Copyright Yardbarker
Until Pluribus debuted on Apple TV, no one knew what Pluribus was actually about. The streamer kept the premise of Vice Gilligan’s new show a mystery. All we knew was that it would follow “the most miserable person on Earth” as she tried to “save the world from happiness.” Now we know Rhea Seehorn’s Carol Sturka isn’t trying to save people from happiness. People are now one person, as an alien virus has turned all but 13 humans into one collective hive mind in Pluribus. That’s horrific for all of the reasons Carol highlighted during the meeting with her fellow remaining individuals. But Pluribus has set itself up to be even scarier in the future. Because while Carol is convinced this global event will end badly, the happy hive mind itself isn’t asking the most pertinent, most terrifying question of all on Pluribus: Why? Why did aliens send this virus to Earth? How Did Mankind Become a Hive Mind on Pluribus? Pluribus began with scientists picking up a message from deep space. It originated 600 light-years away and repeated every 78 seconds. They first thought it was Morse code split four ways, but it actually ended up being a “recipe.” Researchers ultimately worked out an RNA sequence from this message “that encodes for a lysogenic virus“—but this virus ended up being very different from any virus found on Earth. Being humans, and in their excitment over this message, they, of course, set out to create the recipe sent to them without much thought as to what it might do, which inevitably led to the virus infecting humans and spreading across the earth’s population. What Does Pluribus‘ Virus Do? On Pluribus, the non-fatal, highly contagious virus easily spreads through a small amount of saliva, which works as a kind of “psychic glue.” It’s capable of “binding” every human mind. Every host body simultaneously shares every memory, emotion, and piece of knowledge from everyone else on the planet. (Minus the 13 people who, for reasons the hive mind does not yet know, proved impervious to the virus.) The peaceful virus-induced hive mind loves its new, shared, unified existence on Pluribus. It does not mourn the death of the individual. It also hopes to bring the remaining 13 people on Earth into its collective fold so they, too, can become “beneficiaries” of this extraterrestrial technology. Pluribus‘ Virus and Hive Mind Have Killed the Human Race The handful of surviving individuals Carol met share none of her concerns. Some think mankind, now free of violence and oppression, is better off. One even wants to join the collective so she can be with her family, while another doesn’t fully appreciate that her family no longer exists. They can’t see what Carol sees, that these “grave robbers” who say they can’t harm any living thing have killed every human. Billions of bodies might be alive, but every human is dead. If everyone is the same person with the same mind and thoughts, no one exists. The very thing that makes us people no longer exists on Plurbius. “I’ve seen this movie. We’ve all seen this movie, and we know it does not end well.” Carol might be a romance-fantasy novelist, but she clearly knows her sci-fi. She seems to be aware of something the other individuals and the hive mind aren’t even considering: the “why.” Why did the aliens send this virus and create the hive mind on Pluribus? The hive mind includes the scientists who discovered the message originally. They should know the inherent problems with everything that has happened since the night they first received it. Whoever, or whatever, sent the message needed tremendous power to transmit it. It required a satellite bigger than Africa. Even scarier is that it that this alien signal is possibly older than human beings and also being sent all over the universe. Why would a species (or creature) so advanced and so ancient want other intelligent species to become a hive mind in the first place? Why would it care? It’s not like the Pluribus virus connected this mass human brain to the source (as far as we know). This virus only glues people on Earth together. If there’s no benefit to the virus’ creator, why send something that is obviously terrible to anyone who can think? It’s not an inherently good virus, either, despite what the collective claims on Pluribus. It didn’t even create a truly benevolent uni-being. Once the hive mind felt its own existence threatened, it sped up its plans to convert the entire planet. It did so at the cost of more than 886 million lives. It won’t step on a bug, but it will let all those people die so it can survive? And this virus is a good thing, some alien sent for seemingly virtuous reasons on Pluribus? We have our doubts. Something very old and powerful sent a virus to Earth. It killed (almost) every individual on Earth. It merely left behind the bodies to share a single, docile consciousness that does not question why any of this happened. The only one who seems to realize what that actually portends is Carol. The hive mind told Carol during their conversation via the TV that “this” isn’t an alien invasion. The collective believes that on Pluribus, but this was an alien invasion via virus and the destruction of people who can think for itself. If those aliens—the ones who turned mankind into a smiling, happy, unquestioning single individual, the ones possibly doing that to every advanced life form in the universe—show up on Pluribus, the world is going to have much bigger problems than forced happiness. It’s going to have 8 billion bodies who literally can’t wage war.
