Protocol

Another week, another episode of serial experiments lain. Layer 09: Protocol’s voice-over says, “If you want to be free of suffering, you should believe in God. Whether or not you believe in Him, God is always by your side.” Much of the rest of the episode consists of infodumps about topics such as Roswell, important figures in computer history, and concepts and inventions like Memex and hypertext. An alien in a striped sweater appears on Lain’s doorway. In Cyberia, JJ hands Lain an envelope that he says she dropped, but she doesn’t remember it and it’s stamped with the Knights’ logo. Lain has a “date” with Taro where she questions him about the processor from the envelope. Taro steals a kiss as he leaves.

Nice.

Lain sees a vision of herself being introduced to the Iwakura home, and has a brief exchange with this past version of herself. Eiri finally appears in person.…

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Rumors

Ready for more serial experiments lain? Our friend the voice-over says in Layer 08: Rumors, “Do you want to be hurt, too? Do you want your heart to feel like it’s being scraped with a rasp? If you do, don’t look away, whatever you do.” Lain meets with Taro in a computer game world where he’s killing other player characters, telling Lain that nobody knows what’s fun or why. Lain speaks to an artist making models of scantily-clad women, and they speculate on Tachibana’s R&D efforts and whether they’d do anything illegal. In particular, he mentions how Protocol 6 (essentially, IPv6 in our real world) is “reaching its throughput limit,” and that whoever can control Protocol 7 can control “the economy of the Wired,” and that there are constant sabotage efforts against it.

Lain mentions to her parents, with a nervous laugh, how she’d been recently asked if they’re her real parents, but gets no response besides a stare. At school, Alice and her friends confront Lain about spreading rumours about Alice. Lain next enters a chatroom of some kind where the participants are, of course, sharing rumours and wild speculations; “God” appears and talks about his and Lain’s nature. Now, she’d apparently been absorbed in her pocket Navi but snaps out of it to see everyone in her classroom staring at her and a message on her Navi, “Lain is a peeping tom.” She runs away and worries about what she’d done on the Wired, and we see a vision of the school exploding. We then cut to Lain of the Wired watching Alice fantasise about a teacher. Lain confronts Lain of the Wired and strangles her. Back in the chatroom, Eiri tells Lain that she’s omnipresent in the Wired, and Lain figures that she can erase people’s memories – including the memories of her double and the rumours she’d spread, which she then does.

They did indeed forget, but as Alice and the rest walk toward Lain a double, the cruel Lain, appears – and it’s this Lain that they can see and interact with.

A lot happens in this episode, so let’s go through scene by scene. First, it’s not clear whether the game Taro is playing is intended to be PvP (player vs. player) or not, but ruining other people’s day through good old-fashioned cyberbullying is the basic theme of this episode. As for the porn artist, his dialogue is expository but the setting gives us a sense that the Wired is, in multiple ways, a perverse place.

The question regarding Lain’s parents was, of course, brought up last episode, and their response to Lain here tells me that the Tachibana boss was on the right track; the Iwakuras are not Lain’s real parents. Note that Mr. Iwakura’s glasses are opaque because of a glare from an unseen source as Lain enters the room, but the glare is gone when he and his wife look to Lain, not saying anything but with an expression like they have some bad news to deliver. The effect is that he seems distant at first, but more honest at the end of the scene.

At school, and really throughout the series, Alice is very patient and forgiving with Lain. In contrast to the Wired rumourmongers, Alice always prefers to assume the best of people. The internet tends to bring out the worst in people, because the people we speak with seem less real due to pseudonyms and lack of things like tone of voice, eye contact, etc., and our own anonymity removes us from a feeling of responsibility. Alice’s good nature, then, makes her feel more like a real person as opposed to the extremely online personalities of the chatroom participants.

Who knows how much of what the chatroom participants say is true? It doesn’t matter, really, as they’re essentially voyeurs. As for “God,” it is interesting to see Eiri talk about himself a little. He at least doesn’t claim to be the creator of the world (meaning the real world, I assume), but adds that “The all-powerful ruler of the world” is “giv[ing] God too much credit.” Well, God would be all-powerful pretty much by definition, but Eiri is, I believe, mostly interested in increasing his own power, or at least the perception of his power, and one way to do so is to downplay the power of other “gods.” He does claim to be like God in that he’s omnipresent, though. He also talks about how Lain has always existed in the Wired and that the “real world” Lain is just a hologram of the Lain of the Wired, much as the apparition of Mrs. Iwakura said in Layer 05.

One confusing comment Eiri makes when Lain asks who he is, is “I am you.” Now, I don’t think that’s true, so I assume that he says this to throw Lain off-balance and make it harder for her to think through what he tells her next. If she accepts that the real world doesn’t matter, then she’s more likely to help weaken the barrier between the real world and the Wired, giving Eiri more influence over both.

Do all of the students at Lain’s school really stare at her? If rumours of what Lain’s been doing as a peeping tom get around, as they certainly could in a school, then it’s possible that most everyone would recognise and stare at her.…

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