LOST: The Constant [RECAP]

We begin the madness on board the chopper, which as you remember, took off from the island toward the freighter, with Frank, Sayid, Desmond, and Naomi's body on board.  (Did anyone mention her? If they did I didn't catch it.)

Desmond is looking at the picture of he and Penny, Sayid is still looking rather saddened, and Frank?  Frank's getting a little worried.  He starts fiddling with the controls, staring at a post-it note on the instrument panel with the directions to the freighter, his "cheat sheet."

"Why are you flying directly into the storm?"  Frank is getting more flustered and as they fly into the clouds, the lightning starts flying around them.  "What do you expect to find on the boat?" Sayid asks Desmond.  "Answers," he replies.  And the storm starts rocking the helicopter.  The compass indicates that they're drifting away from the 305 degree heading they're supposed to follow.  Desmond grips the base of the seat he's on.

"On your soddin' feet!"

Desmond wakes up to find himself in the barracks, back in the army.  He's late to the line, and is quizzed by his Sergeant.  "I was having a dream."  Well, that's just not good enough for the Sarge, so it looks like its PT time!

The whole squad is out in the mud and the rain, doing pushups in the mud.  "I hope your dream was worth this," one of his fellow soliders tells him.  "It was so real.  Like I was actually there."

The helicopter is still being tossed around by the storm.  Desmond throws the headset off onto the floor and starts trying to undo his harness.  "Who are you? How do you know my name?"

Back on the beach, we find Faraday, Charlotte, Jack, and Juliet, still worried about the fate of the helicopter.  With some intrepidation from Charlotte, Faraday explains to Jack and Juliet that their perception of how long they've been gone, isn't how long they've actually been gone.

"It'll be fine as long as Frank stayed on the bearing I gave him." "If he didn't?" "There might be side effects."

Desmond is still flipping out on the chopper.  The sky has calmed considerably (and also lightened considerably....)  He finds the now smashed up photo in his hand, and looks at it.  Nothing's changed in the picture.  (Well that's a good sign anyway!)

They land on the freighter, and the crew is not happy about Frank bringing back the survivors.  Des continues his ranting, and the crew quickly starts to haul him off to sickbay.  Sayid is obviously against this, but agrees after a nod from Frank.  The confused Desmond yells, "This is a mistake! I'm not supposed to be here!"

He's standing up in the rain and mud, while his comrades are still doing presses in the mud.  The Sarge, predictably upset by this, puts the lot of them on a run.  Later on a truck, Des and one of his squadmates, Billy(?) are talking.

"What the hells the matter with you?"  Desmond tells Billy about his "dream," and Billy gets rather inquisitive about it.  "Who else was on the boat? Anyone you recognize?"  He tells Billy about the photograph, and realizes that he needs to talk to Penny.  Right then.

He takes off towards the phone booth, drops a coin on the ground, and reaches down to pick it up.

"This isn't happening," he says as the coin isn't on the deck of the boat.  "What am I doing here?"  They throw him into the freighter's sickbay compartment and lock the door.  "I'm not supposed to be here!"

"Hey!" a voice yells out from inside the room.  There's a rather ill-looking fellow on the bed.

"It's happening to you, too, isn't it?"

Sayid, still topside, is taking stock of the situation, noting the crew, the radar, and Frank getting chewed out by someone on a higher deck.  He asks Frank about Desmond, and how they could have taken off at dusk and landed in the middle of the day.  "Trust me, I'm trying to help you."

Frank trades Sayid the phone for his pistol, and Sayid calls Jack, still on the island.

Jack puts the call on speaker.  "Something's happened to Desmond."  Faraday gets visibly upset by that statement.  "Has he been exposed to high levels of radiation or electromagnetic fields?"  Well, the puzzled looks from Jack and Juliet would seem to say, emphatically, "YES!"

"We don't know why, but coming or going from the island, some people can get... confused.  No, it's not amnesia."

Desmond is shouting at the man in the bed, who seems to be in a coma or something.  He suddenly snaps out of it.  "I was just on a ferris wheel!"  Then the lights come on, and the ship's doctor enters the room.  "See, Ray, I'm not crazy!"  Doc Ray injects Minkowski (Oh yeah, that's who that is, by the way!) with something and puts him out like a light.

He goes to Desmond.  "And how are you feeling?"  He starts shining a light in Des' eyes, rapidly moving it back and forth.  "Tell me the last thing you remem...."

Desmond picks the coin up out of the mud.  Confused, he goes into the phone booth, and calls Penny.  "I need to see you." "No, you broke up with me." "I need to see you." "I'm moving." "Moving where?" "It doesn't matter." "No! I need you..."

Frank and Sayid enter the sickbay, and quickly give the phone to Desmond.  "Hello?"  Faraday tries to explain the situation to Des.  The Doc sounds the alarm on the boat.  We discover that Desmond thinks its 1996.  Faraday tells him, "when it happens again, get on a train and go to Oxford... I need you to find me."

Faraday finds his bag, and starts rummaging through it.  "I need my journal or I won't believe him."

He further explains that people sometimes experience a displacement, sometimes hours, sometimes days, but never years.

Daniel tells Desmond, "Tell me to set the device to 2.342, at 11Hz."  Desmond frantically scribbles the information on his hand.  "If the numbers don't convince me, tell me you know about Eloise...." 

The phone goes to dial tone, but its back in the phone booth again.  He quickly looks at his hand, but there's nothing there.

He's made it to Oxford, where he finds a long-haired, but still squirrely Faraday, talking to someone else.  He finally introduces himself.  "I think I've been to the future."

The skeptical Faraday asks him why he's here, then.  "To find you.  To help me."  "Why would I do that, put you through the headache of time travel.  Seems rather unnecessary, don't you think?"  He thinks its a prank put on by some of his friends.

Desmond tells him about the settings for "the device."  "You're going to tell me who told you those numbers!"  "You did!  I know about Eloise."

Daniel takes Desmond to his lab.  There's a big rat-maze laid out on a table, and a bunch of mad-scientist looking electronics everywhere.  "This is where I do the things Oxford frowns upon.  You'd think I'd have referenced this meeting!" "Maybe you just forgot?" "Yeah, right, how would that happen?" "This is changing the future?"

Faraday puts on a protective jacket, for the radiation. "What about me?" Desmond asks him.  "I do this twenty times a day," he tells Des.  He grabs a rat from a cage and puts it into the maze.  "This, is Eloise.  I'm going to 'unstick' Eloise in time.  Just like you."

He pulls some sort of ray-gun device over the rat, and turns it on.  The pink beam covers the rat for a bit, and then he turns it off.  The rat isn't moving.  "Shh! She's not back yet."  Then it wakes up, and he lets it loose in the maze.

Faraday watches with excitement as Eloise successfully navigates the maze.  "Yes! It worked! This is incredible!"  "What?"  "I just finished the maze this morning, I'm not going to teach her to run it until an hour from now!  I sent her consciousness, her mind into the future."

He hurriedly erases his chalkboard (one of those details I'll have to go after later.)  "Why'd you send me here?  I end up on some bloody island...." "Island?  Why would I..."

"He said he could help."  And they're all locked in the sickbay with Minkowski.  "Desmond, we need to get back...."  "Desmond? You're Desmond?!" Minkowski asks.  "Every so often I'd get an incoming call, with orders never to answer it.  But I did.  They were from your girlfriend, Penelope Widmore."

"You're back.  75 minutes that time. How long were you there?" "About five minutes that time."  Faraday runs back to the chalkboard.  "Why is this happening?"

"In your case I'm guessing the progression is exponential.  You should be careful crossing the street."  Desmond notices Eloise is looking a little bleeding demised.  "What happened?"  "Brain aneurism probably.  The effects vary from case to case."  Desmond grabs him, "If this keeps happening am I going to die?"  "I don't know.  I think Eloise's brain short circuited.  She's got no anchor.  Something familiar in both times.  A constant.  If you want to stop this, you need to find something there, something you really care about, that also exists back here."

"Can it be a person?"  "Yeah, maybe, but you have to make some kind of contact."  Desmond grabs the phone and tries to call Penny.  The number's been disconnected.  He rushes from the lab, gets halfway down the stairs, and passes out.

He looks into the mirror.  "You look a lot older now, eh?  Welcome back, Desmond."  "I need to call Penny,"  He tells Sayid.  "If you and I are friends, I need to call Penny now." Minkowski tells them that all the radio equipment has been sabotaged, but he'll take them there if they let him go.  "How do we get there?"  "Through the door."  The door is now open.  "Looks like you guys have a friend on this boat."  Minkowski's started bleeding profusely from the nose.  They look out into the hallway, "It's clear."

Desmond gets up and continues down the stairs.

We find ourselves at an art auction.  There  is a painting of a ship.  The Black Rock, which set sail from Portsmouth in 1845, and was lost at sea.  On the block is the only known artifact from her, the journal of the first mate.  The contents have never been made public by its owner, a somebody-or-other Hanso.  We find Penny's father bidding on it, along with several others, including a mystery phone bidder.  You'll notice a head of curly silver hair in the crowd.  Mrs. Hawking, perhaps?

He's stopped at the door, just as Mr. Widmore is leaving.   He agrees to speak with Des, and they make their way to the restroom.  "I need to get in touch with Penny."  "I take it you've had second thoughts, and you'd like her to give you a second chance?" He says with a sly grin on his face.  "Why do you hate me so much?" "It's not me who hates you.  Here's her address."  And he exits, leaving the water in the sink running.  Desmond reaches to turn it off.

"How did this happen to you?" they ask Minkowski.  "We were anchored here, waiting for orders, bored out of our mind.  We wanted to see the island, but (name?) started acting crazy, we had to turn around."  "Where is he?" "In a body bag."

They get to the radio room.  Everything is smashed and there are cut wires everywhere.  "Who did this?" "Got me, but when the captain finds out...."  And Minkowski passes out again.

"Can you fix it?" Desmond asks Sayid.  "I need a minute.  Do you know the number?"  Desmond sees the calendar on the wall, with days marked off.  "I didn't realize it was almost Christmas."  Now Desmond's nose is bleeding, too.

Minkowski goes into a seizure.  He mumbles something like "Have to...get... back...." and goes out again.  Is he dead this time?

"What happened to him?" "The same thing that's going to happen to me!"

The water is still running in the sink, only now its gone over the edge and is all over the floor as well.  Desmond turns it off, grabs the address from the floor and exits.

He knocks at the door of 423 Cheyne Walk.  Penny answers the door.  They argue for a bit, but she finally lets him inside.  "Eight years from now, I need to call you, and I can't call you if I don't know the number!"

They argue about this, also.  "On Christmas eve, 2004, I will call you, I promise."  "If I give you the number will you leave?" "Aye!"  "7946-0893"  He starts reciting it into memory.  "All that and you're not going to write it down?!"  "You can't change the number! If you still care  you have to answer!  You have to..."

"...trust me"  "I do trust you," says Sayid.  "Do you remember the number?  The patch is done."  Desmond tells him the phone number, he dials it up and it starts to ring.  "I hope she's there." "I hope so too."

(And this ending segment was a nice tie-back to "Flashes Before Your Eyes" which ended in a nearly identical "bouncing" back-and-forth fashion."

The phone keeps ringing.  He leaves Penny's apartment and walks away.

Still ringing, no answer.  He looks up to see her watching him, and she pulls the curtains closed.

"Hello?" "Penny?" "Desmond?!!"  He continues walking away, smiling now.

"You answered! You still care about me!" "I've been looking for you for the past three years.  I know about the island, there's been research.  I spoke to Charlie..."  The phone starts cutting out and getting noisy.  There are the obligatory I love you's back and forth.  "I'll find you, no matter what."  And the phone goes dead as the batteries run out.

"Thank you, Sayid. It was enough."  "Are you alright now?" "Aye, I'm perfect."  There's an overhead shot of the frieghter....

....and we find ourselves back on the island again.  Faraday is frantically thumbing through his journal, there are pages of equations, diagrams...and then he comes to one page, with a large ominous message written in red ink.






BONK.  And all the LOST fans watching sit in stunned silence and awe.

Whew.  That was a lot of typing, and a lot of reading.  but it had to be done.  Analysis forthcoming, and it'll be a doosie this time!!

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