Chapter 3

Hurley, once again, put into words what everyone else was thinking. "Didn't they all, like, end up in a pit?" he asked Locke.

"That's what Ben told me," Locke acknowledged. "Need I remind all of you he's hardly the most reliable narrator?"

"But you told us the same thing," Jack countered.

"I think that's there are three words have to add," Locke said. "Everyone in the Dharma Initiative on the island was killed," Locke corrected. "The submarine that the Others were using belonged to Dharma, which means that there had to be some people from Dharma on the mainland who knew were the island was."

"And they must've been doing some recruiting even after the Purge," Sayid turned to Desmond. "The three years you were in the Swan with Kelvin, did he give any indication that he knew about what had happened to everyone else?"

For the first time in a long time, Desmond gave this some thought. "Kelvin said he'd been in the station with a man named Radzinsky for nearly three years before I showed up. Now Radzinsky must have been with Dharma for a very long time."

"He's the one who drew that map on the blast door that Kelvin took over," James remembered.

"And if Kelvin was telling the truth, the Swan station may have been his idea in the first place," Desmond says. "If what Daniel's telling me about the Incident is true, it explains a bit. Radzinsky must've ended up manning the Swan immediately afterward. Maybe it was duty; maybe it was punishment."

"And if he was underground all that time, he could very well have been spared by the Purge," Kate reasoned. "But it still doesn't explain how Kelvin ended up on the island in the first place."

"Let's put a pin in that for now," Locke said. "Because the very fact that someone else from Dharma ended up on the island after the Purge must mean that someone out there still thinks the Dharma dream is still going on."

Juliet looked thoughtful. "Ben was jamming all outside transmissions from the island from the Looking Glass. Which means not long after the Purge Dharma lost any contact with the island."

"It would explain that Dharma supermarket delivery we got halfway through our stay," James pointed out. "Others needed supplies and as long as whoever was running things in the outside world thought they needed it, the drop-offs continued."

"That answers one question, but leaves a lot more out," Jack admitted. "The drop had to come by air, but none of us saw a plane. How did it find the island and no rescue boats did?"

"Better question," Locke reminded them. "How did the submarine keep coming to and from the island if no one else could find it?"

"We're all asking a version of the same question," Desmond asked. "How did Dharma find the island in the first place? And as to that, we may have at least a piece of the puzzle already."

A little less than a year and a half ago while they were trying to bring down Widmore, Sayid and James had their one encounter with Dan's mother, though neither had known at the time. After Desmond and Penny had come back to civilization thanks to their efforts, Penny had raided the church where she had been. Eventually, they found what was clearly another Dharma station. Dan had figured out some of the workings of it, but to this point, it was enigmatic to any of them as the workings of the hatch had been even after it had been opened.

It was obvious that somehow it was being used to locate the island - the pendulum swinging across the map of the world and the geographic coordinate's tote board that kept flickering clearly meant as much. But beyond that none of them – not even Dan – could interpret how the Dharma Initiative had used this station to the find the island in the first place. The group, however, had taken on the attitude had the Others did with most of the stuff on the island – the fact that outsiders would have no idea what it did or how to work it didn't mean it wasn't worth protecting. Widmore Industries had made sure it was under twenty-four hour electronic surveillance.

Jack looked at Penny. "Anyone go near the church one way or the other within, say, the past month?"

"No one out of the ordinary in nearly a year. Which doesn't mean the people who are after might not know another way to get there," Penny told them.

"If they know anything about the island, they know how to look underground," Kate reminded them. "That shouldn't matter because that's under watch too, but…"

"Why go in the front door when there's a more complicated method?" Juliet finished. "Either way, there's a good chance they know how that station works."

"Probably an Orientation film somewhere we've never been with step by step instructions," Michael reminded them.

"Which is why we have to figure it out before they do," Locke must've foreseen what might come next. "Returning to the island is not something I want to do any more than the rest of you. But if it is the Dharma Initiative, they think we know how to do it. And if we're to have any chance of protecting ourselves and the people we love, we have to find a way to stop them."

"Perhaps we should just do to it what you did to the Flame," It was hard to tell how seriously to take Juliet.

"I'm relatively certain that would attract the wrong sort of attention," Sayid clearly wished this was a realistic possibility. "And even if it could be done with no one being injured; it would attract far too much attention. For all we know, it may even be what these people want us to do."

"They always did seem to be three steps ahead of us," James reminded them.

"We need more information." Charlotte paused. "And I might be able to help there.

Juliet had reasoned it out. "You have a connection to the Dharma Initiative."

Charlotte looked a little ashamed. "For much of my life, my mother would never tell me or my sisters where we were born or what happened to our father. All three of us had strange dreams about growing up on a tropical paradise, but when ever any of us asked our mother about it, she would just deny it. Finally, after I starting doing the research for your book, I confronted her and she admitted it. My parents were in the Dharma Initiative. And I and my younger sister were actually born on the island."

"How long have you known?" Jack asked neutrally.

"She finally confessed to it a couple of months ago," Charlotte told them. "She and my father were recruited in 1975, not long after the Initiative was founded. My father was a biologist who was recruited to do experiments on animals living in unnatural habitats." She looked at James. "There is at least a possibility that the cages you were held prisoner in were designed by my father."

"We'll try not to take it personally," Kate looked at him. "When did you leave the island?"

"Around July of 1977. My mother never saw my father again." Her eyes began to mist. "I guess I know what happened to him now."

No one tried to offer Charlotte false comfort. They all knew if he had survived the Purge, the fact that she'd never seen her father since then all but assured he was dead by now.

"Why didn't your mother ever try to get in touch with him after you left?" Hurley asked gently.

"According to her, she spent over a year trying to get anyone she'd known who'd helped her be recruited give her a straight answer as to what happened afterwards. She ran into brick wall after brick wall. The same thing happened to all the other women she knew. After awhile, she gave up and spent the rest of her life trying to make sure the three of us came out all right," Charlotte said. "Eventually we stopped asking questions."

"When did you make the connection?" James asked gently. "Was it when I asked you to start doing research?"

Charlotte shook her head. "After Desmond told me where he'd been all that time. The DeGroots – the couple that supposedly founded Dharma – they studied at the University of Michigan. My father got his doctorate there. When I told my mother about it, she finally folded." She swallowed a couple of times.

No one wanted to push Charlotte, so it was probably best that Dan ended up speaking. "Abigail – my mother-in-law – had stopped keeping in touch with most of the people she knew from that time. After awhile, it just got to be too painful. But she was willing to give us the names of most of her friends who left the island with her. Thanks to Penny, we've been trying to get in touch with some of them."

"Are you sure that's safe?" Michael asked gently.

Penny gave a bitter laugh. "Nothing in our lives have been free of risk for awhile," she reminded them.

"Is it even worth the effort?" Claire asked. "By their own definition the women and children were non-essential to the Initiative. Otherwise, they would've been brought back when the emergency passed."

"They'd also have more of a reason to find the island than almost anyone," Jack reminded his sister. "They'd want to know what happened to their families."

"The thing is, the lion's share do seem to have given up," Desmond told them. "A lot of them are dead or don't remember their parents. Those left alive have given up any attempt to try and figure what happened. There's only one person who has any connection who hasn't given up hope even after thirty years."

"Who is she?" Jack asked.

"Her name is Olivia Goodspeed," Daniel told them. "In 1972, her brother Horace was handpicked by the DeGroots to lead operations for the Dharma Initiative. She and her brother were among the first members to travel to the island. Her job was to help teach the island's children. A job that she stuck with when she left the island. For the last thirty years, she's been teaching high school science in Portland, Oregon."

Jack got to his feet. "I know I'm the one whose whole mantra was about living together," he told them. "But if we're to have any chance of figuring out what Dharma is up to, much less what we're up against, I think we've come to the point where we have to strategic divide our forces."

There was a general murmur of agreement. Sayid turned to Daniel and Desmond. "Since the three of us have the most technical expertise, I believe we could do the most good at the station in LA."

"You sure?" James asked gently. "We've been through it half a dozen times."

"We didn't have that notebook before," Dan told them. "One of the references I can read is a search for pockets of energy. Maybe there's something in it we can interpret."

"I'll come with you," Juliet told them. "Maybe there's something in that notebook I'll recognize."

Locke looked at Charlotte. "I assume you're planning on going to Portland to talk with this Olivia person," he assumed.

"I could use some company. This isn't a conversation I'm looking forward to having." Charlotte admitted.

Locke looked around. "Anyone else up for a trip to Portland?"

Hurley and Claire agreed to come with him.

Jack looked over at Daniel. "I assume you've made copies of the journal by now."

Dan nodded. "Since we're going to be in LA, I figured I'd visit Cal Tech. There's a…colleague of mine who works there that might be able to make sense of some of the equations."

"This is going to be tricky," Jack said. "Can you get me some copies of the parts of the journal that are more science-related than they are time travel related?"

Dan momentarily seemed puzzled but finally nodded. "You're going to try and do the same thing."

Jack smiled. "I'm a surgeon. One thing we always value is a second opinion." He turned to his wife. "I'd appreciate it if you came with me."

"Are you just asking me this so I don't pick up your trail ten minutes later?" Kate asked with a small smile.

"I won't deny the thought crossed my mind," Jack said, smiling back. "Thing is, the people I want to ask we already know. And if they can't figure it out, my guess is they'll at least have some idea as to who to ask."

"What about the rest of us?" Jin asked.

"Some of you might take this personally," Jack said slowly. "But these people have shown no hesitation when it comes to hurting people who get in their way. We need to keep our loved ones safe."

Everybody waited for objections. Surprisingly, James spoke up first. "Wherever you need us to be," he said solemnly.

Locke then did something even more surprising. "Michael, if you want to go somewhere safe I don't think anyone would blame you."

Michael didn't hesitate. "I'm not making the same mistake again," he said firmly.

"You sure?" Jin asked. "These people might have the same interest in Walt that the ones on the island did."

Michael looked at Walt. "It's your call," he told his son.

Walt was as firm as his father. "We're staying." He looked at Locke. "When you get back, I want to talk about something."

No one needed to talk in euphemisms now but everybody appreciated it all the same. Considering everything that they had learned in the past couple of hours, no one needed to be reminded as to why Walt was 'special'.

Locke was decent enough to look at his father first. "Is this okay with you?"

Michael hesitated. "I won't pretend I'm thrilled but if this can help keep us safe, I don't have a problem. But first things first, find out what this woman knows."

"I'm not going to lie. This probably will just give us more questions than answers," Charlotte said.

"Welcome to the club, Red," James told her with only a trace of his usual sarcasm.

SEATTLE GRACE

"You've told us some pretty unbelievable stories the past couple of years. This is the first time I've actually started to get what it must've been like to be on the island."

"Then I think you also get why I was so eager to leave," Jack told Alex.

Jack knew very well that nobody at the hospital was going to understand the science any more than he did – probably any more than Dan Faraday himself. But he also knew that the presence of fresh eyes on something this inscrutable might at least give a hint as to what was in the journal that they had found.

"So you got these papers from a journal that was written by a man who never got it," Izzie told them. "Who wrote equations for it that he doesn't understand. And that has a complete record of things that happened that he couldn't have seen because several of them took place before he was born."

"You know I was hoping it would somehow sound less insane after someone else said it," Kate told them sadly. "Running from a monster that seemed to be made out of smoke and finding hatches in the earth sound positively pedestrian compared to this."

"Well, from what I understand you got explanations for that," Callie told them. "I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, too."

"Do you really think so?" Jack asked.

"No," Callie admitted. "But I had a feeling if someone didn't say that, our heads would start exploding." When Izzie winced, she replied: "I actually didn't want to hurt your feelings with that one, Stevens."

Izzie waved it off. "I'm still not entirely sure what you hope we'll find here," she asked Jack. "I think your new friend Faraday has the right idea. Take these equations to the physics department of some university, and see if they can make sense out of it."

"And in the next day or so, that's exactly what he's going to do," Jack reminded them. "But when Sayid was going through Rousseau's maps when he came back, two of the people who made major efforts decoding them had far less education than any of us did. Shannon made a major connection that we might not have been able to. And Hurley did figure out that the numbers Rousseau scribbled over and over weren't meaningless."

"From what I remember, he didn't tell you about their significance until well after you were rescued," Callie pointed out.

"Doesn't mean they weren't important," Kate told them.

"Wait a minute," Izzie paused. "Maybe I've just been staring at these words for so long I'm hallucinating, but I think I might recognize something here."

No one quite liked hearing Izzie Stevens using the word 'hallucinate' but Jack decided to overlook it for the moment. "What are you thinking?"

"Well to the start with the obvious, I think this is a map." She pulled out the page which clearly showed geographic landmarks but was drawn with more scientific notation then a geographer's.

Jack and Kate looked at the page. "That's one of the reasons I wanted to bring it," Jack pointed out. "I mean, you'd think that considering we spent nearly a hundred days on that island we'd know every inch of the place. But it's one thing to travel it following a trail; it's another to try and follow someone else's description of it."

"The place was far too big and we never made a concrete effort," Kate agreed. "Sayid left planning to map the island, but after Rousseau captured him and then released him, we learned that we weren't alone. Trying to make an atlas never became a priority again."

"We've been gone for nearly three years and I'm not sure we'd have been able to recognize certain landmarks when we were there," Jack pointed out. "I'm not even sure what this is a map to."

"That's the point. I don't think it's a map to anything," Izzie said. "I think it's trying to show where something is buried."

"Please don't tell me there's a skull and crossbones somewhere," Alex groaned.

"Considering there was what amounts to a pirate ship…" Kate trailed off.

"I think Iz is right," Alex said. "This looks kind of a topographical map. You know, like those maps that show mineral deposits."

Jack took the map from Stevens gently with new interest. "Well, one thing we are sure of is that the Dharma Initiative was interested in looking underground for pockets of energy."

"And we also know that a lot of what was important about that island was below the surface," Kate said looking on. "But I still don't recognize any of the landmarks."

"If the Dharma folk built most of the landmarks you found, and this book comes from a time when the Dharma people were on the island," Callie posited.

"Then maybe this map is showing us where they were going to be," Kate finished off. "You got any idea how to read this thing?"

"Maps were going out of style when we were in med school," Stevens reminded them. "That said I have seen something like this before. When I was doing a paramedic ride along during med school, there was an Amber Alert. We got called out to this abandoned quarry; it was like two miles along."

Kate wasn't sure she followed; Jack thought he might. "You think this is some kind of grid search."

"Which makes a certain amount of sense," Kate realized. "When you've got nothing but miles of jungle and plains, you've got to divide the area out somehow. I suppose it's too much to ask that there's some kind of scale here."

"I'm not sure what it would tell us if it did," Jack said thoughtfully. "What would we recognize from thirty years ago?"

"Only that this island was even bigger than you thought," Alex pointed to a coordinate. "Assuming that G means grid, then what you're looking at is Grid number 117. These Dharma folk must have a lot of patience if they had already mapped out a hundred and sixteen previous segments of the island."

"Not all of it," Kate said, pointing to a section that was scribbled out with three large X's on the area. Next to it was scribbling. "Don't violate. Violate what?"

"If I had to guess, that's where they were," Jack didn't have to explain what he meant by 'they', even to his fellow doctors.

"Was Dharma trying to know where the Others were so they wouldn't start a fight or because they were planning one?" Callie asked.

"No clue. And it doesn't explain why Dan Faraday would have this information this journal," Jack admitted. "Was he looking for the Others, which I have to tell you no one ever voluntarily did on the island?"

"Didn't John say that Eloise Hawking was in charge of the Others at one point?" Callie told them. "If your friends are right about the dates on the journal, she would've been on the island around this time."

"And then what? Dan was trying to find out where his mother was so he could have tea and crumpets with her before he was born?" Alex said sarcastically.

"From what he tells, they barely talked afterward," Jack said in a detached tone. "I have to tell you this is way too Back to the Future for me."

"You've been hanging around my boyfriend a little too long," Callie said to Jack. "And so have I, because this makes as much as sense as a possibility as anything else you've brought up."

"It's still something we can explain," Kate told them. "I have an inkling as soon as we try to figure out the calculations; we're going to be even more baffled than we are already."

LOS ANGELES

LAMPPOST STATION

Dan shook his head. "You know I found this thing and I still don't believe it's here."

"Consider yourself fortunate you didn't know what it was when you found it," Desmond shook his head. "I have to tell ya, I every time I come down here I get the worst bloody sense of déjà vu."

"I have the same sensation," Sayid told them "and we only visited it. You had to live there."

"Except for the fact that," Desmond pointed at a model of the computer that looked way too much like the button in the hatch, "never asks for anything."

"Maybe you don't know what to ask for," Juliet said.

The four of them had been looking around the station that, for all intents and purposes, they had christened the Lamp Post for the last hour. Sayid was still hoping that Daniel, who had no experience with the island and its madness until relatively recently, might have some ideas as to what they should be looking for.

"Your mother clearly knew what was in this station," Sayid said thoughtfully. "Does that mean when the island was purged, she took over monitoring it?"

"I suppose that's possible," Dan said slowly. "But the timing doesn't make much sense. My mother gave birth to me off the island. There are hospital records to show us much. This means she left the island sometime around 1977, maybe very early '78. She never went back. From what Locke told you, the Purge happened sometime around 1990?" Sayid nodded. "I didn't go to Oxford until 1991 and even though I barely saw her throughout my studies, I find it very difficult to believe she could just zip back to and from the island that easily."

Juliet looked thoughtful. "Considering that Ben moved everybody into the Barracks after the Purge that means they took the submarine too. We're assuming that the submarine must have some coordination with whatever this station does. "She looked at Sayid. "I know that you weren't in the Navy, but what does it take to program an underwater vehicle?"

"Didn't you ride on it finding the island?" Daniel asked.

"They had me take a sedative. Then I woke up on the sub. I never found out why it was so essential that everyone on board be unconscious when we were traveling there," Juliet said. "They just said it was for our protection."

"Maybe they were trying to keep up a layer of secrecy," Daniel said.

Desmond shook his head. "When I was in the Scots Guards, I had more than a few conversations with folks in the R.N. First of all, the idea of using a submarine outside of military use is almost non-existent, much less carrying civilians more than a few miles. It's not like you can look out a porthole and know where you are. Second, even if you're only underwater for a few hours, it's not like you can just shrug it off."

"He's right," Juliet agreed. "I should've suffered some kind of decompression sickness when you surfaced. But I was fine when I got on to the pier."

"You think it might've been the power of the island?" Sayid was only half speaking in jest.

"It still doesn't explain why they drugged us in the first place," Juliet said.

"Maybe there were side effects that didn't have anything to do with physical illness," Dan turned to Desmond. "You fled the hatch; you got on your boat. You set a bearing for Fiji and yet sailing for two weeks only got back you to the island."

"We've been over that," Desmond said.

"But if the electromagnetism in the Swan was as strong as you say it was, it stands to reason that it might have a strong effect on navigational instruments," Dan pointed out.

Sayid thought for a second. "A couple of weeks after being on the island, John gave me a compass. It didn't point north like it should have. I assumed it was defective. Even after everything I saw on the island, it never occurred to me to think that there might have been other factors."

"Another thing. I know this is still a sore point," Dan said carefully to Juliet. "When Michael surrendered your friends to Ben and his people, he gave Michael a boat to get off the island. Was that all he gave him?"

"He told Michael to follow a bearing of 325 degrees and if he stayed on it, he and Walt would find rescue." Juliet told them. "That may have been one of the only times Ben told the truth."

"All right. They clearly knew a safe passage to civilization," Sayid said to Dan. "What would any of this have to do with side effects?"

"I worked with electromagnetism and radiation," Dan reminded them. "I was exposed to microscopic amounts over a long period of time and I still have memory issues. If there was the kind of electromagnetism you're talking about on this island, then just getting near it the wrong way could have the same effect as being near radioactive waste."

The three people who'd been on the island considered this for a moment. "That might have been the root cause of all the fertility issues on the island," Juliet said slowly. "When Richard showed me a sonogram of someone from the island, it had the appearance of a woman in her sixties, but he told me she was twenty-six."

"You're sure that wasn't some form of bait?" Sayid asked.

"I ended up meeting her. I advised not her to try and become pregnant," Juliet said flatly. "Otherwise, I would've lost ten patients."

"But all your people said that island healed everything," Desmond reminded them.

"Then 253 people wouldn't have died on impact," Even after hearing what Locke had told him and some of his own remarks at the time, Sayid still wasn't convinced the island was as miraculous as Ben and his people had claimed. "And considering how those of who survived got there…"

He didn't have to elaborate. Dan pressed on. "So maybe the reason you were unconscious was to protect you and everyone else who came to the island via sub from some kind of exposure."

"Assuming that's correct, it still doesn't answer the main question," Desmond pointed out. "The passengers might be safe, but what about the crew? Subs don't exactly have automatic pilots now, much less in the 1970s."

"Which is about as far as I take that particular theory," Dan admitted. "So let's work on whatever information we can gather from here." He walked over to the tote board. "I'm assuming the numbers that keep coming are longitude and latitude."

"That much we had reasoned out." Sayid told them. "Were there any coordinates like that anywhere in the notebook?"

Dan nodded. "Those were among the easiest calculations to make. Not that made much more sense than any of the more complicated ones. There are eight separate listings here; not one of them is within a hundred miles of land."

"That in itself may not mean anything." Sayid remembered what Naomi Dorrit had told him the first time they had met. She had been lying about her employer and her mission, but that didn't necessarily mean she'd been lying about everything.

"We're still operating on the theory that the island is moving," Juliet shook her head. "I lived there three years and I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around that concept."

"We're not talking about a floating island," Dan reminded them. Then he stared at the board. "Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way."

"And how should we be looking at it?" Sayid asked.

"Maybe this station isn't trying to find out where the island is," Dan said thoughtfully. "Maybe it's trying to predict where the island will be."

Dan let that sink in. "So what are you saying? This island's the land equivalent of the Starship Enterprise and this place is trying to find where to beam people down?" Desmond asked.

"It's as good an explanation as any we've come up with so far," Sayid admitted. "Is there any science to this?"

"It would go way beyond my capabilities. Probably the capabilities of most quantum physicists," Daniel allowed. "However, I think that there is something we can all agree on. None of us are qualified to understand how this station works. But if we're right about the Dharma Initiative being behind this, they'll have someone who can."

"And that's assuming that they just have someone fill out an application," Juliet said grimly.

Sayid thought of the story Mikhail had spun when they'd first met him. Had someone years ago simply published an ad saying: "Would you like to save the world?" It seemed both too simple and somehow appropriate.

"Daniel," he said. "You said that you knew someone nearby who might be able to understand the equations in that notebook."

Dan seemed a bit twitchier than he had since Sayid had met him. "She's been studying in the field for more than a decade," he said carefully. "She is one of the most qualified people as well as one of the most discreet. That said, she's not going to be happy to hear from me."

"You used to date her, didn't you," Juliet surmised.

"It's actually worse than that," Dan sighed. "Theresa was my research assistant. I'm not sure she ever forgave me for choosing music over physics. And she's not going to be thrilled to learn I've taken it up again."

"What are you more afraid of telling her?" Desmond asked. "That you're only here to pick her brain or that you've married another scientist."

"In this case, that's a question I can't answer."

"Here we are again," James said with a small smile. "While everybody's trying to save us from the bad guys, you want to build a raft to get away?"

"Just as long as theirs room for Sun and Ji Yeon on this one," Jin said, only half in jest.

"I have to say, I'm kind of surprised you agreed to this," Sun added slightly more seriously.

"Which part, the part where I protect the women and children or that I listened to Doc?" James asked.

"Both, actually," Michael admitted.

James dropped the pretense of humor. "It's a little more complicated. For starters, lest you forget, I have family I want to protect besides just you guys,"

No one doubted that. Everyone knew James well enough that he cared for Rachel and Julian with just as much devotion as Jin did for Sun and Michael did for Walt. "What's the other part?" Jin asked.

"Good old-fashioned guilt. I know my book wasn't exactly a road map to the island, but there are definitely bread crumbs that certain people would know to look for."

Michael did something that would've been unthinkable on the island. "Much as it's kind of my default to blame you for stuff going wrong, this isn't on you."

"He's right," Sun agreed. "These people have been looking for the island decades before we crashed on it."

"Yeah, but they didn't start knocking on our door until after I published," James pointed out.

"Then they'd have come after you, not Jack's friends," Walt pointed out.

"They still might," James pointed out. "Hence the desire to keep all of our families safe."

"I have to say self-pity isn't a good look on you, James," Sun told him.

James raised an eyebrow. "You honestly preferred Sawyer the asshole?"

"Are those my only two options?" Sun was smiling herself.

"The thing is, just 'cause we're on the bench doesn't mean we can't help our team," James walked over to his desk.

By now everyone knew that James Ford had a way of thinking outside the box.

"When I asked Scarlet and the Brain to do research for the second book, there was a lot of material that I didn't end up using." He took out a fairly thick file. "I only ended up using about a quarter of it for research, but there's a lot here about South Pacific culture and science that comes very close to what we were dealing with on the island."

Jin looked at the file doubtfully. "You really think they're might be something that helps us figure out what Dharma's up too?"

"Honestly, I'm not sure," James admitted. "But fresh eyes might tell us something that we've been overlooking." He put the pages on the table. "Split it four ways. You see anything that might give us a thread to change down, put it aside."

"So you're just going to leave us to do all the work," Michael said doubtfully.

"No, I'm going to go over the first draft and see if there's anything I left out," James genuinely sounded hurt. "Just didn't want you to have to try reading my handwriting."

"Sorry."

James waved it off. "It's okay, Mike. Old habits."

"You want me to look too?" Walt asked.

"Thought you'd want to be part of the team," James said.

Walt looked doubtful. "Are there…any weird creatures in there?" he finally said.

Everyone found themselves looking at Walt. "I thought you said you had them under control," Michael asked his son.

"It's just…it's like the island." The usually sure-footed Walt sounded uncertain.

"It'll be okay, kid," James said. "Just be careful. I don't want to be chased out of our apartment by a feral footnote."

PORTLAND, OREGON

Of all the things that Charlotte Lewis had thought she might see when she knocked on Olivia Goodspeed's door, she didn't expect to see an adolescent answer it.

"Um, hello" she said awkward. "Does Olivia Goodspeed live here?"

There was a long pause. "Grandma! Some weird people are here to see you!" the boy shouted.

A spry looking woman in her late sixties walked to the door. She clearly didn't recognize Charlotte or Locke, but it didn't take her long to recognize Hurley and Claire. She shooed her grandson off.

"We talked on the phone last week," Charlotte told her.

"I know." Olivia Goodspeed said slowly. "It's just, even after all this time, you think you're prepared and then it happens."

She looked at Hurley and Claire and asked the one question none of them wanted to answer.

"Are any of my family still alive?"