#meditations

About Gemini

Let's begin this by touching on who Gemini is from The Adventures of Pinocchio. In the original story, he is only known as Talking Cricket. The name "Jiminy" is actually a reference to the Disney version of the story. Unlike the Disney version where Jiminy Cricket travels with Pinocchio and tries to steer him away from trouble, the Talking Cricket only periodically appears. When Pinocchio first meets the Talking Cricket, he kills him with a hammer after the Talking Cricket chastises him for being a brat. The Talking Cricket reappears again as a blue ghost that again laments the choices that Pinocchio has made up to the middle of the story, and at the end, the Talking Cricket is presumably revived by the Blue Fairy. I've also found it interesting that the spelling they went with is "Gemini", a reference to the constellation (as stars are prevalent in wishes, per Galileo Galilei, and that Gemini means Twin, but then it veers into frivolous speculation from that point).

Thus, a lot of people have been trying to understand who or what Gemini is, and it turns out that we have a very good indication of the "what". When we first meet Gemini, he is broken and rebooting. Sophia describes him as a friend and that he is a "special" cricket puppet. Gemini himself has a very robotic voice, devoid of any cadence that would suggest his specialness until P makes it to Elysion Boulevard. After all, Sophia states that Gemini can fix himself, and when he does, his voice indicates that he is a puppet that has far more emotion and self-awareness than even P.

The flavor text describes the Monad Lamp as "a small lamp with a cricket guide puppet inside. It illuminates the darkness with a faint light. Do not be afraid even if you get lost in the fog. The cricket guide will be with you." Sophia adds to this by explaining that Monad Lamps were toys made in the spirit of the Krat folklore about crickets being guides. From this, it can be surmised that there may have actually been multiple Monad Lamps, but the one that P ends up with is, indeed, special.

Lea's Monad Lamp

It's evident that Gemini once had a previous owner in Lea Florence Monad. In the base game version of the dialogue, in the third memory on the beach, Carlo (and Romeo) plead with Lea to take them as her apprentices. Calmly and sternly, Lea orders Gemini to "get rid of them". In the DLC version of the dialogue, Lea is far more frantic but still orders Gemini to get rid of the two boys. Overture's banner also shows Lea with Gemini attached to her belt; however, in-game, her Monad Lamp is noticeably empty when compared to P's.

It was very curious, but at the time, I couldn't understand why. That is, until we meet a very specific character who subtly tells us key information about Gemini.

The Crusher Puppet Trail

When P arrives in the Ergo Mines after successfully winning the Tracker as an ally, he comes across a broken crusher puppet. This puppet is very different from other puppets we have met, namely the broken puppet found after defeating the Parade Master and the lonely puppet who sits immobile in a tunnel in the Barren Swamp. While those puppets still have the robotic voice and stutter as they speak, the crusher puppet in the Ergo Mine speaks clearly and with a vast range of emotion (mainly of panic).

The crusher puppet calls out to P and leads him along the mines to where he is, giving tidbits of who he is. He expresses that he was dating the daughter of the highest ranking Alchemist, and apparently that was not good. He had a bag thrown over his head, and since then, he had been trapped in darkness---no sight, no hearing, no ability to move his arms and legs. He is able to communicate through these puppets, but because they are (surprisingly) so fragile, they can't travel very far.

The prescribed way to find these puppets along the Critical Path (i.e. the path that you the player will undoubtedly take to progress), is to listen for the audio cue when you step into the trigger, and his voice gets louder (spatial audio) as you get closer to his location. There is yet another indication that this is a friendly crusher puppet: these puppets have a green-yellow light for an eye very similar to Gemini's light. Hostile puppets have red eyes, and non-hostile puppets have either no eye color or blue eyes. When P finally finds the one guiding him to his location, we find a brain in a glowing liquid of the same green-yellow color.

For as long as the capsule glows green, the brain can communicate with P. Time finally comes to make a decision: mercy-kill the brain by shutting off the life support system, or leave him to slowly suffocate as gas slowly leaks out of the machine. Choosing the former results in learning the identity of the brain and receiving the record for Nightmare.

The Brain in the Vat

Alexander Goodman was an Alchemist who created the Mind Keeper Machine. While the specific purpose of the machine is never disclosed, it's clear that the machine is meant to keep a brain alive without the need of a body. Because Alexander Goodman was dating the daughter of highest-ranking Alchemist (presumably Sophia), he was kidnapped and thrust into darkness (probably by Simon and the Bastards). And he remained in darkness, in silence, and rendered immobile; however, he didn't know what had actually happened to him until P briefly became his window to the world.

Alexander's presentation in Pistis Harbor is a direct reference to a thought experiment called "Brain in a Vat", which was modernized from Rene Descartes' original "Evil Demon". In the First Meditation, Rene establishes that perhaps the world we know isn't real because we can't be sure that it is real. He proposes, for the sake of doubt, that the world is governed by a powerful malicious demon whose purpose is to constantly lie and deceive. The only way to properly doubt and therefore attempt to avoid being deceived, Rene Descartes reduced himself to merely a "thinking thing", because as long as one thinks, one exists---senses be damned. He imagines himself "as if [he] has no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses at all". By excising himself from everything except from the fact that he can think, he can clearly examine arguments from as detached position as possible.

The Brain in the Vat (BIV) is similar, conceived by Gilbert Harman and modernized by Hilary Putnam in the 1960s from the earlier Evil Demon experiment, the Hindu Maya Illusion, and Zhugnzi's "The Butterfly Dream". In BIV, a brain is excised from its body and placed into a life-support vat. It is then hooked up to a computer that would send electrical impulses to the brain and essentially allow the brain to live in a simulated reality including appropriate responses to the brain's output. While BIV is regarded by Putnam as meaningless, it gives way to semantic externalism (when words mean something different external to the speaker, or "being on different pages" to put it simpler) and solipsism (the idea that only one's mind is sure to exist). Essentially, the argument becomes that one wouldn't be able to know internally if their brain was embodied or in a vat because from the perspective of the brain, everything would appear true and they wouldn't know if their beliefs are actually false.

The Nature of Doubt in a World of Truth and Lies

Moreover, Rene Descartes' Meditations broaden to the application of doubt in reason and the determination of what is true and what is false. Back in his day, people were accustomed to accepting whatever was taught to them as true. If the Church said that God existed, who were they to argue that there was no God (aside from atheists)? The evidence is there in the fact that they breathe, and that action came from God. But if the world was actually all a lie, and all one could do was think while understanding that thinking about an action and an action itself are two separate things, how would one know that they were actually breathing? How would one know that what they saw or heard was real and not a trick played by some omniscient puppeteer? Rene Descartes added that he could either be awake or in a dream, and he wouldn't be able to determine one or the other if he relied on his senses.

But what does this have to do with Alexander Goodman? The second time that P encounters one of his crusher puppets. Alexander explains to P the incident that left him in the dark, and the player receives the gesture Doubt.

The mere acquisition of Doubt underscores Alexander's quest as homage to Meditations (aside from other direct references to Rene Descartes that I'll show later). After all, Alexander's story sounds bizarre. At the time of locating this puppet, there is no indication what Alexander truly is outside of his panic that he's in a dark place unable to do anything but communicate using broken puppets.

It becomes, then, that Alexander's quest is another touch of the overarching theme of the game: Truth versus Lies. The Adventures of Pinocchio weren't all completely about lying but rather about being uneducated made you susceptible to exploitation including being fooled by swindlers. In the books I read on Gnosticism, humanity's pursuit for Knowledge to truly be one with the ultimate being predicates on determining truth from falsehood.

And as an aside, P eventually unlocking the Sherlock Holmes costume from Tracker's quest is a nice little cherry on top. After all, the greatest detective also knows when to critically assess the evidence before him.

Dreams and Waking

In Meditations, Rene Descartes also questions the notion of even being conscious. If he is used to sleeping at night and he has the same experiences in dreams as he does awake, or that he can have even "more improbable experiences than insane people" while awake; how would he know if he was in his dressing gown next to the fire or undressed and asleep in bed?

The record received from granting Alexander Goodman's wish is called Nightmare, which is a nod to this argument. The description pertains to Alexander's final thoughts before he dies in the vat, expressing that even if everything was a dream, he didn't regret being human and falling in love.

Another interesting thing, though more of a little bonus (as I like to include): Alexander Goodman's fate is very similar to that of Perilaus' Brazen Bull. In ancient Greece, the inventor Perilaus proposed to the tyrant king Phalaris this torture device, which was a bull made of bronze that opened on the side. The victim was to be placed inside the belly of the bull, and a fire was lit underneath to heat the bull like a giant oven. The bull's head was made with an intricate set of tubing so that when the victim screamed, it sounded as if the bull was bellowing in "the tenderest, most pathetic, and most melodious" way. Upon revealing the Brazen Bull to Phalaris, the tyrant king had Perilaus be the first victim of his own creation. (This device is featured in Amnesia: The Dark Descent.)

Alexander Goodman's Mind Keeper Machine, of which the purpose isn't entirely known (though I can speculate), would be similar...though, likely not as a way to willfully torture victims; however, the mental duress it imparts on unknowing victims is torture in itself. After all, the Alchemists probably would not want to kill the brain of the man who built such a machine.

One last thing: COGITO ERGO SUM is also used in the short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. Alexander Goodman and Gemini, both being without proper mouths, cannot scream. This epigram, however, also applies to the fact that AM, a supercomputer, simulates cycles and versions of hell for Ted and the others. While I have other things to discuss about this short story, it is worth mentioning that it logistically helps to underscore the hell that at least Alexander Goodman is made to suffer.

Addendum: Walker of Illusions

Quick aside: I occasionally forget Walker of Illusions because she's a mini-boss (and a hard one at that!), but there is a possibility that she might also be a little nod to Descartes' writings. She is a much more subtle one if she is and a conglomerate of his concepts even.

Walker of Illusions could be referencing to Descartes' idea that everything is an illusion via the Evil Demon thought experiment, a version of a BIV (considering the very prominent and enlarged brain in her glass cranium), and that her eyes are covered though she isn't blind. Her signature move is to conjure a second version of herself that registers as a regular enemy. The reference to Meditations isn't as strong as Alexander Goodman, and she could also be attributed to the Frankenstein aspect of the game's narrative.

Descartes, the Technician

This section is more of an aside to Alexander Goodman. Descartes is a a technician in the base game, and one that seemed to argue against Venigni at times. He wrote the diary (Descartes's Note) on Fuoco's awakening and worship of the King of Puppets.

When he writes on Fuoco, Meditations is used as the basis of the diary. Specifically, the irrefutable nature of a higher power compelling a being to behave a certain way. In this case, the Grand Covenant which binds the puppets to their Creator (God), who is Geppetto. Ergo, the crystallized soul, must be the key. He questions how Fuoco could have just suddenly started to act, with passion, on his own; is someone controlling Fuoco or does he have his own will? "This requires further investigation" (the Scientific Method).

He also is shown in one instance to butt heads with Venigni (amicably) as the creator of the Coil Mjolnir. The description of the Coil Mjolnir Head seems more to characterize him as the real Rene Descartes, which parallels Venigni, whom we actually interact with in-game.

Implications of Gemini

With all this discussed about Alexander Goodman, we come back to Gemini. Gemini makes passing comments about when he used to be alive, so we know that Gemini was not always a puppet and he understands the concept of life and death as it pertains to humans. Like in Pinocchio, Gemini is nothing more than a disembodied voice anchored in a puppet, just like Alexander Goodman. When we considered what Alexander Goodman can do with the crusher puppets, we can attribute that to Gemini. Therefore, prior to Lies of P, Gemini was able to pilot different puppets at will while he was with Lea.

I like to relate this idea that also uses BIV to another duology consisting of Ciel Nosurge and Ar Nosurge, in which You (the player) are a consciousness from another dimension communicating and influencing another planet's fate via a terminal (either your PS Vita or your PS3). The terminal, and later on the robot named Earthes, are machines that are piloted by your extra-dimensional consciousness. This would be similar to how Alexander Goodman, and by extension, Gemini would be able to operate puppets.

Inferences to be Made on Gemini, Sophia, and Lea

At some point, Lea sent Gemini away, which would account for why her Monad Lamp is empty during the DLC, but where did she send him? Remember, Gemini is a friend of Sophia. Sophia was sought after by Simon and the Alchemists and was taken by them (inferred by Sophia's Diary). When P arrives in the Relic of Trismegistus, Gemini makes the comment that someone was dragged away from there. At the time, the player is made to think that Gemini is talking about Geppetto, and it's a fair assumption given the ambush had just happened and we didn't have Overture yet. Overture re-contextualizes the line to hint that Gemini is actually talking about Sophia.

Later on, dialogue changes on the beach depending on whether or not Overture has been completed for that playthrough. Lea's command to Gemini to get rid of Carlo and Romeo is much more frantic and desperate, indicating that Lea's become unhinged (something to be discussed in a separate post). Gemini also makes a remark: "Lea is my..." after the final memory

[Image to be added when I get to this in my playthrough]

However, it's difficult to discern what he was implying aside from being a close friend or companion.

But with all things considered about Alexander Goodman, it's supported to determine that Gemini is likely a BIV himself, piloted puppets to help Lea including her Monad Lamp, was possibly put into a humanoid puppet to protect or save Sophia, and was placed into another Monad Lamp by himself or Sophia to be found by the only other soul that Sophia could trust: Carlo, who is awakened inside of P.

Conclusion