It Will Only End Once: Time Travel, Jacob's Destiny, and our Variables... by Alex

Now a lot has been made of the intentions of Jacob and the Man in Black, who I believe, for reasons I will go into momentarily, is called Hobbes., about whether onne is good and the other bad, and about who we should side with in any coming war. Little attention is paid to who specifically they are. The reason for this is that there is seemingly no answer which can be meaningfully drawn from the show. People point to 'aliens' or 'gods', which most people find generally unsatisying. Many argue that it's not important, that it is what these two rivals do that matters most. I disagree. I think the identity of thtose two characters unveils the whole makeup of the show.

As an aside, the reason I think he's called Hobbes is that, in a certain line of philosophy, almost all the names of important philosophers have been taken - Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Burke, Bentham - apart from the grand daddy of them all. The man who many consider the most influential philosopher of human history, Thomas Hobbes, has conspicuously found no representation on the show. This is odd, because his writings - that outside of society natural life is "nasty, short and brutish", that society is an illusion, that people will ultimately only ever consider the pursuit of their own aims at the expense of other peoples - fit effortlessly into the themes of the show.

Jacob and Hobbes are from the future. We've seen time travel in the show, we haven't seen aliens or divine intervention (I believe). In fact, they're from so far in the future that they are actually highly evolved human beings - humans at one of the end points of human evolution. Their true form is not as humans appear today, though they adopt this form commonly. Instead, Hobbes looks like a cloud of swirling black smoke, and Jacob as a cloud of bright white light. These are actually just two different forms of the same species - human.

Or at least, highly evolved human. In this far flung future world, the human race is drawing to an end, and it is drawing to an end because of a war. The idea of nation-states has been exhausted and destroyed, and there are just two sides left, sides chosen by humanity - a side of science and a side of faith. Society had managed to marry the two for a long while in a way which advanced human development exponentially - creating such wonders as the ability to cure most diseases (including cancer), to heal most wounds (including a broken spine) and to time travel. These crucial developments, and many others we have not (yet) seen are the product of the union between science and faith, but now a rift has grown between them, and in the future, the war is bloody and brutal. It eventually leads to

doomsday - the end of all human life.

Seeing the end coming, two of the less warlike individuals, Jacob and Hobbes, escape to what is just a regular island in their future world, a literal desert island. Though they are on differing sides of the war, they are part of some kind of team bound by a code of honour and logic that demands that they work together and not pursue their own ends. On the island they either build the frozen donkey wheel, using ey Jacob's mastery of faith and Hobbes' mastery of science, or use it as existing technology their race has left on the island.

Trapped, thousands, perhaps millions of years in the past, they examine what they have just seen. Humanity is evolving around them constantly, forever developing its science and its faith, but Hobbes watches the world and realises that it is all for nought - he knows, as a scientist, that whatever happened, happened, and society is doomed. Maybe not for a long, long while, but all of the striving and work of human existence in the meantime is pointless if it will ultimately end in a sad tale of self-destruction. Jacob, meanwhile, is more thoughtful, perhaps more naive. Science tells him that whatever happened happened, but his faith (in some kind of meaningful destiny) leads him to believe that things can be changed. Hobbes tells him that if he needs proof, all he needs to do is bring a group of humans to their island and let them interact as they see fit. Their lives will be nasty, short and brutish (as our survivor's lives have been since 815 crashed). Jacob takes this wag! er seriously, and sets about going across the world, nudging and pushing people to bring them to the island, be they shipwrecked, brought there of their own accord, or otherwise. And he lets the situations play out, encouraging good behaviour but refusing to interfere.

One day, with a ship on the horizon, Hobbes comes to Jacob, and asks him why he keeps trying to redeem humanity, especially such primitive humanity - it always ends the same. But Jacob has seen how it ends, and knows that it only ends once - everything he is
doing it just progress; an attempt to change the future, alter the variables. Hobbes turns to his old companion, and asks if he knows how much he'd like to kill him. Jacob had not heard the words from his own mouth before, but he had come to believe that Hobbes had grown so bitter and twisted with rage over the future of humanity that he was ready to kill him, and perhaps then commit suicide. So yes, says Jacob. He knew how much Hobbes wanted to kill him, and though he was bound by a code of honor not to do so, Hobbes was confident he could find a loophole.

And so Jacob's great experiment continues. He was not allowed to interfere with proceedings, because the whole point was that people would be able to work out a civilisation without war or exploitation on their own, but there were some, those he believed may have been 'good people' who were leftovers from bygone island societies, bygone attempts which had failed. These individuals themselves were good, though, and forever worked in their respective societies to do good and create the utopia Jacob so desperately wanted to prove was possible. These people include Richard Alpert. In time, this group, who would one day be called the 'others' became something of a minor institution for the island. Many of them were ageless hangovers, preserved by Jacob's powers of faith and science.

Many were new people from the outside, brought to the island to be tested, and either sent home, tragically killed, or allowed to remain and taken to the temple, where they were preserved, as Richard is. The leader of the others, who, though they do not even know it, Jacob allows them to pick for themselves, occupies an office even Jacob respects. The man he will commune with, and talk to, other than Richard, one of the eternals, and a consigliere of sorts. So Jacob travelled the world, nudging people along a path that would one day lead them to him and his island. A candy bar here, a lent pen there, it all has a snowball effect. He knows this better than anyone.

Jacob met a man named Enrico Valenzetti, a brilliant mathematician, and together they worked on a theorem, which Jacob refused to claim, to predict the end of the world. 4-8-15-16-23-42. These were key numbers. Jacob looked upon them tragically, and realised that, formulated correctly, they did indeed predict the end of the world he had already seen. But if one of these numbers could be changed... if somehow he could alter the flow of history so that the variables were not the same, what then? Could he imbalance whatever happened, happened? When the Dharma Initiative came, Jacob believed that he had found a perfect balance between science and faith - a group of professional scientists who were also peace-loving hippies who dreamed of a better world. His dream was to use them, instructing them through Alvar Hanso, the grandson of the leader of one of the societies he had helped form, to alter the variables, and save the world. But it was not to be. For one thing, all they did! was conduct 'silly little science experiments'. Their lasting achievement would be to unleash the power of the island from the future, and thus force themselves to suppress or let off the energy every 108 minutes. For another thing, someone was meddling with the timeline...

Hobbes had discovered a loophole. And the loophole was Oceanic 815. A plane never meant to crash on the island, or so Jacob thought. But the ultimate result of the plane crashing would be the murder of Jacob himself by Ben, a man who had as a young boy had gone untested, but who had been shot and thus taken to the temple, where he was healed, by a hopeful, perhaps negligent Richard. There he was exposed to the same powers which preserve Richard. But he was not ready. He had not been tested - would the power invested in him perpetuate a good or an evil force? So far, Jacob has been inclined to believe that it is an evil force, but he had not made up his mind. One day, after Hobbes had occupied a cabin and secretly poked and prodded the actions of a certain set of individuals, Ben and Hobbes, occupying the appearance of an apparently resurrected dead man - one whose importance he had inspired in people in the first place - march up to Jacob. And Jacob, because it is in his co! de that he respects the leader of the others, must allow this to happen. Confronted with Ben, the boy he was ever so ambivalent about, always wary of, Jacob's conclusion can only be "what about you?" He is asking a genuine question - he is letting Ben decide the answer. But Ben's wrath is too much, and he kills Jacob.

But Hobbes' loophole was not perfect. There were some, a rogue element, sent into the past by Jacob. Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sawyer, Sun, Jin, and Hurley would go back to the Dharma times, where there was a perfect opportunity, Jacob knew, to potentially alter events.

As a rogue element, they would be pushed out of the timeline by a touch from Jacob, and then, once they arrived in the seventies, become completely free agents, their actions no longer subject to whatever happened, happened, or rather self-consistent time travel.

When Jack blows up jughead, Jacob knows, he will prevent 815 from crashing, and ultimately save Jacob's life.

But Jacob has been undone. For 815 was meant to crash, and the consequences of his actions will be dire...

It is now up to the free agents, those who are aware, in the altered timeline, of what has happened because they were nudged out of sync by Jacob, and perhaps Desmond, the man who has for the longest time been a variable in time, to alter events. We have seen Desmond change the future before. Perhaps he will again. Or perhaps seeing him change time was only meant to prove that our losties, now landing in LAX, could do the same thing - they are now all like Desmond, foreseeing events before they happen and desperate, for reasons they will come to learn, to return to the way things were.

Season Six will see the resolution to the Jacob and Hobbes dilemma, the closing of the loop, Jacob's ultimate sacrifice as he realises the salvation of humanity may require 815's crash and therefore his death, and Hobbes' redemption. Inspired by Jacob's sacrifice and the work of the 815 survivors, he will preserve those he believes worthy - perhaps Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, Kate, Sayid, Jin and Sun - along with Richard and the Eternal Others, to await the doomsday of humanity, where they will try and make a difference - they are the variable. This is why 815 was supposed to crash, and this is why Jacob had to die. Season Six will be the vindication of these events.