Welcome to Lost HEMA Theory!

"Akuta says Vaal is 'sleeping', but will awake 'hungry' and might speak to the landing party at that time. He then leads the party to meet his people.  They appear as young men and women, but all have a curious, childlike mentality.  Kirk points out that the tribe doesn't seem to have any children and asks Akuta why.  Akuta doesn't know what a child is, saying that Vaal has forbidden love and copulation, and provides them with 'replacements' as they are needed.  McCoy scans the tribe and is shocked when he discovers they are ageless and all in perfect health.  The party later observes them as they perform a ritualistic 'feeding' of Vaal, carrying loads of the explosive rocks down into the underground tunnel.  The picture is now clear; the people live only to service Vaal, to dance, and to gather food.  They don't even do their own agriculture, since Vaal controls the environment right down to 'putting the fruit on the trees'.  Mr. Spock observes the symbiosis between the Feeders and Vaal as an "excellent example of reciprocity", but McCoy vehemently disagrees and says the Feeders are not really alive, but stagnating, all their needs and wants provided for by a 'hunk of tin'."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apple_(Star_Trek)

Hmmmm.... How interesting to consider the 'agelessness' and 'health' of Richard Alpert in the context of what the crew of the Enterprise encountered in this episode.  Like Vaal, is JACOB an artificial intelligence 'using' the inhabitants to serve its own drive to survive?  Per my prior postings this year, I would not be surprised to learn more about the nature of the symbiotic relationship among the island/JACOB and its inhabitants.  What might the parallel to 'feeding Vaal' look like, on Lost?  Is the island/Jacob 'fed' through recurrent energy generated by, and received via interaction with, a core group of human beings/souls, who help to power the artificial Jacob sentience through psychic means?

Perhaps the prior musings by others on the meaning of Charlie Pace's middle name offer some insight here... Is Jacob generated through a real device, or is it produced through some ancient version of a 'Hieronymus machine', powered psionically?⁴ 

And how spooky indeed is the parallel of Vaal providing 'replacements' as needed, with the current discussion surrounding Locke's looming 'resurrection' in particular, and more generally whether or not the island can reanimate people, make copies of people, or even place old souls in new bodies....

Quo Valis?  Quo Vaal?  Or, Quo Draal?

So ultimately where is this all headed?  What do the bodies of Christian Shephard and John Locke have to do with the island/Jacob?  What is the nature of Locke's sacrifice, how does it connect to the temple and its function, and what might this portend for future episodes of Lost?  Interestingly enough, it all goes back not to Valis, or Vaal... but instead, to Draal in that classic sci fi series, Babylon 5:

"The Great Machine is an enormous technological marvel beneath the surface of the planet Epsilon III in Babylon 5. Although the size of the machine is not specified, it is similar in concept to the great machine of the Krell of Altair IV in Forbidden Planet, being several miles in size, and generating considerable energy. Unlike the Krell machine, the Great Machine requires a biological mind to regulate it, and the ancient race that built or found the machine left one of their race to interface with it to operate and regulate it. When that being, Varn (Curt Lowens), became aged and ill, the machine became unstable."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Machine

Ok.... Let's start counting the connections.... An ancient machine with similar powers to the device created by the Krell (check and check).... A machine requiring a biological mind to interface and regulate it....  Oh, boy....  Now it's coming into sharper relief/focus.... Like the Great Machine on Epsilon III, the yet-to-be-unveiled Jacobite sentience device housed on the island (in the temple?) may in fact turn out to require a human body/mind to operate and regulate it.....  Perhaps the original installers were of a different race than us, and once they died out, humans were used in their place.  Due to the pronounced power and effects of the island, we humans may 'burn out' more quickly in our capacity as the biological regulator/interface.  

When Christian Shephard's body arrived on the island, it was 'plugged into' the island/Jacob sentience device, perhaps somewhere inside the temple walls, hard- and wet-wired into the island/Jacob.... So the sacrifice the island demands is its need for a human to provide a biological mind to regulate its operation and sentience.... Which makes eminent sense, in retrospect, as decades of detailed research into the demonstrably huge calculative powers of our biological/neural wetware will readily attest....  And how interesting to consider the portentious possibility that, like the Great Machine, the island/Jacob may become unstable when the integrity of the biological being/interface declines through age and ill health (curse you, vile thermodynamical entropy!)   Back to the Great Machine:

"Because of the instability of the machine, the planet began to suffer geological events, and attempts by Babylon 5 personnel to investigate were repelled by missiles fired from the planet. Eventually, a force got close enough to find a cavern that served as entrance. Inside, they found Varn, removed him from the machine and took him to Babylon 5 for medical attention. In Varn's absence, the machine drifted even further out of control.  Draal, an elderly Minbari who perceived his life as no longer useful, saw a possibility.  Londo Mollari, the Centauri ambassador, dodged missiles to take Draal and Varn down to Epsilon III, where Draal joined himself with the machine and Varn stayed to help until his anticipated death by old age."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Machine

Again we see the importance of a viable, healthy biological mind to the continued, stable operation of the Great Machine, with obvious parallels to the island/Jacob.  It is no surprise that Christian Shephard speaks for Jacob, to Locke, after the latter has fallen to the bottom of the Orchid/well; Christian Shephard is to Varn what John Locke is to Draal....  Accordingly, what we will see in a future episode is the body of John Locke somehow being 'joined' to the device that houses the island/Jacob sentience.  And apparently a key part of the process in bridging the shift from Shephard to Locke is the presence on Locke of some physical/tangible matter owned by and associated with Shephard, in this case, his wingtip shoes (how apropos.... come sail away with me, indeed!)

Although we may witness a corporeal rebirth/resuscitation of Christian Shephard on the island, once Locke has taken his place in the device, I would not be surprised to see him instead bidding a fond farewell to his son, Jack, and the rest of the castaways, as in 'Return of the Jedi' form, he completes a transmutation to a higher-dimensional being, mirroring the fate of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Yoda....  May the superstrung extradimensional force be with you!   Remember those voices in the wilderness... the background of the jungle....

In addition to all of the myriad symbolic connections between Locke's sacrifice as a proxy and the sacrifice of Christ dying in our place, for our sins, I suspect we will witness a literal manifestation of Locke's proxy, when he takes the place of Christian Shephard in serving as the biological body/mind helping to sustain, operate, and regulate the island/Jacob, and providing a communicative interface with the inhabitants on the island....  Back for a final look at parallels with the Great Machine:

"Draal drove off aliens who claimed that the machine on Epsilon III belonged to them, then warned Commander Sinclair to stay off the planet, but that Babylon 5's continued presence would be accepted. Some months later, Draal appeared in holographic form to invite the Babylon 5 station to discuss his willingness to help in the coming Shadow War.  Later, in an attempt to counteract the blatant propaganda of Interstellar Network News, Babylon 5 set up its own interstellar broadcast service, Voice of the Resistance. Draal made the planet's Great Machine available to help carry Voice of the Resistance to Earth and other worlds. The machine's great broadcasting power made possible the broadcasting to such distant places. The Machine also served to maintain the opening in time which allowed the events of War Without End to take place.  The ultimate purpose of the Great Machine remains unknown, the audience only being told that it belongs to 'the future'."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Machine

The powers and functions of the Great Machine in the War Without End episodes are indeed relevant to what we've witnessed on Lost.  Like George Minkowski, Daniel Faraday, and others (including our cherished castaways), the commander of the Babylon 5 station-- John Sheridan-- experienced profound 'unstuckness' in time, 'record skipping' forward and backward in space and time.... all accompanied by telltale bright flashes of tachyon bursts (sound familiar?), enabled in no small part by the power directed through the Great Machine, to open time....

The spacetime 'anchors' or 'constants' in War Without End were small metallic devices fashioned by Zathras and affixed to one's belt/uniform.  Time will tell if Daniel Faraday's 'constant' in the form of Desmond Hume is merely a figurative or mnemonic device, or if instead it is a more literal force, namely something about Desmond's abilities tangibly affecting the localized spacetime field, helping not to stabilize this field as much as to 'restabilize' one's consciousness, whenever one 'record skips' along the spacetimeline.  If this proves to be true, then Desmond may turn out to be the functional (biological) equivalent to Zathras' mechanical spacetime anchoring devices....

Ancient Asteroids, Modern Meteroids, And The Fate Of The Human Race-

Hmmmm.... All of this talk about Vaal and Draal got me to thinking about the end of the world as we know it and, of course, the classic Brian K. Vaughan-penned comic book series Y: The Last Man.⁵   While it is indeed possible that the shot of Hurley reading issue #15 of this series was a simple (and well-deserved) homage to one of the fine members of the Lost producing/writing team (since Season 3), I suspect I'm not alone in pondering the possibilities of this clue as a window of insight into past, present, and future episodes of Lost.

For years, Lost fans have debated and discussed a range of different 'doomsday scenarios', from asteroid collisions to changes in the magnetic field, from nuclear holocausts to viral destructions, from mass starvation to rampant infertility, and beyond.  What insights can we glean from recent episodes, regarding the nature and likelihood of a doomsday scenario figuring in the denouement of the series?

Well, since the island is moving through spacetime and we have witnessed its ability to 'record skip' back and forth, actually, in spacetime, and we have observed a profound energy blast emanating from the island (Swan hatch), it may indeed be possible to construe the island as a potential means of enacting a species-saving course correction through deflecting an object hurtling toward the Earth, from outer space.  While some would be quick to point to the likelihood of this as a future-focused plot device-- staving off the threat from an asteroid say, in 2012 (per the Mayan calendar prophecies), I would not rule out the possibility of a predestination loop in which Faraday or some other party uses the island to travel back in spacetime to deflect an asteroid or some other threatening heavenly body.  We may learn that this has already happened, and that Faraday has already done this, so he needs to go back in spacetime to do it (that which he has already done.)

[2/20/09 Addendum:  Here's a neat Cuse/Lindelof/Vaughanesque twist we might see.... Instead of our heroic castaways riding the island back in time to avert an asteroid collision, what if they were instead traveling back in time to the age of the dinosaurs, using the island's powers to actually cause a collision between an asteroid and the Earth, sealing the fate for the dinosaurs, and creating the conditions for the rise of our own species....?]

And if this sounds not a bit unlike what Jeffrey Sinclair did in the War Without End episodes in Babylon 5, with a little help from his friends and the Great Machine, you're not alone.... Recall that the Great Machine of Epsilon III played a central role in enabling the spacetime dynamics we saw in those episodes, including Sinclair riding the Babylon 4 station back in spacetime, while transmuting from human (Sinclair) to Minbari (Valen), arriving a millennium backward in spacetime, just in the nick of time to provided much-needed support helping the Minbari survive the onslaught of the Shadow threat, living to fight on and again, 1000 years hence, together with their human comrades-in-arms....

Hmmm.... I can see it now... the ultimate sacrifice/proxy for the continuation of our sinful species.... Faraday and the castaways riding the island back in time to save the world as we know it from destruction, like SValen/inclair, all enabled by the Jacob-ite sentience operating through and regulated by.... Locke's body serving as a biological mind/interface....  Why do they do this?  Because, like Valen/Sinclair, they have already and always done this... It has been so and will be so, again.  And why was the island/Jacob here?  Because, like the Babylon 4 station, it was there to go back in spacetime to save the world as we know it, in one big spacetime predestination loop spanning millennia....  This is one example of a fateful course correction we may witness playing out as the series heads toward its conclusion at the end of Season 6.

But the Vaughan/Y: The Last Man homage raises another distinct possibility for us to consider.... Recall that the island has been shown to render a previously infertile male as fertile (the island is Jin's tonic....)  If Vaughan's scenario, or some variation thereof on the infertility/sterility theme, were to play out on the series, we may find that the island's powers in bestowing fertility will prove vital to the continued survival of the species, post-plague-induced (or otherwise) sterility.

Another interesting variation is the potential for the island to serve as a veritable/literal 'island' or repository of genetic material to help repopulate the Earth, post-apocalypse.  A range of others have previously expounded on this possibility, noting the diversity (ethnic, gender, race, etc.) of the island inhabitants, as well as the demonstrated practices of taking blood samples (DNA), especially from those whom they suspect as having psychic abilities.

Hmmmm.... Might we see an attempt to use the island to repopulate the Earth with a cloned, psionically-enhanced super-race of human beings?  And would this race not have distinct survival advantages in leveraging energy pockets/vortices to produce valuable effects and seemingly magical material applications?  Time will tell....