Aelita remains one of the most elusive personalities in ‘The Peripheral’, seeming to be on just about everyone’s radar. The latest episode delves into Lev’s motives for tracking down the elusive Aelita.
The Peripheral already deals with a lot of elusive sci0fi concepts and jargon. Amid all the stuff that eludes the audience sometimes, some of the characters in the show find it hard to track down not a concept but an elusive person.
This person is none other than Aelita, the talented and fierce woman who seems to be on a mission that seems to carry the weight of the world(s).
There are more than one interested parties that want their hands on Aelita, all seeking to get what they want and the only way to get it seems to demand Aelita’s presence/help.
One such party is the oligarch Lev Zubov, who has been mysterious regarding his reasons to track down Aelita’s whereabouts. But why does Lev want Aelita?
The reason and the reveal
The Peripheral episode reveals why Lev wants to find Wilf’s sister, as he explains to the man himself.
He tells Wilf that he wants Aelita to have a “Stub” of his own, and now that she is evading everyone, Lev stands at risk of losing what he wants from her as well.
Lev also reveals a couple of disturbing details to Wilf before he tells him about the stub. To know why he wants to get a stub, one must first know what a stub exactly is.
What is a Stub anyway?
The Peripheral explains what a stub is in the second episode, where Wilf and Lev tell Flynne about this and other terms that they use with other people in their timeline.
A Stub is essentially an alternative timeline. When a person from the future contacts a person in the past, the course of events in the past is changed from the future timeline, as it branches off into an alternative timeline.
So Flynne’s timeline is a Stub for Wilf and Lev. Nothing that happens in Flynne’s timeline will have an impact on the course of events in Wilf’s timeline and vice versa, since Flynne’s timeline branches off from Wilf’s when they came in contact.
Aelita, Stub & profit
Lev wants to find where Aelita is because he is an oligarch. The whole point of him is to create new means to create and increase his wealth.
One such way is to create a stub of your own and then own it for yourself.
If you have a stub of your own, you can subject that stub/alternative timeline to anything, without its physical ramifications ever having any effect on your own timeline.
Lev gives Wilf an example of his brother Alexei investing in a pharmaceutical endeavour. He says that after a point, one has no choice but to test a new drug or solution on humans.
An alternate timeline provides the best testing grounds for the morally reprehensible to do as they please. Lev wants to have a stub of his own but his objective is to not replicate anything his brother did.
Lev tells Wilf, though, that the possibilities with a stub are practically infinite, and he’s looking to realize one of these impossibilities, although what is the specific goal he’s trying to achieve is unknown for now.
Also Read: Wilf and Aelita’s relationship in The Peripheral explained