I believe, like many others who have posted similar theories, that maybe the Island is itself the heart of a loop that replicates, creating some kind of record machine.
Imagine that the mysterious energy in the island allows someone to create a loop in a Minkowsky unique self-correcting universe. Now, imagine someone in the loop trying to break it…course correction would imply that the loop occur only that this time with a new variation: it would either be bigger or shorter than the previous loop (like circular tracks on record), and it would include the new person trying to avoid the loop and maybe new people–thanks to course correction- helping to make it happen.
Since, I’m very lousy at explaining myself I will try to do it by exposing some evidence to this theory based on the metaphor coined by Daniel Faraday and present everywhere in Lost: the vinyl record. Forgive me my English, I am a foreigner in this language as much as I am foreigner to myself.
THE RAIN ISSUE NUMBER 815316: as a leitmotiv in the earlier seasons, rains came in and out as if they formed part of a loop –just as in the LOST DVD menus-, Locke, for instance, asserted this, even predicting when a certain rain would end, as if it was always the same rain, repeating itself as part of a previous loop, one that happened independently of the island newcomers.
MIND YOUR BEARINGS: if you are in, lets say about to eat pizza in track 3 (a smaller loop in the spinning record, in a certain sense) and jump to track 4 (a bigger loop)…. you would find out that you have already ate the pizza because loop 4 is a little bit wider (and being longer, includes the pizza eating scene). In order to make continuity happen, you would have to travel from the center to the rest of the circumference in a certain bearing so events in track 3 coincide exactly with events in track 4…if not, you would have to find a constant as your mind tries to adjust to the rift or difference. This is why a rocket thrown from outside the island gets there delayed about an hour and then, in the same season, the doctors body is washed upon the shore before he dies in the boat. The island and the boat are in different tracks…depending on what bearing they cross from track to track (from loop to any of the other variations of the loop) they will appear before or afte! r they should. To put it in another way, if I leave a track following a certain bearing I may arrive to the next track in what seems a different time. So, it is not quite time-travel nor alternate universe, as the writers once said….but it does seem like it. If this seems confusing, take an old vinyl record, or even the Orchid or Paik industry logo and put 5 events in a track and the same 5 events in the next track with the same longitude (inches in the circumference), you will see that the events do not touch each other…
ENTER DESMOND: ¿why does he consciously time jump back and forth? Because he goes from a time in the loop in which he existed in to a bigger time-loop where he is not anymore. In other words, in the previous loop, Desmond does get killed, but, since he has changed something he is know traveling to a new loop where he should not be…his consciousness needs to course correct to adjust to this…and the universe also…so he goes back and forth participating in the events or variations that create the next loop: communicating with Daniel Faraday. This is why he, and not the other passengers in the chopper, suffers so much…for the other passengers is a little jump from track 1 to 4 through bearing 305…so the guys and the moment they leave the island towards the freighter in loop 4 coincide with the guys versions that arrive at the freighter in loop 5 or whatever.
DHARMA CON OR RIGHT TRACK HOAX?: There is only ONE timeline respecting this way Minkowski theory on time travel in singular universes, but this does not dispel the possibility for alternate or MANY time-loops. So, there is 1 record and MANY tracks…as in 1 island and MANY paths, just maybe…Dharma means the right way, or path... or, yes…the right track… ¿or is it loop? I have come to think, in terms of a singularity...the first loop that happens...in a course-correcting time-line, slight variations are possible and the universe will still try to course correct producing the time loop...so the next loop is either shorter or longer but slightly different...if it is different...what happened to the loop before...has it become a ghost loop?
GHOSTS LOOPS AROUND: remember Walt being at the same time imprisoned by others and appearing out of nowhere in the jungle or being outside the island and at the same time speaking to Locke in the dharma death pit? And what about Jacobs cabin appearing and disappearing here and there…the gray ashes on the ground where not magic dust for rituals but markings made that predicted where the cabin would appear or, even more, where it had appear before. At certain times the island is in-between loops, juxtaposing events from different tracks…as if the island itself was trying to adjust and find constants, or as if where the place where all loops meet. Remember Horace in Locke’s dream…he nosebleeds…he loops and nosebleds…In track 1977…the purge affects dharma…in track 2021 the purge affects the entire world…Desmond nosebleeds maybe not because his mind goes asunder, but because he is going to a loop where he does not exist…or maybe came back and forth including a! forth where he died…so he needed his constant in the present to make his consciousness stick in that time and stay out of a future where his thoughts would die or he himself is not anymore?
THE SWAN AND THE CAPSTAN: It is not an alternate universe...but an alternate take...an alternate loop...and all the loops are concentrated or expand around a center (lets say the Orchid)...So, since there is always place for variation, for a bigger or smaller loop, for more tracks in the record so to speak, there is always a possibility for people to be sucked in to the loop…or, in other words, in to the island and.... perhaps, this explains the smoke monster. When DI builds the Swan they create an artificial way of playing always the same track, of staying in the same loop and limiting all variations (so the Dharma name, the right track…for DHARMA people think it is THEIR WAY or the HIGHWAY), so they live cozily in an island and environment that always replenishes itself and where people never die and get sick (everything material repeats itself, while the mind, conciousness or spiritual (soul) does not). If the donkey wheel is, as someone posted somewhere, truly a ca! ptsan, think of not a boat or moor capstan, but of a record player capstan… then the Swan acts like, an interruption machine that makes the loop go back before it fully repeats itself or even creates the loop, like tilting up the needle of a vynil record long enough so it comes back at the beginning of the track, or as a way of making the island stay in the same track (loop) and avoiding being thrown out as when you move the capstan (that might also work as a vinyl record capstan when you stop the dish…the needle rises). So, in other words, the DI creates an artificial way of looping…they calculate how far from the orchid or magnetic rotating center they must travel –say, two miles to create a 108 minute loop, for example- and well, they build the Swan hatch where the record keeps coming back summoning magnetic energy until you need to dispose it or something like that…with the added value or discovery that, if you want to travel from track to track and not suffer! side effects or end up in a purge or some other nose-bleeding! moment of yourself, well, you must find a constant or learn a little bit of consistency…the kind of thing you learn by…yes pushing a button or entering a number over and over again beyond the absurd: this explains the social observation issue of the Pearl station.
SKIP THE BEARING DETAILS, CUT THE ISLAND IN HALF: Sawyer, Juliet and co. might not be fully time traveling, they are truly mind-traveling like Desmond did, since they have been in all the other events before, in different tracks. This may explain why they all are about to nosebleed to death, since all of them are jumping and barely know each other, they cannot become each other constants (they are all adrift between tracks, they need someone stuck in just one track as reference). Charlottes babbles before dying comes from many tracks and loops juxtaposing in her mind, from a discussion about Carthage with a roman emperor to a place beyond life, thus: THIS PLACE IS DEATH. Alos, maybe the SWAN hatch was a way of making a pair of guys and a couple of stuff move from track to track and thus times or time-lines or loops…it was a way of harnessing the energy that made THE ENTIRE ISLAND move from track to track. On the other hand, the losties on AJIRA 316 are swooped to a diffe! rent loop than Sun, Ben and co…. maybe part of them go to DI time at the new end of the new loop (bigger than before) and SUN and co go to the other end of the loop in the far future, where no other, no dharma, just abandoned barracks and stations exist in ruins. It is not off and on island time, because Locke could only be undead if he where sucked in a loop…. In a metaphoric way, both sides are closer than ever one in the beginning, the other in the end…and you just need to turn a little capstan to make ends meet? Remember Tale of Two Cities…what if both Islands are replicates or similar…or island A and B are in the point where tracks meet or one loops touches the other? Just musing around…
UNBORN, UNDEAD AND UNCURED: Whether the first loop is created by the Swan or the Swan creates an artificial loop or REWIND system I still cannot tell. Either way this explains why before the swan was built babies could be born in the island (Amy: Ethan) and why Claire´s baby is born…In the first case, the Swan wasn´t built, so there was no loop that played back keeping out all possible variations. Babies could not be born in the loop because before they mature all that is not conscious (people, maybe not their bodies) in the island goes back to cero. This explains the month limit asserted by Juliet. On the other side, Claire´s baby is born, and also Sun´s baby does well because Desmond forgot to enter the numbers and push the button for an inch of time, enough for too much energy or movement to accumulate moving the island or the needle to the next loop, a loop that now includes people in 815. This also explains why Locke’s legs and Roses cancer is cured…they ente! red a loop where they must stay alive for course-correctings sake, while Ben gets sick, he was living perfectly well in the previous loop (a smaller one) and now, well…he will get sick…in the future…something that mirrors (remember the circle or loops grows as if you extended the timeline…more events in the future and more events in the past…same outcome due to course correcting) he being shot in the past, at both edges of the loop (just before swan is built, quite near the end of the swan hatch blow-out). The same applies to the undead, their bodies roam because within the loop they cannot fully die (they would disappear creating a variation or new loop), this is the case of Christian, Claire, etc. This also explains why Locke´s and Swayer´s daddy appears alive in the island, he died in a car accident and they took his body to the island…and…voilá…strangled papa…or maybe not. And, also explains recurring events (Locke´s leg injury or failure)….the i! njury that ocurrs in track 2 at 2:05 minutes, will ocurr in tr! ack 3 at 4:04 minutes or maybe not even ocurr due to course correction, but since in the island maybe all loops or timelines cross and ghost each other…there you go…it may also happen that in track 4 minute 4 Locke gets injured and in track or loop 5 minute 2 this still does not happen but something similar does happen as an eco or ghost or summoning of the previous or upcoming iteration.
HOW MANY LOCKES DOES IT TAKE TO OPEN THE DOOR: Maybe, just maybe he have been seeing different Lockes all along…this explains his mad thriving for things to happen in a certain way at times and his complete baffled and lost attiude in other moments…What if the Locke that comes out of nowhere to avoid Jack calling the chopper is from a future iteration or another track. This explains all his predictive issues. In the pilot episode he seems to know what is happening…In many episodes he says: this was or was not supossed to happen…You cant tell me what I cannot do, etc.
SMOKE MONSTER RISING FROM DHARMA PIT: maybe the smoke monster is made of nothing else than the people who have died in the island…not only of their dust and ashes not assimilated (since their bodies as imagos appear everywhere) but also their souls not assimilated. Maybe the monster was before Dharma, but after the purge it became the lean-mean machine it now is…recording and retrieving and destroyin everything on behalf of the course-correction or path that creates the loop that allows it to live. This also explains the: the island wants you to do it…¿island and smokey one and the same?
WHISPERS OF HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF: woods filled with whispers that seem quite familiar but distinct, a beacon repeating a code over and over again, Jack hearing voices through a damaged and not functional speaker while imprisoned, Hurley and Sayid picking up songs from the Jughead era…magnetic waves, sound waves and who nows what else seem to jump across the tracks…or maybe yuxtapose every now and then…every time the artificial Dharm loop ends and for a brief period of time the Swan resets everything…or something similar.
IT´S MORIARTY´S REVENGE ALL OVER AGAIN: a few images where cut from the chapter where Ben pushes the capstan…only someone out of the record can move the record, thus, moving the record spits you out of the loop…but…strange enough…after Ben pushed the capstan he appeared in Tunisia and in the images cut away in another chapter that takes us to the same place, we see he seeing himself after he pushed the capstan that took him to Tunisia…not only that, but when he goes to the Hotel in Tunisia the Clerk asks him if it is his first time staying there and…with a conspicuous glare filled with a certain irony he says that yes, it is his first time…it is the first time for the clerk, not for Ben…This also explains the double 15 bunny issue in the comic-con video.
IF YOU ARE NOT WATCHING THE MACHINE, THAN WHO IS WASHING THE MACHINE?: remember when Libby and Hurley where doing the laundry…didn´t Libby say something like: that´s odd, the old washing machines look like brand new. The first strange thing about this remark is that it highlights something odd: almost everything in the Swan hatch looks like new. Then, as with everything else in Lost, there is a lot of meta-fiction and weird recurrence traits. The machine washes old things to make them look brand new…and, only in the island case, the machine also keeps itself new…maybe a reference to how the Swan works. The same happens with the Orchid…orchids are, as everybody knows, hybrid plants, in some way, a metaphor for science fiction itself…they are partly artificial and partly natural…they are partly true and partly false…just like the station where there is half Dharma (microwave like pod) and behind the curtains, half Otherness (capstan donkey-wheel), jungle modern! lab and freezing antique mine shaft. Moreover, the Orchid is a crossover place between two spaces (island and Tunisia)…a perfect hybrid. Back to the Swan hatch, it does look brand new and who knows if this is so despite Desmondo´s efforts in keeping it tidy on his 108 minute shift. On the contrary the Pearl seems in ruins, and the Orchid too. This made me think..what if part of Dharma science created a way for hatches to thrive in different times in different loops…so people in the Pearl working full-time in track 8 watch people in The Swan doing their stuff in track 9…can you imagine Dharma guys entering the Pearl and turning the TVs and writting about Desmond or other people, even 815 losties, and their behaviour in the Swan hatch in the future or other section of another time loop? Not only that, but if Libby is correct and the washing machine looks brand new it is because they are stuck in a loop where time does not affect it…who knows…maybe the Orchid was a! lso in perfect state and just started decaying a little or app! eared fu lly in ruins when Desmond pushed the button late the first time (and the island moved to a wider loop) or the hatch imploded (thus ending the artificial rewind or re-looping created by Dharma). This also could explain fresh Dharma food drops, they do not literally come from the sky thrown by a Dharma thart does not exist anymore, but are launched from another track. Let us say, if a certain Pierre Chang throws a pair of cereal boxes in a certain direction from track 1981 they might just arrive in the same place of the record or another place, for example 2004, just as throwin a missile fromt the freighter in a certain bearing towards the island makes it arrive an hour earlier than it was launched…Now here is the catch…we know satellite communications are not fully affected by the islands nature…so…what if…I push some buttons in the computer in 2004 and this sends a signal through a dish that is picked up by the satellite that remits it to the same island in 1981 gi! ving Chang the message: I´m hungry, throw in some Apollo bars.
HYSTERICAL NUMBERS: Writers once said that someone is lying or some flashbacks are not true, or at least something like that. It is very hard to explain why an asteroid would fall in to a fast-food franchise other than contriving some cosmical intervention related to the numbers. But, what if Hurley is lying, not only that, but, what if he is lying to himself all throughout the show…this could explain his anxiety and eating disorder. Yes, he plays the numbers, yes, he wins the lottery and feels guilty…but why? Because HE KNEW THOSE NUMBERS WOULD COME-OUT THAT DAY…just maybe…at least…he knows he did not hear the numbers the first time spelled by his crazy mate in the ward…his crazy mate made him acknowledge that he had been in an island in the past or in an alternate track or mind-jumping around, and had participated or saw the creation of a machine with those exact numbers…Either denying this or accepting it the outcome is the same, he feels crazy…He sees gh! ost everywhere because in the very end, this is the truth for him. Either way after he plays the numbers all kind of bad things SEEM to happen…Where does this overwhelming guilt come from…Denial, once again…so the fat dude imagines asteroids blowing franchises, and all kind of bad schemes, he even imagines seeing the numbers everywhere…he sees them usually when he is nervous…BUT, DEEP IN HIS HEART, BURIED UNDER HIS SUBCONCIOUS IN A MORBID AND IMPENETRABLE HATCH, he knows he has been in the island, he knows he is reliving some track and maybe what happened or what is going to happen…How can he deny he knows everything is repeating itself?...Well, by tempting destiny –playing the lottery- and, yes, by stuffing himself with Apollo bar every time compulsion for truth knocks his subconscious.. Writers have said that Hurley sometimes represents the audiences most basic point of view, it is in a true thriller and tragic fashion that all along we know what is going to! happen but we do not want to accept it because it seems unbea! rable or unimaginable.
ARE YOU STILL THERE?: now think…if there is going to be a displacement between certain hatches and the rest of the island, maybe entering the numbers is a way of confirming DI folks in 1981 or 2019 that there are still people in the hatch wherever the hatch might be, the future, the past, an alternat time-line (which still is possible although not as plotworthy) section 101 of track 1996, etc. This explains why the electromagnetic purge is not done automatically even with old techonology, and also confirms the Pearl´s station purpose. Things could even get weirder…there is, as I have read, a possible incongruency between Inmans, Desmond and Radzinsky timelines. Well, maybe not so. Through this theory it is perfectly possible that Radsinky and a partner entered the hatch in 198X and 199X post Desert Storm Ilman knocked his or their door two days after the hatch started working at full throttle. And even 200X Desmond could have arrived a few minutes after Inman wiped the! stain that Radzinsky 198X lef when he shot himself after hearing something substantial Inman told him. All this, of course, ends when Desmond turns the failsafe key…and this perfectly explains why the great implosion does not affect Eko and Charlie…at least not profoundly, and why Desmond appears naked…his clothes where Dharma jumpsuit or something taken from the yacht or, simply from another time or track, a track that stopped playing itself over and over again yuxtaposing itself against other tracks that played along the island when the Swan stopped working.
PLOTWORTHY RECAPS ON THE RERUN: Obsession, what else is part of the first seasons main trait…father issues, etc…The characters in the beginning of the series are lost in their life, victim of their obsessions, of repeating the same mistakes in search for the unreachable object of desire…Self..ego…is very much formed through repetition…and this is also the path to solitude…to islands…They get there because they are already there, stuck in between times, undead, unborn, pure obsession…thus, some of them go away or are dispelled trough many plot schemes…from a GREATEST HITS –here comes the record thing again- Charlie who finally solved his drug issues (addiction/obsession), to a Walt´s daddy who finally accepts abandoning his son and not using him as substitute or protection against his overwhelming sense of failure…Walt´s father does this by sacrificing himself, and choosing the well-being of all over his capricious obsession of becoming the father he n! ever was. You can go now, that is what Chirstian, Island?, Smokey?, says. In terms of the plot, the main characters will achieve attonement when they pay for and surpass their obsessions, their repetitive and selfish state of mind. So, they will bump in to a scheme where repetition/obsession has created a heaven, a Dharma Initiative, a kind of immortality or good that comes from repeating oneself over and over again and also, like Ben, taking advantage of it. They will have to decide between contributing to the loop, to the obsession scheme even if it seems good for them, or breaking the loop, going beyond their own needs and, maybe even trough self-sacrifice or transformation, for their loved ones sake or the futures sake. And they will leave behind servitude to a repetitive scheme that feeds them constantly (the island) and go on with their life or sacrifice in order to help others go on with their life. For this would be also, in plot terms, the path from abiding to one! owns need and world, to accepting and even nurturing the exis! tence of OTHERS…a mayor trait in the show is, after all…the game between SELFISHNESS LOSTIES AND MISTAKEN OTHERNESS. Who knows, maybe Jacob is the heart and soul of all the repetition…he is asking desperately for salvation…Maybe many of the things happen as they do because Jacob has been abducted and imprisoned in a cabin, an almighty power or source of energy harnessed and chained for the sake of a few men selfishness…?
Sorry for the length and for repeating myself so much on the loop issue. I am quite sure I might be all wrong and that I have missed a detail too crucial that could throw all these ideas to the trash. But, by far, I like this theory, it is neither to far off fantastic nor too complex to escape metaphor. Then again, in the end I feel completely lost. Theory by Buruso
Imagine that the mysterious energy in the island allows someone to create a loop in a Minkowsky unique self-correcting universe. Now, imagine someone in the loop trying to break it…course correction would imply that the loop occur only that this time with a new variation: it would either be bigger or shorter than the previous loop (like circular tracks on record), and it would include the new person trying to avoid the loop and maybe new people–thanks to course correction- helping to make it happen.
Since, I’m very lousy at explaining myself I will try to do it by exposing some evidence to this theory based on the metaphor coined by Daniel Faraday and present everywhere in Lost: the vinyl record. Forgive me my English, I am a foreigner in this language as much as I am foreigner to myself.
THE RAIN ISSUE NUMBER 815316: as a leitmotiv in the earlier seasons, rains came in and out as if they formed part of a loop –just as in the LOST DVD menus-, Locke, for instance, asserted this, even predicting when a certain rain would end, as if it was always the same rain, repeating itself as part of a previous loop, one that happened independently of the island newcomers.
MIND YOUR BEARINGS: if you are in, lets say about to eat pizza in track 3 (a smaller loop in the spinning record, in a certain sense) and jump to track 4 (a bigger loop)…. you would find out that you have already ate the pizza because loop 4 is a little bit wider (and being longer, includes the pizza eating scene). In order to make continuity happen, you would have to travel from the center to the rest of the circumference in a certain bearing so events in track 3 coincide exactly with events in track 4…if not, you would have to find a constant as your mind tries to adjust to the rift or difference. This is why a rocket thrown from outside the island gets there delayed about an hour and then, in the same season, the doctors body is washed upon the shore before he dies in the boat. The island and the boat are in different tracks…depending on what bearing they cross from track to track (from loop to any of the other variations of the loop) they will appear before or afte! r they should. To put it in another way, if I leave a track following a certain bearing I may arrive to the next track in what seems a different time. So, it is not quite time-travel nor alternate universe, as the writers once said….but it does seem like it. If this seems confusing, take an old vinyl record, or even the Orchid or Paik industry logo and put 5 events in a track and the same 5 events in the next track with the same longitude (inches in the circumference), you will see that the events do not touch each other…
ENTER DESMOND: ¿why does he consciously time jump back and forth? Because he goes from a time in the loop in which he existed in to a bigger time-loop where he is not anymore. In other words, in the previous loop, Desmond does get killed, but, since he has changed something he is know traveling to a new loop where he should not be…his consciousness needs to course correct to adjust to this…and the universe also…so he goes back and forth participating in the events or variations that create the next loop: communicating with Daniel Faraday. This is why he, and not the other passengers in the chopper, suffers so much…for the other passengers is a little jump from track 1 to 4 through bearing 305…so the guys and the moment they leave the island towards the freighter in loop 4 coincide with the guys versions that arrive at the freighter in loop 5 or whatever.
DHARMA CON OR RIGHT TRACK HOAX?: There is only ONE timeline respecting this way Minkowski theory on time travel in singular universes, but this does not dispel the possibility for alternate or MANY time-loops. So, there is 1 record and MANY tracks…as in 1 island and MANY paths, just maybe…Dharma means the right way, or path... or, yes…the right track… ¿or is it loop? I have come to think, in terms of a singularity...the first loop that happens...in a course-correcting time-line, slight variations are possible and the universe will still try to course correct producing the time loop...so the next loop is either shorter or longer but slightly different...if it is different...what happened to the loop before...has it become a ghost loop?
GHOSTS LOOPS AROUND: remember Walt being at the same time imprisoned by others and appearing out of nowhere in the jungle or being outside the island and at the same time speaking to Locke in the dharma death pit? And what about Jacobs cabin appearing and disappearing here and there…the gray ashes on the ground where not magic dust for rituals but markings made that predicted where the cabin would appear or, even more, where it had appear before. At certain times the island is in-between loops, juxtaposing events from different tracks…as if the island itself was trying to adjust and find constants, or as if where the place where all loops meet. Remember Horace in Locke’s dream…he nosebleeds…he loops and nosebleds…In track 1977…the purge affects dharma…in track 2021 the purge affects the entire world…Desmond nosebleeds maybe not because his mind goes asunder, but because he is going to a loop where he does not exist…or maybe came back and forth including a! forth where he died…so he needed his constant in the present to make his consciousness stick in that time and stay out of a future where his thoughts would die or he himself is not anymore?
THE SWAN AND THE CAPSTAN: It is not an alternate universe...but an alternate take...an alternate loop...and all the loops are concentrated or expand around a center (lets say the Orchid)...So, since there is always place for variation, for a bigger or smaller loop, for more tracks in the record so to speak, there is always a possibility for people to be sucked in to the loop…or, in other words, in to the island and.... perhaps, this explains the smoke monster. When DI builds the Swan they create an artificial way of playing always the same track, of staying in the same loop and limiting all variations (so the Dharma name, the right track…for DHARMA people think it is THEIR WAY or the HIGHWAY), so they live cozily in an island and environment that always replenishes itself and where people never die and get sick (everything material repeats itself, while the mind, conciousness or spiritual (soul) does not). If the donkey wheel is, as someone posted somewhere, truly a ca! ptsan, think of not a boat or moor capstan, but of a record player capstan… then the Swan acts like, an interruption machine that makes the loop go back before it fully repeats itself or even creates the loop, like tilting up the needle of a vynil record long enough so it comes back at the beginning of the track, or as a way of making the island stay in the same track (loop) and avoiding being thrown out as when you move the capstan (that might also work as a vinyl record capstan when you stop the dish…the needle rises). So, in other words, the DI creates an artificial way of looping…they calculate how far from the orchid or magnetic rotating center they must travel –say, two miles to create a 108 minute loop, for example- and well, they build the Swan hatch where the record keeps coming back summoning magnetic energy until you need to dispose it or something like that…with the added value or discovery that, if you want to travel from track to track and not suffer! side effects or end up in a purge or some other nose-bleeding! moment of yourself, well, you must find a constant or learn a little bit of consistency…the kind of thing you learn by…yes pushing a button or entering a number over and over again beyond the absurd: this explains the social observation issue of the Pearl station.
SKIP THE BEARING DETAILS, CUT THE ISLAND IN HALF: Sawyer, Juliet and co. might not be fully time traveling, they are truly mind-traveling like Desmond did, since they have been in all the other events before, in different tracks. This may explain why they all are about to nosebleed to death, since all of them are jumping and barely know each other, they cannot become each other constants (they are all adrift between tracks, they need someone stuck in just one track as reference). Charlottes babbles before dying comes from many tracks and loops juxtaposing in her mind, from a discussion about Carthage with a roman emperor to a place beyond life, thus: THIS PLACE IS DEATH. Alos, maybe the SWAN hatch was a way of making a pair of guys and a couple of stuff move from track to track and thus times or time-lines or loops…it was a way of harnessing the energy that made THE ENTIRE ISLAND move from track to track. On the other hand, the losties on AJIRA 316 are swooped to a diffe! rent loop than Sun, Ben and co…. maybe part of them go to DI time at the new end of the new loop (bigger than before) and SUN and co go to the other end of the loop in the far future, where no other, no dharma, just abandoned barracks and stations exist in ruins. It is not off and on island time, because Locke could only be undead if he where sucked in a loop…. In a metaphoric way, both sides are closer than ever one in the beginning, the other in the end…and you just need to turn a little capstan to make ends meet? Remember Tale of Two Cities…what if both Islands are replicates or similar…or island A and B are in the point where tracks meet or one loops touches the other? Just musing around…
UNBORN, UNDEAD AND UNCURED: Whether the first loop is created by the Swan or the Swan creates an artificial loop or REWIND system I still cannot tell. Either way this explains why before the swan was built babies could be born in the island (Amy: Ethan) and why Claire´s baby is born…In the first case, the Swan wasn´t built, so there was no loop that played back keeping out all possible variations. Babies could not be born in the loop because before they mature all that is not conscious (people, maybe not their bodies) in the island goes back to cero. This explains the month limit asserted by Juliet. On the other side, Claire´s baby is born, and also Sun´s baby does well because Desmond forgot to enter the numbers and push the button for an inch of time, enough for too much energy or movement to accumulate moving the island or the needle to the next loop, a loop that now includes people in 815. This also explains why Locke’s legs and Roses cancer is cured…they ente! red a loop where they must stay alive for course-correctings sake, while Ben gets sick, he was living perfectly well in the previous loop (a smaller one) and now, well…he will get sick…in the future…something that mirrors (remember the circle or loops grows as if you extended the timeline…more events in the future and more events in the past…same outcome due to course correcting) he being shot in the past, at both edges of the loop (just before swan is built, quite near the end of the swan hatch blow-out). The same applies to the undead, their bodies roam because within the loop they cannot fully die (they would disappear creating a variation or new loop), this is the case of Christian, Claire, etc. This also explains why Locke´s and Swayer´s daddy appears alive in the island, he died in a car accident and they took his body to the island…and…voilá…strangled papa…or maybe not. And, also explains recurring events (Locke´s leg injury or failure)….the i! njury that ocurrs in track 2 at 2:05 minutes, will ocurr in tr! ack 3 at 4:04 minutes or maybe not even ocurr due to course correction, but since in the island maybe all loops or timelines cross and ghost each other…there you go…it may also happen that in track 4 minute 4 Locke gets injured and in track or loop 5 minute 2 this still does not happen but something similar does happen as an eco or ghost or summoning of the previous or upcoming iteration.
HOW MANY LOCKES DOES IT TAKE TO OPEN THE DOOR: Maybe, just maybe he have been seeing different Lockes all along…this explains his mad thriving for things to happen in a certain way at times and his complete baffled and lost attiude in other moments…What if the Locke that comes out of nowhere to avoid Jack calling the chopper is from a future iteration or another track. This explains all his predictive issues. In the pilot episode he seems to know what is happening…In many episodes he says: this was or was not supossed to happen…You cant tell me what I cannot do, etc.
SMOKE MONSTER RISING FROM DHARMA PIT: maybe the smoke monster is made of nothing else than the people who have died in the island…not only of their dust and ashes not assimilated (since their bodies as imagos appear everywhere) but also their souls not assimilated. Maybe the monster was before Dharma, but after the purge it became the lean-mean machine it now is…recording and retrieving and destroyin everything on behalf of the course-correction or path that creates the loop that allows it to live. This also explains the: the island wants you to do it…¿island and smokey one and the same?
WHISPERS OF HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF: woods filled with whispers that seem quite familiar but distinct, a beacon repeating a code over and over again, Jack hearing voices through a damaged and not functional speaker while imprisoned, Hurley and Sayid picking up songs from the Jughead era…magnetic waves, sound waves and who nows what else seem to jump across the tracks…or maybe yuxtapose every now and then…every time the artificial Dharm loop ends and for a brief period of time the Swan resets everything…or something similar.
IT´S MORIARTY´S REVENGE ALL OVER AGAIN: a few images where cut from the chapter where Ben pushes the capstan…only someone out of the record can move the record, thus, moving the record spits you out of the loop…but…strange enough…after Ben pushed the capstan he appeared in Tunisia and in the images cut away in another chapter that takes us to the same place, we see he seeing himself after he pushed the capstan that took him to Tunisia…not only that, but when he goes to the Hotel in Tunisia the Clerk asks him if it is his first time staying there and…with a conspicuous glare filled with a certain irony he says that yes, it is his first time…it is the first time for the clerk, not for Ben…This also explains the double 15 bunny issue in the comic-con video.
IF YOU ARE NOT WATCHING THE MACHINE, THAN WHO IS WASHING THE MACHINE?: remember when Libby and Hurley where doing the laundry…didn´t Libby say something like: that´s odd, the old washing machines look like brand new. The first strange thing about this remark is that it highlights something odd: almost everything in the Swan hatch looks like new. Then, as with everything else in Lost, there is a lot of meta-fiction and weird recurrence traits. The machine washes old things to make them look brand new…and, only in the island case, the machine also keeps itself new…maybe a reference to how the Swan works. The same happens with the Orchid…orchids are, as everybody knows, hybrid plants, in some way, a metaphor for science fiction itself…they are partly artificial and partly natural…they are partly true and partly false…just like the station where there is half Dharma (microwave like pod) and behind the curtains, half Otherness (capstan donkey-wheel), jungle modern! lab and freezing antique mine shaft. Moreover, the Orchid is a crossover place between two spaces (island and Tunisia)…a perfect hybrid. Back to the Swan hatch, it does look brand new and who knows if this is so despite Desmondo´s efforts in keeping it tidy on his 108 minute shift. On the contrary the Pearl seems in ruins, and the Orchid too. This made me think..what if part of Dharma science created a way for hatches to thrive in different times in different loops…so people in the Pearl working full-time in track 8 watch people in The Swan doing their stuff in track 9…can you imagine Dharma guys entering the Pearl and turning the TVs and writting about Desmond or other people, even 815 losties, and their behaviour in the Swan hatch in the future or other section of another time loop? Not only that, but if Libby is correct and the washing machine looks brand new it is because they are stuck in a loop where time does not affect it…who knows…maybe the Orchid was a! lso in perfect state and just started decaying a little or app! eared fu lly in ruins when Desmond pushed the button late the first time (and the island moved to a wider loop) or the hatch imploded (thus ending the artificial rewind or re-looping created by Dharma). This also could explain fresh Dharma food drops, they do not literally come from the sky thrown by a Dharma thart does not exist anymore, but are launched from another track. Let us say, if a certain Pierre Chang throws a pair of cereal boxes in a certain direction from track 1981 they might just arrive in the same place of the record or another place, for example 2004, just as throwin a missile fromt the freighter in a certain bearing towards the island makes it arrive an hour earlier than it was launched…Now here is the catch…we know satellite communications are not fully affected by the islands nature…so…what if…I push some buttons in the computer in 2004 and this sends a signal through a dish that is picked up by the satellite that remits it to the same island in 1981 gi! ving Chang the message: I´m hungry, throw in some Apollo bars.
HYSTERICAL NUMBERS: Writers once said that someone is lying or some flashbacks are not true, or at least something like that. It is very hard to explain why an asteroid would fall in to a fast-food franchise other than contriving some cosmical intervention related to the numbers. But, what if Hurley is lying, not only that, but, what if he is lying to himself all throughout the show…this could explain his anxiety and eating disorder. Yes, he plays the numbers, yes, he wins the lottery and feels guilty…but why? Because HE KNEW THOSE NUMBERS WOULD COME-OUT THAT DAY…just maybe…at least…he knows he did not hear the numbers the first time spelled by his crazy mate in the ward…his crazy mate made him acknowledge that he had been in an island in the past or in an alternate track or mind-jumping around, and had participated or saw the creation of a machine with those exact numbers…Either denying this or accepting it the outcome is the same, he feels crazy…He sees gh! ost everywhere because in the very end, this is the truth for him. Either way after he plays the numbers all kind of bad things SEEM to happen…Where does this overwhelming guilt come from…Denial, once again…so the fat dude imagines asteroids blowing franchises, and all kind of bad schemes, he even imagines seeing the numbers everywhere…he sees them usually when he is nervous…BUT, DEEP IN HIS HEART, BURIED UNDER HIS SUBCONCIOUS IN A MORBID AND IMPENETRABLE HATCH, he knows he has been in the island, he knows he is reliving some track and maybe what happened or what is going to happen…How can he deny he knows everything is repeating itself?...Well, by tempting destiny –playing the lottery- and, yes, by stuffing himself with Apollo bar every time compulsion for truth knocks his subconscious.. Writers have said that Hurley sometimes represents the audiences most basic point of view, it is in a true thriller and tragic fashion that all along we know what is going to! happen but we do not want to accept it because it seems unbea! rable or unimaginable.
ARE YOU STILL THERE?: now think…if there is going to be a displacement between certain hatches and the rest of the island, maybe entering the numbers is a way of confirming DI folks in 1981 or 2019 that there are still people in the hatch wherever the hatch might be, the future, the past, an alternat time-line (which still is possible although not as plotworthy) section 101 of track 1996, etc. This explains why the electromagnetic purge is not done automatically even with old techonology, and also confirms the Pearl´s station purpose. Things could even get weirder…there is, as I have read, a possible incongruency between Inmans, Desmond and Radzinsky timelines. Well, maybe not so. Through this theory it is perfectly possible that Radsinky and a partner entered the hatch in 198X and 199X post Desert Storm Ilman knocked his or their door two days after the hatch started working at full throttle. And even 200X Desmond could have arrived a few minutes after Inman wiped the! stain that Radzinsky 198X lef when he shot himself after hearing something substantial Inman told him. All this, of course, ends when Desmond turns the failsafe key…and this perfectly explains why the great implosion does not affect Eko and Charlie…at least not profoundly, and why Desmond appears naked…his clothes where Dharma jumpsuit or something taken from the yacht or, simply from another time or track, a track that stopped playing itself over and over again yuxtaposing itself against other tracks that played along the island when the Swan stopped working.
PLOTWORTHY RECAPS ON THE RERUN: Obsession, what else is part of the first seasons main trait…father issues, etc…The characters in the beginning of the series are lost in their life, victim of their obsessions, of repeating the same mistakes in search for the unreachable object of desire…Self..ego…is very much formed through repetition…and this is also the path to solitude…to islands…They get there because they are already there, stuck in between times, undead, unborn, pure obsession…thus, some of them go away or are dispelled trough many plot schemes…from a GREATEST HITS –here comes the record thing again- Charlie who finally solved his drug issues (addiction/obsession), to a Walt´s daddy who finally accepts abandoning his son and not using him as substitute or protection against his overwhelming sense of failure…Walt´s father does this by sacrificing himself, and choosing the well-being of all over his capricious obsession of becoming the father he n! ever was. You can go now, that is what Chirstian, Island?, Smokey?, says. In terms of the plot, the main characters will achieve attonement when they pay for and surpass their obsessions, their repetitive and selfish state of mind. So, they will bump in to a scheme where repetition/obsession has created a heaven, a Dharma Initiative, a kind of immortality or good that comes from repeating oneself over and over again and also, like Ben, taking advantage of it. They will have to decide between contributing to the loop, to the obsession scheme even if it seems good for them, or breaking the loop, going beyond their own needs and, maybe even trough self-sacrifice or transformation, for their loved ones sake or the futures sake. And they will leave behind servitude to a repetitive scheme that feeds them constantly (the island) and go on with their life or sacrifice in order to help others go on with their life. For this would be also, in plot terms, the path from abiding to one! owns need and world, to accepting and even nurturing the exis! tence of OTHERS…a mayor trait in the show is, after all…the game between SELFISHNESS LOSTIES AND MISTAKEN OTHERNESS. Who knows, maybe Jacob is the heart and soul of all the repetition…he is asking desperately for salvation…Maybe many of the things happen as they do because Jacob has been abducted and imprisoned in a cabin, an almighty power or source of energy harnessed and chained for the sake of a few men selfishness…?
Sorry for the length and for repeating myself so much on the loop issue. I am quite sure I might be all wrong and that I have missed a detail too crucial that could throw all these ideas to the trash. But, by far, I like this theory, it is neither to far off fantastic nor too complex to escape metaphor. Then again, in the end I feel completely lost. Theory by Buruso
