Chapter 2

Extract from the journal of Benjamin Linus c. 2004

JS has agreed to operate on me tomorrow. Naturally he has arrived at this decision after much petulant whining and throwing tantrums and pulling that dreadful facial expression of his, but I suppose it will be worth it in the end. You would hate him, my dear. I can barely stand him myself. He will not listen to reason and refuses to accept that he could ever be wrong. I suppose you would point out that I am exactly the same, although my arrogance is at least accompanied by some degree of intelligence.

I'm so scared, Annie. I hate myself for it, but I can't help it. I still do not understand why this has happened to me when I believed it impossible. Is it my punishment for what I did to you?


They had met on Ben's first day on the island. She had come over to talk to him, to welcome him. She had introduced him to everyone at school and stayed with him when they chose to shun him. He had never told her that she was the first friend he had ever had, but he guessed that she had probably worked that out. She had made fun of the way he lined up his pencils and books so neatly on the desk, perfectly aligned. She would lean over when the teacher's back was turned and doodle in his exercise book to annoy him, or pass notes to him written on scraps of paper folded up into tiny squares and didn't seem to mind when he never wrote back. She laughed when he made sarcastic comments about their classmates and he knew she wasn't pretending just to humour him. He would walk her home every afternoon and wonder why she always looked a little strange and sad when he left her at her door, as if she had wanted him to do or say something differently. He wished he had been able to read her mind then, as he usually could. He wished he'd known what it was she wanted.

Naturally, their friendship had always been a running joke with everyone else at the school. No one could quite understand why Annie Tyler – beautiful, sociable and well-liked – would choose to spend time with the school pariah. Ben knew he unnerved almost all of the class simply by being Benjamin Linus; the quiet, inscrutable boy with the sharp wit and the relentless stare who made everyone else feel a little less clever and a little more tense when they were near him. He remembered when Joe Anderton had spent a rather dull geology lesson guessing what everyone would do after graduation. Annie, he promised, would win a Nobel Prize before she was thirty. Ben, the last to have his future predicted, would grow up to be 'a real live evil genius. I mean it, man. Just you wait. That guy will rule the whole world one day.' It was the only sensible thing Joe Anderton had ever said. Ben wished he could have told him then, that one day he would be a leader; that one day he would change everything on the island. But he had been sworn to secrecy about such things and had kept that secret since he was ten years old. A few more years and then everyone would see, everyone would be proved wrong… and then he and Annie…

"You're not concentrating."

Alpert folded his arms across his chest and looked at Ben somewhat critically. They had met in the usual place, Ben perched a little uncomfortably on a moss-covered rock and Richard standing nearby. "Something's happened, hasn't it?", he said. "It's not your father again? We talked about this. You can't let him get to you…"

"My father hasn't done anything, Richard," Ben replied. "His ambitions are so low these days he barely even tries to upset me any more."

"Then why aren't you listening to me?"

"I am, I just… I… I've been wondering whether to tell you… I have someone."

A confused look crossed Richard's dark features. "You have someone for what?"

Ben wished he had kept his mouth shut. There was a big difference between wanting to shout from the mountaintops that Annie loved him and telling Richard Alpert. "I have someone," he repeated, "and I…"

"You mean there's a girl."

Ben was more than a little put out at Richard's rather disdainful tone of voice. "She's not just 'a girl', Richard. I love her and she loves me. It's… she's…"

"Wonderful, beautiful, perfect – yes, I know," Richard sighed; a little mournful, a little exasperated. "It always is the first time. But you need to stay focused on your task, Benjamin. You can't allow yourself to be distracted. I'm trying to teach you things of such immense importance, about Jacob, about this island, about what we need you to do… and you're wasting my time and yours daydreaming about this girl."

"Her name is Annie."

"I don't want to know her name! I don't care about her name. I care about the future of this island, Benjamin, and she will only make you forget your purpose. You can't let that happen."

"I won't," Ben promised earnestly, "I won't."

"Then you need to end it."

Angry now, Ben sprang up from the rock and glared at Richard. "You can't make demands like that," he said, trying to keep his voice level. "I won't do it."

Richard leaned back against a tree and sighed again. "I don't want to make any more demands of you, Ben," he said apologetically, "but you have to understand how much we all need you. This jeopardises everything."

"I don't see why. It doesn't have to change a thing. I won't let it."

Richard stared at him for a long time, unmoving and silent. Finally, he walked back to the tree trunk which usually served as his seat and sat down again. "Be sure that you don't," he said sternly. "Now, let's begin where we left off last month…"