LOST: The Big Bang Theory

LOST: The Big Bang Theory

It seemed illogical to Daniel Faraday that someone would be asking him silly questions while he was waking. He tilted his head to one side and twitched it as if the answer to "Are you alright?" might fall out his ear. Alright was relative. He had gone from an 82 degree jungle to a 104 degree desert and yet he was chilled to the bone and the difference in the humidity was causeing steam to rise from his body. Someone had brought him a robe and he huddled beneath it like a blanket as someone else thrust a cup of hot tea into his hand.
Things looked different. The way his visual acuity interacted with the polarity of light emissions... it was different than he'd grown accustomed to on The Island; it was closer to what he regarded as "normal".
He looked around and saw many of the people he'd seen enter the device: some still shivering and gulping tea, others scurrying about, trying to be useful.
"So, it worked? The theory of instantaneous physical geo-polarity tran-substantiation is real? I had... doubts."
"Well, if that means did the teleportation device work, well, you're here. In the Sahara." replied the doctor, Jack, from the island. "Where am I?" was one of the most common questions arrivals were asking. "You're here, you're real, physical, alive. This is not Heaven or limbo or Purgatory." Another common question, though not one that Daniel, who felt certain he was alive, would have thought to ask.
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Rose had only been here a bit more than ten minutes and yet she was already helping others, handing out robes, pouring tea.
She and her husband had traveled to Australia in search of a cure for her cancer. On the way back they had "a layover" and her disease went into a total remission - not even a lump. She would have been happy to spend the rest of her life there as long as she was with Bernard. Now that they were off the Island, she might only have a year or two, if the cancer returned. She had to pack the rest of her life into that time. And more, had to make sure Bernard was happy and strong enough to be able to go on without her.
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Less than a yard seperated Steve and Tracy, but he sensed the ground split and a chasm widening between them. She gazed at him through an icy curtain as if he was both a stranger and a creature that threatened her life. Wordlessly - they had discussed this and there was nothing left needing to be said - she turned from him and faced the rest of the world, and San Diego, and her husband and her two children. She walked away, taking part of his heart with her. He'd lost his best friend, Scott. And his closest friends on the Island, Lance and Neil, were real assholes. Now, this.
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Cindy started another couple of pots of tea. She was worried, but not for herself. Oh, she'd need to find a new job. Even if Oceanic was still in business, she'd never get on another plane again. But she was concerned about Emma and Zach. How long would it take them to forget and adapt to the real world after the time they'd spent in paradise?
Would they stay in touch, maybe visit and call for a while, then fade away, perhaps a card at christmas, then nothing? She wondered what sort of acreditation it required to be a licensed nanny.
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Juliet was glad to see her old book club friends Adam and Amelia. She gave them the over-simplified version of how the teleportation worked. She took a piece of paper and drew two circles, labeled A and B. She folded it in like the back page of a Mad magazine until the circles touched.
"A" was the send point, "B" was the target. The wrinkle in space connected them. There were virtually in the same location, only the thinnest membrane of reality divided them. There was a push from the origination point, but even stronger was the pull from the destination.
Two physical objects cannot occupy the same space, so the contents of circle B - in this case a 24 foot diameter sphere - had to be moved. It still wasn't certain where it went - outer space, an alternate dimension - but nature abhors a vacuum and the contents of circle A rushed in to fill circle B. It wasn't really anywhere near that simple, but that was a short answer that was easy to grasp.
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"Did everybody make it?" Jack asked.
"That's relative, I guess. I think everyone but Linus went in at our end. Did everyone come out?"
Daniel fished in his pocket for a folded piece of notebook paper with a list of names. He and Jack looked around and ticked off names.
Amelia and Adam and Harper were there. Rose and Bernard. Steve and Tracy. Lance, Neil, Craig, James Ford. A few of the people Jack never really got to know - bikini girl, blue striped shirt girl, dreadlocks guy. Cindy, the children. About a half dozen more.
"What about Ben?"
"He asked me to tell you he's not coming."
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Juliet was stitching up the laceration in the back of John Locke's scalp. Leave it to Benjamin; it he had to save the life of someone he wasn't sure he liked, at least he'd use blunt force trauma to the head to do it. It's not like he didn't have various pills and injections and gases to render someone unconscious.
John Locke had appeared on the platform propped up by James Ford. His legs buckled beneath him almost instantly and James shouted "someone want to give me a hand with Professor X here?"
Juliet had a wheelchair ready and waiting. They only had one minute to clear the platform before the next arrivals.
Locke hadn't wanted to leave the island - he'd made that abundantly clear. But the island is adamant about who lives or dies. If the island wanted Locke alive, then Ben's plan wouldn't work with John there.
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Desmond Hume and Penelope Widmore arrived on the platform. They were the last of them - at least everyone who was coming.
Everyone stopped and turned to look when they heard John Locke shout "What do you mean, he'll destroy the Island!?!"
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Keamy and Omar and their lieutenants were running at top speed through the jungle. The Temple was in sight. They had no idea that everyone they were there to kill had been evacuated. Except one. They stayed in tight formations, with one portable electromagnetic flux disruption field generator per group. That was wasted effort; the Smoke Monster was deep in the jungle, spread out over the surface of the ground like black morning dew.
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In the Cabin, Christian stretched back in his chair. Claire hunched over in the corner smiling enigmatically. Everyone was there - all of Jacob's helpers. Dozens of them, and that was only counting the humans. There was anticipation, but no fear or regret. What happens happens, and whatever happens on the island happens for a reason. Richard Alpert sat outside, by the door.
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Daniel wondered if the blow to the head had scrambled Locke's brains. Why did he have to have everything repeated?
"By 'he' I mean Benjamin Linus. In this context 'destroy' means vaporize through a nuclear reaction. 'The Island' is where we just were."
"But why"
"Well, that's a more complex..."
Juliet butted in. "Ben Linus has a chance to destroy everyone he hates in one fell swoop. Including himself. How could he resist?"
"But... how?"
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Daniel Faraday grabbed Juliet's diagram with the fold and the two circles.
"Look, by reversing a couple of numbers in the formula, instead of moving everything inside circle A to circle B, he's going to move everything Outside of A."
"Everything? The world? The Universe?"
"The Island is powerful, but not that powerful. No, everything for about an eight mile diameter around the island. He's going to shift the entire island from one spot on the globe to another. It's not the first time he's done it.
The difference is, he's going to switch another pair of numbers in the equation, and this time it will be all push, no pull. He's not going to empty target location B first."
"But that's insane!" Jack stated.
Juliet realized that where Benjamin was concerned, that was stating the obvious.
"But multiple physical objects can't exist in the same space. That's what causes a nuclear reaction." She realized that she was also stating the obvious.
"There's one more thing," added Faraday. "He's moving the island to the co-ordinates he managed to allow Charles Widmore to acquire. So when the island arrives Widmore and Abaddon will be on a vessel waiting for it."
"And be destroyed in the explosion?"
Faraday allowed himself a tiny twitch of a smile at the shear elegance of the plan.
"No, not exactly. More like... Be the explosion. Again, with just a couple of the numbers in the co-ordinates reversed, Widmores ship will be... exactly where the Island will materialize. Along with any water and air, fish and birds happen to be in an area eight miles in diameter. Every atom of which will split simultaneously. It will be the largest nuclear explosion in history."
"Oh my God!"
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"Wouldn't an explosion that size destroy the planet, turn it into a sun or something?"
"Oh, no. I don't think so. Remembered, most of the contents of that sphere will be either air or water. Only a relatively small percentage of it will be solid matter. Just the ship and... uh, the Island. And the target location is more than a thousand miles from the nearest inhabited area. Oh, there will be some ash and a lot of steam, perhaps a concussion blast and some tidal waves. Nothing Earth-shattering. I hope. I don't think Linus really cares, though."
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Benjamin heard the soldiers coming.
He had thought of this. He had imagined that his finger would linger over the last key as he imput the numbers. some hesitation, perhaps a twinge of remorse or sadness.
He was wrong, though. No remorse, no hesitation. He tapped in the altered numbers and hit "enter". Now, if he lived that long, he'd have about a minute to think about what he'd done.
Benjamin Linus thought about what he'd done, and an ecstatic grin spread across his face.
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"Did you feel that?' someone asked. Some people said they did, others said they didn't feel anything. Their chatter almost drowned out the sound.
A very distant sound from very far away. Just the faintest of whispers.
"- poom -"
LOST
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[Randall Hugh Crawford, 5/15/08]