Z-Spaces: An Animorphs Psychochronography #9
#9 - Whatever we learn, you'll learn (#8 The Alien)
It's July 1997. Puff Daddy, Faith Evans and 112 team up to top the charts with their Notorious B.I.G. tribute song, "I'll Be Missing You," sampling The Police's "Every Breath You Take" as to confuse everyone when the song would start on the radio. It's OK, because the music video has multiple shots of Puff Daddy falling off a motorcycle. Radiohead releases the album "OK Computer," and I almost completely drop thrash metal overnight. In theaters, people flocked to see the very entertaining Men in Black, taking the wise-cracking Will Smith character from Independance Day and putting him in a film environment that actually compliments him. Batman & Robin, My Best Friend's Wedding, Face/Off, Contact, George of the Jungle and Good Burger also hit theaters. James Stewart passes away. Farrah Fawcett embarrasses herself on the "Late Show with David Letterman." Cartoon Network debuts both "Johnny Bravo" and "Cow and Chicken," and we also see the beginning of "Stargate SG-1" and "Win Ben Stein's Money" while "Married... with Children" and "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" stop production. "Final Fantasy Tactics" hits the Playstation while "Star Fox 64" comes out on the Nintendo 64. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is published.
In real news, Timothy McVeigh is sentenced to death for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. Mellisa Drexler delivers her baby on prom night and proceeds to kill and dump the infant in the trash, creating the term "dumpster baby." The House of Commons votes for a total ban on handguns in the UK. An unmanned spacecraft crashes into Mir while NASAS's Pathfinder probe lands on Mars. A hotel fire in Pattaya, Thailand kills 90. Andrew Cunanan shoots fashion designer Gianni Versace to death. F.W. Woolworth closes. My mom used to work at one of those stores. Said it sucked.
Backing up, let's talk about Men in Black for a moment. Along with being a better film than Independance Day, it's both astrologically smarter and a lot closer thematically to Animorphs, with aliens secretly landing on Earth and taking human disguises (one even being a tiny alien controlling a human-shaped robot from inside it's head), huge galactic wars taking place off-camera, and the film's main villain sharing a close resemblance to a Taxxon. Most prominatly is the idea of Forbidden Knowledge, the idea of protecting a great secret in fear of what floodgates it might open. Both the MIB and the Animorphs keep their identities secret so that they can continue their operations to keep the peace. The Yeerks and Edgar the Bug take human identities to hide their tracks as they lay conquest. All four parties need to keep their Forbidden Knowledge protected.
Of course, the concept of Forbidden Knowledge goes back to the book of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God forbids Adam and Eve to eat from the tree, but Eve is tempted and consumes the fruit, and Adam follows suit. The result was a sudden understanding of their own mortality and fallibility. The fall of innocence. The Andalites have their own name for the Tree of Knowledge: Seerow's Kindness. The Yeerk Homeworld is, for a Yeerk, a Garden of Eden. Unlimited food supply, good company, Gedds to see and hear it. Than the Andalites came, and the Yeerks ate the fruit from their branches, obtained Forbidden Knowledge and were subsequently banished from Eden, never to return. The Andalites then created the law of Seerow's Kindness, positioning themselves as the guardians of Forbidden Knowledge, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill an inheritor of this role. Ironically, the origin of Seerow's Kindness is also Forbidden Knowledge.
The problem is that there will always be the temptation to obtain Forbidden Knowledge. Ax observes that the human race are greedy for it at accelerated rates, gaining the knowledge of flight and advancing to the knowledge of space flight in record time. The Animorphs' temptation of information about the Andalites is strengthened by Ax's protection of it, and Ax is tempted for knowledge on the human race because the Animorphs literally wave books at him. The drive for Forbidden Knowledge is represented by the radio telescope in which the book revolves around. It's a tool of exploration, of searching the depths of space for answers. Incidentally, this book came out the same time Contact was in theaters, a film revolving around using radio telescopes to obtain Forbidden Knowledge from aliens. It is within the radio telescope compound that three nuggets of Forbidden Knowledge reside. The first is the code Ax accidentally gives Marco's father, with which human technology would take an unnatural leap forward. The second is the knowledge that Elfangor gave five humans Andalite technology, something the Andalite forces must keep hidden or shatter the public image of Elfangor as a Hero and Upstanding Citizen.
In both case, Ax finds himself once again the role of guardian (guards, of course, represent rules, and rules are meant to be broken, hence why he is a temptation to the Animorphs. Incidentally, I find it very appropriate that Ax morphs a serpent in this book). However, the third instance of Forbidden Knowledge is the most important, as it is Forbidden Knowledge in which Ax is tempted by as opposed to guarding it: The idea that Yeerks are not all Evil. Within the compound, Ax meets a Yeerk who reveals that it loved someone, and that someone was taken from it by Visser Three. Ax eats from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which in turn reveals to Ax the fallibility of Good and Evil, bringing forth the shades of grey that the Andalite propaganda machine had been hiding all this time, a Seerow's Kindness kept from their own people. And with his own consumption of the fruit, with his own obtaining of the Forbidden Knowledge, he proceeds to shed his role of guardian to his human companions.
Forbidden Knowledge leads to the uncomfortable Enlightenment that the Animorphs have been steadily approaching. Elfangor gave the Animorphs the Forbidden Knowledge of morphing, and turned their lives upside down. The Yeerk with a broken heart gave the Forbidden Knowledge of grey morality to Ax, and finally, standing over the empty vessel of Visser Three, he can't find it in himself to make the final blow and deliver serious damage to the Yeerk forces. The fruit will always be eaten, and Eden will always be lost. Ignorance is bliss.