#gary king

Gary shits himself at seeing a blank… of himself???

circa 1990

More TWE stuff thats been bouncing around in my brain as of late; Basil told Steven in The Mermaid that the Network first arrived around Newton Haven in 1990 (The first golden mile) and we do see it confirmed in the flashback. What I've been thinking about is just when exactly it started taking over the residents. Sure, it may not have happened all at once, but surely atleast one or two blanks could have been in Newton Haven while the five musketeers had still been living there, right? Not to mention that Newton Haven wasn't the only place around the globe to be inhabited by blanks before the World's End. Meaning its highly possible, if not statistically likely that either Gary, Andy, or any of the others may have met or spoken to a blank atleast once in their lives without even realizing it.

This doesn’t really add much from a lore perspective, but people tend to forget that the blanks were around for much longer than just Gary's golden mile. They also experienced life before the apocalypse, people just never knew they were there.

Which leads me to another realization: The blanks were NOT a variety of consciousness while under the influence of The Network. They were a hivemind. Now its not entirely clear if they ever stopped being a hivemind after The Network essentially abandoned the life it had created on earth. But we do know that The Network just up and left, leaving behind something meant to serve one purpose.. BE a hivemind. To GROW the hivemind. Now that there's essential no way to do that seeing as their leader and creator left them to fend for themselves, it only makes sense to assume that they're no longer an interlinked consciousness. How else could they make decisions without the help of The Network? The only logical explanation would be that they now have a choice. They now have the power to do something that their species was never meant to do. Think for themselves.

"And as for the blanks.. well, funny thing. They woke up. A week or so after The Network pulled out they just sort of rebooted by themselves. Tried to start afresh. They seemed lost at first. Like children, cut off from their parents. Abandoned, forgotten. Looking for guidance. Someone to show them the way. I felt a bit sorry for them to be honest.."

And people are afraid. Why wouldn't they be? Knowing that an entire extraterrestrial species tried to wipe out the earth's population or turn them into slaves. But they don't. The Network wanted that. And now that its gone they don't have a reason to think that anymore. They just want to exist, despite the everlasting social impact that The Network left on their species.