The Soul Key: Final Scene Between Elias and Benjamin (Spoilers)

[frkcd]

I just finished the book and am making it a DS9 September after I decided to re-read Fearful Symmetry prior to The Soul Key and will launch into The Never-Ending Sacrifice tomorrow.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Soul Key. I am a bit confused about why Sisko lied to Elias, telling him in Fearful Symmetry that he needed to go with Kira to convince Sisko's counterpart to become the Emissary. Sisko's reason for asking Elias to go instead of himself made sense at the time, but after learning Mirror Sisko was dead, I was confused.

In fact, Sisko's initial encounter in Fearful Symmetry with his multiverse counterparts is a bit confusing because they all indicated that the Mirror Universe Sisko was still alive, yet by the time Elias found him, he'd been dead for quite some time.

Anyone have any thoughts about this? Why did Sisko lie to Vaughn and why send Vaughn instead of himself?

On page 288, Sisko tells Vaughn, "You ended one person's suffering so that others could be saved."

The obvious answer is the Mirror Elias Vaughn. And the others? Sulan, Adami, and Essa.

Then on pages 288-289, Sisko tells Elias he had no choice and, "It was necessary." Elias asks for whom and Ben tells him, "You know Who," with the capital W.

My hypothesis is that the necessity of Benjamins's actions is about acting at the behest of the Prophets, doing their bidding, hence the capital W, but if this is true, did it have to be Elias that killed his counterpart? Why not someone else? And if it needed to be Vaughn, why?

Elias then asks if the Prophets/Wormhole Aliens meant for him to become the Mirror Emissary. Benjamin doesn't answer but further down the page tells Elias, "It was never about you. It was about making sure that when events do finally come to a head, all the right players are on the field, exactly where they need to be in order to win."

With Ghemor (the Voice) installed as the Emissary and Iliana showing up in the Epilogue with the Ascendants as the "Fire," my interpretation of Sisko's comment about "all the right players" has nothing to do with what transpired in the Mirror Universe but is about the coming plot with the Ascendants, and if "it was never about" Elias (possibly providing an answer to Vaughn's question about him becoming the Emissary), then, again, why did Sisko have Elias go with Kira?

Any suppositions or actual explanations will be greatly appreciated.

Donnie

 

[DS9Continuing]

Well, for one thing, the multi-verse Siskos didn't suggest that MU-Sisko was still alive at all. That's what Sisko told Vaughn they said, but that's not what they actually said.

Perhaps in the over-arching plan, Sisko sent Vaughn to the MU in order to jump-start MU-Ghemor into accepting the role she'd already tried to run away from. Which is exactly what happened in the scene where she tracks Sisko down in the habitat ring - she asks why he sent Vaughn, and he tells her, "We both know you could have done it yourself, but you didn't." Reverse psychology.

I'd say the bit about Vaughn killing MU-Vaughn was an extra bonus, but not the point of the thing. Well, perhaps it was the point from Vaughn's POV - to accept his own mortality by literally killing himself - but from Sisko's POV, it was about getting Ghemor to do what they needed her to do.

Looking back, we were actually told all along that Vaughn couldn't be the MU Emissary, because he was right there alongside Kira in the fight against the Ascendants in Kira's vision in Warpath.

 

[JD]

Re: The Soul Key: Final Scene Between Elias and Benjamin

I really think that all of this is just setting up for a future plotline, and that we simply need to wait and see where it is headed.
Now one thing worth mentioning, is that fact that if you read the multiple Siskos scene again, they never actually say that he needs to get Mirror Sisko they simply tell that he was supposed to the Mirror Emissary, and that they need the Emissary in the MU. They never did say that it needed to be Mirror Sisko, just that an Emissary was needed that.

 

[Rosalind]

(Sorry for the multiple posts. I just noted the 2nd time that I forgot to note that there are spoilers in my thread!)

frkcd, please do not post multiple threads on the same thing, that is considered spamming and can be warned as such. if you find you have made a mistake in your post, use the edit button to change things, if you want to edit your title, please ask either LightningStorm or myself.

 

[LutherSloan]

I'm still pretty unclear about the whole thing, I know I had a thread about this already myself.

 

[Man of Steel]

IMO, the whole book was a bit confusing.

 

[frkcd]

Ivsxy808 and JD,

I caught your responses before I left work yesterday. Thanks. I did go back and read the Prologue from Fearful Symmetry. Wow. I couldn't believe I'd missed that even after I chose to re-read the book to avoid the very thing that happened: not recalling specifics. As someone who only reads mystery/detective fiction other than Trek Lit, I would have expected myself to catch that. Thanks, again. I will re-read the scene between Ghemor and Sisko, too.

Rosalind, thanks for the information. I've not posted here much since the changes and didn't even realize there was an edit button. It took me a while to even find out how to start a new thread.

LutherSloan, I'll see if I can find your thread.

Donnie