If you think what I will suggest at length below is crazy ask yourself this, aren't you finding these things right here below from the current season weird? Didn't a character actually come out and say "geez, it's like we're in some kind of bizarro world?" (And if you're up to date with the Canadien release schedule), didn't last episode go on and on about "waking up" and use the exact sound effect made famous by the Matrix 3 separate times? AND ISN'T EVERY CHARACTER IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! SOME COMICAL EXAMPLES -
- Keira who adores and loves Alec to death and considers him like her family in closeness is now given the gift of not one but two Alecs to love and also have help her. Yet instead this just means she’s got to murder an Alec because obviously good-guy Keira would find the murder of Alec, also just a teenager and kid, an acceptable cost to be back with the family that she definitely knows no longer exists because she or Liber-8 who originally never existed radically change the past on a weekly basis.
- Additionally one Alec can be considered an acceptable choice for murder when he betrays in the most shocking, evil, inexplicable, unacceptable way when as an impulsive, hormonal teenager in a split second he behaves villainously to the most extreme extent possibly when he makes the decision to save the first girl he has ever loved, who he loves with all his being, who has actually died for real, permanently, in a violent way less than a week ago and almost certainly he can save and pretty easily, instead of letting Keira keep the time travel device despite given her rate at taking out the past changing members of Liber-8 she couldn’t use for another 20 years anyways and again would only return her to a future where her family never existed.
*Kung-Fu capable but always sweet and lovable Emily is now a psycho murderous assassin who beats the boy she three days ago loved to a pulp when he now suddenly limited to his evil-super-genius hurtful talk words and is mean to her and a nicer duplicate version of him happens to come into existence.
*Strangely normally meek, always nice precinct traitor nerd girl Betty in love with Carlos who never defends herself, being mistreated actually dishes back, has an actual temper tantrum and yells at Keira and partner guy. Even stranger, then in response to that long due, justified outburst, once good-guy, sympathetic understanding Keira, now evil Keira basically tells her to watch herself, behave and shutup!
*Normally loving, trusting Carlos with his timeline’s Keira dead can’t shake an instant dislike and mistrust of the surviving Keira he has left who he gives an unfair hard time because even based on what he knows and science saying this alternate timeline Keira is just his Keira with one more week of life under her belt and should be almost identical in personality and goodness to his timeline’s beloved Keira, he can’t because of an apparent strong discriminatory stereotype against alternate timeline cop-from-the-future-partners he picked up somewhere growing up. And the always optimistic, hopeful, happy-go-lucky, psychologically rock-solid Carlos beyond being sad for the death of his timeline’s Keira is now an ever bleating pessimist mentally falling apart who for some reason thinks it sensible as a cop to morbidly keep the decaying corpse of his beloved cop partner he can’t explain to authorities if discovered in his trunk so he can go back and open it and look at it for a while when he is sad and misses her.
ADDITIONALLY - So when you see in you're normally normal show a woman dressed like a school principal who sits behind a school principal's big desk who's part of an aparent ancient organization that's over a thousand years old but only finds need to staff about four people in total to prevent to a complete change to history itself and the destruction of entire timelines and realities who's working offices located in weird, surreal looking dark barely furnished rooms deep inside a building of corridors where we never see the actual building itself or Keira or anybody that works there walking in an actual entrance or exit, where in fact the only exit to this place we've seen is a literal swan-dive jump off a cliff if that's not metaphorically suggestive enough for you, and for some reason these people keep their captives in weird glass boxes, with one of these people being a person who actually died but still finds ways to still be alive and be a diligent worker, and smart, super-cop Keira has no problem drinking the cool-aid and suddenly being their best agent and discussing the murder of Alec, that kid she once loved and adored, and when the rules of time cause time cause a timeline to ripple out of existence instead of simply vanishing as if it never existed the sky turns to utter black, the world shakes, and we're presented with a visual scene that looks and seems more like the opening of the gates of hell, how exactly does this not scream out to you that none of this is real?
Now, now you're ready for my possibly crazy belief that none of it was ever real, at least not exactly, and what I'm crazy enough to suggest as the real truth of what is going on in the television show Continuum. (This below was written separately)
"So nothing in the show for the most part is real in any actual literal sense and Keira is an A.I. of some kind and the stuff in the show, most of it like most of the characters and the time travel and all that is just a figurative representation of her analytical/thought processes or actual scenarios she’s creating to help her solve the problem she’s stuck on, can’t seem to resolve, but is working on constantly and reaching partial conclusions about all the time, her great debate that is the center of the show, a stark black versus white type conflict between two possible systems. Those two systems being what you all know if you watch the show and if not can read a description of at the bottom of this.
So I get it now, even if maybe I’m slow to only now realize this is almost certainly the true nature of the show I’ve been watching all this time after watching all the episodes that have aired in this season that have been so bizarre and inexplicable and episode 7 ever so blatantly beating us over the head with every little aspect of the episode designed to scream to us none of what you are watching is real in a literal sense, this is a “Matrix” type situation, we’re making this so clear we even have Keira inexplicably have a headache moment and grab her head in pain like this a dream she should wake up from while we play the exact signature sound effect from the Matrix and made famous by the Matrix three separate times in the episode if the rest of our blunt crowbar methods in this episode didn’t work.
Anyways, I still have questions. So first I’m guessing Alec Sadler is likely the creator/programmer/engineer of Keira, right? Then is she purely a software construct or is she tied to a location and is part mechanical like some great super computer? Like when in the figurative construct of the show, when she’s referring to her “CMR” all the time, is that meant to suggest in reality “CMR” is the name given to some real processing chip or part of her that actually exists that does serve a similar type function of dealing, analyzing, and comparing certain data? Is young Alec’s interactions with her and at times her CMR meant to signify a real creator Alec tweaking her programming in reality?
And so clearly the whole time travel war isn’t just some totally figurative random construct to help Keira find her solution and the third parties that must be stopped who jump back to different points in time and make changes in the “treelike” structure of time and all timelines and realities for their own reasons signifies third parties who hack Keira’s systems in different places where they can to change her code where they can to try and alter her overall system, the figurative “treelike” group of timelines and realities described in the show, for personal gain whatever she controls is of great importance to many people. And thus the time cops in the show that have been around for thousands of years signify the people who were part of her initial design and creation and maintain her systems as how they were meant to be. Like in the show when somebody illegally jumps through time and effects change, meaning when somebody hacks into her system and rewrites some of her code, the time cops too jump in time to that particular time and then remove the trespasser’s ability to cause change by capturing them and “debriefing them” and then try to fix any changes that have been made, meaning they find the invading hacker, boot them from Keira’s system, then try to fix the changes in code best they can. And Keira being an A.I. not being a simple static program that is instead at every second a constantly changing collection of all her individual parts, coding and input data like a human mind, is why once a change is made it can’t be simply rewritten back exactly to what it once was but can only be fixed as best that is still possible now that Keira is slightly changed.
This is also exactly why and finally makes sense of why in the show grand destruction of her original timeline, in reality a big rewriting of a main branch of her coding, has resulted in a Keira with a much different overall personality which within the figurative parameters of the show hadn’t been making sense. It also explains the other thing that hasn’t made sense, in the figurative parameters of the show supposedly the destruction of that one original timeline and Alec’s one week time travel event caused the inexplicable changes in Keira and both Alec’s personalities to a darker nature. Yet not only their three personalities were changed in that one exact way which itself didn’t make sense, every character in the show universally has had their personalities inexplicably suddenly all change to become darker in that exact way that really made no sense. But if changes to a main branch of her coding changed overall A.I. Keira’s A.I. personality to be darker, then since all the people in the show are just different made-up constructs and manifestations of Keira herself then an overall change to her would cause the same and equal overall change to every single one of them.
Question is this conflict/question A.I. Keira is trying to resolve a logic problem she just randomly ran into when she was trying to govern/control the general system, whatever her powerful function is, and had difficulty balancing and solving? Is Liber-8 just another random, construct made-up by A.I. Keira as way to help her figure out and solve her problem and debate or is it like it suggestively sounds by way of name instead an actual computer virus someone injected into her? Was her current conflict /debate created on purpose and started, instigated by people trying to change her programming because again she controls something that is important to many people? Is Kogami not just another made up construct but instead represents a real person? When he sent his agents back in time to start the Liber-8 movement, change history and make sure the corporate system never took over was that in reality him as a leader of some human group and as a great programmer/hacker breaking through security firewalls and injecting a “Liber-8” computer virus into Keira’s systems to start this whole thing?
In episode 7 when we saw old Alec and Keira’s husband talking to him in surprise that supposedly “inactive” Keira who while it was sad they had to make the decision about her they did, which he had to admit did result in some forms of great gain, turns out isn’t actually inactive, that clearly represented real people that do exist talking about A.I. Keira right? When A.I. Keira’s programming was likely subverted by the virus injection of Liber-8 or whatever happened to start her logic conflict clearly that does suggest creator Alec and probable Keira A.I. project person represented by the man presented in A.I.’s Keira construct world as super-hero future cop Keira’s husband made a huge decision to take A.I. Keira offline when it was clear they couldn’t simply fix her code this time and they are now surprised because it appears A.I. Keira has actually been running this whole time.
Lastly and then I’ll stop. How far down the rabbit hole are we going when we find out what the real “reality” looks like? As made clear by what I just wrote, I keep guessing we’re dealing with a “I Robot” the Will Smith film type reality here, a A.I. Keira is a super-computer A.I. that runs the system, street-lights to electronic financial transactions, to city camera’s, to even decision, command, and enforcement type stuff in a world set in the future like the future world in the figurative show with a the corporate version of the two systems being dominant, in place, and in control. And we’ve got lots of hackers who just try to hack Keira’s system just for personal gain. And then we’ve got an actual organized underground group fighting to topple the current system and bring back the old system that supports civil liberties and all that with a real Kogami person existing who broke through A.I. Keira’s security measures and was able to make her consider a different system. A different system that as a truly intelligent creation once she was allowed and able to consider as an option to be a viable system of governance and control, being programmed as part of her fundamental programming to care, protect, and seek betterment for the humans she helps serve. couldn’t disregard as a more humane better system even when her system maintenance people including her creator, old, rich powerful evil Alec likely tried to force her to do so and likely would have erased the idea completely from her systems if that were possible without harming her essential systems. And now that too would totally explain the change in Keira to a darker more evil Keira in the figurative construct world of the show after the destruction of the timeline, really a deletion of key branches of code, probably representing an effort by the figurative timecops, her maintenance people trying to force her to disregard this alternate option of a system by actual making her A.I. personality literally a bit more evil in a way since it is her goodness, and morality coding that won’t let her forget about this new more humane possibility that has presented itself.
The two opposing systems - the rigid, ethically questionable corporate-run system that sacrifices civil liberties and equal control and power in the system by all people by right of just being a human individual for a system that gives power to the smaller systems, corporations, based if they can succeed at being more productive and efficient than whatever currently exists which is justified by the fact a more efficient, productive system results in more valuable resources, needed services, created for everybody and thus worth the necessary sacrifices with this system being unbendingly enforced by a large force of highly enhanced soldier type enforcers given pacifying trust-inducing names of “protectors” while expected to follow any and all orders blindly and obediently, orders which if they choose not to be follow because of personal conscience can be overridden when the autonomous human part of the soldiers is overridden by brain implanted CMR chips that will take actuall control of the individual “Protector’s” body if necessary and also this is a world of “Big Brother” where everything is recorded because it a good system should be an open system and be completely transparent in how it runs even though who actually has access to this information, has control of it, and if they actually respect individual privacy and don’t use it for power and personal gain is completely unknown and unavailable knowledge to the vast majority of people who live under this system because their level of individual contributions to the system not only aren’t, but literally in almost all cases simply can’t, ever, be great enough for them to earn a high enough level of clearance, access, and power to know such a thing. And this system is in direct opposition to the current system of our, the television viewer’s, and so-called “past” in the show that gives power to the individual through undeniable civil liberties with the rule enforcement forces of the system instead of dictating to the individuals that live within the system with complete command must instead serve these individuals and respect their individual rights given to them simply by virtue of being born over even their greatest self prerogatives. "