< Continued from page 3
"I'm sorry, how's a rat running through a bloody maze so incredible?" Desmond yells.
"What is incredible, is that I just finished the maze this morning. I'm not going to teach her how to run it until an hour from now."

"You sent her to the future?"

"Her consciousness, her mind." Daniel runs over to the chalkboard and erases.

"So how does that help me?" Desmond asks.

"You. Help you? I don't understand, am I supposed to help you?


Didn't I send you back to help me?"

"I don't know why you sent me here. All I know about you, you end up on some bloody island."

"An island? What island? Why would I go to an island?"

"Desmond, give me the phone," Keamy says and wrestles the phone away from Desmond.

Sayid is about to punch Omar, and Frank says, "Everyone relax, listen. Daniel wanted to talk to the guy, so we brought him the phone, that's all."

"You let Faraday talk to him?" Keamy asks.

"He said he could help," Frank says.

Ray yells, "Faraday can't even help himself."

"Outside, now," Keamy says to Frank. "The captain wants to talk to you."

"I want to talk to your captain," Sayid says.

"I'll be sure to let him know," Keamy says.

Desmond looks at his hand with the writing on it.

"In the meantime, have a seat," Keamy says and he, Omar, and Ray go out. Keamy locks the door.

Desmond runs and grabs the pin light and flashes it before his eyes. "I need to get back."

"Back where?" Sayid asks. "The island?"

"He said he could help me. He'd tell me what I needed to do."

"Desmond," Sayid says.

"Desmond?" George says. "You're Desmond?"

"Do I know you?"

"I'm George Minkowski. I'm the communications officer. Before they strapped me down here, all the calls came through me in the radio room. And every so often I'd get this flashing light on my console, an incoming call. We were under strict orders never to answer it."

"So, what's that got to do with me?"

"Those calls came from your girlfriend, Penelope Widmore."

Desmond's Constant

Desmond comes too in Daniel's room. "What happened?" he asks.
"Oh, you're back," Daniel says. He checks his watch. "Out about 75 minutes."

"Out?"

"Oh, yeah, you were catatonic right in the middle of a sentence. I had to carry you to the chair. So, I take it you were in the future again?"

"Aye."

"For how long?"

"Five minutes."

Daniel goes back to the chalkboard.

"Why does this keep happening?" Desmond asks.

"I'm guessing that in your case progression is exponential. Each time your consciousness jumps, it gets harder and harder to jump back. I'd be careful crossing the street if I was you."

Desmond sees that Eloise is dead. "What happened to her?"

"She died."

"I know, but how?"

"Brain aneurysm, probably. I don't know. I'm going to do an autopsy on her later."

"Is that going to happen to me?"

"The effects seem to vary from case to case, but, uh-"

Desmond grabs Daniel and pushes him up against the chalkboard. "If this keeps happening, am I going to die?"

"I don't know. I think Eloise's brain short circuited. The jumps between the present and the future, she eventually, she couldn't tell which was which. She had no anchor."

"What do you mean 'anchor'?"

"Something familiar in both times. All this, see this," he points to the chalkboard, "it's all variables. It's chaotic. Every equation needs stability, something known. It's called a constant. Desmond, you have no constant. When you go to the future, nothing there is familiar. So if you want to stop this, you need to find something there. Something that you really, really care about, that also exists back here in 1996."

"This constant, can it be a person?"

"Yeah, maybe, but you'd have to make some kind of contact."

Desmond picks up Daniel's phone and starts dialing.

Daniel says, "Didn't you say you were on a boat in the middle of nowhere? Uh, who you calling?"

"I'm calling my bloody constant."

Desmond gets a message that the number he is calling has been disconnected. He goes out of the room and down the stairs and falls. Sayid helps him up.

"You okay?" Sayid asks.

Desmond sees himself in the mirror and George says, "You look a lot older now, huh? Welcome back, Desmond."

"I need to call Penny," Desmond says.

Sayid says, "Calling your girlfriend is not our priority."

"Listen, brother, I don't know you, but you seem to know me. So if you and me are friends, then I need your help. I need to call Penny, now."

"Whoa," George says, "you boys are getting ahead of yourselves. Two days ago someone sabotaged all the equipment. We lost all communication with the mainland. I probably could have fixed it, but then I went nuts."

"Where's the radio room?" Sayid asks.

"It's one deck up. I'll take you there."

Sayid and Desmond quickly untie George.

"Then how do we get out of here?" Sayid asks.

"The door," George says.

They look and the door is partway open.

"Looks like you guys have a friend on this boat," George says.

Desmond notices that George's nose is bleeding and gives him a tissue. Sayid looks out into the hallway and says it's clear.

Desmond is laying in the stairwell. He opens his eyes and then struggles to get up.

At an auction, the auctioneer talks while some look at a painting of a ship. "The Black Rock set sail from Portsmith, England March 22, 1845 on a trading mission when she was tragically lost at sea. The only known artifact of this journey is the journal of the ship's first mate, discovered among the artifacts of pirates seven years later. The contents of this journal have never been made public nor are known to anyone outside the family of the seller, Tovard Hanso. We open the bidding on lot 2342 at 150,000 pounds."

Charles Widmore raises his paddle. Other people continue bidding, and Charles Widmore wins the journal for 380,000 pounds.

Desmond comes in, but he's not allowed to go to Charles. After winning the journal, Charles gets up.