LTT sealed away the DO with 7 Seals. We don't know if the number of Seals is due to the intricacies of imaginary magic systems, or if it is supposed to represent the 7 Ages that are the Spokes for the Wheel of Time. As we've seen, though, these Seals did not repair the Bore (my pet name for ACoS and APoD). They shut the DO out for a while, but they have grown weaker, and the DO exerts more influence on the world with every day.

Both Min and LTT (and, seemingly, Herid Fel) agree that the Seals must be destroyed if the DO is to be defeated. LTT, the resident expert (when he's sane), says the DO infected saidin because they used saidin to "touch" him. It is implied, therefore, that everything outside of the Wheel is the DO itself.

We could spend time talking about Randland and the Pattern as some pocket multiverse that the Creator made. We could wonder if the DO can only achieve true victory by making the Creator's avatar turn to Shaitan's philosophy. I'd like to spend some time wondering how Rand is going to "fit a square peg in a round hole."

Rand's recent use of the TP has given some theorists hope: they figure that if Rand accesses the TP, he can use that to "touch" the DO and his Bore and make the prison like new. But look at the themes in our book series - does it "sound right" that the path to salvation will be the Light's champion using the DO itself to shut him out? This might feel right in many stories, but it doesn't quite gibe here.

There's another, less philosophical, problem with Rand using TP to remake the DO's prison : the DO is the TP, so if the Bore is a seething mass of DO that is now touching the Pattern, you can't replace the DO with himself and expect that to work. There would still be DO touching the Pattern. It might be safer to touch the DO with himself - as absurd as that sounds - but I can't imagine that actually working. More importantly, I'm fairly sure the DO can stop himself from being used in that way.

This all brings us back to the problem in my title - How can Rand repair the bore? I have some ideas, as I'm sure many of you do. Still, there's too little info on the Wheel, the DO and Creator, and Creation itself - we're left with a lot of speculation that can only be supported by limited arguments. I invite everyone to put out their ideas and opinions; for my part, I will provide two or three theories I've been toying with. There would normally be more to back these theories up, but we're playing in barely-charted waters here...

Let me start with this other question from my title - what forms the boundary between the Wheel and the DO? It seems kind of clear that this is a super-important question, since an answer would tell us (a) what the prison is made from, and (b) what Rand needs to harness in order to win. There is essentially no info on this topic, so speculation is all we have. I'm going to kick things off by ruling out one possible answer...

It doesn't make much sense that the only thing keeping the DO from the Wheel is, in fact, the Wheel. We're told that the DO was sealed in a prison at the moment of Creation, but we're not told what makes up that prison. The current situation, with the DO's growing influence, suggests that the Wheel cannot extend outwards, only stopping when it meets the DO. Why?

Because the current situation, like the one in the AoL, says otherwise. The Shadow touches the Pattern because his prison has been cracked. This means that the Pattern itself can't quite be the prison, because then the Pattern would still be the thing that touches the DO. There must be something between the Pattern and Shaitan.

All that logic from the last two paragraphs rules out one possible way to defeat Shaitan - Rand cannot simply use the Pattern itself to "push" the DO away. There will still be an overlapping point where the two touch.

I've thought through a few possible alternatives - accessing the evil within Padan Fain, "draining" him in order to make his unique power a repulsive sheet that will be at the border between the Pattern and Shaitan. I considered them using some of the alternate universes as a barrier - nothing like screwing over the 'Finn and defeating the DO at the same time, huh? I considered the possibility that the collective will and life-force of all the good guys IS, in fact, the Creator, and that their combined will can get the job done.

I even wondered if TaR might be the ideal barrier. It encompasses all of Randland and its parallel worlds. As such, it's clearly a unifying power unto itself - an identifiable yet separate force like good, evil, and Shadar Logoth's evil. And TaR also clearly acts as a border. This idea seems to also shoot itself down, though, since we learn that the DO wins if he achieves ultimate victory in any of the parallel worlds. I also have to assume that TaR is a thing of the Pattern itself, and is probably formed by the dream-states of the creatures that live in it. However little info we have on the mechanics of TaR, it would still seem like the Pattern touching Shaitan.

What if Rand and the good guys decide to use the Creator himself? There's many statements about humans being unable to recreate the Creator's work. And we're all fairly certain that the Creator will not actively intervene to win TG. It makes sense that the Creator can get the job done. So how could they harness the Creator?

There might be an answer that fits thematically and (maybe a little too) literally into the problem: can they re-imprison the DO with light?

Light may, actually, fit the bill. On a thematic level, Shaitan is "the Dark," while the Creator is "the Light." The Pattern itself is a creation of the Light, while the DO's minions are creations of the Dark. The Light involves an inclusive, self-encompassing, eternal cycle that makes reality. The Dark involves an intrusive force that occurs once to end reality.

For those of us who are Americans with a christian background, we might imagine George Burns or a bearded white guy (ugh!) as god, and a red-skinned, horned, demon as the devil. In Randland, I imagine these literal images are: a big blob of darkness, and a big blob of light.

Min's visions of the battle against the Shadow match these thoughts - little fireflies are swallowed up by, or effectively repel, the Dark. The strength of each group waxes and wanes. We can see that darkness can smother light, so why can't light cast the darkness away?

Solar radiation is one of the few "real world" scientific objects that exists in Randland. To be honest, I can't even remember any mention of magnetism in the WoT, but photons are definitely there. Not only do they have stars and planets, but Rand's invisibility trick involves "bending" light around himself.

And we readers know that light occupies a weird wave/particle dualism - it is simultaneously a mass-having object and a mass-less energy. This scientific conundrum might mean that light has properties that can be useful in winning TG. Since we also learned that "the DO's prison is everywhere, but felt most strongly at SG," light (as EM radiation) is one of the few universal forces that might be able to live up to such a task. Sadly, a guy who never took college physics is probably the last guy you want writing this paragraph, so I'll stop here. Let my more-educated colleagues bolster or demolish this thought.

There must be something that lies between the Wheel (and the Pattern it weaves) and the DO's prison. We don't know what this is, but we can speculate on what it might be. I think that the way to re-imprison Shaitan is to find out what makes up this boundary, and to find a way to use or create that in order to win TG. In the absence of more info and other ideas, I think it might be photons - the literal particles of light - that might form that boundary, and that might have peculiar properties that allow them to "touch" the DO's prison without actually letting the Pattern "be touched" by the DO itself.

These ideas may sound ridiculous. The easiest conclusion I can see in my own theory is the good guys will use the Power to make some sort of "photon gun;" such a thing would shoot light directly at the DO's prison. With a large amount of light as a buffer, they could let the Wheel weave something into the intervening space, or they could weave a new "Seal" around that, and thus the DO would be locked away without being in contact with saidin or saidar. And, wow, I had to deduce that silly idea because touching the Bore with a "light weave" would probably be the same as touching it with any OP weave - thus putting everyone right back to where LTT & his 100 pals were.

Folks, as dumb as this theory might read, the underlying questions are still pertinent. So what do you think? And what do you think might form the Pattern/DO boundary? How do you think Shaitan's prison can be remade? I just wanted to toss out a new, forward-looking post for general consideration. I'm back to film reviews and articles for now...