In working out a theory of some possible ramifications of the Incident over at Bigmouth's site I let my propensity to produce overlong comments go daffy. So, here's a repost of that comment in a venue that requires a wee bit less scrolling to get through. The thread started talking about possible causes of the pregnancy sickness, which led Darkprose to comment: "Indeed, the whole reason the Swan site was there [when Locke found it in S1. --ab42] was because of the Incident, which was the bomb being detonated. When Juliet got the Island to work with the Others, she had already detonated the bomb decades ago. Whatever happened, happened."
I kind of haven't explicitly thought through the time travel mechanics of the Incident, but darkprose's proposed scenario motivated me to do so. Here's me doing the blog-commenting equivalent of thinking out loud:
You're proposing that Miles was right in season 5 when he warned the others that Jack's H-bomb detonation plan may end up causing the very incident he's seeking to prevent.
The corollary is that Faraday was, tragically, wrong. Forgive me for quoting at length, but here's Faraday's speech to Jack in 'The Variable':
"In about four hours, the DHARMA folks at the swan work site--they're gonna--gonna drill into the ground and accidentally tap into a massive pocket of energy. The result of the release of this energy would be catastrophic. So in order to contain it, they're gonna have to cement the entire area in, like Chernobyl. And this containment--the place they built over it--I believe you called it "the Hatch." The Swan hatch? Because of this one accident, these people are gonna spend the next 20 years keeping that energy at bay... by pressing a button... a button that your friend Desmond will one day fail to push, and that will cause your plane--Oceanic 815--to crash on this island. And because your plane crashed, a freighter will be sent to this Island--a freighter I was on and Charlotte was on and so forth. This entire chain of events--it's gonna start happening this afternoon. But... we can change that. I studied relativistic physics my entire life. One thing emerged over and over--can't change the past. Can't do it. Whatever happened, happened. All right? But then I finally realized... I had been spending so much time focused on the constants, I forgot about the variables. Do you know what the variables in these equations are, Jack?"
So...you're saying Faraday was, ultimately, incorrect about his 'realization' of variables, and that his focus should have remained on the constants.
It would then follow that James's disappointment upon waking up at the ruin of the Swan hatch in 'LA X' is one more example of "how little he knows". He'd gone along with Jack's H-bomb plan to *avoid* the incident, and following Faraday, the subsequent construction of the Swan Hatch. Nothing of the sort had happened.
Interesting. This reinforces that the sideways universe has existed since at least 1977. But why would the bleed-through between the S1-S5 timeline and the sideways universe only begin after the sideways 815 flight? But that's entirely another topic.
Per the original topic, the pregnancy sickness, if it is simply a byproduct of radioactivity on the island emanating from the 1977 H-Bomb...why the hell did Richard not once mention it to Juliet in her recruitment or in her years of research??? He was there in 1977 and would have watched the bomb go off.
In any event, if you're right the main timeline of 'Lost' is a cruel, cruel story. Both Locke and Faraday came to the island, and both gave the ultimate sacrifice in service of something they believed to be greater than themselves--for Locke, it was the Island itself, and for Faraday it was the 815ers whose lives had been so altered by the island. Jacob told Richard that he brought people to the island because he believed that they were capable of 'knowing the difference between right and wrong'. If willingly throwing yourself into a fatal task completely for the benefit of others isn't evidence of having satisfied Jacob's stated reason for manipulating the lives of others, than what is?
But let's look at Locke and Faraday's reward: For Locke, it was to be murdered in a state of profound bewilderment, and later to provide the bodily means by which the enemy of all that he held dear might destroy what he (Locke) meant to sacrifice his life for. For Faraday, it was to be murdered by his own mother, and to have his dying thought be 'My mother acted as if she pushed me so hard out of love, but really she did it so I would eventually come to this island and die by her hand for a reason that I don't even know.' And following his murder, his great sacrifice was put into motion by Jack...the end result being to cause the very thing he'd given his life to prevent.
That is profoundly, absolutely, and utterly cruel. The Man in Black may kill people on a whim, but the fate of Locke and Faraday is just...sadistic. And if Jacob's responsible, since he brings people to the island in the first place, then he's worse, a thousand times worse than MiB.
The only way Jacob can redeem himself is if his endgame is to engineer the complete negation of the Island reality, and let Faraday, Locke and the others exist free of his and MiB's manipulations in the sideways reality.
And sideways Faraday needs to get a clue. Sure, that redhead was hot, and you loved her in another life...but in that other life *your soul was destroyed for the benefit of others who couldn't care less*.
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