Travel by Death

According to my last post, if the Oceanic Six do not return to the island inside of 70 hours, the Earth will stop turning. We have several parties who are in the know about this catastrophe and taking action to stop it. They are: Richard Alpert (via John Locke), Mrs. Hawkings (via Ben Linus), and possibly Daniel Faraday.

Faraday, unlike Alpert and Hawkings, has jumped into the fray because of the nosebleed effect and most likely does not know the world may end. The nosebleed effect being: If you have the bad fortune to get unstuck in time and do not have a constant, you brain will start bleeding out your nose until it scrambles and you die. Sad but true.

Now Alpert and Hawkings, who could be the same person, and who could (either of them) have four toes, know this goes way beyond brain-scrambling. Of course, we don't know how they know. I'd like to discuss Team A, Alpert-Locke, and their interaction at the crashed Nigerian plane, because I believe it has given us one major insight:

To escape the island, you have to die.

I think the converse is also true. To return to the island, you have to die. Here's the evidence. Jack's father decides to drink himself to death in Australia. He dies. He is able to return to the island and walk around with his body back.

Alpert tells Locke, to leave the island, he has to die.

Hurley's imaginary friend from the loony bin, Dave, tells Hurley that to be free he must jump off the cliff. That this is all an illusion and he needs to kill himself. Libby "saves" him at the last minute. Maybe Dave was right.

Coincidentally (or not) Locke, Hurley and Christian are among the few who have seen Jacob's cabin. It may be Jacob who facilitates this travel by death, but only for those who know him.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say the "purge" may have been an act of mercy by Ben and the hostiles, to free the Dharma Initiative workers from the island's grasp (and from inevitable death by nosebleed). This would explain why Ben persists in calling himself and his people "the good guys," and why I'm justified in believing that.

But what are the rules governing travel by death? Do you have to know and have seen Jacob? Is this why he knows his daughter is dead and not just transported. Are these the same "rules" Ben mentions to Widmore? We'll see.

The Pendulum Effect: Part II

The pendulum effect was first seen on Lost very early on, with Kate swinging between Jack and Sawyer. Now, in season five, the pendulum effect is no longer metaphorical. My latest theory: Those who remain on the island are literally swinging back and forth through time as if riding on a pendulum.

By turning the frozen donkey wheel under the Orchid station, Ben has "unstuck" the island's inhabitants in time, a theme certainly borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Their first jump was to the past -- before their camp had been built and before the Nigerian plane had crashed. They hike to the hatch and experience another time shift -- now the hatch is long since blown up. Another shift -- the hatch is back. Another shift --the Nigerian plane is overgrown and resting on the Question Mark.

This is where we receive to the key to what is happening. Richard Alpert (he who doesn't age) says to John, "the next time we meet, I won't recognize you." Alpert knows they are on a pendulum, and that John's next jump will be to the past, before they've met. This also explains why they never go back to the time of the dinosaurs, or forward to an unrecognizable future. If they're traveling on a pendulum, it can only reach the same distance to the past as to the future. Each jump is equidistant from a centerpoint. The centerpoint, I believe, is when Desmond turned the fail-safe key and blew up the hatch. An action that unstuck only Desmond -- until that donkey wheel was turned and everyone became unstuck.

So, is the pendulum gaining momentum -- meaning each jump is further back in time and further forward in the future, or losing momentum? It's obviously losing momentum -- because Locke sees the Nigerian plane crash, then goes to the equidistant future and sees the plane resting on the cliff above him (an event not as far back in time as the plane crashing).

In the present, Mrs. Hawkings is furiously charting this effect in her secret laboratory beneath a Los Angeles church (with Tom Cruise keeping Ben company upstairs?). I'm certain she is charting when exactly that pendulum will come to rest. Turns out it's 70 hours from now. What happens then? The Earth stops turning on its axis and we all float off into space (well, technically, we would be thrown into the nearest wall at 1.5 times the speed of sound as our building tips off its foundation). More on that later.

Pendulums & Butchers

Wednesday night's two-hour premiere really knocked me into next week so I've got a lot to cover in this post.

First things first. We were hit over the head with some really obvious references throughout the second part of the season premiere two-parter. The first being Foucault's pendulum, visible in the last scene.

Designed by French physicist, Léon Foucault, the Foucault pendulum swings back and forth, drawing lines on the floor in a manner that allows you to see the rotation of the Earth. The experiment has different results if conducted at the poles or at the equator. In the episode we see Ms. Hawkings furiously doing equations on the chalkboard -- most likely because if you are in Los Angeles, and not at the South Pole, you need to do a lot of equations to find what you're looking for in the pendulum data. This may explain why Penny's team may have been looking for the island in a polar station.

The presence of the Foucault pendulum surely references Umberto Eco's (Mr. Eko?) book, "Il pendolo di Foucault." The book is a fictional account of three friends who invent a conspiracy (called "The Plan") for fun, but then begin to forget it's a game. One character, who has an unrequited love and constant sense of failure (John Locke anyone?), becomes obsessed with The Plan.

Is the island just "The Plan?" Certainly Ben's conversation with Widmore suggests they are playing a game. There are infinite references to chess and games. Unfortunately, some desperate people, like Locke, believe its real.

Or, the opposite could be true. Ben's conversation with Jill the butcher swings my pendulum the other way. If he has people -- probably in every city in the world -- with whom he can just drop off a body, no questions asked, he is definitely a higher-up in a real secret society. Jill is just one of potentially thousands of members of the "islanderati." This also would explain why Ms. Hawkings is doing her calculations in a robe in a hidden lair under a church -- if that doesn't say secret society, what does? But then who says you can't lead a secret society AND be playing an elaborate game? Enough for now.