It might require this from every world it inhabits in order to regenerate. Maybe regarding our biology, something Area X couldn't quite grasp without a good sample? It (mistakenly?) copied Lowry's cell phone assuming it was biological.

What was the question? I'm simply not sure. Control provides the answer to that question when he bunny-hops into the light of the bloom at the base of the tower. The topographical anomaly, the plant, both shaped like the lighthouse, were a question asked by Area X that humans couldn't understand. I don't believe the Crawler or Area X ever meant to harm anyone. One passage seems to imply that it had a symbiotic relationship with the doomed species from its homeworld, and now it might be a somewhat-confused parasite without a host, a topic the biologist / Ghost Bird thinks about at a couple points.

The Crawler is keeping the link alive via the biological scripture it writes, 'coordinates' to each piece of Area X and the worlds that the biologist now traverses.Īrea X was watching us as we watch creatures in a tidepool, attempting to understand and unable to communicate, and like Saul told Gloria by their own tidepool, it can hurt us badly without meaning to. This is what I think Henry figured out - he thought he was detecting supernatural manifestations, but it was actually an alien organism (he tells Saul that he figured it out, but it wasn't what he thought it was). The piece that ended up on Earth, inside the lighthouse lens, is the conduit to the rest of Area X. Area X was scattered across the universe and pieces of it ended up on hundreds/thousands of worlds, but they're still connected and attempting to regenerate. There was a cataclysm that wiped out Area X's 'homeworld' (for lack of a better term) which is what lies across the border, going by the mentions of ruined cities and exploding comets. Here's our not-so-'grand unified theory':

My wife and I finished it yesterday and probably spent hours trying to suss it out.

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer