Lost Time Sickness

Yes I'm painfully aware that much of what I'm now spouting here in my blog about the ABC TV series Lost may become out of date - in fact completely and totally wrong come January when Season Six kicks in. However, after watching the last five seasons I think I'm piecing together what we've been shown, and I've come to a number of conclusions. Chiefly among them? Danielle Rousseau might have been right. There is a sickness among people on the Island. However, not quite the way she had anticipated.

Why did she think there was a sickness? Well, she tells Sayid (and by proxy us) in season one episode nine "Solitary." Then, we get to actually see the events happen before Jin in season five episode five "This Place Is Death." What happened? Well, Danielle Rousseau is separated from the rest of her research team members. They go into the catacombs underneath the island that lead to the temple. When they come out, they all immediately try to kill her. She responds in self defense and kills them before they can kill her. We see no indications any of them hate her prior to their disappearance into the catacombs. In fact one of them was her betrothed. These events drive her crazy. She's left alone on the Island.

Ben later comes along and literally steals Danielle's baby Alex from her crib. We see this in the fifth season twelfth episode titled Dead Is Dead. He had been ordered to kill the baby by Charles Widmore. Ben opted instead to take the child and raise her as his own, with a warning to Danielle never to seek her daughter under penalty of death. Not the best of compromises, and this not only secures animosity between Ben and Charles but more importantly for our purposes here, it further drives Danielle into insanity. However, her brand of insanity doesn't match the insanity her copatriots from the research vessel exhibited. They tried to kill her. No warning. No explanation. They just turned on her and she fought back out of instinct more than anything else. Now, why would they do this if they weren't sick? Why would they try to kill her if they weren't crazy? We're not told what happened to her research team to turn them on her.

Again, we're not privy to what happened to her team during their disappearance, but we can speculate. What if somehow they were given a glimpse into their futures, and were made to understand in simple terms that they were fated to die at the hands of Danielle Rousseau? They'd be exposed to the events of their fate and made to believe them real. From their perspective this would be ludicrous, and yet it's true. They would be unable to deny what they were shown. With this knowledge they would return to the surface with every intention of taking out Danielle before she could take them out. So they go up with some quickly formulated plan. This plan fails and she kills them. What is not made known to them at the time they are told about their fate is the fact that what they were shown would be the events that would play out after they were told she'd kill them. Essentially, their change of behavior towards her caused her to become defensive and fight back, which led to their deaths. It would be a case of self-fulfilling prophecy.

They chose to try to change their fate, but the very fact they make that choice seals their fate.

Similarly, the events that lead Sayid to Ajira flight 316 are myriad and too complicated for me to explain here, but ultimately when he is faced with young Benjamin Linus in the late 1970s, and he is given an opportunity to murder the man who would be responsible for so much pain and suffering in Sayid's more recent past (and young Ben's future), he makes the choice to murder young Ben in cold blood. Indeed, he's been working towards this his entire life. The events of his life had molded and shaped him into being a cold blooded murderer. It is a choice that he makes, but the choice is essentially the only logical choice given his state of being at the time. In fact, the audience would have difficulty NOT understanding why he did it, whether an audience member can condone the action or not. It certainly makes sense, like killing Hitler when he was but a janitor.

However, many argue that it is Sayid's act of vengeance to a young Ben that turns Ben evil. Failing to convince Jack to save him, Sawyer and Kate take young Ben to Richard Alpert, who does the one thing he knows to do in order to save young Ben's life: he takes him down into the catacombs that lead to the temple. Richard cautions Kate and Sawyer that Ben will be forever changed from then on. He will irrevocably become one of Richard's people. Years later we know from the episode Man Behind The Curtain (s3e20) that Ben works with the "Hostiles" or "Others" to purge the island of the DHARMA Initiative. He even kills his own father. Sounds very much like the behavior of Danielle's friends after their return from the catacombs under the island that lead to the temple. However, Ben's plans were more complicated and took years to complete.

Ben's also given multiple indications that he can predict the future. At least up to a point. In season five there's a moment where he admits that for the first time in a long time he honestly doesn't know what's going to happen next. Now, whether we can believe him or not is difficult to determine, since we've witnessed Ben lie about every other sentence. However, his behavior since his return to the Island has been that of an outsider. If he does know more than he's letting on, he's uncharacteristically good at hiding it. He's manipulative, and good at lying, but before now his actions would often betray his lies.

In season five he no longer knows the future. So whatever happened to him in the temple as a child seems to have only affected him up to a point. We've also witnessed him glean information from extensive files made for him by Patchy and others about most if not all the inhabitants of the Island. In the episode Confirmed Dead (S4E2) Ben is able to recite information about Charlotte Lewis having never met her before as if he were reading her obituary stamped on her own forehead. He must have read her bio long before and committed it to memory. If he could do similar feats with all the inhabitants of the Island, it would explain how he's been so skillful at manipulating everyone: he knows their weaknesses.

This would also mean he knew about Locke's missing a kidney. So if he actually had wanted to kill Locke, why would he aim almost point blank at the one place where it would do the least damage? Perhaps because he didn't want to kill him, but he did want someone to believe he was trying. Could Ben even be manipulating Jacob and his nemesis? Just who isn't Ben trying to trick?

But again I digress. The sickness. What is it? What causes it? Well, to understand that, we have to understand time. And time is difficult to understand. It's like trying to explain to a square what it's like to be a cube. Having never been three dimensional, the square would not have any frame of reference from which to understand. If a sentient cube were to appear before a sentient square, and try to explain that life is more than just two dimensions, the square would no doubt be changed forever, and perhaps not for the better. A square in a cubical world would be a fish out of water, unable to interact properly with its surroundings, yet unable to deny that its perspective of reality had been changed forever. This is known as The Flatland Phenomenon and Carl Sagan makes an interesting and successful attempt at explaining it in that link.

Now imagine if you will that you're in that square's predicament, but you are not a square. You are a cube. You are a sentient three dimensional, temporally linear being, and you are touched by a sentient being who is four dimensional. You are exposed briefly to the reality that there are more than three dimensions. Like the square facing a cube, your life is changed forever. You may not be able to comprehend the full implications of what this means. For a brief instant, you witness your own existence from birth to death outside of a linear framework. You witness for an instant your entire life and how your life interacts with that of others also trapped in a linear three dimensional existence. Then you come back to your three dimensional senses, like a completed cake being forced back into the cake mix box.

I believe this is the sickness. I believe that many - if not all of the major characters on the television series Lost are three dimensional beings who in various ways have been exposed to a fourth dimensional existence. This has affected some characters indirectly, and others are more directly affected. I can start with the easiest among them first. Charlotte Lewis was getting nosebleeds and brain hemmoraging from the time hops that she and the others were going through. However it seemed to have affected her worse than the others. She was more susceptible. Some theorized that was because she was already on the Island as a child but Miles was too and he didn't die from temporal exposure. As I said, it affects different people in different ways, and in Charlotte's case: This Place Is Death (s5e5).

The nosebleeds also affected Miles, Juliet, Faraday, Jin, and Sawyer. Each to lessening degrees of severity. I am speculating that time hops are dangerous for three dimensional linear beings. Not only are they traveling through time but also space. The Island itself is moving, as is the Earth itself which constantly rotates and revolves around the sun, which moves relative to the rest of the galaxy, which is constantly expanding. The time hops that were happening to these characters in season five are not occurrences that third dimensional beings were even remotely designed (or evolved depending on your beliefs) to experience.

However, because these characters were exposed to time travel in their adult lives, it's very possible that such exposure could have affected their entire existence as linear three dimensional beings. This could explain for example how Miles is able to glean information from dead bodies. He's able to tap into their fates, similarly to how the smoke monster makes one able to witness events of their life to characters like Ben, Eko, or Locke. Miles has a similar capability inherent inside him. He's not able to witness the entirety of time, but he can get occasional glimpses under specific circumstances, probably because of his exposure at any point in his life to temporal anomalies. Though his life is linear, temporal anomalies can affect a three dimensional linear being at any and all points across its past present and future.

Another example of this "side effect" behavior in response to temporally anomalous stimuli can be seen in Hugo Reyes aka Hurley. Throughout his life he appears to have been exceptionally lucky. He survived an accident that killed twenty-three people around him. He blamed himself for the event because of his weight, but it's equally possible that what happened to him was an act of distorted probability. Because Hurley has had exposure to a temporal anomaly at some point in his future, any possibility along his linear existence that might have killed him cannot successfully kill him now, because he is meant to exist perpetually on his linear axis for the duration that the temporal anomaly dictates. So if a knife is nonchalantly thrown in his direction, in that moment he will just happen to have a canteen in his hand that will catch the knife and protect him. He can't die until the temporal anomaly allows him to. However, this probability distortion around him may adversely affect others who are not so temporally charged. So whenever he pushes his luck, it can cause bad things to happen to those closest to him.

We've seen that Hurley is uncharacteristically lucky when it comes to games and sports. He beat Sawyer at table tennis. He never missed a shot when playing basketball with Jack. However, he lost to Walt repeatedly when playing backgammon. This might be because Walt is even more temporally charged and probability ridden than Hurley. Walt is also strangely enough able to confuse birds into flying towards him, usually when he's upset. I can't see how this would be a temporal distortion. It sounds more like gravometric or electromagnetic. Walt may cause birds to think he is whatever direction they were flying if they get to close to him, like a compass going wonky. They might mistake him for true north.

We witnessed Michael Dawson repeatedly try to kill himself after leaving the Island, but he was unable. This is because he was destined to return to the Island. Or at least that's what Tom told him in the episode Meet Kevin Johnson (s4e08). We see him try but he fails. A gun misfires. A car crash leaves him relatively unscathed. Like Hurley, he seems to aquire a probability field around him that protects him from harm. This could be because he was destined to be on that frieghter when it blew. It could also be because his destiny isn't over yet.

Desmond was in the Hatch in the episode Live Together Die Alone (s2e23) when Locke stopped him from pushing the button. Desmond responds by activating a fail-safe key which is meant to save the world if the recitation of the numbers and the pushing of the execute button were ever to fail. After Desmond triggered the fail-safe, the sky around the island lit up purple, the hatch imploded, and Charlie, Eko, and Locke managed to escape relatively unscathed. I think Charlie's ears were bleeding and he was temporarily deafened by the blast. Desmond kinda disappeared.

In Further Instructions (s3e03) Hurley encounters Desmond in the jungle, completely naked and a little disoriented. It's only a day later, but Desmond begins behaving in ways that indicate he has aquired the ability to see glimpses of the future. Sometimes he senses these future glimpses as if they were recent memory. Sometimes they come to him in dreams. Sometimes they appear as flashes of inspiration and knowledge: images and sounds that are brief and out of order and difficult for him to interpret. It's as if he was recently exposed to the entirety of his future, but can only now see bits and pieces, because that's all his three-dee mind can comprehend.

Eventually these visions seem to settle on the fate of one person: Charlie Pace. Desmond is able to predict his death, so he acts to thwart it. However, this only seems to give Charlie a temporary reprieve, as another flash tells Desmond again how Charlie's going to die. Through this ability, Desmond is able to help Charlie die a heroic death of choice, that potentially saves everyone on the Island, or at the very least gives them a fighting chance.

Locke & Eko were both exposed to the smoke monster, as was Juliet. The smoke monster appears to show its intended victim something akin to their life flashing before their eyes. It studies the life this individual has led and then it seems to pass judgment. That may not be what actually is happening, but it seems to either let one live with a set of instructions, or just kills them outright as it did with Eko when he refused to comply. We know Locke was exposed to it but we're not quite clear on what was said. We know Juliet was exposed to it briefly, but she was able to use the sonic fence to ward it off. Ben encountered the smoke monster in season five, but that did not seem to be his first experience with it. In fact Ben had reason to believe he could summon the thing. He successfully used it to kill Keamy's men in season four (Shape of Things To Come s4e09), but was unable to use it in season 5 episode 12 (Dead is Dead). How the smoke monster works is still largely a mystery, but I have reason to believe that it too is a remnant or byproduct of temporal physics.

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have freely admitted that the time travel stories are over. Season five was riddled with time hops and yet they say there will be no more. It was necessary for the plot but that it's over. However, they did not say that temporal physics in general would no longer play a part in the events of season six. I speculate that we'll learn in season six that most if not all of the major players in Lost are lost predominantly because Jacob, Blackie, and perhaps others are agents of a fourth dimension who use three dimensional linear entities as their toys. Just as we use squares and cubes to build the world around us, so too do these fourth dimensional entities use tesseracts to accomplish tasks and achieve goals. We may never fully understand what they want beyond Blackie's desire to kill Jacob, but our major characters in the Lost mythology are experiencing the side effects of being touched or 'tainted' by fourth dimensional nonlinear beings. I believe when touched by Jacob or Blackie or other fourth dimensional nonlinear beings, the entire linear timeline of a third dimensional linear being is adversely affected, causing a myriad number of strange symptoms. Since a third dimensional linear being is not supposed to know its future or comprehend that of others, being so affected by a fourth dimensional being is like a sickness. It may happen in a character's future, or it may have happened in their past, but once done, it adversely affects the probability and awareness of the individual, to the point where it could bring about insanity, alterations in personality, strange occurrences of probability variation or brief insights of future events or past clarity.

Our Losties are sick. Temporally sick. Their linear lifelines have been diseased. This could cause friends to turn on one another as enemies, or complete strangers to suddenly know one another as if they were friends. It can turn brother against brother and make strange bedfellows. Each from their limited perception, they will believe they are behaving completely rationally and coherently, but those around them will appear to have gone insane and even bloodthirsty, causing them to respond in kind. If I'm right, the final season will set the stage for a final battle where people we've seen very close may come to blows, and people once believed to be enemies will band together out of desperation for survival.

It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be exciting. However, Danielle Rousseau was right. It's also gonna be sick.

Dollhouse By Any Other Name

Recently over at Whedonesque, it was reported that Joss Whedon himself will be writing and directing the first episode of the second season of his provacative and controversial television series "Dollhouse" starring Eliza Dushku and a whole bunch of beautiful talented people. Simon encouraged people to come up with possible episode titles for the first episode in the second season. I was going to answer that question over there, but I tend to ramble. What follows is what I was originally going to leave there at Whedonesque. Instead, I opted to just leave a one word response, then move the rest over here.

Joss Whedon's done pretty well so far with title names. Ghost, Man On The Street, and Epitaph One are titles borne out of the stories themselves. "Ghost" sounds like a corny title in and of itself, but when you watch the episode in question, it makes perfect sense. There's another episode later in the season that Whedon didn't title which is called "Haunted." Essentially this is what Dollhouse does to Echo and the other Actives: put the minds of dead people into her brain and let them think for her.

In fact, this is an ongoing theme of the series. The living is being haunted by ghosts in Topher's machines: dead minds are stored and then placed later in the brains of actives for the Dollhouse's own selfish (or occasionally philanthropic) purposes. If I were to suggest a title name to Whedon, and if I really wanted to challenge him, I'd ask him to write an episode called "Soul" and to please go where the name suggests. He'd probably chicken out and do an episode that involved blues music. The thing is, I'm a deist and he's an atheist. I'd like to see him address the issue of whether or not Echo/Caroline actually has a soul. I'm not talking about gods here. I'm just talking about the concept of a soul. I don't think Joss thinks she does, but I think Caroline thinks she does, and I think she has more evidence, given what he and other writers have put Echo through, to support Caroline's opinion.

Everything Caroline is, everything she's ever known and felt, is theoretically digitized and saved on that little hard drive box that Alpha threatened to destroy, and that Echo & Ballard saved from certain destruction. Yet Echo watched Caroline, in the body of that waitress, die.

All the people that have been in Echo are still in her. Topher wipes her brain every time, but the mind is a curiously delicate yet resilient thing. If Topher's wiping the brain like a chalkboard with every visit to The Chair, then where is the mind protecting the information? It's making a backup, and where else could that backup be but the soul?

Topher's not really wiping brains. He can only disconnect previously stored information from the high end brain to the standard functions of the body. So Caroline has always been in Echo in a state of dormancy. All the people she's ever been are in there. It's just that Topher has a way to make the conscious mind forget where that information is.

Like when you forget where you put your car keys and you try to remember where but you can't. You must know. You were there when you put the keys down. You had them. Nobody else took them from you. You were there when it happened, but your conscious mind has nothing to use to access that information from your brain. Like maybe a mnemonic device or a note you left for yourself, but even if you try to retrace your steps and go back to the moment you last had them in your hand, you still can't access the memory, because something was distracting you at the second you put the keys down. Then you finally find them and maybe you then remember why you put them there, but maybe you still don't. You just shrug and go on with your day but in the back of your mind something is nagging at you. You honestly don't remember putting them there, but you must have, and that memory must still be in your head somewhere. You just can't remember where.

I think, when Topher thinks he's wiping all memories from a human brain, all he's really doing is dislodging that information from immediate access. The conscious mind forgets who or what it is, and then Topher can fill that emptiness with more information, but it's all stored elsewhere. Topher doesn't actually erase it. He just makes an Active forget where in the brain that information is available for retrieval. The brain's got a finite space, but something not currently understood by science that is ethereal might be where that information is really stored. Some place that Topher's machines can't wipe.

So if I were going to suggest a show title to Joss Whedon, I'd suggest "Soul." I doubt he'd write it tho. Who would want to tune in to see that? It's too ...cerebral.

Lost's Zombie Season Is Now, Part Three

In previous installments of what is rapidly turning into a series of posts, I have elaborated on my theory that the Zombie Season joke of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse might actually have been a tongue in cheek clue as to the direction the ABC TV series LOST has been going. We know some characters have had brushes with death. We know some characters have actually died and yet are still walking around. However, I'm not sure if anyone has ever taken a running tally. What follows is an attempt to look at all major characters and significant other characters to see if we can determine who is still alive, and who only appears to be alive and is in fact probably undead.

Now for this to make any sense I have to assume that if a character had a brush with death, but we're not certain that they died, I have to put them in a kinda limbo maybe column. If we saw a character literally die, and then come back, I have to put them in the undead column. If there's no evidence of either then they are in the live column but keep in mind, we haven't seen every moment of every day of the lives of these characters. Just because I can't recall a time when Jack or Kate died, doesn't mean they didn't. It just means the writers/producers haven't showed it to us yet. Also, this is based on what we know currently, and can change at the drop of a hat after season six begins again. In all cases, if I say someone's alive, that's only because we don't know any better. Illumination of events pertaining to someone's past could change that.

So let's play ALIVE OR DEAD OR UNDEAD OR WHO KNOWS?

Jack "Doc" Shepherd - ALIVE (maybe)
When Oceanic 815 crashed, Jack blacked out and woke up in the jungle, a long distance away from the crash site. He fell out of the plane as the fuselage and a wing ended up near the shoreline. It's not incredibly likely, but it is possible that Jack died in that instant, and some unknown force artificially revived him. The same can be said for many if not all inhabitants of Oceanic 815, but particularly Jack. The writers purposefully had him far from the actual crash site. The writers also purposefully had Jack materialize on the Island away from Hurley & Kate when they appeared in the past after disappearing off Ajira 316. For now we have to put him in the Alive column, but the writers have given themselves room to later claim he's been (un)dead all this time.

Kate Austen - ALIVE
There has been no instance throughout the course of the series where the writers have purposefully shown us Kate dead and artificially brought back. This is not to say it hasn't happened. It's possible this has happened to all Oceanic 815 survivors, and we just haven't seen it yet.

John "Sawyer" Ford - ALIVE
Sawyer has led a dangerous life, and has made many enemies. It's very possible he's had a brush with death and the writers never showed it to us. However, based on what we've seen thus far, he's fit as a fiddle.

Hugo "Hurley" Reyes - WHO KNOWS? (undead)
Several times there has been a mention of an accident that happened to Hurley after his father disappeared and before he went to the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute. A deck that was built to hold eight people fell when twenty-three people, including himself, were on it at the same time. Two people died. It's believed that he survived this unscathed, but felt depressed afterwards and insisted that the incident was his fault. Because of that, his mother had him committed. While in the facility, Hurley began to see someone named Dave who later turned out to be an imaginary friend. His doctor prescribed Clonazepam and also proved to Hurley that Dave was not real. After the crash, Hurley started seeing Dave again. Upon his return from the Island, Hurley began having interactions with friends he knew to be dead. Either he didn't die on that deck, and he's very much alive but crazy, or he died on that deck was artificially revived and can talk to the dead because he himself is undead. It should also be noted that Hurley has a surprisingly strange case of luck that has kept him alive multiple times when he should be dead. Some would attribute this to The Numbers that he used to win the lottery. It's also possible that he is a temporal anomaly and cannot die until some event in his future has been accomplished, probably on the Island.

John Locke - DEAD (kinda)
His corpse has been shown to us at the end of season five. However, it's possible that corpse is an elaborate fake. There are multiple peripheral characters (Widmore, Linus, Jacob, etc) who have the resources. It's just not very likely. There is a humanoid posing as John Locke but the final moments of the season five finale pretty much cemented the idea that UnLocke is not Locke, but rather a manifestation of Jacob's dark nemesis (Esau/Blackie). However, Locke's been undead before. We've witnessed John Locke fall out of a seven story window. Jacob visited him in that instant, and revived him artificially. From that moment onward, John Locke was definitively undead. He seemed to retain his own mental and spiritual faculties, but looks could be deceiving. His legs didn't work until he got on The Island. Once there, he began acting strangely and could walk again. It's possible that Locke has existed throughout the series as an undead pawn in the game between Jacob and Blackie. How much he's been himself and how much he's been manipulated is open for debate. At one point, Ben shot Locke in the gut and left him for dead, but he managed to survive that gunshot wound, presumably because Ben shot him in the kidney area and John no longer had a kidney because he donated it to his father years before. To the best of our knowledge, from the point when Ben strangled John in the hotel room off Island, to the end of Season five inside the statue, John has been dead dead, and Blackie has been impersonating Locke (aka UnLocke). The thing is, if John Locke could be artificially revived by Jacob before, what's to stop that from happening again?

Sayid Jarrah - ALIVE
Again, we've seen no near death experiences (NDE) and have no reason to believe he's dead or undead. That could change, and being an Oceanic815 survivor, he may have died then only to be revived by "The Island." Keep in mind that at the end of Season Five, Sayid wasn't looking so good. He'd been shot, had lost a lot of blood, and Jack didn't have the necessary time or resources to do anything for him. It's possible that Sayid could die in the season premiere, and then be artificially revived by The Island or whatever.

Jin-Soo Kwon - ALIVE
Again, we've seen no near death experiences (NDE) and have no reason to believe he's dead or undead. That could change, and being an Oceanic815 survivor, he may have died then only to be revived by "The Island."

Sun-Hwa Kwon - ALIVE
Again, we've seen no near death experiences (NDE) and have no reason to believe she's dead or undead. That could change, and being an Oceanic815 survivor, she may have died then only to be revived by "The Island."

Charlie Pace - DEAD (possibly UnDead)
Okay here it gets a little tricky. First off, he was a user. The writers could add to the mythology of the series that Charlie had a NDE years before Oceanic815. Failing that, and ignoring the face Charlie could have died and been artificially revived during the plane crash, we also witnessed (All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues) Ethan hang Charlie from a tree, which should have broken his neck. Jack tried for several minutes to revive Charlie with no success. Then Charlie started breathing again. It's presumed because of Jack's efforts, but it may have easily been despite them. Charlie was also in the Swan station when it blew. Locke, Charlie, Desmond, and Eko all survived an explosion relatively unscathed. Charlie seemed to have lost his hearing for a bit but it was temporary. We did not witness the actual explosion. We saw Desmond was naked when he came back, but Locke, Charlie and Eko were fully clothed. It's possible that Charlie didn't die in this instance because, like Locke and perhaps like Eko, he's already dead and being artificially kept alive. After the Swan explosion, Desmond began experiencing flashes of premonitions that mostly involved Charlie dying. He endeavored to save Charlie multiple times from these deaths. Finally they both realized that they were only postponing the inevitable. Charlie was destined to die soon, and he chose to die in the Looking Glass station, in order to save Desmond. We witnessed Charlie drown after Patchy blew up the porthole to the station. It is possible that if Charlie was already undead, having a body filled with water is only a temporary state of being unconscious. If Patchy already knew this, it is not out of the question to believe that after Desmond vacated the station, Patchy could have returned, fetched out Charlie's body, then dragged him back on shore to revive him. If Charlie's undead, he could still be very much alive. So all those rumors and speculation about Dominic Monaghan being in the final season? Not completely outside the realm of possibility.

Claire Littleton - WHO KNOWS?
This could explain why the last time we saw Claire she was in a good mood, despite the fact she had seemingly purposefully left her only son behind to be in Kate's care. If she knew Charlie was still alive, she might have a smile on her face. Claire disappeared late in season four and hasn't been seen since. We saw no indications that she had NDEs prior to becoming pregnant, and it's hard to believe that someone artificially kept alive would be able to give birth. In fact, that might explain why Ben Linus' people were having difficulty keeping a baby to term. Perhaps if a woman had been on the Island during the Purge, she was dead but revived by Jacob or The Island or whatever, and therefore an undead woman's womb would be unsuitable for a proper pregnancy. Claire didn't have that problem, having conceived before arriving on the Island. So we're pretty certain she was very much alive at least until she delivered Aaron. The last time we saw her she was hanging with her dad Christian Shepherd, who is decidedly UnDead. So her current state could be alive, dead, or undead. Presumably we will see Claire in some capacity in season six because the actress has already been brought back on the payroll.

Benjamin Linus - ALIVE
As a child, Linus was shot by Sayid and taken to The Temple. Richard made it very clear that if Ben was revived by The Temple, he's never be normal again. He'd be one of The Hostiles. I want to believe that this makes him UnDead. However, the same thing essentially happened to Rousseau's crew, and she was able to irrevocably kill them. So that puts a hole in my theory that Ben is among the UnDead. Also, as an adult he was dying of cancer and Jack cured him of that. Hard to believe someone artificially alive would be given cancer by the Island. Not completely out of the question but a little difficult to make an audience swallow.

Juliet Burke - WHO KNOWS?
We have been given no indication that during her past prior to The Island Juliet had any NDEs. We witnessed her husband get run over by a bus, and her infertile sister was dying of cancer, but that's as close as Juliet came to death. Once on the Island, Juliet again seemed to be spared death herself, tho it has seemed to have befallen all the other Others she used to call friends. At the very end of season five, Juliet fell into a hole which seemed to have mortally wounded her. Believing a bomb could reset time, she picked up a rock and began banging on it because it had not yet gone off. Some believe this caused the bomb to go off, which may have killed her or it may have reset time. Others believe the bomb did not go off as it was never meant to (Sayid purposefully made a dud because he thinks Jack is insane) and Juliet has been transported into the present time. In any case, if she doesn't get medical care soon she's going to die. Since the actress has recently gotten a lucrative job on a tv series called V, it's doubtful she's going to be a prominent member of the cast in Lost's final season.

Desmond Hume - Alive (possibly undead)
It appears from a writing standpoint that this character has purposefully been written out of the narrative, and if they never revisit Desmond I would completely not mind. I like where they left him. Sure he's in the hospital but it was a superficial wound. He'll be fine. He'll be with his wife and kid and live happily ever after. I want that to be the case. I'm more of a Penny/Desmond shipper than I am a Kate and Jack or Kate and Sawyer shipper. It wouldn't matter so much to me what happened to the rest of the characters in the story, so long as Desmond & Penny come out of all this unscathed. However, I fear that's not going to be the case. Mrs. Hawking told Desmond that the Island wasn't through with him. When I look at the story between Charlie and Desmond I strongly feel that Desmond either purposefully or accidentally traded Charlie's life for his own. That in some previous timeline which is now gone, Desmond died in the Looking Glass station. However, his time flashes allowed him to save Charlie's life multiple times, but only temporarily. So the two of them got to choose when Charlie died, and Charlie died saving Desmond. Had Charlie not been there, Desmond would never be with Penny. So he's been given a reprieve, but like all the characters in the show his fate is forever entangled with the Island. It will eventually call him back, and when he does go back again, the Island won't let him survive. Like Michael, he'll be fated to do something that will kill him, but at least in this storyline, he was able to have a son, and have some precious time with the woman he loves. The Island can now take his life, but it can't take away the happiness he shared with her. So in a way he wins no matter what now.

Miles Straume - Alive (possibly undead)
Like Hurley (strange luck), Desmond (time flashes), Michael (temporary invulnerability), and Locke (multiple abilities), Miles has a special ability. It seems to be specific to being near a dead body. He's able to read from a body's remains when and how it died. We don't know why, but I'm of the opinion that all of these abilities are somehow tied into the temporal anomaly that is the Island. I don't believe people are getting powers because the Island is sentient and is granting them. I believe that these abilities that some characters have are side effects of the temporal anomaly. Some event in the past or future of each of these characters affected the individual's entire existence. Not just in a three dimensional cause and effect manner. These people have been affected fourth dimensionally. Now, Carl Sagan gave an explanation of the Flatland metaphor that describes how a two dimensional sentient being might react if exposed to a three dimensional perspective after living a life in 2D and I feel that might be what's going on here. When a 3D being is exposed temporarily to a 4D reality, it's possible that exposure affects the 3D entity's entire existence, because the fourth dimension is essentially time. So if you were exposed to time in middle age, it could cause anomalies that would have manifested from your birth to your death in unexpected ways. So Miles may never have died and been reborn, but like the other characters I mentioned, I believe he's either been exposed or will be exposed to a temporal anomaly in a manner that causes him to have this ability.

Michael Dawson - Dead (possibly undead)
As I just explained, Michael's one of the characters who may have been exposed at some point to a temporal anomaly. Because of that, when he left the Island and failed to find a way back to his life, he repeatedly failed to kill himself, because he wasn't able to die until certain events transpired back near the Island. This could mean he was always meant to die on that frieghter, but time was altered when he managed to escape the Island. Ben let him go, perhaps knowing that fate would eventually force Michael back when it was time.

Walter Lloyd - Alive (off island probably not coming back)
Like Desmond, I'm satisfied that Walt managed to escape the Island with only mental scars. It could have been a lot worse for him. I would not mind if his story is left where it is. However, there's another part of me that would like some completeness to the story by somehow using the descendants of the Losties to come save them. We currently have Walt, Ji Yeon Kwon, and Aaron off the Island. Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse have said that time travel is done. So I guess it's out of the question that these three individuals would return to the Island after having grown twenty years or more. Still, I like the elegance of the idea. The children come to save their parents. We'll see.

Shannon Rutherford - Dead (could be brought back)
Boone Carlyle - Dead (could be brought back)
Ana Lucia Cortez - Dead (could be brought back)
Daniel Faraday - Dead (could be brought back)
Mister Ekko - Dead (could be brought back)
Libby - Dead (could be brought back)
Charlotte Lewis - Dead (could be brought back)
Nikki Fernandez - Dead (could be brought back)
Paulo - Dead (could be brought back)

Is Lost's nemesis of Jacob really Esau?

Well this is mildly interesting. It's a link to a pdf file that talks about passages in the Bible referring to Jacob & Esau. It is not intended for Lost fans, necessarily. However, looking at this information in light of the end of season five of Lost is.. educational. Now, please understand I am not a zealous Christian who wants to use your interest in Lost to convert you to Christianity. Far from it. In fact in recent years I've been questioning my own belief in Christianity or Deism as a whole, but I digress. Rest assured my interest in this context is in understanding the permutations of Lost mythology. I have no interest in the destination of your soul, beyond my hope that you end up wherever you want to be.

I'm no bible scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but I was raised a southern Baptist so I know my way around the book even though I don't put as much stock in it as I did when I was seven. For purposes of Lost though, it's an interesting resource. I don't know the details to the religious proclivities of the masterminds behind Lost. I have read somewhere that J. J. Abrams is Jewish, but I could be wrong. I am relatively certain that the people behind Lost would agree with me that the events depicted in the Bible are still The Greatest Story Ever Told. Whether you personally find it to be fact or fiction or an interpretive combination of the two, it's hard to dismiss just how intricate and mind-blowing the story itself is.

In the above mentioned pdf file, and I'll try to summarize in case that link disappears by the time you see this, it talks about 1 Peter verses 3:15-16. You may notice that 315 was the number of the Ajira flight in season five of Lost, and that 15 & 16 are two of "the numbers" made famous in Lost season one. I am not blind to that coincidence, but I'm trying not to freak out over it. Since 2004 I have seen the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 pretty much everywhere.

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction

In as nice a way as he can, Peter is trying to tell readers that sometimes Paul says stuff that others will misinterpret. Does this sound like someone familliar in the tv series Lost? Peter also points out that unstable and ignorant people sometimes distort Paul's words. I accept that I can be defined in this context as unstable and ignorant. As I said before, I'm no bible scholar. Also, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to Paul.

Personally, even when I was a diehard Bible thumping Jesus freak, I had difficulties with Paul. For example, he said nice things about the Roman empire and how you should give unto Caesar's that which is Caesar's and give unto God that which is God. Of course he wrote this while in a Roman prison, so I'd probably say that too. Paul also said very mean-spirited things about homosexuals, and while I personally don't understand why gay people do what they do, I certainly don't go around condemning them to hell. However, that's just what Paul did on multiple occasions. He condemned people a lot, for all sorts of things, and I don't think that was his job. I would go so far as to say the man was no saint, but I think the Roman Catholic Church disagrees with me on that score. Some modern day gay bashers are reinforced by what they see in Paul's letters. Because of Paul's words, some have taken it upon themselves to do horrible things to homosexuals, from just teasing to downright murder. So yeah, I'm a little "unstable" when it comes to Paul. That's a nice way of saying I'm very angry with him. How my (perhaps ex?) fellow Christians treat homosexuals (and others who disagree with them) can be led straight back to what Paul teaches. That is one of the things that has caused me to fall just short of denouncing Christianity. Jesus talked about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, but many Christians put Paul's words ahead of Jesus'.

I digress. Please forgive me. As I said before, I have no interest in converting you to Christianity. Believe whatever works for you.

Recently I came across a Lost Poll at Dark UFO that asked the question: Should fans of ABCTV's Lost stop calling Jacob's nemesis "Esau"? My gut said to vote Yes on this one because there's no canonical corroboration for the name. It's a hypothetical guess based on Judeo-Christian dogma. In the bible there was Jacob and there was Esau. In the New Testament there's a passage written by Paul in Romans chapter nine where Paul writes that God loved Jacob but hated Esau. It's possible this is where Lost's writers got Jacob's name, and if that's the case then it only makes sense that his nemesis would be named Esau.

Again it should be pointed out that in 1 Peter verses 3:15-16, Peter warns us that some things Paul writes can be easily misinterpreted.

I didn't vote yes, because unlike Paul I don't think people should be told what they can and can't do, at least with regards to insignificant things like this. I do go around asking human beings to stop killing each other or destroying one another's property, but nobody listens to me anyway.

People should be allowed to call the guy whatever they want. I call him Blackie. Not cuz I assume he's the bad guy, but because at the beginning of the series Locke talked to Walt in reference to backgammon about how there's always two sides: one white and one black. The costumers purposefully draped Jacob in light colors, and the casting directors chose a fair haired and light skinned man to play Jacob. This other guy has dark hair and is dark garbed, so I just call him Blackie until we get a better name. Again, I don't assume this means he's the villain necessarily. I think both Jacob and Blackie are the bad guys. They're players in a game that uses human beings as chess pieces. I'm not rooting for either of them.

The thing is, the writers of Lost purposefully kept us in the dark as to the name of The Man In Black. Probably because they wanted people like me to write blog posts about it, and they wanted people like you to read them, then write blog posts of your own about what you think it all means.

But getting back to the Bible itself, "where" you might ask "does Paul actually talk about Jacob and Esau anyway?" I'm glad you asked that question. It's in Romans Chapter nine. In the beginning of the chapter, Paul describes how not all who are born in Israel can be considered the descendants of Abraham. In case you don't know, Abraham is a big muckety muck in Judeo-Christian mythology. He's a descendant of Noah, and then Adam before him. Back in the Old Testament, birthright was still a powerful thing. Presumably some bloodlines of nobility can be traced back to biblical characters. At one time this was very important to people, before peasants realized that blue blood ran red.

Verses six through thirteen of Romans chapter nine look something like this:

6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel,
7 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.”
8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.
9 For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.”
10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac,
11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—
12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”
13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

Now, where is Paul getting all this? The Old Testament. Keep in mind that when Paul was writing, Christianity wasn't really the worldwide firestorm religion that it is today. In fact, how we perceive Scientology today is pretty much how the Roman Empire felt about Christianity. They were whackos. Now, jews were people the romans could diplomatically bargain with, but Christians were rebellious upstarts who were still on fire with a burning need for power, because their martyr had recently been crucified, his disciples were being hunted down and incarcerated or otherwise crucified. If I remember correctly, Paul was in a roman prison when he wrote his letter to the Romans. So Christianity at the time of Paul's words was not widely accepted. It would be. A few centuries after Paul's death, Catholicism would overtake the Roman Empire and become what we now know today as The Roman Catholic Church. Roman emperors used to throw Christians to the lions - literally. For sport! Kinda makes you look at Scientology a little more wearily, doesn't it? I fear for humanity's future, if it ever starts taking "engrams" seriously.

Paul was going on what he knew in the Old Testament, which wasn't called the Old Testament back then cuz Paul was writing the New Testament and didn't even know that's what we were gonna call it. To Paul, the story of Abraham was still rather new and novel and exciting, because Paul used to be a roman guard. He converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus. He was one of the first Jesus Freaks. So to Paul, the story of Abraham was very much like how the story of Lost is to us now. Fascinating. New. Mentally challenging to try and understand. The primary difference is I don't think Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse expect us to bow before them and worship them like gods.

They probably wouldn't mind.. but I digress.

The story of Abraham takes up the bulk of the latter half of the Book of Genesis. I skipped that part as a kid cuz it got boring really fast after the flood, and the story about the old man threatening to sacrifice his own son cuz God wouldn't give him a goat? That's a mildly disturbing story to try to grasp at the age of seven.

Abraham had a lot of kids. Issac is essentially the father of the Hebrews. Ishmael is the father of Arabised Arabs. This is where Islam & Judaism part ways in the Old Testament, but essentially they're arguing over the same god. Ever hear of The Smothers Brothers? They always used to fuss over which son their mother liked best. That's pretty much how I see Issac & Ishmael. Issac was the son of Abraham and Sarah. Ishmael had a different mother, so Isaac & Ishmael are actually more like step-brothers. Christianity also seems to consider Ishmael a bastard child, but Islam begs to differ. It gets really catty from here on out between those two religions so let's just ignore that part.

Isaac was also the father of both Jacob and Esau. See where I'm going with this? Both Islam and Judaism talk about Issac as a great servant of God and the Father of the Israelites. Jacob was such a nice guy, muslims have nothing nasty to say about him in the Quran. His descendants tho are either ignored or ridiculed. Mostly ignored. Christianity seems to take the Jacob/Esau thing more seriously. Jacob and Esau were fraternal twins (not identical), born of Isaac and Rebecca. Jacob is also known as Israel, and is the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob made something of himself. Esau was by contrast, an asshole.

When I say Jacob was also known as Israel, I mean Jacob was renamed Israel by an angel that descended from heaven with a big wand and went 'twang' on Jacob's head. So Jacob was named Israel which meant at the time "struggler with God" which is another way of saying "Superman's Pal."

Esau means "hairy" in hebrew. He's also sometimes called "Edon" which means "red." He was all red and hairy when they pulled him out of the womb, and the name stuck. Esau got the short end of the stick for pretty much his entire life. He'd never read the book "How To Win Friends and Influence People" and it sounds like he was an ugly curr so I doubt the book woulda done him any good. Esau's the bad apple. He's the "evil twin" and not even God liked him very much.

But this is where the story of Esau and Jacob breaks down for me. Jacob is the favored son. Esau was the black sheep. When the two were grown up, Esau was down on his luck and fell on hard times. He begged his brother Jacob for some red lentil stew cuz he was starving. Jacob gave him food in return for his birthright. Now, let's look at this carefully. Jacob, the good guy, only offered to save his brother's life from starvation IF his brother would denounce his rightful heir to the throne of Isaac. He tricked his brother out of being the father of Israel.

Now one can argue that Jacob was doing what was right for his father's people - for his own people. Because you take one look at Esau and even thoughhe's the first born you can't imagine this creepazoid leading the Israelites into a prosperous future. However, Judeo-Christianity is founded on two brothers who are treating each other worse than Bart and Lisa Simpson ever did.

Jacob's supposed to be the good guy. Esau is supposed to be the bad guy. Frankly, I can't tell the difference. Can you? The good guy woulda fed his brother, and figured out what was wrong with his brother so he could help him be a better person.That's if you're a good guy. Jacob's not a good guy. He's human just like everybody else. He makes mistakes. He's jealous that his brother can be all ugly and stupid and still claim rightful heir to the throne, so he starves his own brother and tricks him into giving up his own birthright. Now Esau is homeless, penniless, has no future prospects, and can't even really call Jacob his brother. Jacob gets everything. Esau gets nothing. Jacob is remembered for being the father of a nation. Esau is remembered for being red and hairy and stupid.

So IF Blackie is Esau, one could understand why he'd look at Jacob and ask him, "do you know how much I want to kill you?" Who wouldn't? Jacob's as much of an asshole as Esau. However, this is all speculation. There's no conclusive proof in the Lost television show that the final season is going to boil down to two jewish brothers arguing over who deserves the best bahmitzvah. If it does, I may find myself switching the channel, because quite frankly I've had my fill of Judeo-Christian mythology for one lifetime.