'Brave New World' Episode 4: Disease analogy and computer tech collide as John infects the New World
In this time of social distancing, touch and being touched has acquired a whole germ-laden layer of meaning above the usual sentimentality associated with the word "touch". In the New World, everyone is constantly 'in touch', connected and plugged into the AI Indra. It's also what makes the whole society more susceptible to being 'infected' by foreign elements and experiences entering the "social body".
In the harmoniously balanced AI-controlled New World, the "social body" is formed with humans as its cells, interconnected and plugged into the AI brain. Right in Episode 1, we had World Controller Mond use the word "virus" and the analogy of the body turning on itself after the Epsilon's suicide. It is a suicide that no one wants to acknowledge as such because it is a symptom that not all is well with the "social body". CJack60, an Epsilon, who touches the dead Epsilon also starts showing deviant traits like lying (which Epsilons are supposedly incapable of) and calls the dead Epsilon "a friend".
He also goes into the dead man's quarters to retrieve a metal piece with a sad face engraved on it and recognizes that he too feels sad like his friend. This level of self-awareness in an Epsilon is an anomaly, which disturbs World Controller Mond. Bernard too is infected by the last memories of the dead Epsilon when he touches the corpse's smashed face, absorbing its pain and sadness.
But the traumatic events in the Savage Lands has Bernard scramble to reintegrate with a vengeance after he returns. He even gaslights Lenina who is "changed" by her experiences. He represents the cured cell, blasted with traumatic chemotherapy. Lenina, on the other hand, becomes even more cancerous after the trauma. She starts chafing against the order and stability of the system, trying to send an "undesignated cell" into the hatchery to breed a baby without a class, which is immediately rejected by the system. She then touched John's 'contaminated' belongings to access his Old World music — another foreign object introduced into the New World's social body.
But it is John the Savage that represents the ultimate virus for New World's social body. He is "a son" in a social order in which no sons should exist. This results in the death of the "Director of Stability", John's father.
John is also the disruptive element that refuses to get connected to the social body and the AI Indra through the "optical interface". In the last few scenes of the episode, we see him screaming in terror as he is surrounded by the sex-crazed New Worlders in dance orgy — utterly taken aback when he is inserted into the mass of interconnected, writhing bodies.
In the last scene, World Controller Mond finally links John's viral influence to computer terminology. "The system tests itself to make itself more stable," she tells Bernard, speaking of the AI Indra. John is the virus in the social body, transported from the Savage Lands. He is also the proverbial bug in the code that has to be "solved" to grant the social body "immunity" to withstand the next disruption. After the Epsilon and the Director's death dive, Mond is convinced that the system is trying to give itself immunity against future strains. But will it succeed?
'Brave New World' premiered on Peacock on July 15 and is available to stream.