Got alot of this from Wikipedia...

Apparently the book that Locke brought to Ben is VALIS, a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick.

The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God.

Gnostic: refers to a diverse, syncretistic religious movement consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect spirit, the demiurge, who is frequently identified with the Abrahamic God. The demiurge may be depicted as an embodiment of evil, or in other instances as merely imperfect and as benevolent as its inadequacy permits. This demiurge exists alongside another remote and unknowable supreme being that embodies good. In order to free oneself from the inferior material world, one needs gnosis, or esoteric spiritual knowledge available to all through direct experience or knowledge (gnosis) of God.


Now, in the book, the narrator is in the search for a cure for what he believes is simultaneously a personal and a cosmic wound. Near the end of the book the messianic figure, incarnated by the child Sophia (a name associated with Wisdom in many Gnostic texts), cures him (temporarily)...

there's also stuff about memory retrieval...i don't know it's all very complicated...but the child saviour thing: i'm thinking walt/aaron...

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I love my beautiful turnipheads...