Blogpost 3 : Source Code

There were times in our lives that we experience people hit us when we are not looking especially if we're trying to sleep or rest. We always get irritated or frustrated when people do that particularly when we look for the person who did that but no one wants to admit who have done the act and people around you have started to laugh because they think that you're very dumb to not know who the mastermind is. When this kind of act happens, we are always the center of attraction. During this event, we are thinking that "Who the hell did that?! Show yourself and I'll hit you too!". What if we can go back time and see who did that but we have to replace another person who is a witness to that act or in other words creating a parallel world whose past we may visit but you're a different person.

The movie "Source Code" shares the same intention as ours when we want to go back time and see who did that but in a whole new level. The movie was starred by Jake Gyllenhaal. The movie is all about a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and found out that he has a mission to find the bomber in the Chicago commuter train with only 8 minutes. The Source Code and creating parallel universe is the focus of the story. The Source Code is a machine that retrace events by accessing mental impressions formed in the brain during the victims’ final eight minutes of life based on the movie. 

As I was searching for articles about the movie "Source Code and it's relation to parallel universe, I found an article entitled "Parallel Universe and Corpse Brains: Source Code Takes Science on a Trip" by "Hugh Hart" in the site of "Wired". The article talks about on how the Source Code creates parallel universe and the possibility if Source Code can become reality. Source Code is just a fictional idea made by the movie. 

“‘Time reassignment’ respects this boundary by creating a parallel world whose past we may visit and freely disturb, since those actions have no causal impact on our own reality,” Ripley said. “Whatever Colter does in the Source Code changes absolutely nothing that has already happened in the primary reality.” stated by Hugh Hart.

The movie believed that when you die, circuits from your brain remain open just briefly, even after death, like a light bulb that was turned off and there's an after-glow. Another thing that the movie believed that the brain contains a short term memory track that's approximately eight minutes long like a security camera in a convenience store that only records the last portion of the day's activity in its hard drive. Now, combining this two beliefs in the movie, Source Code takes advantage of this two things. I believe that Hugh Hart was saying that Source Code cannot affect the primary reality because it creates parallel worlds whose past we may visit and freely disturb that is similar to our reality. 

Jake is dead in the movie but based on the beliefs of the movie he is alive in the source code. When Jake goes back in the Source Code, he's in a body of another person with almost same capabilities as him. Each time Jake goes into the Source Code, he's creating a new parallel reality. Jake dies 7 times on going to the Source Code in order to find the bomber. Before his last transport on the Source Code, he ordered Vera, the one in-charge of the source code in primary reality, that she must take off the life support of the Source Code to him when 8 minutes arrived since he knew who the bomber is now. For all the 7 tries in order to look for the bomber, all of them in the train died but his 8th try he saved all of them and when the 8 minutes was up, his consciousness stayed on the person he overtake on the source code. Over all he made 8 parallel realities and he experienced different scenarios. 

In the 8th and last parallel reality he created, I realized that his consciousness is not in 2 places at once but he's in several places at once. Jake's body physical body not only exists in the primary reality, but in every parallel reality that the Source Code created. His consciousness resides on his original body inside the Source Code and the other one is the one who created 8 parallel realities. The beauty of creating parallel universe is very nice but we must only focus on our primary reality because this is where our choices were made.