Are you there Future? It's me, Swan! An explanation of DHARMA'S experiments in time manipulation.
A pnuematic tube that for ages dumped notebooks into a field, a station that can send bunnies into the future, and clone duplicate copies? A station that reports an incursion of the hostiles, but then just blows up. A station that you enter in numbers, and not doing so will cause a buildup of electromagnetism, and if you don't blow it up, baaaaad things will happen. There seems to be something missing in the overall purpose of the DHARMA Initiative, and Radzinsky's motherly instinct of the SWAN hints at it being more than just a psychological experiment to me.
Ok, here's the theory. The DHARMA stations were designed to be able to communicate to each other, and the outside world. at different points in time. That's it. Why? So that incase something did happen, you can instruct people of the future of a) how to travel through time to b) fix what went wrong, and keep the DHARMA Initiative from being annhiliated.
Here's the breakdown:
The Flame: has a computer you play chess on and if you win, type in numbers to perform certain tasks:
24 - Pallet Drop
32 - Activate the Station Uplink
38 - Access Mainland Communications
56 - Access the Sonar System
77 - Report incursion by the hostiles
So interesting is number 77. "Enter 77" the episode, we remember that 77 was to "report an incursion" but we see the Flame blow up. So... that report, was for whom? Well, to someone sitting in another station in the past. This elusive dashed line on the Blast door map.
A station that was supposed to be built, but by endless time loops, never gets built. Messages from the flame are supposed to go there from the future. Messages from the pearl are supposed to go there pnuematically as well (more on this later)
Not as interesting, but note worthy is the pallet drop, we know that the DHARMA initiative is no longer in tact in 2004, however, there was a pallet drop of food for our losties to find. Because presumably Mikhail is typing in "24" during season 1, purpose of feeding the Others. Since this pallet drop could come from another point in time, its a clue that the Flame communicates events of the past into the future, or likewise, can recieve messages about the future (on the mainland) since we already know that in 2004-2005, from the payload experiment, that material goods end up taking a 31-minute relativity detour, while communication is instant.
Which brings me to "38" we already know that electronic communications are instantaneous relative to each other to a person on the mainland, and a person on the island, however we know that the person on the mainland is 31 minutes in the future so essentially you are communicating with someone in the future by pressing "38" as well. It's probably so, the future people of the mainland can let you know that "Oh btw, when the Swan hits 4,8,15,26,23,42 in 20 minutes, that typo caused volcanoes to destroy the planet, so go tell Radzinsky to get it right, k?"
The Swan: and those damn numbers. If you followed the Valenzetti thing from the Lost Experience, the equation those numbers go into (whatever is ticking inside that computer in the Swan station) predicts "the exact number of years and months until humanity extinguishes itself" After the incident, we were told by Pierre that you have to re-enter in the numbers every 108 minutes. Was the incident a sabotage? Someone wanted to program the swan into a 108 minute ticking timebomb, and the "entering the numbers" is the workaround to keep it from doing it's harm. Was this someone a crazy-old-man time-travel scientist making his last stand against fate's inevitability? Or a bug-eyed sandwich-making Harry Potter? Or a gang of eyeliner wearing D.I. haters? To me it looked like every 108 minutes, the computer received no-data instead of it's numbers, and you had to correc this by physically overriding the equation. When the numbers are too far off, we know it's disa! ster for the universe.
Changing the numbers, would mean that you are predicting a new course of time for all of humanity. We already know that some, like Desmond, have the ability to change the "future" to a degree. Simply put, Desmond keeping charlie alive is like putting 4,8,15,17,22,42 instead of the 15,16,23... the total is still 108, but the individual parts are somewhat different (Charlie dies still, but just differently). We know that messing with those numbers however, is bad new. Currently, due to the course of all paradoxes, all time-travelling, everything... is 108 right now, and each component of the equation is fixed. If you can change the past, and the future, then I'm sure you can successfully move those numbers around to be different with no adverse consequences. People saying whatever happened, happened would say that the numbers can't change. If you can change the numbers, however, and keep the universe stable, then you can essentially change "whatever happened." Whether that's p! ossible, we don't know yet...
The Pearl; The observational station that monitors each of the other stations, including the Swan, and dumps the booklet pnuematically into what appears to be an open field. Now soo many possibilities open up here. What if a) there originally was a station here (C1, or even the question mark on the blast door map) and basically some form of time travel/past changing kept it from being built, so over history the tubes are dumping where a station should be. This C1 also was to recieve the electronic S.O.S. from a "38" entered by the Flame. Or... b)it's a dropoff point for the future, so that incase there was a problem (let's say that someone entered in the wrong numbers, or forgot to enter them) you now have a physical date and time recorded, who it was, and what happened to keep them from doing it, as backup to the dot-matrix printout Desmond printed out in the Pearl (backup data). You know, redundant data. This is so that future D.I. fo! lk can go back to the island, and collect those pnuematic tubes as history, and find the point in time that you need to go back to to fix the problem. Or my favorite...c)that the Swan/Orchid were designed to manipulate time of physical objects on and around the island, so that you really are sending those logbooks into the past! We know that the payload shows matter can be manipulated through time, so the moment the notebook is sent from the tube it arrives to it's destination from the future (31 minutes, or more), to give the recipients forewarning of a future problem.
And the fact that now there is no station there, the warning message to the past never made it. Also, somehow the message never made it back to Radzinsky at the Swan (because of the incident, he was forced to hang out there and keep the numbers going because the Swan was his design) and he was still pushing the buttons. He didn't understand the purge, went outside once (maybe he ran out of Ranch dressing) and then he sees his fellow Dharma-ites all keeled over dead. He presumed it was a disease instead of just chemical genocide, so he personally invented the "give yourself a shot" each day routine.
The Orchid The brainchild of Pierre Chang, the thing that uses the magic forces around the island to send matter to and from the island at different points in time. We see them clone bunnies. There's a force that lets you leave the island, and we know that it can send you to-and-fro in physical time. Sure possible that it is designed to send physical objects (notebooks, possibly?... people?) back into the past, as in sending messages to yourself in the past. Or send Film-strip warning messages off the island to oh I dunno... 30 years into the future? Hmmm... makes you wonder.
Did the DHARMA Initiative set up this extensive network of communication only so they could warn themselves, their friends, the D.I. stations off the island, the founders of the D.I., anyone of a problem? A time-travel paradox? An attack? A problem for the future by changing the Valenzetti equation too much? Anything! The purpose of all these stations is to protect their interests and keep their research going, and there was always a backup plan for the universe?
After all, we know from ComicCon, that Pierre Chang is sending a film of himself 30 years into the future to tell the recipients to reinstate the D.I. The technology they created, makes this all possible. Theory by matt
A pnuematic tube that for ages dumped notebooks into a field, a station that can send bunnies into the future, and clone duplicate copies? A station that reports an incursion of the hostiles, but then just blows up. A station that you enter in numbers, and not doing so will cause a buildup of electromagnetism, and if you don't blow it up, baaaaad things will happen. There seems to be something missing in the overall purpose of the DHARMA Initiative, and Radzinsky's motherly instinct of the SWAN hints at it being more than just a psychological experiment to me.
Ok, here's the theory. The DHARMA stations were designed to be able to communicate to each other, and the outside world. at different points in time. That's it. Why? So that incase something did happen, you can instruct people of the future of a) how to travel through time to b) fix what went wrong, and keep the DHARMA Initiative from being annhiliated.
Here's the breakdown:
The Flame: has a computer you play chess on and if you win, type in numbers to perform certain tasks:
24 - Pallet Drop
32 - Activate the Station Uplink
38 - Access Mainland Communications
56 - Access the Sonar System
77 - Report incursion by the hostiles
So interesting is number 77. "Enter 77" the episode, we remember that 77 was to "report an incursion" but we see the Flame blow up. So... that report, was for whom? Well, to someone sitting in another station in the past. This elusive dashed line on the Blast door map.
A station that was supposed to be built, but by endless time loops, never gets built. Messages from the flame are supposed to go there from the future. Messages from the pearl are supposed to go there pnuematically as well (more on this later)
Not as interesting, but note worthy is the pallet drop, we know that the DHARMA initiative is no longer in tact in 2004, however, there was a pallet drop of food for our losties to find. Because presumably Mikhail is typing in "24" during season 1, purpose of feeding the Others. Since this pallet drop could come from another point in time, its a clue that the Flame communicates events of the past into the future, or likewise, can recieve messages about the future (on the mainland) since we already know that in 2004-2005, from the payload experiment, that material goods end up taking a 31-minute relativity detour, while communication is instant.
Which brings me to "38" we already know that electronic communications are instantaneous relative to each other to a person on the mainland, and a person on the island, however we know that the person on the mainland is 31 minutes in the future so essentially you are communicating with someone in the future by pressing "38" as well. It's probably so, the future people of the mainland can let you know that "Oh btw, when the Swan hits 4,8,15,26,23,42 in 20 minutes, that typo caused volcanoes to destroy the planet, so go tell Radzinsky to get it right, k?"
The Swan: and those damn numbers. If you followed the Valenzetti thing from the Lost Experience, the equation those numbers go into (whatever is ticking inside that computer in the Swan station) predicts "the exact number of years and months until humanity extinguishes itself" After the incident, we were told by Pierre that you have to re-enter in the numbers every 108 minutes. Was the incident a sabotage? Someone wanted to program the swan into a 108 minute ticking timebomb, and the "entering the numbers" is the workaround to keep it from doing it's harm. Was this someone a crazy-old-man time-travel scientist making his last stand against fate's inevitability? Or a bug-eyed sandwich-making Harry Potter? Or a gang of eyeliner wearing D.I. haters? To me it looked like every 108 minutes, the computer received no-data instead of it's numbers, and you had to correc this by physically overriding the equation. When the numbers are too far off, we know it's disa! ster for the universe.
Changing the numbers, would mean that you are predicting a new course of time for all of humanity. We already know that some, like Desmond, have the ability to change the "future" to a degree. Simply put, Desmond keeping charlie alive is like putting 4,8,15,17,22,42 instead of the 15,16,23... the total is still 108, but the individual parts are somewhat different (Charlie dies still, but just differently). We know that messing with those numbers however, is bad new. Currently, due to the course of all paradoxes, all time-travelling, everything... is 108 right now, and each component of the equation is fixed. If you can change the past, and the future, then I'm sure you can successfully move those numbers around to be different with no adverse consequences. People saying whatever happened, happened would say that the numbers can't change. If you can change the numbers, however, and keep the universe stable, then you can essentially change "whatever happened." Whether that's p! ossible, we don't know yet...
The Pearl; The observational station that monitors each of the other stations, including the Swan, and dumps the booklet pnuematically into what appears to be an open field. Now soo many possibilities open up here. What if a) there originally was a station here (C1, or even the question mark on the blast door map) and basically some form of time travel/past changing kept it from being built, so over history the tubes are dumping where a station should be. This C1 also was to recieve the electronic S.O.S. from a "38" entered by the Flame. Or... b)it's a dropoff point for the future, so that incase there was a problem (let's say that someone entered in the wrong numbers, or forgot to enter them) you now have a physical date and time recorded, who it was, and what happened to keep them from doing it, as backup to the dot-matrix printout Desmond printed out in the Pearl (backup data). You know, redundant data. This is so that future D.I. fo! lk can go back to the island, and collect those pnuematic tubes as history, and find the point in time that you need to go back to to fix the problem. Or my favorite...c)that the Swan/Orchid were designed to manipulate time of physical objects on and around the island, so that you really are sending those logbooks into the past! We know that the payload shows matter can be manipulated through time, so the moment the notebook is sent from the tube it arrives to it's destination from the future (31 minutes, or more), to give the recipients forewarning of a future problem.
And the fact that now there is no station there, the warning message to the past never made it. Also, somehow the message never made it back to Radzinsky at the Swan (because of the incident, he was forced to hang out there and keep the numbers going because the Swan was his design) and he was still pushing the buttons. He didn't understand the purge, went outside once (maybe he ran out of Ranch dressing) and then he sees his fellow Dharma-ites all keeled over dead. He presumed it was a disease instead of just chemical genocide, so he personally invented the "give yourself a shot" each day routine.
The Orchid The brainchild of Pierre Chang, the thing that uses the magic forces around the island to send matter to and from the island at different points in time. We see them clone bunnies. There's a force that lets you leave the island, and we know that it can send you to-and-fro in physical time. Sure possible that it is designed to send physical objects (notebooks, possibly?... people?) back into the past, as in sending messages to yourself in the past. Or send Film-strip warning messages off the island to oh I dunno... 30 years into the future? Hmmm... makes you wonder.
Did the DHARMA Initiative set up this extensive network of communication only so they could warn themselves, their friends, the D.I. stations off the island, the founders of the D.I., anyone of a problem? A time-travel paradox? An attack? A problem for the future by changing the Valenzetti equation too much? Anything! The purpose of all these stations is to protect their interests and keep their research going, and there was always a backup plan for the universe?
After all, we know from ComicCon, that Pierre Chang is sending a film of himself 30 years into the future to tell the recipients to reinstate the D.I. The technology they created, makes this all possible. Theory by matt
