A/N: So, here's my story, my unpopular opinion written out once again for the Internet to be confused by: In English class this year, we watched a bunch of episodes of Lost so we could examine the literary elements used in it. When we watched Exodus and saw Dr. Arzt blow up, the rest of the class laughed hysterically. I cried. Once we got around to Dr. Linus, I'd decided (mostly to piss people off) that Dr. Arzt was my second-favorite character.

But although I did say that ironically at first, he really truthfully is my second-favorite character. (My favorite character is Daniel Faraday, because that boy is just the sex, and Arzt, quite frankly, is not.) Flash-sideways Ben with those glasses of his is also pretty much as close to the sex as someone Michael Emerson's age could hope to be. And for that reason, I absolutely loved seeing Arzt and Ben's friendship in the flash-sideways AU. I thought it would be so fun to write.

Also, while I still think that Arzt exploding was a lot more horrible than most people think, it is kind of funny in retrospect and this plot bunny just made it funnier. So here we go.

I hope you enjoy! Please R&R! (And if you do, please tell me if you think repeated use of the phrase "the sex" in this author's note means I should bring the rating up to T.)

The first two weeks of high school are exciting for freshmen. They're reuniting with friends, getting used to a new building, and feeling more grown-up overall. Furthermore, the first two weeks are exciting for many teachers of 9th grade. Their new students are full of wide-eyed energy, making the course briefing and getting-to-know-you phase easier for everyone.

Guess who was not one of those teachers? That's right: Dr. Leslie Arzt.

Dr. Arzt simply did not trust children. Sure, they were excited now. But just how long will it be, he wondered, before that starts acting like a brat, that one constantly fails to do his homework, and that one turns out to be British and decides it'll be funny to regularly mispronounce my name?

Because he taught science, the first couple of weeks were also painful for legal reasons. Going over safety procedures was an exceptionally tedious chore. The kids should know this already! Was the public school system really so bad that they couldn't spend the time in middle school teaching kids how to not inhale noxious gas? After ten years, Arzt could have probably recited the entire list of protocols if you asked him.

Well, he could have, but he wouldn't.

By the September after his return from Australia, he hardly had to think about going through the safety protocol. Besides a minute of grumbling to himself about the California public school system, his proceedings with the task were almost mechanical:

Late Sunday night, type up the regulatory changes that apparently needed to be made.

Hand the papers out to the students. Make them read them on their own.

Take whatever boneheaded questions were asked.

Have the students take the papers home to get them signed. Half-heartedly check that they did. The end.

And furthermore, all of these things he could do no matter how tired he was – in fact, he found that if he was dozing off while he was typing, having to do the job didn't bother him quite as much. And if it didn't bother him, he'd be that much more efficient.

At least, that's what he thought.

He had just carried out step two when he heard a student gasp, "Oh God..." A frantic hand soared up in the back of the classroom. "Dr. Arzt!" the girl shouted.

Arzt groaned. He'd just sat down, and he was still exhausted from typing all night. But it was time for step three (the boneheaded questions) and there was no way that he could avoid it. "What's the matter, Nicole?" he asked as he walked over to the girl.

Nicole had walked in the door to Dr. Arzt's biology classroom as a wide-eyed freshman like everyone else, but by now, she was already showing signs of what kind of student she really was. The nervous grimace. The constant fidgeting and scratching her head. The eyes that stayed wide open, but for a reason other than awe. Arzt had seen every student there was, and he could tell that Nicole was a Hyperventilator. For the next year, she would have weekly panic attacks over homework, labs, and all matter of small annoyances. There was no telling how often she'd require the nurse's attention.

Obviously, whatever it was that this girl needed to ask, it wasn't horribly important. Arzt had to resist rolling his eyes when Nicole took a deep breath in before speaking.

"It's number 26," she said. "We're not gonna have to actually do anything involving it this year, are we?"

"The bullets from 19 to 30 all concern chemistry," Arzt replied, not even having to look. "We are not a chemistry class but a biology class. You don't have to worry about it until 11th grade." He gave her a stern look. "Okay?"

Nicole nodded her head and looked down. "Yeah, I see," she mumbled. "It's just, it freaked me out a little. 'Cause, you know, dynamite, that's a scary dangerous explosive..."

"Dynamite?" Arzt interrupted. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Nicole was startled enough by her teacher uttering a minor expletive that he was able to snatch her paper off of the desk. He ran his index finger down the list until he got to number 26. And sure enough, there it was, written clear as daylight:

26. When handling dynamite, move slowly and always be alert. Don't try to multitask. Make sure that someone is supervising – but not too close! Failure to follow these directions could be deadly.

"What in the frickin'..." Arzt muttered to himself as he raced back to the front of the room. "Class!" he said. "Do me a favor and cross out number 26." He picked up a pen and pantomimed on Nicole's paper.

As the kids had far too much fun scribbling over the list of protocols, Arzt stared down at the list, bewildered, with a hand on his forehead. Where had this rule come from? He didn't remember hearing that the school was planning to add volatile explosives to their curriculum. How could it have found its way onto the list, especially when he had made the edits to his class's copies himself?

Had he added the protocol to the list subconsciously? He had been tired while he was typing them up.

No! That was ridiculous. Nobody could write eloquently when they were half-asleep.

It was a mystery, and Arzt couldn't think of any way he might solve it. But he needed to stop worrying about it. Who wants to become a Hyperventilator over nothing?

Something in the back of his mind said that there was something supernatural behind this. As a science teacher, he knew that it was a pure bullcrap theory. But it kept nagging at him. He folded up the paper in his hands and put it in his shirt pocket. He could forget about it for a while, couldn't he? He had a class to run.

"Well, Leslie, I have to say you were right about your kids from two years ago – they're just as horrible as you said they were," said Dr. Ben Linus, 11th grade history teacher and good friend of Dr. Arzt, as he took out his lunch.

"What did I tell you. You really think so?" Arzt replied.

"Of course not," Ben said. "They're a fine group of kids. I think you're just bitter."

"You really think so?" Arzt repeated.

Ben put down his fork. "You seem distracted," he said. "Is there a problem?" He paused. "And by that I mean, I know you're bitter but you're worse than usual today," he added under his breath.

"What?" Arzt had been too distracted and missed what Ben said. "No, nothing's wrong. Well..." His hand hovered over his shirt pocket, the contents of which, despite his best intentions, hadn't escaped his mind since second period. But then he set his arm down. Ben wouldn't have the answer, anyway.

"You disturb me when you get like this, Leslie. Something must be on your mind."

"Can I ask you something, Ben?" Arzt said. "When you're typing up papers for your students, do your fingers ever slip and type something else by accident?"

Ben cracked a smile. "I'm going to tell you before the kids do – you misspelled 'organism.'"

"What? No."

"Well, then to answer your original question, of course. It's called a typo. It can happen to anyone." Ben looked up from his salad with a very quizzical eyebrow raised. "And that just begs the question, why on Earth is such a common ailment in the Age of Technology causing you so much distress?"

And thus came the moment of truth. Arzt could guess why he was so scared to tell. It was obviously because it was the most bizarre thing to ever happen to him. But as he had this conversation, he remembered Ben once telling him that he'd spent a year as a child living with a hippie tribe on a deserted island.

So slowly, he urged himself to take the paper out of his shirt pocket. "Technically, it wasn't a typo," he said. "Without even realizing it, I typed out an out-of-context paragraph."

Ben dropped his plastic fork – his salad no longer mattered. "I'm sorry, but how... how does that happen?"

Lesson learned: hippie camps do not necessarily prepare one for anecdotes from insane friends later on in life.

"Listen, I have no idea whatsoever. Just read it, okay?" Arzt handed the paper to Ben, who unfolded it but all the while kept a bewildered eye on his colleague. "Bullet 26."

Ben's bespectacled eyes read over the four sentences in question slowly, with as much intelligence and scrutiny as they'd ever used. He tried to analyze the statement, for whatever reason Arzt would have been possessed to write something so random. Soon, however, Ben began to chuckle.

"Is there something funny about this situation, Ben? Is there? Because I would love it if you'd let me know what it could possibly be," Arzt demanded.

Ben set the list down, shaking his head apologetically as he tried to control his laughter. "Dynamite, Leslie? Dynamite," he said. "For some inexplicable reason, it seems like it should have 'Note to Self' written across the top."

What was that supposed to mean? "I've never touched a stick of dynamite in my life."

"Were you watching television while you were typing? Any cop shows where the topic might've come up?"

"What kind of slacker do you think I am, Ben?"

"Did you have odd dreams last night involving any sort of explosion?"

"No!"

"I don't know what to tell you," Ben said. "These warnings are so specific that there must be some subconscious memory of yours that's resurfaced."

Dr. Arzt could certainly say that never in this life had he ever reached a junction where proper handling of dynamite had been an issue. But perhaps Ben's credibility up to this point was too fantastic, because Arzt had a feeling that he was right.

For a minute, the two men sat it silence, staring at their lunches. Eventually, Ben spoke, though admittedly with quite the non sequitur. "Did I ever tell you that I once spent a year living on a deserted island with a radical Buddhist tribe?"

Arzt looked up at him, unblinking. "No, Ben, you haven't." He knew. He'd remembered this information not five minutes earlier. But shockingly, as he thought about it now, he couldn't recall ever having been told.

The scene had the potential to continue awkwardly like this for the rest of their lunch break. But a noise made the entire teacher's lounge go silent and look to the front of the room – the whimpering voice of a young student.

"Dr. Arzt?" It was Nicole.

Oh my God. All eyes in the room were glaring at him. His walk to the door was shameful. "What is it, Nicole?"

The girl was squinting and covering her eye like she was in pain. "Well, um, after you left the room, me and Leah were still there, and she started to push me around – like, not bullying me, just goofing around – and I accidentally turned the gas pipe over the sink on, and I might have gotten some of it in my eye."

"Bullet Two, Nicole: No roughhousing in the laboratory!" Arzt said.

"I was telling that to Leah! When I'm in Science, those guidelines are my Bible. But she wouldn't listen. And plus, you took my list of the rules from me, so I wasn't sure –"

"Did you not learn that rule in middle school?"

Nicole nodded sheepishly.

"Come on," Arzt said. "You need to go rinse your eye out – and you already turned the gas off, I hope. And from now on, try to follow your own advice."

He motioned sharply for Nicole to turn around and rush back to the science room. As he was about to stomp off after her, he heard Ben mutter, "Another good 'Note to Self.'"

Arzt spun around and shot his friend a look.

Ben shrugged. "I simply don't know where I'm getting these things from, Leslie."

A/N: And that would be that. Oh, how I enjoyed writing for NotEvil!Ben.

Reviews would be appreciated!