Questions and thoughts...
First...
Wherever the Island is now (in the "815 crashed" reality), isn't it along the flight path of the plane that the runway was built for? Doesn't that mean that there will likely be a rescue team coming? Can "Fake John" lower the defenses so that rescuers can arrive?
Second...
Would any of the DI folks who were evacuated from the island in the "non-crash" reality have figured out that their universe was invaded by folks from another universe? Would they have been able to figure out that the "parallel" folks in their universe were children and/or yet to be born? The non-crashed flight still exhibited a great deal of synchronicity. Sawyer and John, for example. Claire and Jack. Is the DI still operating and do they know who all these people are? (And if the Island acts on its own behalf, is the surviving DI its ace in the hole? That is, will the DI discover a way to bridge universes again and resurrect the Island, all according to the Island's own plan?)
Third...
The runway seems to be evidence that Jacob is one step ahead of all of these events, even his own death. Did Ben order the building of the runway in ignorance, or does it also testify to his knowledge? All of Ben's claims of weakness and ignorance were to the "Fake John". Was he lying? Has he been in on Jacob's plan the entire time?
ETA: OH... and finally... is Widmore now dead in the "non-crash" reality? Is Dan now never born?
Re: Confused...
Right, the runway was built for flight 316. But who really wanted it to be built? "Fake Locke" didn't need it for John's body, I don't think. He didn't need a safe landing for flight 815 and impersonating Christian. But a runway WAS required if Ben was going to survive. And, OK, "Fake Locke" would have wanted Ben to survive, too... but if Jacob's a step ahead, wouldn't he have wanted Ben to survive also?
I don't think there was anything to indicate that flight 316 deviated from its flight path. I think the flight disappeared in a place that ordinary flight recovery crews can look.
The photo with Jack and company that Ben and Sun saw only demonstrates that Jack and company went back in time on the "crash" timeline but didn't detonate the bomb. I imagine the skeletons in the cave are also proof of this. It doesn't actually matter "when" the other timeline came to be. The point is that "now" everything is "as if" both timelines always existed and one was invaded by the other.
Actually, it's more like one universe bifurcates at the point of the blast. In one branch, the nuclear device fails to detonate and we have the "crash" reality that endlessly loops. In the other branch, we have the "no crash" reality.
But wait... that would mean that Jack and company, if they are currently on the "crash" branch, are invading the "wrong" reality "now". That is, Jack and company are only where they are now by virtue of the blast, which means they belong to the "blast branch" of the bifurcation. But they're currently in the "crash" branch.
Interesting.
Oh hey...
that is interesting!
I had been thinking of it as a branching moment (the bomb)--as in one where the bomb worked and one where it didn't. I din't think of it as one where they chose the bomb and one where they didn't--that's cool. That'd probably make the skeletons Rose and Bernard. I wonder if Sawyer and Juliet will have a child then on that line.
Do Jack and co have to be part of both? That is, they couldn't be in the crash branch without the blast--they probably died in the purge. But they are not from the non-crash world either.
As for the run-way--I can see that it could be a part of Jacob's larger scheme, but I still think Fake Locke ordered it built and that it was important that Locke's body be delivered safely. I know he/it managed with Christian's body (which actually is "Lost" in the no-crash world I think because the body is attached to the island--it went back in time with them)--but Locke was more integral to his plan I think and so he wanted to make sure it got there intact.
Ah, I get it...
Keep in mind that...
Spelling out for my own understanding...
OK, I think I can see how the loop has been disrupted and you are going to wind up with the possibility of change (Jacob's plan?).
At the moment of bifurcation-Juliet's death/life you have one universe in which the bomb did not go off and the O6 die sometime in the past (and in which there was a crash). But this is also the universe in which Ben and Sun see the picture of them in the past. The universe in which flight 316 comes down and Jacob is killed in 2007. So Jack and company don't belong here.
In the other--the bomb goes off, the island sinks. But in this one there is no crash. So Jack and Company shouldn't exist there to make the bomb go off--they are from the crash world.
In 2007, in the crash world, Jack and Co. are invaders.
In the 1970s, in the non crash world, Jack and Co. are invaders.
Right, but...
In the 1970's, they go back to a spot that exists on their own timeline. They're still in their original universe. They're invading a different time, but not a different reality.
Of course, this is all very "relatively speaking".
Their own timeline...
Yeah they go back to a spot on their own timeline in their on universe. But if they die in the nuclear blast with the island sinking--then they are in a 1970s in which the plane never crashed, that is in the alternative universe.
I'm just thinking that a paradox has been created that allows for their existence where they shouldn't be. That is, if this is Jacob's scheme then his plan has allowed for entropy/death to be overcome in both universes. In blast world they "should" die in the blast; in crash world they "should" die in the incident, purge, or whatever. But because they shouldn't exist at all, I don't think they die.
In both worlds they should have died in the past, but because the two worlds have been created, they shouldn't be--they shouldn't be in blast world 1970 and they shouldn't be in crash world 2007.
In other words--I think this paradox is Jacob's loophole.
Right...
... this finally clicked for me in our conversation when I realized that, at the moment of bifurcation, there were two "Jack and company" groups now. This will always happen when someone travels between universes. Different universes represent different choices. You don't just leave a universe, you split into two people and one person stays while you go.
And they entered a new universe when it became apparent that the bomb was going to detonate. This couldn't be true in the universe they started out in, as that would create a paradox. So they had to have popped into a new universe for it to be possible. But since they popped into a new universe, they no longer belonged to the universe they came from, and the bomb wouldn't allow them to stay in the universe they found themselves in. So, you're right, Jaz... they belong nowhere.
(I wonder if this is what happened to Richard... he somehow ended up belonging nowhere, so now, where he is, he doesn't age.)
They are the cats that walk by themselves...
and all places are alike to them... (in that they shouldn't be there)
Yes--the Schrodinger's Juliet group in which Juliet survived the fall--they popped back to 2007 into the crash world (their original world) because they did something in 1977 which meant they would never have gone to the past. So they did not die in the bomb blast.
That group should not exist in 1977 with the bomb going off, and they shouldn't exist in 2007 with the bomb not going off. They shouldn't be. So this is the opposite of entropy. The are surplus energy that's created with phase shifting--if the phase shifted lines are now imagined not as two lines of time slightly out of sync, but two realities.
One thing I was going to say in what I was thinking of writing this morning--two images of fire, from "The Incident"--one Jacob cooking fish. Fire as metamorphosis/destruction.
Putting the fun in the funeral
Jaz don't forget that we were shown fire at least two other times with significant meaning. The first was the funeral rite when the body was set on fire and set adrift. The second was the vision quest Locke underwent when he saw Boone and was told that he was a sacrifice the island demanded. I'm not sure how they play into your thoughts but they seem to have significance in the Lost world as a means of transformation.
I'm a bit confused...
'Cause I sometimes don't remember all the plot details, but
First: In the crashed reality--the runway was built for Flight 316 and this was part of Fake Locke's plan to get Locke's body back to the island safely. I didn't think that it was on a flight path? Or if it was on one--not a standard flight path, but one that Eloise Hawking knew of. Is that who you meant by rescuers? More people sent by Ms. Hawking?
Second: In your idea there have always been these two parallel universes--let's call them A & B for now--and what happened is that the O6 folks from B went over to A at the same time they went back in time? And in A they set off the bomb which meant no-crash but the bomb blast sent them back to B. If that's what you're describing then I'm not sure how we get the pictures of the O6 in 1977 showing up in the 2007 B--the picture that Christian showed to Sun and Lapidus. I think it's not that these two parallel universes have always been but that they were created at the moment of the hydrogen bomb blast.
I like the idea that there will be a DI in both universes--'cause then you have dice (change and movement around the backgammon board) instead of DI
I did realize that Desmond now has a motive for bringing the two back together--with the hydrogen blast there is no more Charles Widmore and no more Penny.
(A somewhat random thought here--but the Charlie on the plane saved by Jack looks like the Charlie that came to see Hurley in the asylum--I think Hurley aw two Charlies--one a ghost that looked like the Charlie he knew and one a Charlie from the other universe--the one who had physical properties.)
Third: again I thought the runway would have been Fake Locke's idea?