be bugged. But why?
Later that night, a breakthrough. Sharon poked her head into the office: “ Selenici is on Line 4.”
I picked up the receiver.
“ What do you have?” I asked.
“ This is bigger than anybody could imagine,” Selenici said, still whispering. “ We know ABC has engaged in considerable guerrilla marketing, right? And we know there’s been a lot of thirdparty opportunism, like the Mr. Clucks site.”
“ You might even say ‘ Big Spaceship,’ ” I said.
“ Exactly.”
“ So?”
“ Don’t you get it?” asked Selenici, his voice starting to strain.
“ The Hanso Foundation Security Directive is a front for network research. Eternity is The Hatch. This is Locke versus Rousseau as a ratings amplifier. Each of us is the polar bear, the swan . . . the Experiment.”
I gulped: “ The network is The Others?”
“ Exactly,” said Selenici. I could hear him cocking a rifle. “Week after week,” he continued, “ they’re watching us decipher cryptic clues that make no sense. No sense! They’re gleefully monitoring hundreds of online discussions. This show is an exercise in viewer fanaticism. We are the rats in the Skinner Box. This is operant conditioning at its most diabolical!” The fog was starting to lift.
All these Lost sites — official and otherwise — were a ruse for evil market research. Holloway must have accidentally learned about this. Maybe he threatened to go public. Were they trying to scare him with the home invasion? Later, another source sent me a link to a replica of the Dharma Initiative Countdown Clock. The green cursor, circa 1984, beckoned. So I dutifully entered: “ 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.”
“ YOU KNOW TOO MUCH!” flashed on my screen.
I put down my martini and glanced at Sharon. She started to cry. vmenon@thestar.ca