96 tears...

It’s a beautiful day at the beach and Eko is working on his church, which is coming along nicely. “What are you building?”
It’s Ana, looking about as angelic as Ana possibly could.
- guess this is a vision or dream - “I’m building a church.”
“Now why the hell would you want to do that?”
He tells her he was told to do it, “…I think it was in a dream.”
“A dream like this one?”
She’s not looking angelic anymore. Eko sees the bullet wound in her chest; blood is running from her mouth as she cries.
“You need to help John.”
Memories of Eko’s past flash by, accompanied by the sound of the counter numbers resetting: – plane crash in the water – something brown and blurry in the jungle – a woman doing the dead mans float – the cross on the chain on the ground – barefoot others and teddy bear walking past – campfire – blindfolded Jin – nine Mary statues on the table outside the church in Nigeria – He and Charlie watching the drug plane burn – Yemi in the church – the Dharma arrow station logo – the bible with the missing filmstrip pieces – his scripture stick – Gold Tooth’s corpse – Locke – the monster; a vision of Yemi in the smoke – the drug plane taking off with the army in pursuit – Yemi shouting before he is killed – Marvin Candle in the orientation filmstrip – the swan logo –
Eko is in the swan station now and he finds Yemi sitting (praying?) at the computer.

“Hello, brother.”
Eko tries to apologize for everything, but Yemi shushes him. He has instructions. “The work being done in this place is important, Eko. It is more important than anything, and it is in danger. You must help John. He has lost his way. You must make him take you to the question mark.”
The timer starts to beep and the counter starts flipping the red and black hieroglyphic tiles, but this time they are all question marks. Yemi types something into the computer – all the keys are question marks as well. The counter resets. “John will not want to show you, so you must make him.”
The room and everything in it begins to shake violently. “There are many distractions brother, but you must move past them. What is done is done. Do you understand?” (Henry and the dead women?)
He does. The shaking is getting more and more violent.
“…and Eko. Bring your axe.”
Eko wakes up near Charlie, trembling and clutching the cross around his neck. “You alright, mate?”
Eko gets up, pulls the axe out of a log and throws it over his shoulder. “I need to find John.”

John is with Jack, Kate and Sawyer, on their way to the Swan station. They’re arguing about “Gimpy McCrutch” covering up that “the artist formerly known as Henry Gale” tried to strangle their little amiga. Michael spills out of the doors to the station just as they arrive. “He shot me. He’s gone. He ran out.”
Locke, Kate and Sawyer head down into the station. Michael tells Jack he was sleeping and woke to the sound of gunshots and there was some guy in the hatch with a gun. Eko arrives and gives Jack a hand helping Mike back down under the hatch, where the other three have already discovered the bodies. Kate checks Ana for a pulse as Sawyer rushes to Libby’s side. Locke glares into the empty armory. Eko, Jack and Michael get there, and Kate tells them Ana is dead. They look to Sawyer, and he looks down at Libby - just as she has a sudden convulsion and spits up a mouthful of blood.

She’s alive, just barely; but that’s more than enough to scare the shit out of Michael.



Eko lays Ana to rest with a prayer. “Grant us this mercy O lord. We beseech thee, amen.”
God’s not granting much mercy to Libby, who is convulsing in pain on the bed. Jack knows she can’t survive, but he’s doing all he can for her. He asks Michael how long it’s been since Henry left; it’s been twenty minutes to a half an hour. Jack is ready to take off after Henry, but Sawyer stops him. He wants to know who’ll take care of Libby while the doctor is out playing Daniel Boone? Eko seizes his opening. “I will go. John, you have tracking experience, yes? We will find his trail together.”
Jack tells them if they find anything to come back so they can discuss what the next step should be, together.

Flashback – Eko the priest is listening to a confession from an Australian guy. - the stained glass behind him is in memory of Walter Atkinson Ridings –ry 12, 1873 – October 17, 1946; under that it reads –le Bacon Ridings March 9 1873(?). It looks like a scene of an explorer posing next to a globe. Maybe he was the captain of the Black Rock? - The Aussie confesses to having some forged I.D. papers for a guy pretending to be a priest. They meet in the hallway outside, and Eko is handed an Australian passport.
Number 223652 made out to Oduduwa Ulu, birthdate 23 August ‘68(?). The passport is good from the 16th of April ’04 to the 16th of April ’14. Eko hands over some cash, and the confessor offers to hook him up with friends in L.A. who can get him work, doing “stuff”. The Monsignor interrupts them. Eko introduces “Mr. Caldwell” as the man helping to arrange his trip to the United States. The Monsignor tells him he has to postpone that trip, there’s a miracle that needs investigating. He takes Eko to meet Joyce Malkin, the mother of the miracle. Her daughter, Charlotte, drowned in a river and woke up the next day. “It’s a miracle, a confirmation of faith.”
She wants the world to know about it, but the Monsignor tells her Father Tundi must investigate the miracle before anyone is told. Eko takes the man aside and tells him he cannot do what is asked of him, because he doesn’t believe the woman. “Why do you think I chose you?”

Locke and Eko are traveling through the dark jungle. Locke asks where they are going, and Eko confronts him. “Where is the question mark?”
Locke feigns ignorance.
“I know you do not want to show me, but you must.”
Locke says he doesn’t need to show him anything, and Eko apologizes before knocking him unconscious with a vicious head butt.
John comes to later, and asks Eko why he hit him. It was because he was being difficult. He says that Ana wants them to find the question mark, together. Eko doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, and Locke calls him on it. “No, but you know what I am talking about John, and that is all that matters.”
Locke hands over his crudely drawn map of a memory, “…ten seconds of nothing.”
He is dismissive when Eko tells him about his dream, where Ana spoke to him.
“Tell me John. Haven’t you ever followed a dream?”

Flashback – Eko is in the coroner/undertakers office. The coroner explains that Ambrose (Bierce?) brought the girl in, and she was dead. She had been underwater for two hours. “And when did you find out that she was… not dead?”
“During the autopsy.” – was it done in room four? –
He plays Eko the audio tape of the autopsy. His name is Ian, and his assistant is the lovely Valerie MacTevish. He states that it is a clear case of drowning, and is about to begin the autopsy when there is a bloodcurdling scream – Val starts to panic and scream as well – Ian pops out the tape and hands it Eko. “I don’t ever want to listen to that tape again.”
That was a great scene…

Back in the jungle, Eko is having a hard time deciphering Locke’s inexact map. “These landmarks…is that a river?”

“No, it’s a wavy line.”
Locke asks him what the axe is for. “I don’t know yet.”
Eko steps on the remnants of a Mary statue. They’ve arrived at the wreckage of the drug plane. Eko asks Locke what happened when he found it. “It was up there…Boone made it fall. Then he died; a sacrifice that the island demanded.”
– back when Locke was following his dream – I wonder if the island is demanding a sacrifice from Eko? -
Eko decides to make camp and get some rest, and await further instructions.

Under the hatch Jack is freaking out, wondering what is taking them so long. Mike asks how Libby is, and Jack says all he can do is make her comfortable at this point. He then gets pretty hardcore; Sawyer is going to get the heroin from his stash, and Kate is going to go with him. Either they find out where the guns are now, or Sawyer is going to be responsible for Libby’s suffering. It’s cruel, but he’s doing what he thinks is right at the time he thinks it. It’s a huge turn off for Kate, but Sawyer doesn’t try to call Jacks bluff. “Let’s go, freckles.”
While they’re traveling, Kate grills Sawyer about Ana getting the gun from him; she knows something is fishy. He’s not talking. It turns out the stash has been at Sawyer’s place the whole time. Makes sense. Nice place he’s got. They’re leaving when Hurley comes over and asks if they’ve seen Libby. They tell him what happened.

Some weird clouds blowing through the sky… another dream? Yemi appears to Eko while Locke sleeps next to the shouldering campfire. “Come… follow me.”
Eko follows, limping like Locke… Yemi scales the cliff and Eko climbs behind, using the axe to grab hold. He reaches the top and pulls himself over to find his brother sitting in a wheelchair. “Wake up, John.”
Locke as Eko plummets backwards from the cliff – and jolts awake as he hits the ground. The real Eko questions him. “You had a dream…was there a priest? The man that you saw was my brother. This is why we needed to come together; this is how we are going to be led, and this is how we will know where to go next.”
Locke remembers Yemi leading him up the face of the cliff. But, “…it wasn’t even me, it was you.”

Flashback – Eko the priest is at the Malkin’s house. Charlotte is sitting on the porch, waiting, it seems. Joyce comes out of the house and warns Eko that it’s a bad time… her husband Richard follows.

It’s Claire’s psychic! He tells Eko the doctor made up the story to cover for his own incompetence; Charlotte wasn’t dead, she had hypothermia, which only made her appear dead. Joyce and Charlotte go into the house. Richard continues. His wife is convinced of the miracle and wants to spread the word to spite him. “Because she knows I’m a fraud. Because I make my living as a psychic… I gather intelligence on people and I exploit it (Like the Dharma Initiative?). Everyday I meet people looking for a miracle…but there are none to be had. Not in this world, anyway.” (there are other worlds than these?) - so this explains why he freaked out when he was 'reading' Claire. He felt something real. a psychic burst from Aaron in the womb? did he then contact someone about it? someone who told him to get Claire on flight 815? -
Eko will report that there has been no miracle. “Your daughter is alive, this is all that matters.”
Leaving, he turns to see Charlotte staring out of the window after him.

Eko on the island has climbed the cliff wall, with the help of the axe – he stands on top and looks around – this island is huge – there’s a nice panoramic shot of what almost look like two man made hills, and what may be a large statue of some sort, everything is overgrown and green.

I was expecting to see a pterodactyl fly by… “Rwarrrrrk…Hurley! Hurley!”
He turns and looks back down on Locke and the wrecked plane, and can make out a circle with a question mark in the center, laid out with dirt in the grass. Someone salted the dirt to create a target that could be seen from above, Eko guesses. He uses the axe to tap at the earth under the body of the plane, and hits something metal. He calls John over and they push the plane aside to get at the buried hatch. They uncover it and Eko uses the axe to unstick the latches keeping it shut. He bends to open it, and Locke stops him. “Eko, may I?”
“Be my guest.”
Locke grabs hold of one side and they lift the doors together to reveal a shaft leading down into darkness, déjà vu all over again.

The deathwatch continues back at the swan. Michael’s hurting… he clearly didn’t want this… but he definitely doesn’t want her to survive. Hurley tells him about the date he was about to have… then says, “I’m glad you’re okay, man.”
Ouch.

Locke and Eko climb down the shaft. They reach the bottom and Locke flicks on the lights. The Dharma wheel with a big white circle in the center… the Pearl. They walk into a circular room... some sort of surveillance set up. There are two Frankenstein chairs in front of a wall holding nine monitors… they look like 60’s television sets. The beaten leather chairs have ashtrays installed in the armrests, with a swivel desk bolted to the opposite arm, and a large magnifying panel attached. The desk is a mess. I’ve heard John Carpenter has a chair like this… Locke starts flipping on the monitors… all are full of snow except number two, which is a shot of the swan station.

Locke looks up at the tattered ceiling to see a camera pointed down into the surveillance room as well. There’s an oven knob on the armrest of one of the frankenchairs, and Locke dials it up. The lights turn up with it. There’s a computer on a desk by the wall.
>: PRINT LOG? Y/N
Locke hits Y, and a dot matrix printer chugs to life, spitting out pages of data. It may be a log of the button pushing, time stamping every occurrence.

41602108:05 (is 05 the year?) and the numbers continue, increasing by one every time. Is this a count of how many times the button has been pushed consecutively? Forty one million, six hundred two thousand, one hundred eight times? Yeah, probably not. Eko finds a pile of empty notebooks, and Locke finds a pneumatic tube. He crumples up his map and sends it up the tube. That might turn out to be a bad idea.
Eko holds up the Pearl Station Orientation videotape. They pop in it a dusty VCR.

The Dharma Initiative
5 of 6
Orientation
Orientation - Station 5 – The Pearl
It looks like Marvin Candle, but this guy is younger and both his arms are working. He’s also dressed like Carl Sagan. I guess I’m not the only one tivoing Cosmos on the discovery science channel.
– I like how it’s a scratchy old videotape in the same way the swan was a scratchy old filmstrip –
The Marvin Candle bad twin is standing in front of the wall of monitors, back when everything was shiny and new. They are all displaying the Pearl logo.


“Hello. I’m Doctor Mark Wickman (candle-wick), and this is the orientation film for station five of Dharma Initiative. Station five, or the Pearl, is a monitoring station, where the activities of participants in Dharma Initiative projects can be observed and recorded. Not only for posterity, but for the ongoing refinement of the Initiative as a whole.”
- The scene switches to Gerald and Karen DeGroot observing and taking notes on a group of people doing jumping jacks in matching uniforms –

“As Karen DeGroot herself has written, ‘careful observation is the only key to true and complete awareness.’ Your tour of duty in the Pearl will last three weeks, and during this time you and your partner will observe a psychological experiment in progress.”
- cut to a shot of Jack walking in front of the camera in the swan… Locke’s getting pissed –
“Your duty is to observe team members in other stations on the island. These team members are not aware that they are under surveillance, or that they are the subjects of an experiment. Working in eight-hour shifts, you and your partner will record everything you observe in the notebooks we’ve provided.”
- back to Wickman in front of the monitors. This time the one above his right shoulder is a (presumably) live shot of another station. There’s a guy sitting at a computer, and another man walks over with a printout –
“What is the nature of the experiment, you might ask? What do these subjects believe they are accomplishing as they struggle to fulfill their tasks? You, as the observer, don’t need to know. All you need to know is the subjects believe their job is of the utmost importance. Remember, everything that occurs, no matter how minute or seemingly unimportant, must be recorded. Each time a notebook is filled with the fruits of your diligent observation…”
– seems like the tape might be edited here –
“…roll it up…insert into one of the containers provided. Then simply place the container in the pneumatic tube, and presto! It will be transported directly to us.”
- hmmm… sounds like that whole process might have been a dig at blogs like this and the message boards, no? –
“At the end of your eight hour shift, proceed to the Pala ferry, which will take you back to…” (unintelligible…the village? Prepare for your next?)”
– seems edited again here –
“On behalf of the DeGroots, Alvar Hanso, and all of us here at the Dharma Initiative, thank you, namaste…”
– both hands raised together this time –

“…and good luck.”

It’s copyrighted 1980, the Hanso Foundation. In the video the place looked spiffy, nice clean walls and shiny leather chairs. It’s kind of a mess now… the world has moved on.
Eko asks Locke, “Would you like to see that again?”
“No. No, I’ve seen enough.”
Eko starts to collect the printouts. He wants to take them, they may be important. Locke scoffs at the idea. “Important? I’m sorry, weren’t you just watching the same thing I was?”
Eko tells him he now believes that pushing the button is more important than ever. Locke laughs, they’re all “…rats in a maze, with no cheese.”
Eko says they are being tested. “The reason to do it, push the button, is not because we are told to do so in this film…we do it because we believe we are meant to. Isn’t that the reason you pushed it, John?”
Locke has lost his faith. Did the island or the Initiative somehow see this coming and start ‘programming’ Eko to replace him?
Locke throws a tantrum. “I was never meant to do anything! Every single second of my pathetic little life is as useless as that button…it’s meaningless. And who are you to tell me that it’s not?”

Flashback – Eko’s at the airport waiting to board Oceanic flight 815. – hey, maybe the plane crashed because there were motherfucking snakes on it! – The psychic’s daughter, Charlotte, followed him there, against her father’s orders. She has a message for Eko that she promised to deliver. She tells him Yemi says he is a good priest. She saw him when she was… between places (in the territories? With his bad twinner?) He wants Eko to know that he will see him soon – true enough – “Even though you don’t have faith in yourself, he has faith in you.”
Eko is upset, and he gets loud, asking why she is doing this to him. Libby is passing by and she interrupts to make sure everything is all right. Charlotte nods and Libby continues on her way. – so she was on the plane for sure –
“He has faith in you. One day you’ll believe me.”

In the Pearl, Eko tells John about his brother, about eventually crashing on the island and then somehow finding Yemi in the plane now above them, concealing the entrance to the station. “And I took this cross from around Yemi’s neck, and put it back on mine. Just as it was on the day I first took another man's life. So let me ask you? How can you say this is meaningless?”
Eko is now the Locke of season two. Locke, Eko. Eko, Locke.

“If you will not continue to push the button John, I will.”

Back in the Swan, Jack is shooting up Libby to ease the pain. It doesn’t seem like she has much time left (my tivo bar is near the end….), and Hurley wants to talk to her. Jack gives Hugo’s shoulder a squeeze. So sad, we’re right by the washer and dryer where the ‘romance’ pretty much began. Hurley is sorry he forgot the blankets… Jack is holding back tears as Hurley breaks down…Libby suddenly becomes coherent…she’s trying to spit a word out… “Michael!”
Jack takes it for concern, not for the warning she surely intended. “He’s okay, he made it, Libby.”
She passes away, having used up the last of her strength to try and warn them. She was on the plane and she’s not an other. Moreover, she’s dead. Too bad about the occasion, but I love this melancholy Lost theme. Haven’t heard it in a while. Jack softly closes Libby's eyes then walks away, leaving Hurley crying by her side. Kate is sobbing alone in the dining nook. Sawyer sits and holds her tight, consoling her. Jack is trying to compose himself in the bathroom.

The timer starts to beep its four-minute warning.

Eko and Locke are returning through the jungle.

Michael is in the armory, standing over Ana’s body. He hears the beeping and looks up. The cursor blinks on the computer screen.

>:



– is he gonna try and IM Walt again? –