Limitless

I remember my father mentioning to me that we, human beings, have not really accessed our brain's full capacity. Even Einstein could not boast he did. This is what makes us human, he said.

Limitless. The title is mundane, the actor is an upgraded version of himself, escaping from his stereotypical chick-flick roles, and the genre a pinch of everything. When I saw the trailer, I thought it was another Matrix type of films, mind-boggling, action packed. Surprisingly, it jumped out of the expected. It tends to provoke the mind but in a direct kind of way. I guess we have had enough of Inception to last us for another decade.

The secret is access, and the password is Math. Had I known the significance of Algorithm I should not have dozed off during class. When Eddie Morra swallowed the pill, his last resort to salvage his hopeless career, his 'blindness' was cured. He awoke to the undivulged world of endless possibilities. It is the modern version of Adam and Eve, only this time Adam initiated. Adam becomes invincible.

The effect lasts for a day, the side-effect fatal. Heavy traffic of information being bombarded by liberated neurons pumps in his brain that if he stops, he might explode. He feeds his hunger for knowledge. He uses them wisely. He befriends Mathematics, and he gains two million dollars from investments on Wall Street in two weeks, leaving everyone baffled with this new specie of genius. He is declared a deity.

I half-expected that he would run out of the pills, that he would suffer from its medical consequences, but that he would survive to tell the tale. He did not run out of it. He employs a scientist to reproduce it, thus extending his stature for eternity, with the world in his hands. While everyone was struggling to climb their way up the corporate ladder, he has already conquered and is waving the flag. The pill was the shortcut.

The concept knocked on the door of my image of God. Imagine the Greater Being that monitors our every move. The idea of the film may in the future be feasible, but the basics will hog us - the Higher Being that created 'all that is seen and unseen' still holds the throne to absolute consciousness. We have a glimpse of His Being as of the moment, maybe experience a quarter of it once we attain 100% control of our brain, and He will still be light years away ahead of us. The magnificence of God beyond human mind, eyes exposed or bound, with or without the pill.

Limitless, yet marginal. That is what makes us human. We are.