LOST Theories For S6E16 What They Died For May 18th, 2010

Responsibility. We all have responsibilities. I have ones to my work and my family. I also have a responsibility to act a certain way in accordance to rules established by society. For the island, responsibility plays a role in what the island is. There is someone responsible for protecting it and making sure that no one tries to destroy it. Desmond had a responsibility for pushing the button, like the castaways did for a season. Sawyer felt he was responsible for the deaths of Frank (maybe), Jin, Sun, and Sayid. Hurley feels he is responsible for making sure that Jacob’s wishes are carried out. It all comes back to having a stake in something. To that end. Jack feels it’s his responsibility to become the island protector. This is a huge ‘fix’ for him because he had been trying so hard to get off the island and now he’s going to stay there for a very long time.

DESMOND
Desmond still has some huge part to play and I feel that he will end up dying in the end. It’s his sacrifice that will allow Jack or whoever to kill MiB once and for all. But should he be killed? (More on that in a bit) So, who let him out? Did the Losties get there and rescue him ahead of MiB and Ben? Or did Sayid leave him a rope to help himself while he went off to play suicide savior?

In the Alterverse, Desmond tries to nail Locke again in the wheelchair, and I had to chuckle when he started up the car because I was so thinking that the same damn thing was going to happen. However, Ben, of all people, shows up to stop him and gets beat up by Desmond in two universes and that flicks on the Déjà vu switch that shows Ben his other self. How much does he know, though? It seems as if there is an ability to gain more memories than just what are shown in the flashes as evidenced by Hurley’s recognition of Ana Lucia. For that matter, Desmond knows more than he was originally shown because he has become a sort of shepherd, going after the rest of the castaways to show them the way.

MIB’S PLAN
All this time we’ve been wondering how Smokey, or whatever I choose to call him in this paragraph, plans to get off the island. I’ve been speculating that by simply turning the Donkey Wheel everyone could have been off the island in Season One but maybe that is not the case. Or it’s just a continuity error in the show. However, it seems as if this is Smokey’s only chance since all other means of escape are gone. But his plan had some snags along the way. First, Desmond was supposed to be killed by Sayid because he was a possible candidate, or so he thought. Turns out, Desmond is more. He is a failsafe. A key around the neck of Jacob that can make this all go away. I find it ironic that Desmond and Locke were both in the hatch when it blew in Season Two. Locke destroyed the computer controlling the button and Desmond had to use the failsafe key to release the built up electromagnetic energy. Here, it appears that once again, Locke, now Smokey, will try to destroy the island at its source and Desmond might be how he chooses to do it.

THE CHOOSEN ONE
First off, let me say that I have not been a fan of Kate since she started playing the middle of the road between Jack and Sawyer. Last night was a prime example of why I don’t like her. “What about me?” While Jacob gave her a more straightforward and kinder answer than he gave Ben back in the end of Season Five, I still felt as if she was whining. A friend pointed out that after all this trouble, she deserved to know why her name was crossed off the list. Frankly, I never thought she would have been the chosen one I am glad she’s not. She doesn’t exactly like to do what she’s told to do.

You have to love Hurley. He has been burdening such a load since the show began. He started the Island Golf League to help them blow off steam. He felt that he needed to destroy the food from the hatch pantry because it would have been gone quickly and people would have been mad at him. He feels unlucky at every turn and feels responsible for the bad things that have happened to those he cares about. The fact that he knows he has limits and doesn’t like to leave his comfort zone is evidenced ad he did not volunteer for the job of island janitor. But Hurley may be the best person of all in the world. It’s kind of like he has all the qualities that make an excellent leader except the desire to be one.

Sawyer is a candidate but still would never take the job of island protector, even though he’s been shown to serve and protect the Dharma Initiative and the people of Los Angeles in the job of law enforcement. But, he still wants off the island and he knows that taking this job saddles him on that rock for a long time.

Kwon was a name on the wall in the cave but we didn’t know which one it referred to. Was it Jin or Sun? Guess it doesn’t matter now because they both drowned in the sub. However, given that Kate was disqualified on account she was a “mom” leads me to believe that Sun would have been DQ’d as well. For that matter, Littleton was also a name but since she was a mother it was crossed out as well as Kates. So that leaves Jin, right? Why not say he’s disqualified for being a father? That leaves Ji Yeon and now that she’s an orphan, she could be a prime candidate, but Jack already stepped up.

In perhaps one of the biggest reveals of all, we finally get the low down on Jacob’s process. He chose people who were flawed yet had all the same qualities as him. They were unhappy where they were at and needed the island as much as the island needed them. Kate was on the run, Sawyer was filled with vengeance, Hurley was unlucky, Jack had father issues and a failed marriage. The Kwons were troubled by their families and their own problems. Sayid was haunted by his past and his search for Nadya made him melancholy. Michael had issues with his son and their relationship. Locke had a need to prove he was capable and was constantly put down. I could go on but there is your core castaways.

THEORY DEBUNK TIME
“Dr. Linus”

1. Widmore is able to find the island because:


1. He is the friend Jacob was guiding towards the island and his name is actually Wallace
2. Desmond is on that sub and his name his family name is actually Wallace.
3. Locke-Ness has killed Jacob leaving the island unveiled and seen by Widmore
4. He went to the Lamp Post

Ding Ding Ding. We have a winner. A: Jacob invited Widmore back. What that has to do with the name Wallace, I have no idea. Perhaps it means nothing. Perhaps by moving the dial to Wallace it was the only way to go past Shepherd giving Jack his much needed glimpse of responsibility.

“The Package”

2. Zoe is


1. A pain in the ass
2. The key to everything
3. A red herring
4. A geophysicist with a knack for finding pockets of electromagnetic energy.

Guess A: will have to be good enough as she is now dead. Yeah. I really hated her. She had no purpose. What the hell was she looking for anyway in Ben’s house? She said she was there looking for something and we never found out what that was. Oh well. She was the Nikki/Paulo of this season and the island demanded her disposal.

“The Candidate”

3. The next Jacob will be?


1. Jack (Sayid said it and he keeps saying he is not leaving the island.)
2. Locke (No not the Locke from the OT, Locke from The Alterverse. Somehow the two timelines will converge and Locke in the ALT will do battle with his doppelganger.)
3. Desmond (Jack must shepherd him from the well to a spot of concentrated electromagnetic energy in order to accept Jacob into his being.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the everyone on the list is not actually a list of candidates but a list of people who will be used to get the candidate into position? Once they fulfill their role, they are killed and removed like fallen pieces on a chessboard.

Yep. A: is the answer and my footnote was basically proven by Jacob’s revelations.

NEW THEORY TIME
Not much I haven’t already stated. I will throw out these little theories and hope that they come true.

1. MiB will attempt to leave the island:


1. Via the donkey wheel.
2. Via Ajira 316 which will be disarmed.


2. The Alterverse Castaways are going to:


1. Meet up on a boat to go to the spot where the island should be.
2. Fly in another plane and somehow get back to the sunken island.


3. MiB will attempt to destroy the island by:


1. Throwing Desmond down the 100 watt cave.


4. MiB will be killed by:


1. Blown up by the remainder of the C4 making Ben a suicide bomber who decides to kamikaze Smokey.
2. Jack will go all Neo on him like he did Mr. Smith
3. He won’t. Everything will simply go back to the way it was.


5. The Survivors will leave the island by:


1. Ajira 316. Frank really isn’t dead and has been spending the last two episodes disarming the bomb. He’ll show up at the last minute like Bishop did in Aliens.
2. Penny will arrive on Penny’s Boat and rescue them but will lose Desmond.
3. Each one will take a turn on the Donkey Wheel.

Rainy Monday Morning Riddle

It’s Monday and I am finding an excuse to write something. I heard this riddle while listening to Car Talk on NPR. Here is the riddle and it’s up to you, my four readers to solve it….. and you must show your work. Now, if you listen to Car Talk and already know the answer keep your trap shut and let the others have a chance. I’ll be moderating comments here at the blog and will only publish them after enough time has passed to give you a chance to answer. Here we go.

Recently I had a hankering to read Edward Gibbons' three-volume set, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, no small undertaking considering since there are exactly 2,500 pages of text and illustrations in each volume.

Sadly, as I reached for them on the shelf I could see that mold had damaged every page and cover from the front of volume 1, though that cover was undamaged, to the back cover of volume 3, though it, too, was undamaged."

I called the local book repairer and he said that it would cost a penny a page and fifty cents a cover to repair. He says, 'Bring the affected volumes over and come back in a week, I'll be all done.'

So I show up in a week prepared to pay the bill, and it's about half of what I expected it to be. The statement that it was half is a hint. The question is how much was the repair?

 
 
 
UPDATE
Here is the answer.

In Defense Of Low Tech

The life of a digital gypsy. Sounds kind of fun, huh? Technically speaking, you could spend your whole life working, communicating, and wasting time without being plugged in somewhere. I mean eventually you would need to recharge the batteries on all your devices but think of it, using a cell phone to conduct business over the phone and a laptop to work on with a Wi-Fi signal at say, Panera. You could remotely work from home or at your favorite coffee bar.

Hell, if you were savvy enough you could make a good living without ever stepping foot inside an office or perhaps even own a residence. Companies would pay you to work for them, traveling the world, squatting in an empty cubicle in their office and housing you at a hotel or some sort of alternate housing. You could be a Wi-Fi nomad. But what happens when the signal stops?

NPR recently ran a story about a digital gypsy who does everything without being connected by wires. If you can get past the interfaces of working on a smart phone or laptop then maybe that’s the life for you. Personally, I want a hardwired connection somewhere in my life. I have digital voice for phone and while it may be nice to have something shiny and high tech I recently wanted to go back to the old rotary phones of the 70s and early 80s. Why? We had a little thing lovingly called Snowmageddon this past Winter. We suffered through severe snowfall that darkened the homes of numerous customers up and down the Mid Atlantic. I was without power for two days.

Ok, that doesn’t sound that awful. Sounds like camp. Well, it’s not. I’m not saying that I was close to jumping the cliff because I didn’t have cable or couldn’t harvest my crops or play Bejeweled Blitz. But three things took place that forced me to vacate my home until the power came back on there.

1. First and foremost, the heat. We had no heat in the house and the temperatures dropped into the 40s by the end of the first day.
2. No power means no good sleep. I am a CPAP user and without power, sleeping is rough for someone who quits breathing while they are asleep.
3. No power means no phone. Again, I have digital voice that runs through a modem fed by my cable company. I can’t just pick up a corded phone and call someone. Granted we have cell phones, but see how low tech would have triumphed here?
4. No power means no Internet. Oh the horror. Since I run an online business as a side gig, I could not update this blog, my websites, or my websites’ blog. This is, of course, the least problematic thing I experienced.

Now, I know there were people in more dire situations than mine. A man died waiting for paramedics to get to his house through poorly plowed streets. But think of how many people rely on power and wireless signal to do anything.

I may be Chicken Little but haven’t we seen, firsthand, how putting all our eggs in one basket is a bad thing. We let the banks run amok and we ended up in serious trouble. The automotive industry collapsed and people lost their jobs. People lost their homes. America lost its financial footing and we are still coming back from the brink. Take that lesson and apply it to the Internet and wireless technology. What if we find ourselves without a signal?

IT experts will tell you the Internet’s infrastructure is built for redundancy, that it withstands numerous attacks from hackers, viruses, or anything as simple as a undersea cable being severed. But how long can we continue to rely on something so vastly complex and touchy. How long before we have some sort of EMP disaster that slows us down to a 14.4k speed. Remember Wargames? Same idea. Somewhere in all of this wireless world we need to have a cord plugged in somewhere. In our financial industry, our defense and security infrastructure, and our basic city infrastructure.

Here’s another example. NYT is removing a number of routes from its service to save money wherein they will have to spend an ungodly amount to redo all the signage for subways, bus lines, and maps and ticketing. While it might be less expensive to maintain digital signage and the use of apps for smart phones to be able to freely change information on the fly and reduce the need for costly revisions, what happens if we have a power outage like we did in 2006. Granted the transportation system might be affected but taxis and busses can still run. What if that outage extends into weeks? People, unfamiliar with the layout of Manhattan will not have any way to navigate around. Eventually, old printed signage will have to be brought out costing more money to install and maintain until Con Edison comes back up and running.

Everyone talks about business continuance and disaster recovery of online systems but are we truly prepared to address a situation that involves no t having any systems? How many times have you walked into a room and tried the light switch when you know the power is off? It’s habit. It’s not that you are checking for power. You are assuming it’s there. Can we afford to assume that the power will always be there? And it’s not like I’m spelling Die Hard 4 type of cynicism about our country's ability to handle a crisis. I’m talking in terms of the everyday digital gypsy. If we have a collapse of our networking infrastructure, how does someone who relies on it to do business expect to stay connected? Instead of the factory worker who gets laid off you have the white collar consultant. That person that squatted in a cubicle and lived at the Hyatt using his laptop and crackberry to make sure he could afford that latte habit would be isolated. There are more out there than you think and they are probably responsible for a lot of commerce that helps keep the economy chugging. They may be the second line of impact after the bigger systems like banking, agriculture, and automotive, but those industries might rely on the digital gypsy to keep them working.

For me, I want to stay plugged in somewhere. I want to know that when one thing fails, I have a backup plan. It may not be perfect, but it’s a start.