Egyptian or Futuristic Time-Machine by Eko'sEcho

Before I submit this for your consideration, and criticism, I admit that I owe a lot of the ideas here to the many great theories and ideas put forth by so many of you. I hope that those of you who I’m talking about will see the impact of your ideas in this theory. Then again, you may not like what I propose. I simply want to spark debate and put forth my own views (which will probably change with S6). I see it as intelligent entertainment until S6 arrives.

Okay, so I think it’s best to start by mentioning the biggest mysteries that need to be accounted for before anything else. I know there are a ton of mysteries in this show, but I think some are a little more important than others. My hope is that if we revisit the big things, the little things can be handled later. So, I am posting one issue at a time.

1) The Swan/Hatch/Powerful, Magnetic, Time-Travel inducing Substance, The Orchid/Donkey Wheel:

All of these are related. Whatever else the island may be, we know that there is something inside of it that causes strong, magnetic fields AND (probably because of this) can cause time travel too. The Swan was an attempt to ‘tap into’ this material via Radzinsky’s drilling (S5). When this proved unsuccessful because (a) tapping too far caused a magnetic leak/outpouring and (b) Losties attacked and put a bomb in the hole, the Swan became (in part) a “dam” or a “cork” to bottle up the energy beneath it, which was temporarily coming out after the drilling. The whole button-pushing deal revolves around this.

The Orchid was built at another location which accesses this SAME material underground (where the time-traveling bunnies are kept). But here, there was no drilling INTO the substance, and nothing harmful was released. It’s just close enough to experiment with its properties. Now, the Donkey Wheel is down near here too. How Ben knows this is puzzling at first; especially since it was walled up and we don’t see any other door into it (other than the well which doesn’t exist in Ben’s time (that we know of)). DHARMA probably doesn’t know about it either, but their time travel experiments are in the same location.

So, the Donkey Wheel itself is ONE of the only means of SAFELY “moving the island” (in space AND time). Whoever built it knew better than Radzinsky and co., and so they tapped the energy without unleashing too much of it at once. The Wheel is part of a (probably very complex) time-travel machine built by someone before the DI (Egyptians?). So, the wheel moves the island, but it also moves the turner (because of their proximity to the released substance) to the Saharan Desert (the, or an, exit point). Why the exit point is in the Sahara? My guess is its because the builders were Egyptians. Why is it so cold down there? Well, it is quite a bit colder deep underground, as any cave explorer could tell you, but not THAT cold. The reason may be because whoever built this Donkey Wheel/Time-Machine control may have used it and sent the island to the Arctic Circle at one point, which brought the polar bears onto the island. That also froze the island, including the Wheel, until i! t was turned again, and ended up in the Pacific. Ever since that, the wheel has remained frozen, as it is too dark and cool deep underground for it to thaw out (like a natural icebox). Why isn’t it that cold anywhere else on the island? It may be, but we haven’t been THAT deep underground anywhere else. Eventually, the island was discovered by others (maybe THE others), initially the Black Rock pirates. But, there were still some of the original inhabitants, which I think are the Egyptians, who time-space travelled to the Pacific near the time/place that the Black Rock was en route. I think that Richard is a pirate leader, who gained Jacob's trust, and Jacob/MiB are Egyptians.

To go back to the Swan, then; the button simply protects the island from the nuke dropped into it by Losties (yes, this is a WHH moment). Originally, the Swan was going to harvest the magnetic energy (which was Radzinsky’s plan). But, after the time-traveling Losties dropped the nuke in there, the DHARMA team had to cover it and keep it from the magnetic energy. So, there is a special wall (sonic fence ring a bell?) separating the two. The button keeps the wall active. If the button isn’t pushed, the bomb will explode. The reason that there isn’t a computer doing the pressing is because the DHARMA team didn’t want the energy to fall into the wrong hands. If none of their team was left to push it, it would just explode and nobody could use the Swan and its access to the energy. “Hostiles” would not know the code for activating the barrier. The button, then, controls a fuse which keeps getting extinguished and then re-started every interval. DHARMA figured if they! can’t keep the energy source that they exposed, then nobody should have it. The bomb would see sure to that. Pushing the button “saved the world” because it allowed DHARMA to protect the energy source. So, when the fail-safe is pushed, the bomb just goes off instantly. This leads to a purple sky and some radiation-like fallout. So, Desmond didn’t really crash the plane when he didn’t press it, the bomb didn’t kill anyone when the fail-safe went off, but it did prohibit any use of the Swan and the access-point to the mysterious energy. Desmond’s exposure gave him the consciousness-jumping power. The bomb may not have been as destructive because the magnetic energy sucked it into itself. Once all the bomb-blast and debris were sucked into the black-hole-like access point, the point became plugged again. So, the Swan is a “cork” and the button was just a booby-trap protected by DHARMA members, even though it was intended to be an energy-harvesting station. A! fter this INCIDENT (Losties droppin bombs/access to strange en! ergy sou rce made), the DI's whole Time-Travel / energy harvesting unit moves to the Orchid where time travel experiments are conducted, which may have been the Swan’s initial purpose. The monitoring station, according to a video, was just a viewing point for what it claimed was a psychological test, but these reports (as we saw) went nowhere. The real reason may be that DHARMA higher-ups didn’t want to tell people they had a bomb sealed up at the Swan. So, the monitoring-station people were REALLY there to keep an eye on things, and the only REAL part of their reporting would be if they had to call in to the communications point that the button-pushers were dead or crazy.
SO…we might conclude that (1) the island has energy that is magnetic and can manipulate the space-time continuum, (2) others had built a time-machine here, (3) DHARMA tried to duplicate the time-machine without knowing where the original was; they only knew where the energy was, (4) Egyptians may have built the first machine, which explains the hieroglyphs and the temple and statue (DI eventually realizes this, so they teach Egyptian to their members in order to decode the mysteries allowing them insight as to where the machine is or how to duplicate it, (5) pirates from the Black Rock (the others), some of them anyway, were recruited by the Egyptians to help them guard the temple/machine in exchange for gifts they could provide, like eternal youth, by allowing use of their time-machine or other mysterious items, (6) DHARMA and hostiles are at war over the use of the special substance(s), (7) any talk of “war” is about this battle over control of the time machine and o! ther mysterious items. The hieroglyphs that come up at the end of the countdown sequence in the Swan (which some have said mean “death” or “underworld”) could be the DI’s big 'middle finger' to the hostiles/Egyptians if they set-off the Swan trap.

One alternative to this, and an important one, is that the Egyptians may NOT have built it. It may have been built at some other point, but it could have been located near ancient Egypt for some time. In this version, Jacob is from the FUTURE, he built the machine, he lived near Egypt for a while and dealt with some Egyptians (is Richard Egyptian or pirate?), travelled to the arctic (polar bears), off the African coast (ecko's brother's plane), and parts-unkown. Our story unfolds as part of our Losties' interaction with him and his island/time-machine. The timeline we see is the WHH moments of their encounters with him. When he dies, since he IS from the future, the ALT reality is possible because he wouldn't be around to get his machine into the flight's path. The S6 ALT, then, explore life w/o Jacob and island time-machine. The twist, I think, will come when Jacob or others somehow continue to interact with the Losties in the ALT timeline. OR, the Losties, who now control ! the island, interact with themselves.

There is a lot left to discuss, but this helps set the stage for where I want to head with this. Thoughts and comments welcome.