Chapter 6 – Everything Happens at Once
The house in which they met had once belonged to Benjamin Linus. Later, Locke had lived there, and Sawyer had been a frequent visitor. Now it belonged to Daniel Faraday.
Sawyer was a bit disturbed to realize that the entire population of New Otherton now fit comfortably in Daniel's living room. Daniel's son Desmond sat next to Bernadette Nadler on the sofa, with their two children on the floor in front of them. Rachael Burke sat in a chair, nursing her infant, with Aaron standing behind her. Sawyer was given the big overstuffed recliner, so that he could rest his leg. Jack and Daniel pulled chairs in from the kitchen.
"So what did you mean, things are going wrong?" Jack began.
"Sawyer's told you about all of our temporal discontinuity episodes, hasn't he?" Daniel asked.
"Sort of," Jack said. "As I understand it, you have visions of the past, or sometimes the future?"
Daniel shook his head. "Not exactly. In these episodes, our minds – our entire consciousness – actually travels through time. It's not just a vision – we're able to interact, to change things."
"Wait a minute," Jack said. "You're saying this is actual time travel?"
Daniel nodded. "It's something I was working on at Oxford. One interpretation of quantum mechanics says that it's possible to transmit information from one time to another. And since that's all consciousness is – structured, self-aware information – it's entirely possible to send it through time."
"And you've done this," Jack said skeptically.
"Yes, Jack, I have," Daniel said. I did it first with a rat named Eloise. I constructed a maze, and then I sent her consciousness through time. When I did that, she was able to run the maze perfectly, even though I hadn't trained her on it yet. She was able to access memories of things she hadn't done yet."
"But wait," Jack objected. "If it then already knew the maze, you wouldn't have to train it on it…"
Daniel smiled. "Good point. But when her future consciousness returned to its own time, the memories went with it. So she didn't know it any more." He sighed. "At least, that's how it was supposed to happen…"
"What do you mean, supposed to happen?"
"Eloise died of a cerebral hemorrhage," Daniel said. "Before I had a chance to train her to run the maze. So she never got trained to run it."
"Wait," Jack said uncertainly. "What you're saying is…"
"She was able to access future memories of events that never took place," Daniel said.
"Okay, you've lost me," Jack said. "You're saying this rat remembered doing things that never happened?"
"Right," Daniel confirmed.
Sawyer wasn't really paying attention to all of this – he'd heard it all before, and every time Daniel tried to explain it, it made his head spin. But this time, his head was spinning for a different reason. "Not again," he whispered.
"Uncle Sawyer?" Bernadette asked.
"I should have known this would happen," Sawyer said. "Gotta go…"
-- Discontinuity --
He found himself lying in his bed, in his house in New Otherton. And he knew exactly what day it was, and what was about to happen. He also knew that there wasn't a thing he could do about it.
But he had to try anyway. "Kate!" he shouted, reaching for his crutches. He ignored the wooden leg that Sayid had made for him; it would take too long to put on, and besides, it hurt like hell. He hauled himself to a standing position and began hobbling as fast as he could.
"Kate!" he shouted again as he went out his front door. He knew it was futile. He knew he'd be too late. But he headed for Kate's front door anyway.
He shoved the door open, and shouted Kate's name again. He knew exactly where to go. He headed for the bathroom, tried the door, found it locked. He pounded on it, screaming her name. Then he slammed his shoulder against the door, splintering the frame around the lock, forcing it open.
Inside, Kate lay in her bathtub, in a pool of dried blood. The knife she had used to slit her wrists lay on the floor.
Sawyer closed his eyes and groaned. He threw down his crutches and dropped to his knees beside the tub. He took Kate's head in his hands, looked into her bloodless face, saw her glazed eyes. He was too late.
Again, he was too late. He'd relived this day more times than he could count, and every time he was too late.
"Oh, damn it, Kate," he whispered. "Why did you have to do this?"
She'd suffered recurring bouts of depression ever since returning to the Island. Sawyer had helped her through them as best he could. He'd forgotten how many nights he'd spent holding her in his arms as she sobbed uncontrollably. Once before he'd spent hours holding her hands apart, desperately trying to keep the knife she held in one hand away from her wrists, until she finally collapsed from exhaustion. Juliet had prescribed antidepressants for her, but they'd run out not long after Juliet's murder. In the years since, her depression had gotten steadily worse.
"Kate," he whispered again. "How could you go and leave me all alone like this."
He heard more people enter the house, come down the hall, and enter the bathroom behind him. "What happened?" he heard Sayid ask.
He looked up. Sayid was red-faced, panting for breath; he'd obviously run as quickly as he could. Bernard came up behind him and said, "You'd better sit down, Sayid." Bernard knelt beside Sawyer and took Kate's arm, examined her wrist.
He shook his head. "She's been dead for hours, Sawyer," he said. "I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do here."
Sawyer looked up at Bernard, and saw the sorrow in the old man's eyes. He'd said the same thing to Bernard a year before when the cancer had finally taken Rose. He nodded wordlessly, and closed his eyes.
Then Sayid gave an odd gasp. Sawyer's eyes snapped open, and saw a strange, surprised expression on Sayid's face. Sayid clenched his left fist and raised it to his chest. His face turned a sickly shade of gray, and he seemed to have trouble breathing.
"Oh, no," Sawyer said. "No, Sayid, not you too."
But Sayid fell to the floor. Bernard checked Sayid's pulse, and then put his hands on Sayid's chest, beginning CPR.
"No, Sayid," Sawyer said. "It's too soon. Not today. This doesn't happen for years! You can't die now!"
But Sayid's eyes were unfocused, and Bernard continued to try to revive him…
-- Discontinuity --
Everyone had gathered around Sawyer's recliner. Bernadette was checking his pulse.
"It's okay," he said hoarsely. "I'm back."
"Where were you?" Daniel asked.
"The day Kate died," he said. "Again."
Daniel nodded silently.
"But it was different this time," Sawyer continued. "Sayid had a heart attack."
"But Sayid didn't have a heart attack that day," Aaron protested. "I remember, I was there. He didn't have his first one until about three years later, I think."
"I know," Sawyer said. "But this time, he had one that day. And I think it killed him."
Everyone turned to Daniel, wordlessly asking for an explanation. "It's worse than I thought," he said.
"What's worse?" Jack said.
"Jack, when Ben Linus moved the Island, it did something to the fabric of space-time around here," Daniel said. "It was already pretty highly stressed, and what Ben did – it seems to have ripped it wide open."
"Meaning what, exactly?"
"We've been tracking what goes on in these discontinuities," Daniel said. "I've known for years that they didn't add up to a coherent whole. There are too many inconsistencies, too many impossibilities. Things happen one way one time, a different way the next time. The past, the future – it's all coming unraveled."
"I'm not following you, Daniel."
"Have you ever heard the saying that time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once?" Daniel asked. "Well, if this goes on, everything is going to happen at once. And I mean everything. The past, the future – it won't mean anything any more. We'll have different versions of the same events happening at the same time, and we won't know which is real and which isn't, because they'll all be real. Causality will become completely random. And when that happens…" He shook his head.
"What?" Jack asked.
"The human mind can't take that kind of stress," Daniel said. "When that happens, we all die."
