Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

My son and I were browsing through the books at the thrift store when I spotted another Michael Crichton book - Prey. Kelsey’s finished Jurassic Park and  has proclaimed Michael Crichton to be his favorite author, so I pulled it off of the shelf and handed it to him.

He read the back cover, looked thoughtful for a moment, then said “Mom, it sounds like the creature on LOST.”

I looked at the cover again.
Holy cow - he was right. (Just look at it!)
I flipped it over and read the back cover, my jaw increasingly dropping:

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong.  A cloud of nanoparticles–micro-robots–has escaped from the laboratory.  This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing.  It is intelligent and learns from experience.  For all practical purposes, it’s alive.

It has been programmed as a predator.  It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.

Every attempt to destroy it has failed.

And we are the prey.

Does that not sound like the black smoke creature on the LOST island to you?  And the laboratory?

And get this… the main character’s names are JACK and JULIA.  Julia, incidentally, is the devious and incredibly smart scientist who’s been running the nanobot program. She’s also vice-president of the company that developed them.  Kinda like Juliette on LOST - an incredible scientist, and seemingly co-leader of the Others camp with Ben. (Even though she’s on his bad side at the moment.)  See how she handled that incident with the black smoke creature tonight? Does anyone else think she was lying through her teeth when she said “We don’t know what it is, but we know it doesn’t like our fences”?  Yeah, SURE you don’t know what it is. We’ll just let Sayid handle you, little lady.

The whole thing sounds to me like what could have given the LOST producers their underlying idea for LOST. Heck, it might even be an “inspired by” type of tv adaptation.

This might have been thrown around years ago on some LOST sites or forums; I haven’t looked. I just stumbled upon it and got all excited. You can click on the book’s image to go to its detail page on Amazon, they have a much bigger write-up on the actual story than the back-cover snippet I’ve put here.

PS - Of course I bought the book. For 25 cents, what LOST fan wouldn’t?  So nanobots might not be what the black cloud on our LOST island is… so what? It’ll be fun to read a good Crichton novel anyway. (No, I haven’t read it yet. Haven’t even added it to my Spring Reading Thing list yet!)

OH MAN…
Updating this post, as I just had a breakthrough of thoughts.

Locke’s dad - Kate’s horse - Jack’s Dad walking through the forest - Mr. Eko’s brother…

All of these things could have been replicated (and Jack’s dead father even “brought to life”, hence his corpse missing from the casket) by nanobots.

Ben said a black box that whatever you think of, you open the box, and there it is?
Nanobots could do that.

Think about Ethan’s inhuman strength (hanging Charlie up so high by himself, dragging off Charlie AND Claire by himself) and how he fought like a martial arts master.  Think about Juliette’s lightning-fast reflexes tonight and how *she* fought like a martial arts master.
People who are “infected” (voluntarily or otherwise) with nanobots would have those physical capabilities.

Danielle’s team of scientists who got sick - I’ve thought all along that her scientists are the scientists at the Others camp.  Now I’m thinking that what she calls “getting sick” is actually them being infected with (again, voluntarily or otherwise) nanobots.

This would also solve the question of why the Others are only choosing certain people, and they talk about taking people who are “good”.  Because nanobots are machines with a group mind. You wouldn’t want one “bad apple” with destructive tendencies getting in there; those bad/devious/killer thoughts and behaviors would spread through the whole colony.

I’m now almost convinced… the Others have nanobots in them. They are acting as hosts; much like on Stargate where that one race of people voluntarily take in that weird big-maggot-type creature into them and they share the body.
The black cloud flying around the island… that’s a group of rogue nanobots that got loose, and the Others can’t control it. They also don’t want it infecting them, as it’s absorbed things from (what the Others consider) the “bad” people. When Locke and Desmond blew up the magnetic force-controlling lab, it somehow empowered the rogue cloud of nanobots –either the cloud can move more freely now, or it’s gotten more powerful– and the Others are packing up and heading away (probably to the other island) for their safety.

Also I found the tv guide write-ups for the next two shows:

April 11th: Jack’s happy reunion with his fellow castaways is cut short when they realize he’s with an Other; and Claire is stricken by a mysterious, life-threatening illness.

April 18th: Desmond talks Hurley, Jin and a very troubled Charlie into accompanying him on a journey across the jungle after experiencing another one of his prophetic flashes. And Kate turns to Sawyer after seeing Jack alone with Juliet.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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