Season 4 Secret Clue 5

Welcome back to the LOST Secret Clue, where we dig deeper to find the clues and secrets you might've missed to fuel your theories! This week's episode, "The Constant", was, in a word, AWESOME. Surely your head is hurting after the massive amount of time-travel, science talk and confusion... which is why we're here to help! Strap on your thinking caps friends - we're going deep. Time-travelling professors, nosebleeds, auctioned history, a calendar and more than one rat...

Let's start with the simpler stuff before we get bogged down with time-travel. Did you notice how many links to previous Lost moments were established in the auction scene? It seems that whenever Lost involves itself with big money, Charles Widmore can't be far behind and, sure enough, he was there to win. What was he bidding on? A ledger written by the first-mate of the Black Rock, the ship wrecked in the middle of the island! Even cooler was the shout-out to the ledger's current owner, Tovard Hanso, who must be related to Alvar Hanso, head of the Hanso Foundation and Magnus Hanso, the owner of the Black Rock! However, the most important piece of information from the scene was the fact that the contents have never been viewed by anyone outside the Hanso family... Island locations within, perhaps? Widmore is far more connected than anyone could've guessed. Considering these events took place in 1996, a good 5 years before Desmond set out on Widmore's yatch race, could Widmore not only be looking for the island but have manipulated Desmond towards going there in order to use Desmond to find it for himself?

The numbers were back in full force this week for anyone watching close enough. Penny's address - 423 Cheyne Walk. 1996 jumping to 2004? 8 years. How many times did Des jump? 8. The settings Daniel gave Des? 2.342, the same lot number as the Black Rock ledger. Numbers were key in this episode, and not just the six we've come to know and love/fear.

Did you notice the bearing Daniel gave to Frank as the safe course for leaving the island? It was 305 degrees, the same bearing revealed to Locke on Eko's Jesus stick "by the light". This is not, however, the same bearing Ben gave to Michael so that he and Walt could leave the island... Does Ben perhaps know of a way off the island that is safer? Could he have sent them on the same path used by the sub to come and go from the island, rather than the far more dangerous method via air? The storm Frank had to fly into seems to be hardly that; considering it appears to be in a fixed position that Daniel's note led them straight to, it looks more like it could be a wormhole. Alright, enough mucking about - things are about to get technical.

For a few seasons, we've been confused as to where the island actually is. What if we were asking the wrong question the whole time - not where, but when? To determine the location of places in our world, using the five senses available to us, we are only able to picture in three dimensions; length, breadth and depth. Say you're meeting a friend on the second storey of the corner of 5th and 10th, no problems there. Add a meeting time of 11am and the problems begin - we know what this added dimension means to the equation and adapt to it, however, we have no actual way of determining and measuring this in our minds, nor visualizing it. We know it exists yet, to us, it isn't there. Imagine then if a place existed anchored on the fourth differential in the equation rather than the other three; you'd need a pretty special way of travelling to and fro, especially when you learn what it can do to the mind. A wormhole needs a massive amount of energy to stay open, something that a mass of electromagnetism could certainly supply. If the properties of the energy remained the same and was regularly discharged, there would be little to worry about, but sending another highly-charged mass through would certainly cause issues...

Like someone becoming unstuck in time. Before we jump into Desmond's condition, I want to point out that we may have just found the fabled Sickness. Rousseau's people didn't start acting crazy during their scientific mission; they went crazy once they made it to the island. Minkowski wasn't crazy while working with the highly charged communications gear on the freighter; it wasn't until he and Brandon began heading towards the island. It would seem that Daniel's experiment holds the key - get exposed to radiation and electromagnetism, try to get on (or off) the island and BAM, you're "crazy". This would also explain the vaccine - Dharma knew the effect working on the Swan station would have on the men inside so, to counter-act becoming unstuck in time, they routinely pumped themselves with a vaccine that would keep them anchored; they couldn't have their men dropping dead and leaving the button unattended. This would also explain the need to have everyone catatonic when coming or going from the sub, as you can't have your people skipping through time. Finally, could this also explain poor Leonard, the man who first shared the numbers with Hurley in the institution. Imagine being in a time-loop so short your only memories were 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42...

Daniel appears to be suffering from some serious problems, not unlike but completely opposite to Desmond. Whereas Desmond had the necessary constant - his heart's true love - to keep him anchored, he lacked the scientific knowledge to understand and overcome what was happening to him. The very fact that Daniel has been conducting his experiments without head protection verifies the sneaky suspicion we've had that something isn't quite right with him, however, he seems to have overcome the desperate need for a constant... by being obsessed with his work to the point of constructing his reality around it in an almost autistic fashion. 2004 Daniel has no memory of meeting Desmond in 1996 yet they clearly had; the fact that the past and future cannot be changed through time-travel has been hammered home to us time and again. Has Daniel wiped certain events from his mind? Or could it be that extended and repetitive exposure to the radiation and electromagnetism has unsettled his consciousness long ago, leading him to have a far stronger mastery of his flashes and travels? Will Daniel's memory return, now that he has made contact with his constant, and we'll actually see the improvements Charlotte was talking about while testing him with the cards last week?

I'd like to leave you with one thought connecting Daniel's experiment to the Oceanic Six. If exposure to radiation or electromagnetism before leaving the island can cause "some side-effects", the Oceanic Six members we've met so far fall into the "safe" category. Think about it - where were Kate, Jack and Hurley when the hatch imploded? Tied up on a dock on the far side of the island. Sayid was on a yatch, searching for their signal fire. Could this very well be the key to why some of the survivors got off the island while others didn't? Could it be they now can't?