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[Eko_man]

And Then there was Light...


The fluorescent lights flickered as the soft drone of the control room reached Henry's ears. He lifted his leg over the doorway's extended metal seal, leaving the bulky steel hatch open as he strode deliberately across the room.

"What's the word, Tom?" he asked the clean shaven man stationed at a rather overwhelming computer station.

"Plane's coming in as scheduled. Should be in range within ten minutes," the man responded gruffly.

"Excellent, is everything prepared?"

"Everyone's in place, sir."

Henry sighed, anxious for the coming moments but also dreading what he was about to do. Sacrifices have to be made, he told himself. Outside the small, foot-wide portholes a murky glow tried vainly to penetrate the station. Behind him a large octagonal sign sat attached to the bulkhead, dusk covered its once glossy finish. The sound of wooden cane striking metal made Henry turn.

Before the old man could speak Henry reassured him, "Everything is going to plan, Mr. DeGroot."

The man smiled weakly, "It's time to turn the tables my friend."

Henry returned his smile, pride swelling in his chest. As Degroot slowly wheeled around and left, Henry could feel nothing but resolve. The old man's condition was a constant reminder of how high the stakes were. It must have been almost 5 years now but it still felt like it had been last month. Henry could see the steely look of determination on Degroot's face as he hit the execute button. The sounds of gunfire outside were still fresh in his ears but Henry remembered how they were soon drowned out by the magnet's enormous discharge. He winced unconsciously as he remembered pelting towards the doors, only to turn and see Degroot smashed against the wall by a sizeable metal shelf. He had never recovered completely.

A flashing orange light shook Henry from his daydream. On a panel containing six octagonal emblems, similar to the one behind Henry, one was blinking. The blinking emblem had an entirely empty circle in the middle while the others had various animals and symbols. Tom pushed the button and a woman's faced appeared on a monitor above him.

"Tom, new development," the woman said quickly.

"What is it Mrs. Klugh?" asked Henry before Tom could respond.

"I've been watching the Swan, as ordered, and both of them just left." Her tone was worried but controlled.

"WHAT? Both of them?" Tom was in disbelief.

Henry let a smile slowly creep into his lips. "I don't know why you two sound so concerned. This fits perfectly into our plan, now we needn't shed any blood today."

Tom grunted. "That fatherless boy's been wearing our suit for years, pretending to be part of the Initiative. You ask me...he should get what's coming to him."

Henry's smiled didn't falter, "Patience, Mr. Patterson. This is the beginning of the end for Hanso." He turned to the television screen where the black woman sat quietly. "Tell our men to standby Mrs. Klugh but keep an eye on the Swan. If either of them returns I want to know immediately."

Henry turned around as he heard the woman murmur agreement. He took a seat behind and to the right of Tom and looked around the control room. It's low ceiling hid the fact that it was, in fact, rather large. Several other stations similar to the one manned by Tom surrounded the perimeter while a periscope station lay in the center. The dust on its handles showed it hadn't been used in years.

Tom turned to him, "The plane's about fifteen miles out, sir."

"Prep the system then, Tom. It's been a while, you think you can manage it?"

The man gave a toothy smile, "Like ridin' a bike."

Hundreds of feet above them, palm trees lazily danced in the September breeze. A group of men and women armed with an assortment of weapons waited nervously around a metal door overgrown with vegetation. In the distance a man took his final breath as another felt a flood of terror. Thirty thousand feet above them a man reassured his neighbor that turbulence was normal.

"My husband keeps telling me that planes what to stay in the air," she responded.

* * * * * *

Thank you for Smokeying...

Tom's palm was sweaty as he gripped the joystick, his other hand hovering over the keypad. Through his monitor he say the plane, though it only looked like a spot at the moment. He knew he only had one shot at this. The other monitor was what he was more interested in. It was roving slowly through the jungle. It always amazed Tom how he could be seeing what this thing saw. Gale explained it to him once, something about radiation cascading down and reflecting images to a receiver. Behind him, Gale sat like the ever calm Buddha, watching the various stations around the interior of the underwater station.

"How much time is left, Mrs. Klugh," Gale spoke to the monitor above Tom's head.

"One minute and forty-two seconds," she responded.

"Where is it now?" this time Gale's question was directed at Tom.

"By the Staff." Tom felt his stomach tighten.

"Be ready, it'll be hard to control."

Tom rolled his eyes; thanks. He had only controlled the nanoswarm once before. It was like riding a rollercoaster without a track, especially with the discharge. The plan was simple enough. The Swan's timer would run out, the magnet would start to break it's containment and release magnetic radiation while attracting the plane. The radiation would be absorbed by the carbon graphite molecules within the swarm, giving it phenomenal amounts of power. Enough power to safely land a commercial passenger jet.

That was the part Tom understood. He glanced behind him, Mr. DeGroot had once again joined Gale. They whispered for a moment and then DeGroot limped away, back to his room, back to his secrets. Tom's eyes caught Gale's for an instance.

"Something wrong, Tom?"

Tom shook his head, lying to himself. He had more important things to worry about right now. Why this particular plane was so important was something to be addressed after it was on the ground.

"Fifteen seconds!" Mrs. Klugh's soft but firm voice broke his reverie. Tom tightened his moist hand around the rubber joystick. As Mrs. Klugh counted down aloud, Tom did the same in his head. She reached zero and nothing happened. The monitor still showed the same area of jungle, meandering around like a lost dog. Then the picture gradually started to shake more and more violently. Tom guided the beast towards the beach.

"Henry, Tom! He's back!" Mrs. Klugh blurted out.

"fatherless boy," Tom muttered as he concentrated on the nano swarm's trajectory, guiding by dampened electrical signal to a receptor housed in it's center.

"That's alright," said Henry. "He's too late, the electronics in the plane are scrambled and it's coming right for us. There's nothing he can do, continue Tom."

Tom pulled back on the joystick, taking the swarm airborne. Despite Henry's confidence, Tom felt a sense of foreboding now that a man was back in the Swan hatch. He decided to move quickly.

The plane was materializing on his monitor now. A large Oceanic, just like Henry said there would be. Suddenly, the tail section of the plane blew off. Tom's mind froze.

"He's trying to enter the numbers, Henry! He's discharging it, reversing the poles!" shouted Mrs. Klugh, her voice causing static in the speakers.

"I know what he's doing!" Gale responded angrily.

"If we send in the men we might be able to stop him," Mrs. Klugh suggested.

"No, it seems like there's going to be enough death." Gale's voice was hushed as he watched bodies falling from the tail-less aircraft.

Tom frantically maneuvered the swarm under the tail section as it fell. He cradled it and saw the main body of the plane go sailing by. This is impossible.

"Tom! Concentrate!" Gale commanded," Take down the tail and fast. The body will sail for at least a few more seconds."

Tom obeyed without a response. He frantically pushed the joystick down, praying the tail end of the jet would stay on the swarm. Unfortunately, it didn't. Tom watched as the picture on his monitor sped towards the shore only to see the tail end slip into focus and speed faster to the beach.

"JESUS!"

"Tom, leave it! They'll live it's not that far. Get the body."

As the tail section of Oceanic Flight 815 plummeted to the ocean's surface, Kate Austen gradually slipped out of consciousness in the body of the plane. Her last images confused her as the force of gravity caused her to pass out. She couldn't understand how or why there was smoke moving into the plane instead of trailing it.

* * * * *

A Castle Made of Cards....

Thoughts and fears raced through Henry's head. He tried to keep a straight mind as he watched Tom's monitor. The nanoswarm raced under the main fuselage and slowed its descent until it had stopped, then gently placed it on the beach. Henry found himself fervently wishing the men and women in the tail section had survived. Above all the children.

The men in the control room heaved a collective sigh of relief and clapped one another on the back.

"WE HAVEN'T EVEN BEGUN," Henry bellowed. The room suddenly felt like a morgue.

Henry sent his glare towards Tom, "Find the tail section...and find it now."

As Tom sheepishly turned back to his station, Henry rested his head on the cold sweat of his palm. He prayed DeGroot would stay in his quarters until the whole ordeal had been resolved. Henry imagined the look of complete failure on DeGroot's face if he heard those on the plane hadn't survived. Just moments before he had felt DeGroot's breath on his ear. A breath that Henry resisted to strain from, a breath that would taste like rusted metal.

"Is it the right plane?" DeGroot had questioned. Hope mingling with doubt in his voice.

"We just checked," Henry had told his old friend with confidence. "It's the right plane."

Henry wouldn't have traded any of their years of trial and struggle for the look on DeGroot's face. He himself felt a welling in his eyes.

"I guess it's time to see your grandson, isn't it Henry?" DeGroot said as he turned to leave, not waiting for an answer.

Henry imagined this woman, this Claire, that held his grandson inside her womb. His dreamy state quickly faded as he watched Tom's monitor. The swarm was staring into the fuselage. Bodies dangled from over turned seats like Satan's Christmas tree. The men in the control room sat silently, taking in the vision on the small 19 inch television monitor.

'This means nothing," Henry said more to himself than those around him. "Yes...yes, some are dead. But many others have lived. The ones we need have lived."

Henry knew he was speaking as a leader and not as a rational man. Nearly a dozen screens around the room were now blank. Minutes before this they had been displaying complicated and overlapping images. Reflections of the retina, images of the brain that involuntarily traveled to the eye. Nikola Tesla had claimed it and been branded as a fool. But his mind's ultimate invention and ultimate controversy had been flashing violently on screens less than twenty feet from Henry less than three minutes ago. Memories, the mind's ultimate secret, cascading across the last membrane of the eye in the final moment of crisis.

"Mr. Patterson," Henry's voice was hoarse, "how many are left?"

Tom delicately rotated the joystick in his right hand. Henry squeezed his eyes together. He had never been a religious man but he found himself praying to some unknown entity that the woman carrying his grandson was alive. Months, he thought, no YEARS. This was the flight that meant salvation for what was left of the Dharma Initiative. A plane full of evidence. A plane full of descendants. Descendants of Hanso's experiments, Hanso's success.

Henry waited anxiously as Tom reported the survivors to him. A few miles away a woman suddenly found herself struggling to breathe as she treaded water next to a half submerged airplane tail. A man who had been waiting with an automatic weapon received a message to leave his comrades and make for the beach. He didn't understand what was going on.

"We have to change our plans, Goodwin. The tail wasn't retrievable."

Back inside the underwater station Henry felt as if he were holding a sand castle together with his hands.

* * * ** * *
How Did it Come to This...

Gerald wiped his mouth clean then started to cough violently again. He opened the mirrored cover to his medicine cabinet. After forcing down a few swallows of Dharma cough syrup his chest settled. He looked up at the mirror, examing the heavy lines and sad eyes that stared back at him.

It's a curious feeling, knowing you are dying. Of course you fear it. Even the pope fears death. But there's a feeling of curiosity, a sense of the unknown. What is there after you shuffle off this mortal coil. Many men feel desperation in these last months. They find themselves wishing they had more time to accomplish the things they never attempted. Not Gerald DeGroot.

Gerald heard Henry bark something at the men down the corridor. This was the endgame, he thought. The omega. As he placed the cough syrup back inside the cabinet he caught a glimpse of the Dharma logo. He thought back to his wife, how Karen had fashioned their symbol out of her love for East-Asian culture and how he had agreed out of his love for her. Memories flashed through his head: their early years at Michigan, doctoral defenses, and...Hanso. The picture of the old man sitting comfortably in his office seared into Gerald's brain. How he had promised them as much money as they could dream of. How he had found the perfect island for their work. And then how he knew of Enzo Valenzetti.

It seemed like a match made in heaven. Karen and her research in social psychology. Gerald and his research with electromagnetism. Finally there was Alvar Hanso, a changed man who wanted to save the world and had more money than god. The cherry on the cake: they all believed in Enzo Valenzetti's apocalyptic countdown and they all knew there wasn't much time left.

Gerald slammed his fist onto the chair's armrest. So naive, he scolded himself, so gullible. This is where their dreams of a utopian society had landed him, the epitome of dystopia. And now he was on the razor's edge. An old man who's dying wish was to save the world. Not because he was a benevolent saint, no he wasn't that altruistic. This was a duty born of less noble means. This was a burden of guilt.

The noise in the control room stirred Gerald. Not the noise per say, but rather the lack there of. At a time like this he had expected to hear cheers or at least sounds of activity. Instead his ears were greeted with a steely silence echoing through the corridors.

The dull thunk of Gerald's cane on the floor made Henry turn as he entered the control center. The look on Henry's face was anything but satisfying.

"We had complications, Gerald."

"So I gathered," Gerald was in no mood for euphemisms. "How many are dead?"

"There are forty or so survivors that we've counted this far." Henry responded.

"I don't care about survivors, Henry. How many of the ones we need?"

"Most of them are still alive. Troup is dead." Henry averted his eyes for a moment as he spoke.

Gerald shook his head. Gary Troup wasn't a lynchpin but he wasn't a pawn either. He had valuable information about Hanso, Mittlewerk and their not too humanitarian projects.

"Foreseeable." It was the first word that came to his head although Gerald didn't entire agree with himself. "After all, these were the ones Hanso wanted dead. Let us not forget that this was a flying casket."

There was a murmur of agreement around the room. Gerald turned to leave.

"Continue as planned, Mr. Gale."

Gerald checked his watch as he traversed the hatch doorway. He almost chuckled at himself taking in the futility of his action. Time didn't matter anymore, they had no time.

* * * * * * * *
And All the King's Men...


Henry let out the breath he had been holding in his chest ever since DeGroot turned and left the control room. If it was possible to survive a hundred foot fall onto concrete, Henry felt like that. As he focused back on the monitor above Tom's head he realized every head in the room was focused intently on him. For a moment he thought, carefully organizing his words as he always did.

"Well," he began, "It's time to do what we do best."

Tom smiled, heads turned back to their work stations and the sound of keystrokes furiously lit up the metal cavern. Henry rose from his chair, now noticing that he had been sweating rather profusely for the last fifteen minutes. He took a few paces forward and placed a hand on Tom's shoulder. He looked around to make sure no one was listening and asked the question that had secretly been on his mind since he saw the tail section snap off like a boulder on a diving board.

"Is Sheppard's son alive?"

"He's not in the plane," Tom replied his attention still on the multiple monitors.

Henry felt a bulge materialize in his throat. This is not what he needed to be hearing. This was not the sort of thank you they needed to give Christian Sheppard. Henry felt like he had just broken his mother's family necklace and couldn't bring himself to tell her.

"Tell the team by the Swan to fan out across the island. If there's so much as a finger nail I want it," Henry tried to control his frenetic tone but found it difficult, even for him.

Christian Sheppard was somewhere on the island, deep inside the interior, wearing a business suit and most likely listening to Chopin. Henry couldn't help but smile at the man's devious brilliance. The last time he had seen Christian in person had been almost ten years ago now. By that time he was an accomplished surgeon and Henry first bumped into him while running parapsychology experiments with Macaque monkeys. The man's mind was amazing but every great man has one great flaw. Christian would have taken a bullet for a good handle of Johnny Walker.

That was when they had both been working for Hanso, when everybody was content and everything was roses. It was before Mr. Hanso decided parapsychology was a weapon. Before Zoology turned into training attack animals. Before magnetism turned into weaponized EMP. The battle lines were drawn early, everyone chose sides whether they liked it or not. Christian was always a good man, but he had dedicated his life to science and not the hypocratic oath.

It was only after the incident, the rebellion; after Christian discovered he had a son that he started to change. Never on the outside, he was on Hanso's board. That was a position that provided certain amenities that Christian couldn't bear to part with. He left the island's facilities and took his son back to the real world where he could raise him like a normal boy. From that point on he had been an informant. Now he was a bonified double agent, passing information straight from Mittlewerk's mouth to DeGroot's ears.

It was how they found out about this plane, how Christian found out they were going to kill his son. From Hanso's point of view it was simple: either we kill your son or we kill both of you. From Christian's point of view it was a little more convoluted but twice as brilliant: fake his own death to keep Hanso happy but keep his son alive by using the Initiative.

Now Henry was faced with the task of telling a man who risked it all that he had in fact, lost it all. Mrs. Klugh's kindly face reappeared in the monitor above his right ear.

"We found him, Henry," she paused, almost for dramatic effect. "He's cut up but alive, miracle really."

Henry felt the relief flood over him like a warm blanket. "I don't believe in miracles. It's karma Mrs. Klugh. It's fate."

It was around this time that a man came running onto the beach, pausing for a second as he stared at a massive Boeing tail sticking out of the water like a grotesque whale. It was also around this time that Gerald DeGroot realized he had a liability. A loose end that had to be tied.

* * * * * * * *
An Apple a Day...


Gerald sat in his quarters gingerly holding a picture of his wife. They were in front of the first station's door, arms around each other. Gerald had a pickaxe in his other hand, not that he used it but he saw it on the ground and thought he looked more official with it. Karen had laughed at him.

A comforting murmur of activity came from the corridor. As Gerald put the picture frame back on his desk he felt a clutching pain in his side. Instinctively curling up, he realized that in the excitement of the day he had forgotten to take his treatment. Or vaccine as some call it, he thought with a chuckle. The laugh was brief, it made the pain worse. He reached into the cabinet, placed a capsule into the pneumatic injector and placed the cold steel device to his bicep. Hardly a vaccine, more like delaying the inevitable.

Gerald put the injector back inside the cabinet and shut its mirror door. As the mirror swung it brought into view the only other picture on his cluttered desk. He picked it up with decisively less care than the first photograph. The picture had a large crack running through it. Gerald hadn't bothered to fix it or throw it away, it was a reminder. The photo had a similar setting, three people cheerfully saying "Cheese!" in front of a large metal door in the middle of the jungle. Gerald Degroot, Karen DeGroot and Alvar Hanso.

His blood stared to warm his skin uncomfortably as Gerald tightened his grip on the frame. The pain in his side subsided, it was replaced by a mix of loathing and remorse. Karen hadn't survived the illness. Everyone had gotten sick after the rebellion, after they force-fed the magnet too much power. Gerald had been fortunate enough that Henry came back and pulled him ad his useless legs from the Swan. Karen had been subject to the magnetic radiation much longer than he. Within two days she was exhibiting the symptoms at a far accelerated rate than anyone of the other Initiative rebels. Fever followed by delusions followed shortly by impeded movement. Followed all too slowly by her death.

It had only been a few months before that when Gerald had discovered why it was that the Hanso scientists were so interested in the electromagnetism. Gerald's research had been primary directed at cloaking technologies until that point. His interests and his suspicions were roused when one of Hanso's top physicists had asked Gerald about EMP properties of his cloaking device.

"Well, there's always a low level of radiation but it's hardly enough to worry about," Gerald had said with a hearty laugh.

The scientist shuffled then chuckled awkwardly, "I'm not worried about any radiation. I'm uhh, actually starting a new project on directionalized EMP and uhh...I was hoping I could take a look at your data."

"Well sure you can but that's nothing new...Trent," Gerald finished as he glanced at the man's nametag.

"Oh of course not, I mean, it's natural." The man replied.

"Well, yes," Gerald paused, "for nuclear explosions it's natural I guess. What exactly are you planning to use for a trigger?"

"Oh, it's nothing," the man's face was noticeably twitching. "Are these your notes?"

He hadn't waited for a response as he picked up Gerald's notebook and fled the room with what sounded like a 'good-bye'.

Now Gerald was here, fully aware of what the man had been planning, wishing that he had been more proactive, wishing he had trusted his instincts instead of cringing before the almighty Hanso Foundation. I'm so sorry, Karen. The EMP device the man devised was more diabolical than anything on record. It was a series of theoretical postulates come to life, just like Gerald's cloaking disk. Trent, the physicist, and his team had used a highly unstable Plutonium by-product with an extremely long half-life as a catalyst. Something that Gerald was shocked that the Widmore sponsors had allowed. The compound was housed in the first bunker to be completed, the Swan. There it was fused with the area of highest geothermal and magnetic anomaly.

At first Gerald kept his concerns to himself, that was until the first station inhabitants started turning up with various forms of cancer. Hanso had to constantly cycle men into and out of the hatch in order to keep enough healthy bodies watching over his experiment. It wasn't entirely troubling that the men started showing up with kidney, prostate and testicular cancer. What disturbed Gerald was the rate at which it was metastasizing. Malignant didn't come close to describing the spread of the cancer. It was as if Ebola had taken on a cancerous form.

In normal cells, there is a cap called a 'telomere' on every strand of DNA. Every time that cell divides, the telomeres on each strand divide as well, shortening over the course of the cell's life. Eventually the telomere disappears and the cell then dies. It's a process fundamental to live.

However, in a cancerous cell the telomere on each DNA strand fails to divide when the rest of the cell divides. This means the cell never goes through the natural process of apoptosis, in effect, the cell never dies. This is what causes the tell-tale 'lumps' women find on their breasts and men find on their testicles.

These cancers were different. Not just because of the rate of their spread but also because of the telomeres which Gerald and his team assayed. The telomeres of course failed to divide with every doubling of the entire cell. However, in these patients, the telomeres actually lengthened, prompting the cell to divide faster and faster with each successive division. Gerald was appalled.

Sitting in his office, clutching the photograph, he looked at Hanso's smirking face. The first man to weaponize cancer. And it wasn't only the cancer, Gerald realized the true terrible genius of it when the men had to be treated for severe psychosis as well. They started turning up by the dozen suffering from hallucinations, Parkinson's-esque tremors, signs of schizophrenia, any and all neurological disorder under the sun. Gerald had seen symptoms similar to these when he was working at Michigan, but they were never to such extremes. It was a sacrifice that had to be made when working around powerful magnets. Magnetic radiation functioned at a wavelength long enough to permeate the skull freely, but short enough to damage relays between neurons to a substantial degree.

Gerald had puzzled for endless hours over why Hanso had created such a menace only to come to the realization that the man must have a cure, or at the very least a treatment. Luckily for Gerald, and even more so for the victimized men, Dharma scientists were able to smuggle out small samples of the treatment for testing and administration. They discovered after tests on the suffering men that the compound did in fact act as a vaccine if administered before the man came in contact with the magnet. However, it only slowed the cancer's spread after a man was 'infected'. As much as Gerald hated the term infected it stuck because the cancer was such a mystery for so long.

Hanso hadn't only poisoned his own men, he had lied to them while doing it. The men were informed that entering a series of 6 numbers would discharge the electromagnet in safe, subtle amounts. Entering the numbers in fact did nothing, allowing the radiation to go unchecked. Before Gerald had tried to destroy the magnet so many years before he had reprogrammed the computer with Henry's help so that the numbers' purpose was actually accomplished.

Gerald put the photograph back on top of his cedar desk. He tenderly grasped his cane and pulled himself to his feet. He had things to do and bad memories were the last thing to get in his way.

While Gerald DeGroot made his way painfully to the control room, Henry was being informed of a complication.

Tom Patterson turned around abruptly in his chair.

"Henry, one of them is awake."

"Are you sure?" Henry asked, praying Tom wasn't.

Tom pointed to his monitor screen which sufficed as an answer. A young woman's eyes were blinking into the monitor was she staggered to her feet.

Out on the beach Kate Austen recoiled in fear as she stared into a floating cloud of black smoke.

* * * * * * * *
Who's Afraid of the Big Black Smoke?...


As the brown haired woman stood fear-stricken, Henry couldn't help but stare back, feeling a similar emotion creeping up his limbs.

"Umm, Gale?" Tom asked from his seat. "Should I knock her out?"

The woman started to stagger backwards, always keeping her attention on the swarm of floating smoke. She tripped over a man's leg and fell backwards, onto the roof of the fuselage which was now the floor. As she glanced and saw what she had tripped over, the woman started to hyperventilate. She turned her eyes quickly back to the nanoswarm and started to cry uncontrollably.

"Do it," Henry said with hesitation. "She hasn't left us any other choice."

Henry watched the screen but heard Tom enter a sequence into his keyboard. As he watched the woman suddenly stopped crying, she became rigid, seizured for a brief moment and then fell back to the metal floor. Watching her fall, Henry imagined what had just happened on the beach in more scientific terms. Initiative terms.

Tom's computer signal had triggered a large cascade of energy from the carbon graphite molecules of the swarm. They released a relatively massive amount of energy which causes the polarization of many organic compound. Importantly in this case, calcium; the molecule which is necessary to any neuron to fire. With more than 90% of the calcium molecules in her body momentarily polarized, the woman's neurons stopped dead in their tracks. She went rigid.

As the molecules gradually depolarized, gaining their natural charge back, they set off a chain reaction of neuronal signaling throughout her body and brain. The result of which was a massive, albeit short-lived, grand-mal seizure. Now the end result, her brain having endured a sudden electrical shockwave shut down, not all unlike the circuit breaker in a home shutting down to avoid a fire. She fell onto her back, her open eyes still staring upwards.

Henry hadn't wanted it to come to this. It was always risky. The patient could seizure uncontrollably, the brain could effectively be fried or the patient could develop later complications from the massive electrical and magnetic shock. Henry wiped his brow, hoping the woman would survive but feeling confident that he had made the right decision.

Henry looked down at Tom. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Tom stirred, apparently very focused on the woman's limp body. He entered several codes into the computer and positioned the nanoswarm so it was looking directly into the woman's eyes. Fortunate, Henry thought. It was a lucky turn in a day otherwise devoid of them.

"You know what to do," Henry said looking around the room at men and women he had spent years working with. Henry planted himself back in his black, leather armchair and squeezed his brow between his fingers. The image of the woman's short seizure and then fall were fresh in his head. They conjured up bad memories from a happy time.

When Henry shut his eyes he saw the old hallways of the Dharma/Hanso headquarters. Polished white linoleum floors and spotless lab coats. He saw Tom, then about forty pounds lighter, inside their shared laboratory. As Henry entered Tom looked up from his notes with an eager smile.

"So today's the day, huh?"

Henry smiled back, beaming. "Yup, it's finally time to use one of the big boys."

Henry took a seat at a computer console in the front left corner of the glass enclosed laboratory room. Tom took a seat opposite him. In between them was an apparatus the size of a conference table that could really only be described as a 'ray gun', even by the scientists who created it. Inside the cylindrical tube were billions of carbon graphite molecules bouncing around within a magnetized field with enough force to turn a sheet of steel into shavings. In front of this monstrous device was an unwitty orangutan, around 16 years old and seemingly enjoying his restraints. His eyes were being held open by metal forceps.

"They gave us Joop," Tom said puffing out his chest.

Henry didn't even need to look at the monkey again, "Tom, sometimes it baffles me how you got in here."

Tom furrowed his brow, "But the guy who dropped him off--"

"Lied through his teeth. Do you know how old Joop is?"

"That son-of-a-b*tch," Tom muttered as he turned back to his computer screen. Henry chuckled, he enjoyed having Tom for a partner even if his intelligence was suspect from time to time. Henry's doctorate was in experimental psychology, Tom's masters was in physics. It definitely showed who went to school for two more years.

"I'm ready when you are," Tom said, his voice still assertive.

"Alright, let's fire it up. You've got the database ready?"

"Yes, sir, I have the database ready, sir," Tom said in his best sarcasm.

Henry laughed, "Joop...he's around ninety-five, give or take. Just so you know."

Tom gave him a scowl then began typing. Henry glanced one last time at their oblivious subject.

The experiment rode on a simple enough premise. Memory formation and storage is controlled by a string of brain organs known as the limbic system, it consists of the hippocampus, hypothalamus and the amygdale to name a few. It's like a whirlpool where new memories are thrown in like rocks. If they are important, they sink to the bottom, into stored memory. If the memory is irrelevant then the rock is thrown back out.

Many scientists have theorized and argued that when the brain takes a memory from storage into usage, the image is involuntarily broadcast to the eye. Hence the term "Mind's Eye". One such scientist was Nikola Tesla. Henry and Tom were now sitting less than three feet away from his most controversial and most improbable creation.

That is where the simplicities end, Henry thought with a smug look. When the machine was activated, images from Tom's database of pictures and videos would be projected into the nanoswarm of carbon graphite molecules. As they were reflected from molecule to molecule they would mix into almost a stream of consciousness.

At the same time, images from the Orangutan's memory which were being reflected on his retina were captured and projected into the nanoswarm as well. The effect was that the images projected from Tom's database melded with images from the Orangutan's memory and were propelled into the primates eye. From there they traveled through the optic nerve and then back into the limbic system for storage.

As the machine started to drone, Henry turned anxiously to the orangutan. The goal of the experiment was to make the subject believe his mother was infact his mate. To many scientists who heard about the project it sounded disgusting but the goal was not to have the two mate, the goal was to have the son protect his mother; a behavior rare in orangutan's.

The orangutan struggled at first then sat back as if mesmerized by the greatest movie in the world. The process took ten minutes, afterwards the primate was placed back in his enclosure and Tom and Henry shared some celebratory drinks. The celebration was short lived. Four days after the experiment, the orangutan killed his mother.

Tom and Henry had spent weeks trying to figure out where they had gone wrong. They captured images from the orangutan's retinal reflection and found interesting anomalies with the implanted memories. It appeared that implanted memories were treated similarly to donated organs. The body either accepted or rejected them. In the orangutan's case, images of his mother had been rejected but not flat out. They were altered as if the brain couldn't decide which was right and which was wrong. Instead of outright destroying the memories the orang's limbic system had marked them with bizarre impossibilities.

For instance, several images of his mother showed that she had penis. Henry and Tom came to the conclusion that the brain's altered memories of the orang's mother had caused him such confusion that he destroyed the object of his frustration. A tragic reversal of fortune.

Now, back in the cold control room, Henry watched as memories of the woman's encounter with the black smoke were combined with images of an empty plane and sandy beach. He knew it wouldn't work completely but it was a quick fix. This woman might have bizarre anomalies in her memory; stop signs might say "POTS", friends she had known for years might turn on her in an instance or any other number of occurrences might be altered and flexed against reality.

"Jesus, she's a mess," Tom said softly.

He was right and Henry knew it. The woman's memories were a flood of incoherence. Hospital rooms, farm houses, a car crash; her mind was racing as she lay there unconscious.

"Looks like she had a hell of a father figure," Henry muttered as he saw an old man tearing clothes off from somewhere behind the screen.

"Clean her up, we've got other matters to deal with."

Henry sank into his chair, contemplating their next move. The pieces were all present, now the only problem was putting the puzzle together.

* * * * * * * *
Who Watches the Watchmen...

Gerald DeGroot was no stranger to pain of any and every variety. He had lost his wife in an excruciating manner, was himself slowly dying of the same incurable disease and had watched his lifelong dream turned on it's head, all in the span of a little more than a decade. Mankind is coming to an end one way or another. It was either going to be natural, he thought, or it was going to be at the hands of Alvar Hanso.

It felt as if it were a lifetime ago when he and Karen had been celebrating the birth of their dream. A society of intellectuals that would be a beacon of light in a world of despair eating itself from within. Valenzetti believed that mankind's tenure on this Earth was finite and he was right. Nothing lasts forever, nothing. Even the most basic forms of life prokaryotes, simple single celled organisms that didn't even have a nucleus to store their DNA were on the way out. At one point in time they had dominated, the sole for of existence on the planet. Now they were banished to the far corners of the Earth; either in the most inhabitable of environments or absorbed into higher forms of life. Many people fail to realize that the mitochondria that power their cells were prokaryotes engulfed by larger eukaryotes millennia ago. Big fish eats the little fish, bigger fish eats the big fish.

The Chinese dynastic cycle predicts that every empire will eventually fall in the wake of another. Or, more likely, in the wake of disaster. Today there are eight nations with the capability to launch inter-continental ballistic missiles or ICBM's for short. They call themselves the Group of Eight and keep their tenuous relations afloat by holding strained meetings once a year. Then there are North Korea, Pakistan and India all with the capability to turn their respective regions into massive graveyards. Charred vestiges of once proud cultures. Not too far behind them are another handful of countries, headed by Iran, who will soon possess the ultimate power. The United States singularly possesses the means by which to burn every inch of the Earth's soil, approximately three times over.

The end of mankind had been predicted before. The Mayan calendar, a marvel of ancient times, supposedly predicted it would end around the turn of the second millennium. Valenzetti was fortunate enough to see what would be the means to man's end. His equation was correct, and the time of man was ticking away, one hour at a time.

If there was one man who was poised to profit from the end of the known world it was a man like Alvar Hanso. Cunning and charismatic, he has already become rich beyond his wildest dreams from the second world war. Even rich men desire something more. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, ne'er had truer words been spoken.

So Hanso had made his plans. Used mathematical forecasting to validate Valenzetti's equation and tweak it slightly. He had established a phenomenal electromagnetic research department whose unspoken and unknown goal was to create the weapons and means of defense that would allow Hanso to trump any known military. And then the icing on the cake, a life extension program. Every evil genius is still a genius and as deranged as he might be, Hanso was certainly going to be around to see his plans come to fruition.

Even Hanso didn't have enough money to pull the components of his final vision together. So he recruited the mighty Widmore Corporation and Paik Heavy Metal for various construction expenses. Then there was the problem of the United States government, the world's watchdog. It didn't turn out to be much of a problem. Set up a dummy island with similar structures while bringing the bulk of materials and personnel to his true base of operations. Then provide the US with watered down EMP devices that their own scientists giggled over like children at their first Christmas. It's easy to keep something secret when no one can see it.

Gerald leaned back in his chair, gazing forlorn at the ceiling. And I'm here, privy to every speck of information that could bring Hanso to his knees yet unable to share an ounce. For years now Gerald had toiled over how to stop Hanso before he achieved his goals and every time he had to pause and appreciate the sheer brilliance of Hanso's meticulous planning. Many scientists are interested in the money but they aren't the true geniuses. It's the ones who go about their work for the greater good that really make a difference. How better to recruit these virtuoso's than to give them exactly what they wanted: a society invisible to the rest of the world where these great minds could go about saving the very people who were unaware of their existence.

It's a long fall from the top. Gerald snorted out a quick laugh. So odd how complete desperation seems humorous in it's final hours. They were on the cusp of oblivion. Looking down into the bottomless pit and taunting it.

Somewhere on the island were almost two dozen people who would unwittingly help bring an end to Hanso's threat. If their predictions were right, at least a handful had the cure to the same illness that was killing Gerald now coursing through their veins. Children fertilized by various means for various purposes all subject to the magnetic radiation that would kill most normal men. The human immune system is a fascinating chain of protection. For some it can become a Trojan Horse when infected with HIV, for others it becomes a steel wall against the very same virus. Many of the children on the island had died, others had luckily found their bodies adaptable and resilient enough to survive the radiation. They were one of a shrinking number of hopes for mankind in its waning hours.

Without them Hanso's plans would be that much easier to accomplish. It was the ease with which the pieces could fall into place was the scariest part. Fire one missile at the US, another into Russia, and a final one into Western Europe. Mutually assured destruction. Let the world tear itself apart while a small island sat undetected and anonymous.

If the world was going to destroy itself anyway, why not expediate the process and profit in the meantime. There was a contingency for every complication. 'Educational Outreach' to find the brightest young minds and save them from the nuclear holocaust. A magnetic shield against radiation and the resulting ozone depletion. 'Mental Health Appeal' to study the effects to the magnetic radiation and design treatments. It wouldn't be fitting for members of Hanso's utopia to become hopeless schizophrenics.

Even if the world grew wise to Hanso's plan it would still be near impossible to stop him. Reagan's Star Wars program looked like a busted umbrella next to massive electromagnetic field that Hanso could direct at will. Fry the circuits of incoming planes, ships, or missiles. Once those instruments are out of play one might find it rather difficult to reach an island by any other means.

It was true, during his time in WWII Hanso had seen the ill of his ways but more importantly he had seen the ills of the rest of the world. In his mind they were much more malicious. So he decided to create a society devoid of disease and violence where the world's most talented individuals could better themselves. To him any means justified that sparkling end. To Gerald and the rest of the Dharma initiative it did not.

So it fell down to him. Their time was short and Gerald knew it wouldn't be easy. They couldn't just grab these survivors from the beach and take their blood. Studying heuristics for a large part of his life he knew that people didn't respond kindly to abduction. The last thing they needed was someone becoming violent. Also, for all Gerald knew, Christian Sheppard had alerted Hanso to the Initiatives plans with the plane. There could be armed Hanso spies waiting for the DI to show themselves.

So they had to play their game slowly and carefully. Recruit those they could and bide the little time they had left. Gerald placed his head in his hands and heaved a long breath from his weak lungs. Somewhere above him Alvar Hanso and his jet were circling the globe. Ever the scientist, Hanso knew that aging slowed down the closer one got to the speed of light. Even if it were a few more months, Alvar Hanso was the type of man to take every advantage.

Gerald wished he himself had a few more advantages but dashed the thoughts as soon they appeared. I've brought this upon myself. He cast a longing glance at the picture of him and his wife and rose from his chair. The phrase 'you can sleep when you're dead' was especially poignant to Gerald at this time in his life. He wearily grabbed his cane.

* * * * * * * *
s'yhpruM Law...

This is an interesting one, a very interesting one. Henry watched through one of the nanoswarms retinal scanning monitors as it collected images from a bald, middle-aged man lying on the beach. The screen zipped from shot to shot, few-second long videos of the man's memories. Many were images looking down into the man's lap as he pushed along in a wheelchair. Paraplegic, Henry thought with a quizzical look. He wasn't aware anyone of the experimentees were handicapped.

"That one of our guys?" Tom had been watching the same monitor.

"Can't be, he's too old," Henry responded.

"Being crippled ain't gonna help us much."

"That might not be a problem for long," Henry trailed off as he shifted his gaze between two screens.

One was the memories of the bald man, currently showing electrotherapy he had apparently given himself regularly. The other screen showed picture of real-time and was directed up the man's leg. He would seizure every once in a while but that was entirely normal. As with the woman before, cascades of magnetic radiation produced involuntary movements as they triggered neuronal firing. What caught Henry's eye was how the man's toes were seizuring along with the rest of his body. His shoe had fallen off revealing a Golden Toe socked foot, the digits of which were now wiggling about.

As Henry looked back at the monitor of the man's complicated past, it hit him. This man had been using electrodes to stimulate his paralyzed legs ever since his accident, however long ago that had been. It must have been some vain attempt to control the atrophy, to keep his legs looking like a normal person's instead of someone who was permanently bound to the confines of a rolling office chair. This man had anything but come to terms with his condition and it seemed to Henry that his persistence and stubbornness might end up paying off in the end.

Paralysis can be caused a variety of ways but it boils down to a simple missing step. The brain can no longer send signals via neurons to certain peripheral bundles of nerves which innervate certain muscles. Over time this lack of movement causes the muscle tissue to disappear, leaving a withered limb behind. When either recovering from a similar injury or attempting to stop muscle loss, it is common practice to use an electrotherapy device to mimic muscle use on a limb which would otherwise be immobile.

This man had been doing so for years and had built up a static electric charge in his legs. In a normal human being these charges would disperse upon the slightest contraction; causing a fireworks display of involuntary movement. However, the charges in this man's legs had built up slowly over the years, stuck to and imbedded in the membranes of useless muscle fiber and neuron. A surgeon had more than likely attempted to reconnect any torn nerves but had failed to stimulate their bridging.

Now, as Henry watched slyly, the electric charge in the man's legs was being focused by the magnetic field produced by the nanoswarm. Neurons were firing where they hadn't for years. Membranes between neurons in the man's lumbar spine were fusing together, past the limits of modern science, past the limits of the surgeon who fruitlessly must have once tried.

"He will be an asset later," Henry said to himself.

"What?" Tom had overheard his brief monologue.

"I have a feeling this man will be an ally, knowingly or oblivious," Henry restated with a smile. "After all, it's not everyday you get to see a miracle."

Through several other monitors Henry saw survivors of the plane crash starting to rouse. Arms started to feebly grasp at the sand while legs struggled blindly to find their footing.

"We've run out of time," Henry said, though devoid of any frustration.

There are two types of people, he thought, those who plan...and those who plan for the unexpected. Henry was the later. He had survived this long by living on contingencies and he wasn't about to stop.

"Is Ethan ready?" Henry asked the woman still waiting patiently in the monitor above Tom's head.

"Yes, should I tell him it's time?" Mrs. Klugh had a flare for answering questions with questions.

"It certainly appears that way," Henry looked around the control room. "Alright, everyone go get some rest, it's been a long day."

As the control room started to empty, Henry put a hand on Tom's shoulder.

"I need you back here tonight. We need to scare some sense into these people, keep them on the beach where we can keep a better eye on them."

Tom nodded his agreement and rose from his seat. He stretched his arms skyward and a resounding crack came from his lower back. Suddenly, a look of great awareness came over his face and he froze.

"Henry, I was just thinking," Tom started, "If this was a Hanso flight, who was flying it?"

"Well obviously a Hanso pilot," Henry was tired.

"He's got a radio, what's to stop him from letting them know what we did?"

"Tom, last time I checked dead men can't use radios. What's your point?" asked Henry with his last nerve.

"My point?" Tom responded, baffled why Henry couldn't see his concern. "Where's the cockpit? That's my point."

Henry lowered his eyes slowly, replaying the chaotic events of the day in his head. He had been too focused other places to even notice that he was looking directly through the fuselage. The cockpit wasn't crushed as he had assumed. He couldn't find an answer for Tom's query.

"That's a very good question, Mr. Patterson."

Gerald DeGroot appeared in the steel doorway. His expression was drained of any emotion. All that remained was an unfeeling determination.

"The pilot is in the cockpit. The cockpit is somewhere to be found," DeGroot paused in thought, "The survivors will lead us there, I'm sure of it."

With that he turned to leave. Tom shouted the first words into his mind.

"And then what?"

DeGroot stopped, one foot over the threshold. He gave a short laugh but when he turned his face showed no signs of amusement.

"Well, then we kill the pilot. What else would we do Mr. Patterson?"

No answer came. Gerald DeGroot nodded and left, hobbling on his cane. Henry just wanted to go to sleep. The realization wasn't kind enough to dawn slowly; it hit him in the face like a dead fish. First we were scientists, then we were rebels...now we're murderers.

* * * * * * * *

Eko_man: That's it for now! Can't wait until part 10. PKT, I hope you didn't mind my compiling all the parts together as one for more easy reading?

[PKTjellis]

Ha not at all Eko, I think it's a good idea. One request though...would you mind making the section titles bold? Otherwise, thanks a lot.

p.s. How come the italicized stuff shows up as normal?
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LOST series...explains the show from the Other's POV in story form
* * * * * * * * * http://www.4815162342.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23717
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[Eko_man]

At first I had cut and pasted them all into an email on Outlook for my sister and friend to read because they would love it, but don't go on this site. I made the titles bold and italics AND underlined, but when I copied it and pasted it here, they weren't. I'm not sure why. But I made the titles bold again. And the spelling is corrected thanks to Outlook. This is good stuff!!!

[PKTjellis]

I'm so selfish w/ this bump...but it's better than some of the trash we've been getting lately; I'm not gonna point any fingers...*points at several people*

Newbies...enjoy
_________________
LOST series...explains the show from the Other's POV in story form
* * * * * * * * * http://www.4815162342.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23717
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[T-minus108]

great idea Eko_man! Now Ill just print it off and read it.

[Eko_man]

Can't wait for part 10!!!
Will there be a part 10?

[St4veb0l]

Thanks nice all in one place.
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[PKTjellis]

[lostnewbie]

i was tracking down all the chapters and i finally noticed this. but great stuff, is there a chapter 10, or 11 or..
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hey everyone its just reality

[lostnorman]

[lostnorman]

[PKTjellis]

Haha, I forgot about how you guys over the pond don't have episodes until a few weeks after us. We just started S3 (i'm sure u know). I'm gonna watch this first pod of 6 episodes, see where it leaves my stories and build from there.

Have fun with the new season, brotha.
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LOST series...explains the show from the Other's POV in story form
* * * * * * * * * http://www.4815162342.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23717
* * * * * * * * *

[St4veb0l]

cool look fwd to reading them.
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