Ahh, Memories: How LOST treats the concept of tinkering with history.

Alright, we've been getting a lot of questions/theories/confusion about the entire concept of time travel, memories, minds syncing up, etc. So as a special Friday addendum to yesterday's review, I'm going to give you my understanding of how memories and meetings are affected (and affect) time travel - complete with charts! The question we want to answer is as follows: if a time traveler visits someone in the past, will that person carry that knowledge with them going forward? My answer: nope.

Doubling Back
First off, here's a rough, broad timeline for you. Some of the dates on here are approximate, at best. But they're close enough for our purposes today. You'll probably need to click on it to enlarge. You may want to right-click and open it in a separate window and keep it open for reference. I'll wait......got it? Good. Let's use the meeting of Jin and Rousseau as an example.

On the day marked by A1 (approximately January 6th-ish, 2005) Jin travels back in time to A2 (approximately November of 1988) and meets Rousseau and her crew. Here's the key: That Rousseau you see in 1988 won't remember this meeting until she gets to point A1. Until Rousseau from 1988 gets to the day in her life where Jin traveled back in time to meet her (January 6th-ish, 2005), she won't remember meeting him. Of course, as we all know, Rousseau dies at approximately A3. So she never remembers meeting Jin.

Confused? Let's use an example where the key players are still alive: the Sawyer-Alpert meeting from Wednesday night's "LaFleur." Again, you may need to open this up and enlarge it in a separate window.
Now, the dates of 10-15-04 and 1-8-05 are approximate. But basically it breaks down as follows: Sawyer lands on the Island on 9-22-04 with Oceanic 815. On (roughly) 1-8-05, he travels back to 1974 and meets Richard Alpert. Richard Alpert will not remember this until he, himself, gets to 1-8-05. Therefore, when Richard discovers/meets/reads about Sawyer after the Oceanic 815 crash, he doesn't know him.

IN SUMMARY: if you are visited by a time traveler, you won't remember that meeting until you, yourself, get to the date on which the time traveler journeyed to meet you.


Flaws
First off - Desmond is special. I don't exactly know how the mechanics of his meeting with Faraday work out. But his situation is something of an outlier.

However, think about Charlotte's grizzly mention to Daniel that she suddenly remembers meeting him when she was a child, and he warned her not to come back to the Island. So Charlotte is actually remembering when Daniel time-traveled back to 1970-something and warned her not to return to the Island.

BUT. Daniel won't travel back in time to do that for a few days (at which point Charlotte in 2005 will be dead). So how can Charlotte remember something that Daniel hasn't done yet? A few theories:
1. The Island bestows upon some (or all) of its inhabitants varying degrees of precognition. Islanders don't have to wait until that magical date of occurence (such as A1 in the Rousseau-Jin example), they get their information a little bit ahead of time.
2. When in the throes of death, any essential time-travel-related memories get uploaded to you in your final moments. Think of it as a trippy, metaphysical reworking of the notion that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. I like this option best.

What's It Mean?
That people who are visited by time travelers are basically unwilling participants in the ever-changing course of their own life. I think. That lends itself to a knockout win for predestination over free will. And perhaps next week, when my mind isn't mush from all this LOST analysis, I'll get into how John Locke is the battleground on which that war will be waged.

Pop a Cork
And finally, if my Blogger dashboard is correct (and it's by Google, so it must be), this is our 100th post on The Dharma Blog. Maggie and I would like to thank you for taking the time to read our little blog. We've been amazed with the response, and seeing readers come from across the country (and the globe!) just to hear us pine over Jack and Kate (respectively) and fumble through our way-out theories and analyses.

While we do make millions of dollars every week writing this blog, and get invited to exclusive Hollywood parties due to our blogging skills, we really write it for you, the people. Thanks for taking the time to read and indulge us in our habit, we hope you enjoy it.

Namaste.
Charlie