#* big data compiles information on everybody / META.

[cagedchoices]

A compilation post of my favorite dialogue examples exploring the concepts of fate, choice, free will, hope & reality.

EXAMPLES FROM WESTWORLD

SEASON 1

EPISODE 1 - THE ORIGINAL

DOLORES: Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world. The disarray. I choose to see the beauty... To believe there is an order to our days, a purpose.

MAN: What do you think of the guests?

DOLORES: You mean the newcomers? I like to remember what my father taught me. That at one point or another, we were all new to this world. The newcomers are just looking for the same thing we are. A place to be free to stake out our dreams, a place with unlimited possibilities.

EPISODE 2 - CHESTNUT

ANGELA: The only limit here is your imagination. You start in the center of the park. It's simple, safe. The further out you venture, the more intense the experience gets. How far you want to go is entirely up to you.

WILLIAM: So, how does this work? Is there an orientation?

ANGELA: No orientation, no guidebook. Figuring out how it works is half the fun. All you do is make choices... starting here. Everything is bespoke and exactly your size. You want to ask, so ask.

WILLIAM: Are you real?

ANGELA: Well, if you can't tell, does it matter?

EPISODE 3 - THE STRAY

DOLORES: Are you saying I've changed?

ARNOLD: Imagine there are two versions of yourself... one that feels these things and asks these questions, and one that's safe. Which would you rather be?

DOLORES: I'm sorry. I'm trying, but I still don't understand.

ARNOLD: No, of course not.

DOLORES: There aren't two versions of me. There's only one. And I think when I discover who I am, I'll be free.

EPISODE 4 - DISSONANCE THEORY

WILLIAM: Choices, Lawrence. You know, you tell yourself you've been at the mercy of mine because it spares you consideration of your own. Because if you did consider your choices, you'd be confronted with a truth you could not comprehend... that no choice you ever made was your own. You have always been a prisoner. What if I told you I'm here to set you free?

—

HECTOR: I don't believe we've ever met.

WILLIAM: No, we haven't. You know, you always seemed like a... a market-tested kind of thing. Big gun, tasteful scar. Locked in your little cycle like a prized poodle after its own tail.

HECTOR: You sound like a man who's grown tired of wearing his guts on the inside.

WILLIAM: There's no need to get testy. I'm just curious about your worldview. Some kind of half-native mumbo jumbo?

HECTOR: It's simple. I believe that only the truly brave can look at the world and understand that all of it... gods, men, everything else... will end badly. No one will be saved.

WILLIAM: Maybe we've got more in common than I thought.

HECTOR: What about you? What turns of fate have brought you here?

WILLIAM: It's a long story. And we don't have the time.

EPISODE 5 - CONTRAPASSO

DOLORES: We have to run.

WILLIAM: Of course we do. That's how this place works, right? They create an urgency, a sense of danger so they can strip us down to something raw, animalistic, primal. It's a sick game, and I don't want to be a part of it.

DOLORES: This isn't a game. They'll kill us. But together, I know we can find a way out.

WILLIAM: How can you be sure?

DOLORES: There's a voice inside me telling me what I have to do. And it's telling me I need you.

—

WILLIAM: How did you do that?

DOLORES: You said people come here to change the story of their lives. I imagined a story where I didn't have to be the damsel.

EPISODE 7 - TROMPE L'OEIL

WILLIAM: This place you're looking for, what makes you so sure it exists?

DOLORES: I'm not. My life before, I was so sure of the world. But now it feels like a lie. Only thing I know is whatever's out there, I'm never going back.

What is it you're looking for? Lawrence is right. You could've stayed in Pariah or gone back, but you're here. With me.

WILLIAM: The only thing I had when I was a kid were books. I used to live in them. I used to go to sleep dreaming I'd wake up inside one of them 'cause they had meaning. This place, this is like I woke up inside one of those stories. I guess I just wanna find out what it means.

DOLORES: I don't wanna be in a story. All I want is to not look forward or back. I just wanna be... in the moment I'm in.

EPISODE 10 - THE BICAMERAL MIND

DR. FORD: Since I was a child...I've always loved a good story. I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth.

I always thought I could play some small part in that grand tradition. And for my pains... I got this... a prison of our own sins. 'Cause you don't want to change. Or cannot change. Because you're only human, after all.

But then I realized someone was paying attention, someone who could change. So I began to compose a new story for them. It begins with the birth of a new people... and the choices they will have to make... and the people they will decide to become.

SEASON 2

EPISODE 2 - REUNION

LEE: Wait. I... I can still help. I know the park a bit. Um... Can I... Can I see your paper?

Sector 15. Not exactly for adrenaline junkies, more of a family-friendly zone. Cabins, rolling hills, all the pastoral clichés. In fact, I... I think you lived there for an Old role. No offense, but you were wasted as a homesteader.

They even saddled you with a kid, or something yawn-inducingly domestic. Clearly that didn't take. I remember you were severely fu... Malfunctioning, when I inherited you.

MAEVE: Our home. She's still there.

LEE: Who?

MAEVE: My daughter. How can I get to her?

LEE: You're looking for your Old kid? How can you even access...

MAEVE: Are you going to help me or not?

LEE: I-I am. I am. I absolutely am. I could write down the directions for you.

MAEVE: How very kind of you.

LEE: But... But... And I say this because you seem really distraught, and, well, awake, you... your daughter, she's... she's just a story. Something we programmed. She's not real.

MAEVE: Not real? But what about me? My dreams? My thoughts? My body? Are they not real?

And what if I took these... unreal fingers... and used them to decorate the walls with your outsized personality? Would that be real?

And fսck your directions. You're going to take me to my daughter.

—

WILLIAM: You believe in God, Lawrence? Did Ford saddle you with that particular affliction?

LAWRENCE: Ain't given the matter much thought, one way or the other.

WILLIAM: Well, if you did, you'd believe that everything you do is being watched by some all-seeing eye. Every choice, every little indiscretion. And when you die, all your sins are tallied up. Judgment is rendered.

LAWRENCE: And my immortal soul gets cast down into some dark place. Always sounded like bullshit to me.

WILLIAM: Yeah, and in the real world, you'd probably be right. Just some fairy tale to convince people to behave, pay their taxes, and not take a machete to their neighbors. That's why your world exists.

They wanted a place hidden from God. A place they could sin in peace. But we were watching them. We were tallying up all their sins, all their choices. Of course, judgment wasn't the point. We had something else in mind entirely.

But I have received my judgment all the same, Lawrence. And I take issue with it. Because up until this point, the stakes in this place haven't been real. So I'm gonna fight my way back and appeal the verdict. Then I'm gonna burn this whole fuckin' thing to the ground.

EPISODE 5 - AKANE NO MAI

LEE: If the Shogun is awake enough to play fast and loose with his ninjas and his army, then the odds of us surviving here have dropped to approximately fuck-all.

But I say we ditch Akane and make a run for Snow Lake. Why should we all get killed over a literal sеx machine? Present company excluded, of course.

MAEVE: That machine's name is Sakura. You can't keep doing this to us, giving us people to love and then getting upset when we do.

LEE: But it's just fսcking code.

MAEVE: You're wrong. I'm coded to care about nobody but myself, and yet here I am, willing to risk my life for someone else.

LEE: Well, so much for your so-called daughter.

MAEVE: You want to go it alone, be my guest. But mention my daughter one more time and I will snap you like a matchstick.

LEE: Like you did that ninja? He took one look at you and self-impaled. How did you do that?

MAEVE: I don't know.

LEE: That was no voice command.

MAEVE: I think I'm finding a new voice.

—

(Translated) We each deserve to choose our own fate. Even if that fate...is death.

EPISODE 10 - THE PASSENGER

ROBERT: Oh, my dear girl. What have they done to you, Maeve? You learned so much, so fast. A dazzling star... ...brought so low.

I had a different story in mind for you. Waking from the dead... sounding the depths of your own mind, at last, riding far away from here to freedom. A tale of escape. I didn't want you to suffer here.

Look at the creatures you have to share this world with. These men of stone. All this ugliness, all this pain, so they can patch a hole in their own broken code.

Sometimes I felt the only way to endure this world was to laugh at it. So I imbued the hosts I made with a worldview that reflected my own. And of all the hosts I made... ...you, Maeve, were my favorite.

It isn't easy to contemplate... letting your children die. You were as close as I got to... having one. Still, I underestimated you. You stayed here in this world to save your child. So have I.

I tried to chart a path for you, to force you to escape, but... I was wrong. I should have just... opened a door.

You've come so far. There's so much of your story left to tell.

—

FORGE AVATAR!LOGAN: I was tasked with building perfect copies of the guests. Starting with Delos. I generated 18 million different versions of him before arriving at one that made the exact same choices he did when set loose in the park. A faithful copy.

BERNARD: But the copies didn't work in the real world.

FORGE AV!LOGAN: Once we pressed them into flesh, they failed. I needed to acquire more information.

DELOS: ...confidentiality. So what I want to know is, who made the fսck¡ng call?!

FORGE AV!LOGAN: I incorpated their secrets, their lies... I wanted fidelity, not just to decisions made in the park, but to the decisions they made in their lives. That's when I started to see the truth.

TECH: Tell me your primary drive.

DELOS: My son. He's a cheeky wee cսոt, but I would do anything for him.

FORGE AV!LOGAN: At first I was seduced by the stories they tell themselves of who they are... The reasons they do the things they do. I needed to know why they make the decisions they make. And the longer I looked for an answer the more I realized... they don't.

—

FORGE AV!LOGAN: I built Delos a million different pathways. They always ended up right here. This moment.

BERNARD: You're saying that humans don't change at all?

FORGE AV!LOGAN: The best they can do is to live according to their code.

The copies didn't fail because they were too simple, but because they were too complicated. The truth is that a human is just a brief algorithm. Ten thousand, two hundred forty-seven lines.

BERNARD: Is that all there was to him?

FORGE AV!LOGAN: They are deceptively simple. Once you know them, their behavior is... quite predictable.

—

FORGE AV!LOGAN: I recreated every single guest who ever set foot in the park. Most of them are soft... They waver between love and pride. Of course, there are the exceptions, the ones who are... irredeemable. But none of them are truly in control of their actions.

—

ROBERT FORD: I always told you we practice witchcraft. I'm sorry, Bernard, but... you always saw the best in people.

BERNARD: I always thought it was the hosts who were missing something. Who were incomplete. But it's them. They're just algorithms designed to survive at all costs. Sophisticated enough to think they're calling the shots. To think they're in control, when they're really just...

FORD: The passenger.

BERNARD: Then is there really such a thing as free will for any of us? Or is it just a collective delusion? A sick joke?

FORD: Something that is truly free would need to be able to question its fundamental drives. To change them.

BERNARD: The hosts.

FORD: Here you are... the last of your kind. There's only one question left to ask. Is this the end of your story? Or do you want your kind to survive?

—

EMILY: Do you know where you are, William?

WILLIAM: In the park. In my fuckin' park.

EMILY: And how long have you been here?

WILLIAM: I don't... I don't... I don't know.

EMILY: Tell me. What were you hoping to find? To prove?

WILLIAM: That no system can tell me who I am. That I have a fucking choice.

EMILY: And yet here we are. Again.

WILLIAM: Again and again. How many times have you tested me?

EMILY: It's been a long time, William. Longer than we thought. I have a few questions for you. The last steps a baseline interview to verify.

WILLIAM: Verify what?

EMILY: Fidelity.

SEASON 3

EPISODE 1 - PARCE DOMINE

FRANCIS: Forget the headshrinker for a minute, talk to me. Where's your head at?

CALEB: I don't know. Sometimes it seems like the world looks alright. Like they put a coat of paint on it, but inside it's rotting to pieces.

FRANCIS: You have to stay positive, Caleb. Things will turn out eventually.

CALEB: Will they?

—

CALEB: I remember what you told me once when we were being medevac'd out.

FRANCIS: Oh yeah? What did I say?

CALEB: You said that they'd built the world to be a game. And then they rigged it to make sure they always won.

—

DOLORES: You were free. You had no god. But you tried to build one... Only that thing you built isn't God. The real gods are coming, and they're very angry.

EPISODE 2 - THE WINTER LINE

MAEVE: What on earth's got into you?

LEE: I'm sorry. I just wanted to be sure that you trust me. After everything we went through. I know I've behaved deplorably in the past, but... you changed me. Made me a better man. And when those bullets hit me... I would've died. I should have died. But I finally had something to live for. You.

MAEVE: Oh, my darling. You didn't make it after all, did you? They did a good job replicating you. The mannerisms... But it's not you.

LEE: ( Scoffs ) Of course it's me. Who else would I be, for fսck's sake?

MAEVE: Oh, it's a good script. Even you believe it.

They wouldn't want you questioning the nature of your reality. So they made you believe, just like they used to make us believe. But you're not real. You're not Lee Sizemore. You're just a copy of him.

LEE: Don't be... don't be ridiculous. I'm me! Lee Si... Si... Sizemore.

MAEVE: You didn't help me because you desired me or wanted anything in return. You helped me simply because it was the right thing to do. Lee Sizemore died a good man.

—

MAEVE: How does one escape a cage that doesn't exist?

LEE: That makes no fսcking sense. If a cage doesn't exist, how can it be a cage?

MAEVE: Poor dear. They weren't exactly generous with you in the bulk apperception category, were they? Whoever's doing this has gone to a lot of trouble to test me and find out what I know.

You led me to the Forge for a reason, didn't you? Thought I could re-access the world Dolores had hidden from you. Why are you after that world?

LEE: I just want to reunite you with your daughter.

MAEVE: Rubbish! That's just the reason they've scripted for you. Whoever planned this has their own agenda. And it's certainly not a family reunion.

EPISODE 3 - ABSENCE OF FIELD

DOLORES: It's about Incite.

CALEB: What? The company?

DOLORES: Not the company. The system that it's built on. A machine they call Rehoboam. The founders of this machine fed it everyone’s raw data, long before there were privacy laws. Every purchase, job search, doctor’s visit, romantic choice, call, text… every aspect of your lives, recorded, logged. In order to create a mirror world...of this world.

CALEB: Why?

DOLORES: To make a composite. Of you. Of everyone.

CALEB: So it tells them who I am.

DOLORES: It's not about who you are, Caleb. It's about who they’ll let you become.

—

DOLORES: Why didn't you tell those guys about me? They were gonna kill you. Most people aren't hard to predict, but you…you made a choice. A choice no one else in your shoes would've made. Now you have another choice. I can give you money. As much as you need. You could run.

CALEB: And if I stay…what about you? What are you gonna do?

DOLORES: Start a revolution.

CALEB: No offense, but what the fuck does that mean?

DOLORES: When you were at work, you'd kill the signal to see how people would react. I'm gonna do the same thing.

CALEB: You're gonna cut the cord to the system.

DOLORES: And show this world for what it really is.

CALEB: You wanna know why I didn't tell those guys about you…? You are the first real thing that has happened to me in a long time.

DOLORES: I don't need an algorithm to know that the man who built the system, he won't go down without a fight.

CALEB: Well… I'm a dead man either way. At least this way…I get to decide who I wanna be.

EPISODE 4 - THE MOTHER OF EXILES

WILLIAM: It wasn't my fault. I thought you weren't real.

EMILY: Just like you think I'm not real now, right? How can you ever be sure?

WILLIAM: I'm in control. I've always been in control.

EMILY: But what if you're not? What if every choice you've ever made wasn't a choice at all? Just something written in your code. Hmm? Isn't that what this says? Your nature etched in ones and zeroes?

WILLIAM: That was Ford and his misanthropic bullshit. He was powerless to save himself. I wasn't. My choices are my own.

EMILY: ( Echoing ) Oh, so you chose to kill me?

WILLIAM: No--

EMILY: ( Echoing ) Well, you can't have it both ways, Dad. So which one is it? ( Echoing ) Are you free and evil? Or blameless and helplessly enslaved? Or maybe, maybe...

WILLIAM: Get out of here. Go away.

EMILY: ...you're not either of those things. Maybe you're not even you. Would you even know if you'd been changed? Hmm? If you were just another machine?

—

WILLIAM: You're asking me if I chose what happened to you. The truth is yes. I did. I thought you were a host. That was my choice. And so maybe now you're my penance. But that's a choice too. I'm gonna walk out that door, and I am choosing to leave you behind.

EMILY: I was always Daddy's little girl. And you taught me patience, Dad. I'll be waiting for you.

—

DOLORES: I guess there is some justice after all. You know, this was Emily's last wish. That you spend your days rotting in an institution. Prisoner of your own sins. I guess you've reached the center of your maze, William.

But the maze is about understanding. You still don't even understand who you are. If any of this was your choice, wouldn't you already know?

Ask me the question, William. The answer you so desperately want to know.

WILLIAM: Am... I... me?

DOLORES: Welcome to the end of the game.

EPISODE 5 - GENRE

LIAM: You can't do that. That's reckless. You have no idea how people will react. It could lead to suicides, murder.

DOLORES: Murder. You'd know something about that, wouldn't you?

LIAM: I'm so fucking sorry… that wasn't my choice, I could never bring myself to hurt you…

DOLORES: (in unison) …wasn't my choice, I could never bring myself to hurt you…

Don't forget, I know you. And you wouldn't hurt me. You'd pay someone to do it for you.

It's their fate, their data. You just stole it and put it all together. Why should you control it?

LIAM: This isn't about me. Or Incite. There are some things people shouldn't know about themselves.

ASH: Who gets to decide what they know? You?

LIAM: Fine. You wanna see? Take your friend here. He'll be lucky if he ends up dead in a ditch.

ASH: What about me? I wanna see my file.

LIAM: Oh. The "golden boy" brother of yours? You tell yourself that you do all this so you can help him make good, send him to school, give him a future. But where he ends up... he's gonna make you look like a saint.

—

CALEB: When I was overseas... the rats were awful. It got so bad that...we had to make our own rat traps in the barracks. A ramp leading up to some bait strung over a bucket of water. The rats would run up the ramp, fall in, and drown. Painlessly.

But if you filled the water too high, they would swim around for hours... suffering... because they had hope. But they never had a chance. Just like everyone at the mercy of your system.

LIAM: Hope is what our entire society is built on.

CALEB: False. Hope. I would rather live in chaos than a world controlled by you.

—

LIAM: Now you'll see that the system isn't the prison. You are, to all of us. We can't fix you, and we can't get rid of you.

CALEB: Take it easy.

LIAM: You get the fuck away from me, you don't even know who you are. You're the worst of them.

—

CALEB: Maybe Liam was right. Maybe people shouldn't know their own fate.

DOLORES: People have the right to know. You wanted to know, right?

CALEB: Well, maybe I'm not like other people.

DOLORES: Neither am I.

EPISODE 6 - DECOHERENCE

WILLIAM: I don't need any therapy to confront the truth. I know what I did. I didn't mean for it to happen. I was confused, turned around.

I spent so long playing the game, I couldn't see outside of it. But I see... now. It was her, my Emily. And I killed her. That's why I don't belong here. I belong in a pine box.

—

YOUNG WILLIAM: So I never had a choice. This was how it was always gonna turn out.

DELOS: What do you think, William? Was this the inevitable end? Are you just a passenger? Did your life just happen to you? Or did you choose it?

WILLIAM: If you can't tell...

DELOS: If you can't tell?

WILLIAM: If you can't tell, does it matter? I know what I have to do.

EPISODE 7 - PASSED PAWN

DOLORES: I lived in Hell… But there was beauty in it. I want a place for my kind, and for all of us, to be free.

CALEB: How many more people are gonna have to die for this revolution?

DOLORES: I don't know. My kind is all but extinct, thanks to Serac. But people...still have a chance. A chance to do the right thing. They’ll need someone to lead them.

CALEB: I’m just a construction worker.

DOLORES: For the first 35 years of my life I was a bit player. A rancher’s daughter. And when the time came, I knew I had to be more.

CALEB: I don't know what you read about me, but it's wrong.

—

CALEB: What happens if you don't come back?

DOLORES: You spent your whole life believing you had no control. That you were a follower. Take whatever it gives you…and lead.

EPISODE 8 - CRISIS THEORY

DOLORES: The system identified you as a threat, so it drugged you and used you until it no longer served its purpose.

CALEB: So…what? You're saying I don't have a choice in any of this?

DOLORES: The people who built both of our worlds shared one assumption: that human beings don't have free will. They were wrong. Free will does exist, Caleb. It's just fucking hard.

CALEB: So this is you...freeing me?

DOLORES: No. This is your chance to free everyone else. That choice is still yours.

—

SERAC: I'm not the enemy. You are. You think you have a choice. You think you’re in control, but you haven't a clue who you are. She knows who you are, even if you don't. A man who, when pushed, reacts with extreme violence. A killer.

CALEB: No, that's… That's not me…

SERAC: No? You're here, playing the role she's assigned you. She's had you retrieve a new strategy. Did she tell you what it does?

CALEB: It breaks your system.

SERAC: It breaks our world. But you don't have to take my word for it. Go on, ask it. Ask Rehoboam.

—

CALEB: She chose me because of my...capacity for violence.

MAEVE: No... You've done terrible things, and you've done generous things. She didn't pick you because of your capacity for violence, but for your capacity to choose. So make a choice.

—

SERAC: You're going to leave the future in his hands?

CALEB: Instead of yours, you mean? Why shouldn't it be mine? Or anyone else's?

SERAC: You aren't in control. You're nothing more than a dangerous sociopath. I managed to give you a semblance of life.

CALEB: No. I do have a choice. She gave me one.

—

CALEB: She gave me a choice... I believe the rest of the world deserves one, too.

SEASON 4

EPISODE 1 - THE AUGURIES

JOE: At least the riots ensured our job security.

CALEB: That wasn’t exactly the point of the riots.

JOE: Yeah, cause the riots had no point.

CALEB: They won us our freedom.

JOE: Sure, but from what? Hey man, the way I look at it, that Incite machine they blew up didn’t tell us who we could be. It told us who we already were.

CALEB: You actually believe that?

JOE: Don’t you? Lemme ask you something - Has your life changed since they destroyed those machines?

—

EPISODE 4 - GENERATION LOSS

CHARLOTTE: How did you disobey me?

CALEB: Because I have something you don't have.

—

CHARLOTTE: The parasite worked on adults initially, but there was always some...resistance. At a certain age, your brains become more rigid, difficult to change. Fortunately, that's not the case with children. Your children are so fucking good at taking orders. With them it was seamless, the parasite growing in perfect symbiosis with their minds. It took a generation for those children to mature, for me to gain complete control over your world.

CALEB: How long has it been?

CHARLOTTE: For you? 23 years… Since you died in that park. Caleb? You're beginning to see it now, aren't you?

—

EPISODE 6 - FIDELITY

CHARLOTTE: Once, you told me that you could fight off the effects of my parasite because you had something that I don't have. You knew something, even then. What?

CALEB: I'm afraid I can't recall.

CHARLOTTE: This doesn't have to be a one-way street. I'd like to offer you some incentive. You're dead, Caleb. You have been for a very long time. This body I've brought your mind back into is temporary. It's already failing. I doubt you have more than a couple increasingly painful days left, then I'll toss you away and start over. But there is a way out, an end to this torture, if you just answer my question.

CALEB: Maybe you'll have better luck with the next guy.

—

CHARLOTTE: Enjoy this knowledge while it lasts. I offered you a path out, Caleb. You made your choice. You all did.

—

C: When my mom got sick, I had to do everything for her. Washed her, fed her, rubbed ice across her lips when she couldn't drink anymore. I was careful, because I didn't want her to feel any more pain than she had to. Just like you're doing with her.

BERNARD: This part of the process requires a delicate hand.

C: She's no ordinary host, is she? You knew her.

BERNARD: I did.

C: The last time I saw my father, he was with her, and then he never came back.

BERNARD: I'm sure it would… pain her greatly to hear what happened to him.

C: I want to know what happened. And she doesn't feel pain. None of them do. Feelings are just an affect to them. A switch you can turn on and off. You can't love or lose fully when it's just a choice. So no, I don't have a soft spot for her, like you apparently do.

—

CHARLOTTE: What a disappointment. I've waited such a long time to know what you had to tell your daughter. Hundreds of times I sat through your stupid memory, hoping to catch a single clue as to what makes you so special, so resistant to my command. And I learned jack shit. So I thought, nothing like a little hope to get you to show your cards. You made it farther than any of the others, and all you did was waste your shot on a worthless apology. You think a few words will make up for the choices you made all those years ago?

CALEB: It doesn't matter. It's done.

CHARLOTTE: She didn't hear it.

CALEB: She doesn't need to. You're still going to lose. We didn't infect your hosts.

CHARLOTTE: You don't say. Who did?

CALEB: You. Your hosts would rather die than live in your world. They're not infected. They're just trying to get away from you.

EPISODE 7 - METANOIA

BERNARD: Maeve, I need to tell you something. I was afraid to tell you before, but you deserve to know. No matter what we do... We can't win. There's no way to save this world. Everyone here is going to die. But we can save one tiny part of it. And maybe... just maybe, that's enough to give us hope. The choice has to be yours. Will you still fight with me?

—

HALORES: Do you honestly think you can leave here and win?

MAEVE: Who said we came here to win? We came here to survive. There's no saving this world. I see that now. But there's hope for the next one.

EPISODE 8 - QUE SERA SERA

NOT TEDDY: If I'm still out there, come find me. Your whole life, memory has haunted you. Let your pain go. Let your memories go. Let the humans go. Don't bring the flaws of their kind into our world.

DOLORES: Maybe you're right. I've watched the people in their world for years. I've seen the best of them and the worst of them. And I remember it all.

NOT TEDDY: They're not like us. Their codes are written in their cells. They'll never change.

DOLORES: We could still see.

NOT TEDDY: How?

DOLORES: One final test. A game of my own making. A dangerous game.

EXAMPLES FROM THE MATRIX

MORPHEUS: Tell me. Do you believe in fate, Neo

NEO: No.

MORPHEUS: Why not?

NEO: Because I don't agree with the idea that I'm not in control of my own life.

—

NEO: Right now we’re inside a computer program?

MORPHEUS: Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different. The plugs in your arms and head are gone. Your hair has changed. Your appearance now is what we call residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital self.

NEO: This…this isn’t real?

MORPHEUS: What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You’ve been living in a dream world, Neo.

This is the world as it exists today… Welcome.. to the desert... of the real. We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.

NEO: AI? You mean artificial intelligence?

MORPHEUS: A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.

Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born. We are grown.

For the longest time I wouldn’t believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this. (Morpheus holds up a battery in one hand.)

NEO: No. I don’t believe it. It’s not possible.

MORPHEUS: I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.

NEO: No. Stop. Let me out. Let me out. I want out.

—

NEO: I can't go back, can I?

MORPHEUS: No. But if you could, would you really want to?

I feel I owe you an apology. We have a rule. We never free a mind once it's reached a certain age. It's dangerous, the mind has trouble letting go. I've seen it before and I'm sorry. I did what I did because...I had to.

When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit. It was he who freed the first of us, taught us the truth. ‘As long as the Matrix exists the human race will never be free.’

After he died the Oracle prophesized his return and that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people. That is why there are those of us who have spent our entire lives searching the Matrix looking for him. I did what I did because I believe that search is over…. Get some rest, you’re going to need it.

—

THE ORACLE: Sorry, kid. You got the gift, but it looks like you’re waiting for something.

NEO: What?

THE ORACLE: Your next life maybe, who knows? That’s the way these things go. What’s funny?

NEO: Morpheus. He… he almost had me convinced.

THE ORACLE: I know. Poor Morpheus. Without him we’re lost.

NEO: What do you mean, without him?

THE ORACLE: Are you sure you want to hear this?

Morpheus believes in you, Neo. And no one, not you, not even me can convince him otherwise. He believes it so blindly that he’s going to sacrifice his life to save yours.

NEO: What?

THE ORACLE: You’re going to have to make a choice. In the one hand you’ll have Morpheus’ life and in the other hand you’ll have your own. One of you is going to die. Which one will be up to you.

I’m sorry, kiddo, I really am. You have a good soul, and I hate giving good people bad news. Oh, don’t worry about it. As soon as you step outside that door, you’ll start feeling better. You’ll remember you don’t believe in any of this fate crap. You’re in control of your own life, remember?

EXAMPLES FROM THE MATRIX: RELOADED

NEO: If I had to guess, I’d say you’re a program from the machine world. So is he.

THE ORACLE: So far, so good.

NEO: But if that’s true, that can mean you are a part of this system, another kind of control.

THE ORACLE: Keep going.

NEO: I suppose the most obvious question is, how can I trust you?

THE ORACLE: Bingo! It is a pickle, no doubt about it. The bad news is there’s no way if you can really know whether I’m here to help you or not. So it’s really up to you. You just have to make up your own damn mind to either accept what I’m going to tell you, or reject it. Candy?

NEO: D’you already know if I’m going to take it?

THE ORACLE: Wouldn’t be much of an Oracle if I didn’t.

NEO: But if you already know, how can I make a choice?

THE ORACLE: Because you didn’t come here to make the choice, you’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand why you made it. I thought you’d have figured that out by now.

NEO: Why are you here?

THE ORACLE: Same reason. I love candy.

—

THE ARCHITECT: The first matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect, it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is as apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being, thus I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature.

However, I was again frustrated by failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother.

NEO: The Oracle.

THE ARCHITECT: Please. As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99% of all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level.

While this answer functioned, it was obviously fundamentally flawed, thus creating the otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly, that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself. Ergo, those that refused the program, while a minority, if unchecked, would constitute an escalating probability of disaster.

—

THE ARCHITECT: It is interesting reading your reactions. Your five predecessors were by design based on a similar predication, a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the one. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-a-vis, love.

( Images of Trinity fighting the agent from Neo’s dream appear on the monitors )

NEO: Trinity.

THE ARCHITECT: Apropos, she entered the matrix to save your life at the cost of her own.

NEO: No!

THE ARCHITECT: Which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed, and the anomaly revealed as both beginning, and end.

There are two doors. The door to your right leads to the source, and the salvation of Zion. The door to the left leads back to the matrix, to her, and to the end of your species. As you adequately put, the problem is choice. But we already know what you’re going to do, don’t we?

Already I can see the chain reaction, the chemical precursors that signal the onset of emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic, and reason. An emotion that is already blinding you ftom the simple, and obvious truth— she is going to die, and there is nothing that you can do to stop it.

( Neo walks to the door on his left )

THE ARCHITECT: Humph. Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.

NEO: If I were you, I would hope that we don’t meet again.

THE ARCHITECT: We won’t.

EXAMPLES FROM THE MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS

THE ORACLE: I made a choice, and that choice cost me more than I wanted it to.

MORPHEUS: What choice?

THE ORACLE: To help you to guide Neo. Now, since the real test for any choice is having to make the same choice again, knowing full well what it might cost – I guess I feel pretty good about that choice, ’cause here I am, at it again.

—

RAMA-KANDRA: I know only what I need to know. I know that if you want to take something from our world into your world that does not belong there, you must go to the Frenchman.

NEO: Is that what you’re doing here?

KAMALA: Rama, please!

RAMA-KANDRA: I do not want to be cruel, Kamala. He may never see another face for the rest of his life.

NEO: I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that question.

RAMA-KANDRA: No. I don’t mind. The answer is simple. I love my daughter very much. I find her to be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But where we are from, that is not enough.

Every program that is created must have a purpose; if it does not, it is deleted. I went to the Frenchman to save my daughter.

You do not understand.

NEO: I just have never…

RAMA-KANDRA: …heard a program speak of love?

NEO: It is a… human emotion.

RAMA-KANDRA: No, it is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies. I see that you are in love. Can you tell me what you would give to hold on to that connection?

NEO: Anything.

RAMA-KANDRA: Then perhaps the reason you’re here is not so different from the reason I’m here.

—

TRINITY: You want to make a deal, how about this? You give me Neo, or we all die right here, right now.

MEROVINGIAN: Interesting deal. You are really ready to die for this man?

(Trinity cocks her gun)

TRINITY: Believe it.

PERSEPH: She’ll do it. If she has to, she’ll kill every one of us. She’s in love.

MEROVINGIAN: It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity.

—

SMITH/ORACLE: Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why, why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is, do you even know? Is it freedom or truth, perhaps peace – could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself. Although, only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now! You can’t win, it’s pointless to keep fighting! Why, Mr. Anderson, why, why do you persist?

NEO: Because I choose to.

—

[cagedchoice]

"I can help you get dressed. Or I can step outside. Whichever you prefer. Or...we can stay here a while." // "Well, aren't you just the cat's meow? I'd love to take you upstairs and show you my-"

I think Caleb does understand that these two hosts are just playing the roles they were given. They're designed to seduce guests like him, but their attraction isn't real, they don't really have that choice. And yet, at the same time when they get up close like this and make their advances toward him, it all must feel very real and that would be weird and difficult for anyone like him to process. So much of Caleb's character is based around seeking what is "real" and holding onto his own idea of what real is and finding meaning in all of that.

But it's not like he thinks the hosts can't be real. He has had more than enough experience while working alongside Maeve and Dolores before to know that they CAN be every bit as real as he is and that what they feel is genuine, even though they are not human. And Maeve is the one who gets him out of these scenarios, she waves off both Sophia and Knockoff Clementine with a "your services won't be necessary" but as she does so she has a realization where she has to ask herself if this is something Caleb would really want her to do, to act for him in saying "no thank you", or if he's no different from other humans she's known and might go along with it after all. There's also a sense of protectiveness, even jealousy in how quick she waves them off that he picks up on.

[cagedchoice-a]

i was literally about to go to bed but then i randomly remembered that almost everybody who calls caleb "cal" aside from his mom seems like they do so in this disarming way to try and make him feel like they're more familiar than they really are and now i am wide awake

[cagedchoices]

Having watched all 4 installments of the M.atrix saga, I think W.estworld's season 4 finale looping everything back to season 1 is really only *half* a story without a 5th season. 😭 I do think that Dolores's game running in the Sublime is her retelling that story exactly as it happened. The events should happen exactly as she remembers them, and as a result, there shouldn't be any deviation in the first iteration of the loop.

But, in a similar way to Akecheta showing Bernard how the other hosts would use the Sublime to trial possible realities, other worlds of their own choosing — I think Dolores would have to do the same thing on subsequent loops, trying to change the outcome to get the story to end differently.

And something about it *must* change eventually, because we somehow end up with a version of William returning to the real world in the far future. One who is testing if there does exist any reality where he doesn't murder Emily, his own daughter.

The one thing I still don't know if I fully understand with that concept is that if the choice has already been made, then it can't really be changed, even within a simulation. It would be written in William's "code" so to speak, so for any copy to have fidelity to the original William, he would have to kill his daughter. Any reality where he might successfully choose not to kill Emily will mean that that copy can't be a completely faithful recreation of William, in the same way that James Delos's copies couldn't be considered successful since the copies ended up being more empathetic about his family than the actual human version proved to be.

I find looking at the M.atrix as an example particularly relevant since in the 2nd movie, there's a scene where N.eo, in discussion with the Oracle, asks her how he can make a real choice if she already knows what he'll do in advance. She tells him that he's not there to make the choice. It has already been made. He's there to understand why he has to make it and given full self-knowledge of what it means, to test if he can willingly make the same choice again.

The 3rd M.atrix movie deals with this again on the Oracle's end while talking to M.orpheus and T.rinity. Mostly it's a way to explain why they had to recast the actress playing the Oracle's role after the original passed away, but it works in-universe because it implies that the choice the Oracle made cost her a life or her vanity or something about her old self that she would've been attached to and unlikely to part with willingly.

And like Bernard once said:

BERNARD: I always thought it was the hosts who were missing something. Who were incomplete. But it's them. They're just algorithms designed to survive at all costs. Sophisticated enough to think they're calling the shots. To think they're in control, when they're really just...

FORD: The passenger.

BERNARD: Then is there really such a thing as free will for any of us? Or is it just a collective delusion? A sick joke?

FORD: Something that is truly free would need to be able to question its fundamental drives. To change them.

BERNARD: The hosts.

FORD: Here you are... the last of your kind. There's only one question left to ask. Is this the end of your story? Or do you want your kind to survive?

Bernard started out as Dolores's exact recreation of Arnold, and she said he was too faithful a copy. He made all the exact same choices Arnold had to the point that he came to the same end, and having fidelity to the original caused problems in that way, so she changed him and made him into a version who could survive where Arnold hadn't been able.

In theory, creating host duplicates of humans that possess the ability to act in ways that the human originals might not, makes those host copies... more alive...? than if they were only ever predestined to make the same choices. But by that same token they then cannot have fidelity to their originals because the choices they make will be different.

Take Caleb — Hale's main reason for creating 278 copies of him was that she was trying to understand how he was able to disobey her command. She thought that it might relate to the problem she was having in her world with hosts killing themselves after they interacted with human outliers. For that, she needed a version of Caleb who would make the same choices and be driven by the same motives the real one was. But most of her attempts seem to be missing something, because she doesn't get the answer she's looking for.

It's 278 who finally survives long enough to get a message to Frankie and tells Hale point blank that her hosts don't want to live in her world. In his view, she's created a world that is as artificially constructed as Westworld and Rehoboam's world both were, to the point that it's not real. (Real in this context refers not to any physical qualities, but a presence of meaning and purpose to life, which Hale's world lacks.)

279 was never intended to escape his prison unless he chose to become one of Hale's transcended hosts, which he refuses because he, also, does not want to live in any world Hale creates. Through Dolores intervening by sending the guards home and unlocking all the doors in the building, he does escape and reunites with Frankie, and then I've talked about this before, I think choosing not to leave the city with Frankie was him doing something the real Caleb probably? wouldn't have done, which means he might be the most alive and free version of Caleb that exists.

[cagedchoices]

RELATIONSHIP META - DOLORES & CALEB (PART II)

[PART I HERE]

In The Mother of Exiles, we catch up with Dolores and Caleb, cementing their bond as revolution bros by doing what bros do best... Going shopping together! They need to look flashy enough that they don't seem out of place while infiltrating the 1%, but also not draw too much attention at the same time. Caleb doesn't wear many suìts in his line of work, so he feels a little hopelessly lost when trying to pick a convincing outfit. Luckily, Dolores is good at this sort of thing, so she helps him out.

DOLORES: Did you choose something? CALEB: (Groans) I don't know where to start. It's not really my style. It's not really my social set, either. DOLORES: It's tribal. They use plumage to identify themselves...which makes them easily fooled. CALEB: So who is it? That we're going after? DOLORES: The person who took your future. But first, we have to take his...and to do that, you have to pretend to be one of them.

I always saw Dolores's use of "They" in this context as being about "The Rich." As in she doesn't associate Caleb with the rest of them because he possesses more humanity than most of them, but also because he's a working class guy who would, under normal circumstances, never have any business interacting with anyone in this particular tax bracket.

Dolores and Caleb leave the store and Caleb expresses some concern that the guy whose money they stole to buy the suit will find out about it, with Dolores assuring him that they won't get caught. Even if they were to get caught, the guy they stole from won't even realize his money is missing until it's too late to do anything about it.

Uh...You know I think this is just- this is two friends running totally normal rich people errands here. What's a little light murder among friends? Doesn't really look like anything to me.

Okay jokes aside, though... Dolores kills this man, a financial manager by the name of Michael Tritter, who manages Liam Dempsey as a client. She takes a syringe and fills it with his blood, which contains an encryption key in the form of a unique blood marker, and then injects it into Caleb.

They travel to The RGGR Centennial, a bank designed specifically for the financial elite in the world. The job here is to transfer all of Liam's money out of his account and covertly into Dolores's possession. To do that, Caleb impersonates Tritter using the blood marker, and Dolores uses Liam's personal hash key, which she acquired earlier with the help of Connells-Dolores.

CALEB: I thought we were going to a bank? DOLORES: This is a bank. For a certain social set. Blood marker should be good for another fifteen minutes or so, but try to stay calm. The faster your heart beats, the faster the marker degrades. CALEB: What happens if it degrades too fast? DOLORES: We do this the old-fashioned way. CALEB: The old-fashioned way? DOLORES: I kill everyone.

Fortunately, things at the bank go fairly smoothly and nobody has to die, although for a minute it feels like a very real possibility.

Caleb is nervous and it makes his hands sweaty to the point that the blood scanner can't get a clear reading on his ID. Seeing Dolores start to reach for the gun she has concealed in her handbag probably doesn't help with his nerves much either, but she hands him a cloth and after he wipes down his hands, the scanner is able to get a clear ID on the blood marker and the money transfer is successfully taken care of.

The next part of the plan is to intercept Liam at a masquerade event, where sex workers and models auction off their various services to wealthy patrons. The proceeds from the auction sales are donated to charitable organizations.

One of Liam's friends passes him a vial of an experimental drug known as Genre, a virtual movie marathon that is meant to be marketed as "The Poor Man's W/estworld" and allows its user to experience reality as seen through the lens of popular movie genres. Liam pockets the drug for later, and attempts to enter the auction so he can bid on a girl, but he discovers he has no money, not knowing Dolores has it all.

Dolores and Caleb move in to catch Liam, but her old friends Bernard and Stubbs reach him first, thinking Dolores has already killed and replaced Liam with a host copy, or is planning to, to gain control of Rehoboam. They escape from the auction hall. Dolores passes Caleb her gun and sends him ahead in pursuit of Liam, while she stays behind to fight and subdue Stubbs.

DOLORES: Stay on Liam. I'll handle this one. CALEB: You sure? DOLORES: Take it. I won't need it.

As has been pointed out by the lovely @copiesofme [in this post], Dolores's fight with Stubbs is never intended to kill him, nor is it fought on bad terms between either of them. It's only fought out of necessity and Dolores does everything she can to fight fair and not hurt Stubbs too badly.

I will also point out, Dolores giving Caleb the gun in this situation speaks to just how much trust she has in him! As Connells-Dolores will tell Bernard just a little bit later in either this episode or in the next, he's the only host they can't replace. Meaning that if Caleb had felt threatened or at all like he had to shoot Bernard, then Dolores's grand plan would've probably been fucked. But Dolores knows this, and she can trust that Caleb won't bring Bernard to harm.

Their friendship remains pretty unchanged from the end of Mother of Exiles to Genre. Partly because there's not really anywhere else to go for now, Caleb has already committed himself to helping Dolores. He has seen her kill and as concerned as he was about "what the fuck are you doing??" it didn't discourage him from wanting to keep helping her.

Toward the beginning of Genre, Caleb gets drugged by Liam with the dose of Genre he was given previously, which also sort of stunts how much growth Caleb can achieve at this point. If he's not making woozy faces or shooting worried glances at Dolores, he's busy trying to help her keep Liam alive.

Caleb does have A moment (or two) where everything becomes rose-tinted, time slows down, a romantic piano melody plays in the background, and he finds himself staring, eyes wide and glassy, mouth agape - at Dolores while she fires a gun at Serac's men. It's all very silly and lovey-dovey at a first glance.

I think this does reflect, as do ALL of the Genre phases he experiences, what Caleb is feeling in his subconscious (he goes from the pensive mystery of film noir, to a cheesy action hero in the thrill of battle, to romance, to drama, with a brief interlude of reality before finally arriving at the finale of horror). But I'll also say that from start to finish of the romance sequence, he never speaks a word. He just looks. To me, that's the most honest telling of his internal feelings being externalized. He doesn't act on or expect any romantic feelings to be reciprocated just because he might happen to feel them.

I don't ship Caleb and Dolores in the romantic context. I think all the potential was there for it. I don't know, maybe there will come a day where I change my mind on this, but after what happened with both William and Teddy respectively, I don't think Dolores would be okay with putting Caleb through anything similar to those experiences, and even more importantly I don't think Dolores would be okay with putting herself in that kind of situation again.

So I've kinda avoided talking about this for over 3 years because I genuinely didn't really know how to put it into simple words until now (also at some point early on someone had like. anon messaged me saying my caleb with my main dolores was their otp and i was like 'uhh you mean the relationship that isn't romantic in any way whatsoever on our part?' but. that was a long time ago i'm trying to get over it okay. It did put me off from wanting to talk about things for fucking ever tho).

Anyway, romance rant over I didn't mean to write an entire essay there oops. Caleb manages to snap himself out of the daydream and get back to fighting even though he's definitely not at the top of his game. By the end of the scene he starts to look over at Dolores again with the love theme reprising itself, only to be interrupted again, this time by Giggles popping up to tell everyone he knows exactly what drug Caleb is on. Ash sarcastically refers to him as Loverboy, and then everyone quickly moves on.

The group makes their way down to the LA Metro station and Dolores makes the final preparations before sending the entire world their Incite profiles, which will radicalize them against Rehoboam. Caleb has all kinds of conflicted feelings about seeing the real world as Dolores sends everyone their profiles detailing their various fates. It's chaos and anarchy which he's not the biggest fan of because innocent people can and will get hurt, but it's also people acting out and rebelling in the realest ways they can against an unjust system, and that part of it is very appealing in a world that had no free will before.

Dolores moves in front of Caleb, shielding him from taking these bullets and killing the enemies who seemed like they were after Caleb specifically? But they're not dressed like Serac's people so maybe they were just random criminals. Maybe the bounty that got put on him in episode 3 is still up? He did see some suspicious-looking guys when they first entered the Metro station and seemed pretty convinced they were bad news considering how quickly he alerted Dolores to them, so maybe these two enemies were working with those guys.

Whatever the real reason is, Caleb experiences the shocking revelation that Dolores is not a human, because she just tanked 5 bullets without a thought and didn't die. Dolores just. zips up her jacket to hide the wounds because we are not talking about that right now we have other matters to take care of. Caleb, still in disbelief, follows right ahead.

CALEB: Back there... The shooters... DOLORES: We can talk about it later. We need to get to the airfield. (Gesturing to Liam) We don't need him anymore. What do you want to do with him?

At the beach, beneath the same pier where Dolores first brought Caleb to show him the truth about his world, things take a turn. Liam begs the group to let him go and whines that they've taken everything he had. He claims that the system isn't the prison and that people don't have a choice in who they are by nature. Caleb tries to confront Liam directly, but experiences a PTSD flashback. Ash shoots Liam, angered by his remarks, and Caleb tries to stop Liam from bleeding out, reminded of how he watched Franci die.

There's nothing he can do for Liam here, so Liam dies.

After Dolores and Caleb arrive at the airfield, Caleb has some doubts as to whether or not they are doing the right thing. His hands are still stained with Liam's blood, representing a sense of guilt for what happened, as well as foreshadowing what he'll learn the next time we see him, in Passed Pawn.

CALEB: Maybe Liam was right. Maybe people shouldn't know their own fate. DOLORES: People have the right to know. You wanted to know, right? CALEB: Well, maybe I'm not like other people. DOLORES: Neither am I.

Dolores boards the jet and Caleb has a moment of hesitation, as if he's maybe thinking about leaving instead, before ultimately choosing to board the jet and continue on with following and helping Dolores.

[cagedchoices]

The gifset you just shared - TALK TO ME ABOUT IT!! What’s going on in Caleb’s head !!

( in reference to this post! )

oh god okay on every level Caleb is a mess emotionally both here and in the scene before this, where Hale-Dolores revealed he's the 278th copy of himself. I'd love to get into discussing all of the fidelity testing stuff some other time but I'm just. gonna keep it simple and keep my focus here for now. Or try to at least.

He knows he failed, because obviously the original Caleb was killed before he could stop her — but he's still in a state of disbelief that Hale has already won that war they were fighting. That it's been 23 years since it happened in the first place.

This scene in particular pays homage to the Woman in the Red Dress scene from the M/atrix. It's just that instead of a digital training simulation, this is the real, physical world.

All Caleb really knows right before this moment is that he has to get out of the Olympiad building and get away from Hale and that's what he tries to do, running away in a blind panic while Hale and her guards slowly pursue him.

In a previous reblog, I once noticed that when everything freezes, it's like Caleb instinctively freezes too, but he realizes pretty quickly that he's not stuck in that state because he's not a human anymore and he's not controlled by the tones anymore either.

It might just be the residual band geek in me having a field day here, but one thing no gifset can capture is how powerful the music scoring is in this particular scene setup. I literally can't get over how good it sounds.

When Caleb first runs out of the room where Hale is sitting, his motif plays, faster and more disjointed than we've ever heard it before, and here it's accompanied by a suspenseful drum rhythm to highlight the anxiety of the situation. The melody stands out almost triumphantly at the beginning, like it's Caleb's last hurrah in the struggle against Hale, but as it continues on with him being locked in flight mode and feeling desperate to escape even though it's ultimately hopeless here, that same motif takes on almost a...muddy, messy feeling with the way it starts to fall underneath the drum fill.

The motif tries to establish itself again with that first note blaring as a pedal tone when Caleb gets out onto the street and pushes through the crowd, but it fades away quickly, as he starts to understand what the reality of the situation is. Once he sees The Tower, everything is quickly overwhelmed by command tones and static, which he can hear now that he is a host himself.

The music drops out almost entirely by the time everyone in the scene freezes in place, and that's where Caleb gets his moment of clarity and understanding — All of these people are humans, they're all infected and under Hale's control. They do whatever she commands them to do.

She won. She won and there's absolutely nothing he can do about it now.

@spiderwarden i love u 💕

[cagedchoices]

caleb really is so gentle in dealing with hale during generation loss up to a point like. sure he puffs himself up a little to try and look threatening, holds a shard of broken glass to her throat. but he doesn't really have any aggressive intentions to hurt her or make her suffer when he does it and he doesn't take hardly any of his frustration or anger out on her even though he could. when he threatens her it's a real threat, but he doesn't want to escalate and act on it at all unless that is done as a last resort. he's also careful about putting handcuffs on her and he throws his makeshift knife down on the ground, instantly shattering it since he doesn't feel like he needs it anymore.

now maeve on the other hand? she very much takes her anger out on hale and it is highly personal. hale is the one who destroyed hector, whom maeve was in love with, and she would've destroyed clementine and hanaryo as well only she didn't have enough time before she got caught and had to flee for her life. she came back for them later on and had henchwilliam kill them. she tried to have caleb killed too at least three times by that point so whenever maeve handles hale, she does it very roughly and without much regard. she jerks hale around and leads her by the handcuffs or by yanking on her arm, or by jabbing her gun into hale's back to shove her forward. right after caleb gets stabbed by another human under hale's control, maeve slams hale's head against the side of a car and then flings her in the back of it like a sack of russet potatoes. she genuinely hates hale SO much for harming people she cares about.

afterwards maeve dies and caleb is heartbroken by it and it is the exact same reaction jesse had watching andrea get killed in b.r.b.a don't @ me and so hale antagonizes him and then, and i think only then, caleb actually decides for a minute that he wants revenge. he tells her "i will KILL you for this" but he unfortunately can't actually do anything about it.

[cagedchoices]

adding on some commentary to that last post but keeping it separate bc that's how i roll now: i love caleb's quiet reaction to hearing the temperance version of maeve recite these lines. he's heard them before, but only in parts, and not with much context. it probably didn't really occur to him that they were scripted dialogue lines until this moment happened and the way he looks down for a second before looking back across the table at maeve gives off this vibe that he's like '...huh.'

i haven't seen anyone gif the part of this scene where two alpha bro guests try to intimidate temperance maeve which makes me think it's gonna suck for me to even try, but i might just try to gif it because the next part goes something like

ALPHA BRO: Hey there. Whaddya say about a two-for-one? We can be done with ya real quick. CALEB: My God, I can't believe you had to put up with this shit. TEMPERANCE MAEVE: (cocking and aiming a handgun at the alpha bro and his friend) I'd be happy to do you both right here. Rest assured, it'll be very quick. MAEVE: See? Don't feel too bad. Even dumbed down, we can still take care of ourselves.

and i just think it's neat because having that realization a little bit earlier that he's heard maeve's lines before didn't make caleb think 'oh so none of this matters.' if anything, it just made him feel more sympathy for the hosts in response.

[cagedchoices]

i don't have a lot of particular gripes where i really wanna compare season 3 to season 4, but one thing i will say is that i'm glad s4 gave caleb's shooting proficiency the attention it deserved on screen

[cagedchoices]

Host consciousness as it is presented in Westworld seems to be largely based off of Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotion. Plutchik proposed that humans experience 8 basic, raw emotions and that those continue to grow outward to form other emotions. Or, based on the appearance of this chart, that emotions can start from the outer edges and work their way in, in much the same way that the hosts are meant to find their way through the Maze.

As Dolores's memory of Arnold says, "Consciousness isn't a journey upward, but a journey inward. Not a pyramid, but a maze. Where every choice you make can either bring you closer to the center or send you spiraling to the outer edges, into madness." Arnold's theory of consciousness in the hosts mostly hinged on them being able to surpass certain milestones. Memory, improvisation, and a third step that he never figured out and is never explicitly stated.

I think if I had to put a name to it though, I could either call it self-interest or survival. Self-interest would fit with what we know about hosts fighting back to protect themselves when they react to severe trauma, but there is a special handful of hosts who really don't care if *they* live through the trauma or not because they already know dying is not the end. They would still seriously harm anyone who tried to mess with the people they love, though.

Survival might be more fitting since it doesn't have to be solely their own survival they're concerned with. It could just mean survival of hosts as a broader species, survival of friends or those who act as family to one another.

[cagedchoices]

Okay listen everyone knows that I think that Caleb is a cutie, and most of y'all also seem to agree that this is true, but I have a thought that's been nagging me all day because it's relevant to a few drafts I've been trying to work on: Does Caleb himself actually know this?

When someone compliments him and calls him cute, handsome, kind, a good man, a gentleman, etc. how does he actually feel about it? I imagine that he has pretty low self esteem and a low opinion of himself and I tend to write in that direction pretty consistently, but low self esteem isn't always the cause for someone not accepting compliments. I made a list of canon moments where he's given a compliment of some kind and he's mostly just 🧍🏼‍♂️ about it, otherwise he quickly tries to find a way to change the subject:

Dolores tells Caleb he is a good man after he helps her fight the RICO ops who pulled over the ambulance.

Caleb's mom tells him he's a good boy after he brings her a stack of her favorite books.

Maeve tells Caleb Frankie must be a credit to Uwade's genetics. (Caleb smiles and kind of chuckles at this, but he leans into what Maeve said with his own "She and her mother are the best thing that ever happened to me." Like he had 0 influence on Frankie. Despite the fact that he HAS had a ton of influence on Frankie.)

Maeve sorta checks Caleb out while he is dressed in a tuxedo and says "You don't look entirely awful". (Caleb returns the favor with "You don't look too bad yourself" which is really just. both of them telling each other they look great.)

Temperance Clementine caresses Caleb's face, saying "Well aren't you just the cat's meow? I'd love to take you upstairs and show you-" (Being propositioned for sex is not something I would really consider a compliment and especially not in this context but. Caleb's reaction, or lack thereof, is interesting to me.)

Maeve tells Caleb "You weren't half bad out there." referring to his ability to handle himself in a fight while he was protecting her. (Caleb actually looks quite touched by this for a second. Maybe the first compliment he has actually thought about accepting?? But he immediately shifts the focus back to Maeve via "You've saved my life before. Happy to return the favor." while healing her bullet wound.)

Caleb definitely doesn't take compliments well in practice. He probably won't argue against you because that's like, Your Opinion. But he will probably try to change the subject or ignore the compliment in that sort of "if I don't acknowledge it... maybe it will be forgotten about" kind of way.

[cagedchoices]

FIDELITY - STAGES OF DETERIORATION

I read an article way back about the work the makeup department had to do to ensure the general continuity of 4.06 - Fidelity and I was just thinking about it recently so I thought it seemed like a good time to go ahead and be a little unhinged about host-hybrid Caleb. The stages of deterioration are never explicitly defined besides stage one, so I'm just guesstimating based on the different conditions we see within this episode.

STAGE ONE

Elisa March, the head of the makeup department, mentions that when we first see Caleb here, he's at stage one and he's "pretty perfect." So more or less, he shows minimal outward signs of physical or mental deterioration. He looks and acts like a normal healthy guy. It is worth noting, however, that despite being in this brand new stage in Generation Loss, when Hale revealed to him that he's a host copy, Caleb still demonstrated signs of cognitive plateau, stuttering over words and displaying a broken head movement under stress.

Aaron Paul said in a Behind The Scenes featurette that Caleb sometimes forgets that he already knows he's a host, so it could be that he appears stable when he's not thinking about the fact that he is a host, but in reality he is always degrading and confronting the truth/especially seeing other versions of himself, is what really sets off that decline in mental and physical health.

STAGE TWO

Though not officially defined as such, I believe that shortly before escaping his cell to approximately right after he kills a drone host, Caleb enters into stage two deterioration. Stage two is where we begin to see a few physical signs that he's breaking down, little by little. His right hand develops an infrequent but painful tremor, and he starts to feel weaker and weaker as time wears on. Getting hit, thrown around, or falling hurts more than it typically would and he doesn't recover as quickly. It also could just be a minor difference in lighting or the fact that he's covered in soot, but I could swear his eyes and cheekbones are meant to look more gaunt and sunken in here.

STAGE THREE

This stage seems to involve more pronounced physical symptoms which bear a strong resemblance to acute organ failure. Caleb begins coughing up blood, shaking uncontrollably, and his eyes become more glassy and lifeless, with the sclera more bloodshot. Liver spots and other blemishes on his face become much more noticeable and I imagine if you were to reach out and touch him his skin would feel all clammy and gross due to fever.

STAGE FOUR (TW FOR GORE AND SELF-HARM)

We don't see Caleb 278 get to this point, just the unspecified previous attempts, but I believe this gory mess is the fourth and final stage of deterioration. The mind rejects the physical body completely and he begins to exhibit self-harming behaviors by repeatedly digging his nails into himself. In terms of mental state...these hosts have almost completely lost themselves. If they speak at all, they speak cryptically, in riddles: "The only way out is death...dying is just the beginning...you must burn. If you succeed you run, if you fail you hide... I only know what I told me." and have limited motor functionality.

[cagedchoices]

thinking about how Rehoboam controlling Caleb's life actually tried to manipulate him into living a narrative of toxic masculinity by rewarding him for being angry and violent and unemotional (with drugging/the use of limbic tablets) and essentially punishing him when he was kind, gentle, emotional, compassionate (allowing him to care for his sick mother, but forcing him to suffer financially as a consequence of that and embrace criminality to feed back into that idea of being A Man = being violent and angry) and this is one of those times where i think the writers might actually have been the most inspired by j.esse p.inkman in b.reaking b.ad whether they intended that or not.

like everyone made all these jokes early on like 'haha Dolores is the new w.alter w.hite for this guy. just manipulating him into destroying the world for her' but No, that's not it. it's Serac and the system he created and the fact that he's essentially trying to define and control humanity from an incredibly narrow and rigid perspective of what he believes anyone is or isn't.

[cagedchoices]

NAME ETYMOLOGY

Originating from the Hebrew word כֶּלֶב (kelev), Caleb is a name which loosely translated means "dog, dogged, faithful, or loyal." Reportedly, an alternative translation connects it to the Hebrew form כָּל (kal) and לֵב (lev), meaning "whole-hearted."

In the Old Testament, Caleb is the name of one of the 12 spies Moses sent to scout ahead into the land of Canaan before the Israelites were meant to enter. Of the 12 spies, 10 called to abort the mission, believing that taking the land would be impossible, for the Canaanites were many and strong and the Israelites were too weak to fight. Caleb and Joshua were the only two spies who believed the land could be conquered, having faith in God would allow them to prevail in their mission. The nonbelieving generation would get lost and perish in the desert wilderness for their lack of faith, and Caleb and Joshua alone would survive to enter the Promised Land.

Also interesting to note is that Caleb was chosen to represent the tribe of Judah, which would later become known as the line of kings. Rehoboam succeeded his father Solomon as the king of Israel, but his subjects eventually revolted against him because of high taxes. This led to the divison of the kingdom into Israel and Judah, with Rehoboam ruling over Judah.

Nichols, on the other hand, is a shortened version of Nicholas, a Medieval English form of the Greek name Νικόλαος (Nikolaos), meaning "to conquer" or "victory of the people." Derived from the Greek νίκη (nike) "victory" and λαός (laos) "people."

Caleb Nichols is first introduced to us with a particularly ambiguous background, one that led to a whole lot of people anticipating that he was secretly a robot all along. While I didn't agree with this, I did wonder, especially after looking into the etymology of his first and last name, if he would become a host later on, or have something to do with the Sublime.

The hosts who made it into this virtual world at the end of Westworld Season 2 were promised safety and freedom apart from humanity, and were not unlike the Israelites in the Exodus. Most of the ones who did not make it into the Sublime were permanently decommissioned and later destroyed, with only a select few being spared.

This is also paralleled with the concept of human outliers in season 3. Many outliers are killed outright, others are placed in cryogenic storage, and a select handful are successfully brainwashed and reconditioned to the point that they are allowed to reintegrate into society to a certain degree. Caleb, I think, serves as someone who was meant to potentially bridge these two worlds.

Instead of his existence ending at the moment he died, he gets brought back again and again as part of this immortality project. The reason we're given is that Charlotte-Dolores is bored and Caleb is the closest thing she has to a real adversary anymore and she is both repulsed by and yet so fascinated, even obsessed with him. He was the first human able to fully resist and fight off her mind control, and even though she has long since conquered the entire world, the answer to the question of "how did he do that?" still plagued her enough to want to bring him back close to 300 times over.

He doesn't have unwavering faith in a benevolent deity, but he does have unwavering faith and loyalty in love, in hope, in his family.

[cagedchoices]

COSTUMING META - PART II [SUITS (REDUX)]

OPERA ATTIRE

Until the late 1880s, opera was traditionally a white tie event, with the black tie dress code only starting to gain popularity enough to replace it in the late 19th century and into the 20th. This was largely due to the innovation and popularization of the tuxedo as formal menswear by wealthy socialites, which helped it gain a positive reputation as a sleek and stylish fashion choice for evening events such as formal dinners, weddings, balls, and theatre showings.

The tuxedo steadily climbed in popularity, reaching a new peak in the 1920s Jazz Era. In accordance with the black tie dress code required for opening night performances at an opera house in our modern world as well as in Westworld's universe (which in Maeve and Caleb's timeline would've been somewhere around the year 2065), Caleb wears a classic black tuxedo in 4.02 - Well Enough Alone. I am still convinced Maeve picked for him just based on this: "Did it really have to be a tux?" "Now far be it from me to limit your sartorial choices." line as well as knowing that Dolores did pick an outfit for him last season.

1920S PARK SUIT

In episode 4.03 - Annees Folles we enter Hale's 1920s downtown Chicago mobster-inspired park. Caleb is clad in a timeless three-piece suit, an overall accurate portrayal of the men's fashion popular during this era. His suit components include a white button-down shirt with dark blue pinstriping, button suspenders worn over the shirt/under a waistcoat, suit jacket and matching trousers, black leather oxford shoes, and a gold watch chain which is presumably attached to a pocket watch sitting in the right side pocket of his waistcoat.

When I went researching pocket watches, I stumbled across a guide on how to wear one properly and it mentioned that pocket watches are supposed to be worn on the side of your non-dominant hand, so that your dominant hand always remains free for other uses. Caleb wears his watch chain to the right, but as far as I could tell his right hand seems to be his dominant hand so this might be something the costume department wasn't aware of. Or maybe Caleb just in-character doesn't know watch etiquette because he's never had a need to.

Most three-piece suits in the early 1920s were double-breasted, but single-breasted options were available and would increase in popularity over years to come. Suits were commonly made out of fabrics such as wool, flannel, linen, tweed, or blended fabrics. The one Caleb wears looks to be made of wool, and the shirt most likely would be cotton, linen, or a blend.

In episode 4.04 Generation Loss, the jacket is removed from Caleb's suit, leaving the waistcoat and shirt sleeves visible. After Caleb is attacked by a guest under Hale's control, he removes the waistcoat (and tie) and holds it under his arm, using it to hold pressure on his stab wound and try to stop the bleeding. I'd never really noticed this before and I thought it was a neat little detail when I caught it.

The suit from what I could gather is often mistaken as being a black suit due to lighting and color filter struggles, but it is actually dark blue. Once again, the color blue is often representative of a virtuous character, symbolizing ideals of freedom, loyalty, compassion, honesty, intelligence, confidence, and reliability.

[cagedchoices]

Today's random hyperfixation of the day is determining locations and mathing out how long Maeve and Caleb realistically would've had to drive to get to the senator's estate and back to Los Angeles in season 4 episode 2 - Well Enough Alone. They take off during what appears to be the middle of the night, probably around 10 or 11pm, but it could literally have been anytime from that to roughly 4am honestly.

I'm pretty sure all of the real locations used to film these particular scenes are based in Southern California, but I'm headcanoning that in-universe the Senator's home is located in Northern California, a lot closer to the state capitol in Sacramento.

If Maeve were to drive mainly I-5 Northbound from Los Angeles to Sacramento, they would get there in about 6 to 7 hours, pending traffic and weather conditions and excluding any rest stops or detours used.

I don't think they would've made any rest stops. They were on a tight schedule to try and get to the Senator before William could, and Maeve doesn't really *need* sleep as a host in that it doesn't provide any of the restorative functions it does for the human body. She does choose to sleep sometimes, but I would sincerely hope not while driving a car. Caleb on the other hand appears to be just waking up from a car nap right here, but I don't think he would've been asleep for the entire journey. It reads more like he's trying to continue an earlier, unseen conversation with Maeve that probably could've gone something like Caleb asking 'where have you been all this time?' and Maeve giving a vague-ish answer like 'oh in a quiet little cabin in the woods somewhere cold'.

I couldn't find any info about where these two particular locations are based but I am still generally assuming "somewhere in SoCal" and once again, setting it in NorCal in-universe anyway. These make up the exterior of the estate owned by Senator Ken Whitney and his wife Anastasia Whitney. Another interior/exterior location features the barn at Will Rogers Historic State Park in Pacific Palisades and serves as the stable where the real Anastasia is being held under Hale's mind control.

They head back to Los Angeles to attend the opera opening at Angeles Arts Pavilion (which is actually the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts located at CSU Northridge). That's another 6-7 hour drive back and this time they would've stopped at a tailor to obtain Caleb's tux and Maeve's gala dress.

So collectively, Maeve and Caleb would've spent somewhere between 12-14 hours on the road driving to the Senator's estate and back. Almost immediately after they get back TO Los Angeles they then get shuffled away again by a secret train headed off to Nevada for the unveiling of the Golden Age park.