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Main Article Theories about
Because You Left
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The men who are "after" Sayid and Hurley are hired by Ben

We hear that Ben "has a few ideas" about how to get the O6 back together to return to the Island. His idea for Kate: hire the lawyer to demand a blood sample and pressure her to return. For Hurley, Ben keeps a man outside the mental facility and waits for a moment when Hurley is vulnerable (facing arrest for murder) to make the pitch. For Sayid, who is the most dangerous and least likely to be persuaded by Ben, Ben has to hire men to tranquilize Sayid. It's clear that the men don't want to kill Sayid, just subdue him. We also know that Ben has plenty of agents off of the Island; these are either some of them or perhaps just people he's hired to assist with his quest to return the Island. Ben has been told by Ms. Hawking that he has limited time to get the O6 back together, and so Ben is using all of the tactics he can muster to pressure them into it.

The Image of the Wheel

  • The workers show Chang an image of what is behind the wall. A chamber with the wheel. How was this image obtained?
    SonarImage

    The image of the chamber

  • The image is a view from above, like a cross-section view, similar to an ultrasound showing a baby in a womb.
  • The image was taken from above; Ben had to go down two ladders to from the chamber to the wheel.
  • Dr. Chang said if they drilled "even one more centimeter into the wall" they could release the energy so the "time shifting matter" is directly on the other side of the wall. Since they were still building the Orchid they just moved to another spot to construct the vault from a safe distance
  • The wheel, which already existed before DHARMA built the Orchid Station. The wheel acted as a "lock of a door" or "lid of a bottle" that energy saved inside would be explosively released in case it was turned on.
  • The numbers along the sides of the image represent distance, giving a scale of sorts. Having see the Wheel in There's No Place Like Home, and judging Ben's height at a bit under 6', the Wheel would seem to be approx 8' across (makes sense - an eight spoked wheel being 8 feet wide). Comparing the size of the Wheel to the numbers in the image, it would seem these numbers are metric meters (8' is about 2.4m). It also indicates the the Wheel is 14m away from wherever the image was shot.
    • Tony, the construction manager with Chang says, "There's an open chamber about 20 meters in", so they are using metric.
      • and of course, Chang uses the word "centimeter"
    • The use of metric would indicate a more European flavor to DHARMA, though scientists have long used metric.
      • Scientists have used metric for a long time, but English Units are still more common in U. S. construction than metric, and certainly would have been more common during Dharma's active years.
      • SI was developed in 1960 and was based on the older metric system. The US never officially adopted SI. However, this (DHARMA Initiative) being an international effort, it would make sense that they would use a system common to all. Also, it is not a construction instrument that produced this image, but a scientific one.
        • Even though most of the scientists in US and in Europe would use metrics, it is unlikely that a labour worker from US would be comfortable using it. This indicates that DHARMA is not US based. Thinking back to the cast of characters "The Economist" would be a very likely person to be connected to DHARMA.
        • Dharma is in fact based in the US, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It would not be that difficult for a "labor" worker to learn metric. In the same way, it would not be that difficult to learn a non-American spelling to words like "labour."
  • In the first view of the scan there are some horizontal lines from the tips of the wheel, leading out to the right, and shown in the image circled in red is a number which seems to be a size estimate of the wheel - it is not clear but could say 2.5m or 3.5m.
    Orchid sonar big

    scan view showing wheel being measured

    • Chang is making orientation films for DHARMA Stations, although this one is not finished. Or is being expanded. Either way, this seems to indicate the flashback is in the early days of establishing DHARMA on the Island.
    • This indicates that Chang is either very senior or the designated specialist to manage the Orchid Station issue.
  • Looking at the mass below and to the left of the wheel in the high-resolution version of the sonar image, there seems to be the outline of a face with facial features - at the 14 ft. line there are eyes, at the 13 ft. line there are ears on the side and a nose in the center, at the 12 ft. line and slightly below is a frowning and agape mouth and at the 11 ft. line is a chin.
    • Also, looking at the other image with the full scan - if you flip the sonar image vertically, there also seems to be something like another face which is black in the lower-right corner (upper-right when rightside-up): eyebrows, nose, chin and lips which look like they're blowing out a gust of cold air.

Desmond and Faraday

  • We did not see their meeting in Desmond's original time line because at that time, Desmond did not remember it. Faraday disappeared into thin air after confusing Desmond. It's possible Desmond dismissed the entire encounter and then only remembered it after his dream.
  • Desmond heard Sawyer knocking but had to put on his Hazmat suit. By the time Desmond got to the door, Sawyer was gone and Desmond assumed that it was Daniel who had been knocking from the beginning.
  • Plus Faraday would care a lot about Desmond if he thought that because Desmond was special he could somehow undo Charlotte's death.

Moving and not moving through time

  • The Others do not travel through time because they have an affinity with the Island. "Others" does not include Juliet because she has no affinity with the Island and/or because she has been marked following her trial.
  • There are two types of time travel occurring in Lost, and it is important to keep them separate.
  • Only candidates were unstuck from time by the wheel. This explains why Locke flashes even though he was in proximity with Others and explains why Juliet (Others) and Charlotte (Dharma) flash. Those who are no longer candidates stay in linear time.
    • Desmond moves through his own time line, to places he has already been, even if he did not remember having done so before becoming unstuck. When he does this, he leaves his current body behind, sometimes in an unconscious state. Desmond has never traveled somewhere (or "somewhen") new as a result of being unstuck.
    • Locke (later Sawyer) and party are traveling to different time periods, but not to when they had previously been. They take their bodies with their consciousness.

The Compass

See The Compass Theories



Charlotte's Memory

  • Charlotte not being able to remember her mother's maiden name is caused by the same thing that was causing Daniel's memory problems mentioned briefly in Season 4. Presumably, this is a side effect of time travel, something that Daniel has apparently done a lot of.
    • Probably Daniel does not have memory problem, he just started to lose the consciousness in time and he got confused with where and when he "is" after lots of time travel.
      • How does this explain the memory loss Daniel clearly experienced (and subsequently commented on) with the deck of cards in "Eggtown"?
  • Charlotte doesn't remember her mother's maiden name because the time they skipped to little Charlotte wouldn't have know that information. She was too young to concern herself with that. So although she remembers what is going on right now, she is reverting to some memories or lack of memories of that time period.
  • Charlotte's memory problem, and her nosebleeds, are due to alterations in the past caused by the time-shifting Losties. Charlotte alluded to having been born on the Island in the Season 4 finale. As the characters still on the Island time-shift closer to a point when Charlotte was a child there, they grow closer to potentially altering her past. She's the only one in the group suffering these symptoms as she's the only one present on the Island in the distant past. This may fly in the face of what Daniel claims is possible, but her nosebleeds begin after he explains to Sawyer that they can't change the past. When he checks his notebook for clues to her problem, he looks uncharacteristically worried.
    • Considering Daniel stays behind to contact Desmond, it seems that Daniel doesn't his notebook to look for 'clues to her problem', but rather to reaffirm that "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant."
  • Charlotte's mother is Alex, who was not supposed to die, but Widmore broke the "rules" (that you cannot change the past or future). Had Alex survived, Ben would've sent her to another place/time to save her from the fate of pregnant women on the island. Because she died, Charlotte's memory of her is fading, and Charlotte is fading out of existence as well.
    • If Alex was her mother, then it would seem that she would have vanished from existence at the moment Alex died (assuming she wasn't supposed to). It seems odd that she only starts feeling the effects after the time skipping starts. It could be though that her mother dies during one of the skips back in time, but instead of vanishing immediately, she deteriorates in time with each skip. It would also explain why she couldn't remember her mother's maiden name...she no longer had a mother.

Who's able to affect the past and who isn't?

  • Based on what Daniel Faraday claims, no one change the past no matter how hard one tries. And one can not meet someone if they have not met yet. Faraday is able to meet with Desmond and influence him because they had already met earlier in 1996 at Oxford.
    • I think your missing the point, the statement that no one can meet someone if they have not already met is not meant to be taken in that sense, it means that if that meeting never happened in the first place it cant happen when you time travel back. what your suggesting is that Sawyer, Juliet, jin and Miles who meet all the Dharma people when they travelled back in time, what had they already met them before, No they always had met them in 1974.
  • While the past can be influenced, it will not change the ultimate flow of events. Ms. Hawking indicates that the "universe...has a way of course correcting". Just as Desmond is not able to stop Charlie from dying, no one can ultimately change the course of the universe, even if they are able to affect individual events - like the soldiers interacting with Sawyer and Juliet, it changed an individual event, but not the course of the universe.
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