In Michael and the Magic Man, there's a guy named Michael, whose brother is a private investigator working for a politician. Or maybe he's not a PI, but he's working for a politician in any case.
The politician has a son named Lawrence, and there's some worry that he's going to do something to blow up his father's campaign. So Michael's brother hires him to find Lawrence and see what's doing with him.
Michael does find Lawrence, who does a little stage magic and the like (he's the "magic man" of the title). Lawrence is accompanied by a small group of friends, and Michael gets to know them. He overhears some of them talking, and discovers that they believe they're being chased by aliens.
He isn't sure if they're crazy, or just misled, but some things happen that make him wonder whether they're right. One of those things results in one of the friends getting killed.
I put this in a thread of its own with a spoiler warning, because the book is so worth reading, and because spoiling the surprise is as bad as spoiling the surprise in The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game or Identity. In fact, it's much like the twist in Identity.
It turns out that none of the friends exist. They're basically all Lawrence's imaginary friends. And he was more than a little surprised the first time one of them started interacting with Michael. They figure it's a kind of low grade telepathy, but there's no focus on that.
It seems that Michael, filled with conspiracy expectations from his brother, was the reason why Lawrence's imaginary friends had started getting darker and more paranoid, and the whole "running from aliens" thing came from Michael himself, trying unconsciously to make sense of what he was seeing in the context of his expectations.
The book ends with Michael and Lawrence taking off across the country with their group of friends, who don't really exist.
It probably sounds pretty lame the way I'm describing it, but I promise you, it's worth hunting down a copy and reading it.
Anyway, where Lost comes in. Ben saw Richard back when he (Ben) was a kid. Forty or so years later, Richard hasn't changed except for a haircut and a shave, and he shows up after Ben has killed his father. And maybe all of the Dharma Initiative.
Richard exists. Probably. I mean, he was in Juliet's flashbacks off the island. But then... that presupposes that Juliet exists, and that her flashbacks aren't the product of Ben's imagination.
But Richard and Tom seemed, until a couple of weeks ago, to be utterly loyal to Ben. But when Locke showed up, all of a sudden Richard is talking to him (Locke) as though his biggest goal is to help Locke out.
Locke starts beating the hell out of Mikhail, and Ben, shocked, calls to Richard and Tom to do something. They just stand there. Tom doesn't even stop eating his sandwich. Because Locke's power of imagination is as strong as Ben's.
There's a scene in Michael and the Magic Man where Michael and Lawrence each want the imaginary friends to do something different, and that conflict was what Richard and Tom just standing/sitting there reminded me of.
Do any of the characters on Lost other than Locke and Ben really exist? It's not that I think that if Ben were to die, the Others would just evaporate like a soap bubble. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if they did.
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
That's an intriguing theory.
Posted by Reshpeckobiggle (Member # 8947) on :
And I hope it's not true. I don't want there to be a big twist at the end that makes you realize that most of the awesomeness of the show was never even real. I hope that it turns out that everything that we see has happened just as we saw it, and there will be a big reveal at the end that makes you have to go back and watch every episode over again. Because then my life will have meaning once more.
Posted by The Reader (Member # 3636) on :
If that happens, I will pretend that the show never existed and destroy the DVDs I own.
Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :
In the book, did anything happen outside Michael and Lawrence's influence? There's a lot happening to the other characters even when neither Locke nor Ben are around.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
No, nothing did. And I'm sure it's not exactly like that, but...
I'm not quite sure. But I have a feeling that the big reveal in the "Snake in the Mailbox" season finale will be something along these lines.