Pluribus episode 6 is a wild one. Carol (Rhea Seehorn) is so deeply disturbed by what she discovers the hivemind is eating that she doesn’t trust them to deliver the information to her fellow survivors and decides to share her revelation in person — and winds up learning even more about the Others. “HDP” provides more perspective on the restrictions the hivemind is under when it comes to joining with Carol and the other survivors. This initially makes Carol feel relieved, but I think she’s actually in more danger of being changed than ever before.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Pluribus episode 6.]
Image: Apple
When Carol travels to Las Vegas to tell Koumba Diabaté (Samba Schutte) that the Others are eating people, she’s shocked to learn that he already knows. In a video recorded for Carol, John Cena delivers a compelling defense of their consumption of “human derived protein,” or HDP, as a way to avoid wasting the 886 million corpses created by the initial joining, and everyone who has died since. As Zosia (Karolina Wydra) mentions in episode 2, the hivemind “prefers to eat vegetarian,” but their restrictions against hurting other living creatures are so great they won’t even harvest plants. Even with HDP, most of the world’s population will starve to death within the next decade.
When Carol presses Koumba about how he can be so calm is in the face of this information — mentioning he’ll starve alongside the rest of the hivemind once they figure out a way to make the survivors join — he reveals just how much he’s learned by spending time talking with the Others instead of driving them away. The joining was caused by a virus that the 12 survivors are immune to. In order to infect them, the Others would need to create a custom version of the virus that requires harvesting stem cells, which is a highly invasive procedure that they won’t do without consent.
Image: Apple
Carol is elated by the news, immediately calling the Others to confirm Koumba’s report. She explicitly lets them know that she does not consent and they acknowledge “We hear you, Carol. You do not consent. No stem cells will be collected from your body. Your wishes will be respected.” She’s visibly relieved and returns home to Albuquerque.
However, Carol has a big problem that was revealed via a joke in episode 3’s flashback scene when she visited an ice hotel with her partner Helen (Miriam Shor). Helen was excited about the experience, but the perpetually grouchy Carol quipped, “I could have saved $100K and frozen my eggs right here.” Those eggs would also contain Carol’s stem cells. While the Others would need to surgically extract Koumba stem cells from his bone marrow, they wouldn’t need to touch Carol to get the genetic material they need to concoct a custom virus for her DNA.
The Others can’t lie, but they can be evasive in their responses. When asked if they were vegetarians, they said they would prefer to be. It’s an answer that satisfied the survivors without revealing the disturbing truth of what they were actually eating. When Carol said she didn’t consent to stem cell extraction, they said “no stem cells will be collected from your body.” But that still leaves open the possibility of extracting them from outside her body. The Others have Helen’s memories, so they would know about the eggs and exactly where to find them.
After working around the clock to figure out how to bring the survivors into the hivemend, the Others just discovered how to make a tailored virus yesterday. They’re not happy about how the method clashes with their inability to do harm, but they have an easy out with Carol — the person who has caused them the most pain. You can be sure they’re rushing to tailor a virus to her, respecting only the letter of her wishes rather than her true desires as part of their biological imperative to make her happy.
