# Fluid Karma Fluid Karma was developed by [[Baron]] at [[Treer]] and is used to refer to both a drug and an energy field. [[Treer]] partners with the US Military during the Iraq War and this partnership continues into the current events of 2008 when the film begins. # Fluid Karma the Drug Fluid Karma was injected into soldiers in Fallujah as part of [[Baron]]'s testing program. Also used widely recreationally and to sedate people. Smuggled out of [[Utopia 3]] by [[Pilot]]. It is briefly mentioned on a newsreel that it was used for soldiers to communicate telepathically on the battlefield. ## Syringes Nothing is really explained about what all the colors do in the film or how it changes colors in the first place. Only the green syringe is clearly shown to be used as a sedative. The rest are either ambiguous or never on screen. Worse, many times the syringe has no visible color at all. | Color | Purpose | Pilot's Quote & Film Example (if any) | | ------ | ------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Green | Sedative | Pilot: "Green, you dream."<br><br>[[Walter]] sedates [[Ronald]] with a green syringe of Fluid Karma | | Blue | ? | Pilot: "Blue, in an hour you feel new." | | Yellow | ? | Pilot: "Forget about Mellow Yellow" | | Orange | ? | Pilot: "And Ancient Orange"<br><br>[[Dion]] injects [[Veronica]] with what I think is an orange syringe when she asks him to, with no obvious ill effects | | Red | Hallucinogenic<br>/ Bleed | Pilot: "Because I'm giving you Blood Red. You take the blood train. You talk to god without even seeing him. You hear his voice and you see his disciples. They appear like angels under a sea of black umbrellas. Angels who can see through time."<br><br>[[Pilot]] uses red in front of [[Martin]] at the [[Fire Arcade]] | # Fluid Karma the Energy Field During [[Linda]]'s interview with [[Baron]] and the [[Treer]] executive staff including [[Inga]], [[Soberin]], and [[Katarina]] (with [[Serpentine]] lurking) they explain that the transport mechanism for how energy is delivered wirelessly is via "quantum teleportation" and "quantum entanglement". In the [[Southland Tales Cannes Cut]] [[Inga]] says that [[Treer]] is working with the US Military to retrofit all of their vehicles to use Fluid Karma. # Prequel Saga ## Colors Blood Red plays a big role in the [[Prequel Saga]] where [[Boxer]] repeatedly bleeds through time. No additional explanation is given about the colors. ## What is Fluid Karma Really? Why Fluid Karma is both the name of a drug and an energy field is not explained in the film. This leads to a lot of confusion. But it is explained a bit more in the [[Prequel Saga]]. Fluid Karma is a substance secretly extracted from deep beneath the Earth's surface from the [[Serpentine Trench]] encircling the Earth's core. When Fluid Karma is injected into a human's bloodstream it acts like a drug. When it is exposed to the air, it emits an energy field that can be used by receivers as power. These receivers are often shown as [[Receiver Orbs|orbs]] in the film but never explained. # 2005 Draft The [[Southland Tales 2005 Draft]] sometimes specifies colors for syringes but they do not match with the film. In the [[Southland Tales 2005 Draft]] Orange is specified in the stage directions for sedating [[Roland|David Clark]], rather than the green in the filmed version. [[Pilot|Paul Pilot]]'s dialogue still says "Green: you dream" just like his speech at the [[Fire Arcade]] in the filmed version. # Undated Draft / 2001 Draft Fluid Karma was not mentioned in earlier versions of the script. > The linear accelerator is running at full capacity on the ocean floor one mile east of Catalina island. We are currently generating 10,000 Kilowatts of hydroelectric energy per cubic inch of seawater. \- [[Southland Tales Undated Draft|Undated Draft]] The [[Southland Tales Undated Draft|Undated Draft]] introduced the more sci-fi elements dwelling primarily on oceanography, whereas the [[Southland Tales 2001 Draft|2001 Draft]] was more grounded, dealing primarily with real life internet businesses such as [[Amazon Corporation]] and [[Yahoo!]]. # Issues ## Use by the Military for Energy In the [[Southland Tales 2005 Draft]] during [[Linda|the reporter]]'s interview (D2005 P5:S5) [[Baron]] says that they plan to begin construction on Utopia 4 in the fall of 2008 in Japan with [[Inga]] adding that their "goal is to have Fluid Karma available to the global marketplace by the end of this year". In the [[Southland Tales Cannes Cut]] [[Pilot]]'s narration (C 5:08) says that the tidal generator at [[Utopia 3]] off the coast of Los Angeles has a range that extends to the Arizona border. That is a range of around 230 miles. In the [[Southland Tales Theatrical Cut|Theatrical Cut]] there is a diagram (T 10:09) which shows a radius emanating out from a Utopia facility which shows cars, fighter planes, battleships, and a megazeppelin being powered by it. These seem to strongly indicate that the tidal generators are required to project the field. The Encyclopedia Britannica puts the Earth's surface area at 510,064,472 square kilometers (197 million square miles). While Utopia 3 only covers and area of around 500,000 square kilometers (196 thousand square miles). So around 100 Utopia facilities would be needed to cover the entire planet. That's probably not ideal from a military standpoint, both due to extremely limited coverage, and the massive target it puts on the Utopia facilities. Potentially raw Fluid Karma could be transported in tanks and released as needed. This would mean that anything else in the operating area wouldn't need to carry fuel, but the Fluid Karma energy sources would be a single points of failure - unless the enemy was also using it. In any case, this is never alluded to in any of the films or scripts. It remains dubious to me that the military applications would be worth the tradeoffs, at least at the time of the film. Still, historically, infeasibility has never stopped the US military from doing something ridiculous and expensive. ## Impact on the Ending Fluid Karma is positioned in the film as important but never seems to have a direct influence on the plot except as a sedative, for those that only watched the theatrical cut. People on Fluid Karma can supposedly communicate telepathically but this is mentioned only in a brief flash of a news story about Pilot and is never demonstrated directly in the film. As a result of these problems, reading the ending as [[Pilot]] forgiving [[Roland]] (which relies on this telepathic effect) completely unintuitive to a viewer that did not also read the graphic novels - even though this is apparently the intended reading of both of the official cuts. The "forgiveness" ending is not present in the [[Southland Tales 2005 Draft]], making Fluid Karma almost entirely a background element in this version of the screenplay. # IRL ## Agent Orange The "Ancient Orange" color sounds like "Agent Orange", a real-life tactical defoliant used by the USA in Vietnam. I always thought that Pilot actually said "Agent Orange", until I read the [[Southland Tales 2005 Draft]]. The official subtitles make a few errors in this scene, and I think this is one of them. There are strong allegorical parallels between Agent Orange and Fluid Karma as revealed in the [[Prequel Saga]]. The use of this chemical caused illness for millions of Vietnamese and US military veterans and has been described as "ecocide". ## Quantum Teleportation Quantum teleportation refers to the idea of sending quantum information across distances using entangled particles. It was first demonstrated empirically in 1998 but in the decades since has not been shown to have any practical applications so far. Part of the reason for this is that non-quantum information needs to delivered as well to verify the results, limiting the real-world information transfer potential to the same constraints as traditional non-quantum communication.