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In the end, the viewer sees Lain realizing, after much introspection, that she has absolute power over everyone's mind and over reality itself. Her dialogue with different versions of herself show how she feels shunned from the material world, and how she is afraid to live in the Wired, where she has the possibilities and responsibilities of a goddess. The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone’s memories. She is last seen unchanged - re-encountering her old friend [[Alice]], who is now married. Lain promises herself to look after Alice.
In the end, the viewer sees Lain realizing, after much introspection, that she has absolute power over everyone's mind and over reality itself. Her dialogue with different versions of herself show how she feels shunned from the material world, and how she is afraid to live in the Wired, where she has the possibilities and responsibilities of a goddess. The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone’s memories. She is last seen unchanged - re-encountering her old friend [[Alice]], who is now married. Lain promises herself to look after Alice.
==Trivia==
* Cyberia, a bar/disco frequented in the series is an allusion to the nonfiction novel by the same name by Douglas Rushkoff. The pun on "Siberia" is intentional. See also Gaia, the global brain in the same book.
** It was also the name of one of the earliest cybercafé franchises - which had a branch in Tokyo.
* Protocol 7 refers, probably, to the 7th Layer, the neurogenetic circuit, of the Eight Layers of Conciousness as proposed by Timothy Leary.
** And could also be a successor to the upcoming new internet protocol IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) (the current internet protocol is IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4)).
* NAVI, the trademark-turned-noun for computer in the series, is contracted from Knowledge Navigator, a term invented by Apple CEO John Sculley in his book Odyssey. It referred to a computer connected to a vast network where everyone was connected.
* Copland OS was an unreleased operating system by Apple Computers. See also System 7, its predecessor.
* Devices, in this context, refers to Marshal McLuhan's concept.
* Gaia, a global brain in Cyberia shares a common thread with the collective shared unconscious in Lain
* Earth Coincidence Control Office by John C. Lilly, a higher intelligence controlling the "coincidences" on Earth.
* Knights of the Eastern Calculus: The Knights of the Lambda Calculus are a semi-mythical, semi-serious, real-world group of hackers devoted to the use of the programming language Lisp.
* Tachibana Labs is a play on words on Apple Macintosh, (a type of Apple) itself being the name of a citrus fruit (the citrus tachibana)
* Layer ## at the beginning of each episode is said by Apple's Whisper voice in Mac OS text-to-speech software.
* Nezumi, the Knights-wannabe who carries a computer rig and accesses the Wired while he walks matches the description of a Gargoyle from Snow Crash, as do the MIB agents, who wear the same headgear (complete with laser sight) that Lagos was described as wearing.
* Close the World, Open the neXt. Compare NeXT and neXt. NeXT was the high-end computer company founded by Steve Jobs after his ouster from Apple. The Internet as we know it (that is, * the hypertext-based World Wide Web) was invented by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXTSTEP computer.
* to Be continued, where Be uses the same colouring as Be OS used.
* hello (again), the text from an Apple advertisement, is used in an omake.
* What is Artificial Life? from ALIFE VI is quoted in text-form at several places.
* While it's debatable, Lain can be seen as an Expy of Rei Ayanami. This has been denied by writer Chiaki J. Konaka, who hadn't seen Neon Genesis Evangelion until after he'd written * * the fourth episode. This is not relieving.
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