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After the hatch implosion, Desmond is also catapulted though time to another point in his life. Pushing the button sucked, so he happily decides to change things, buy a ring, and stay with Penny. That’s when Ms. Hawking shows up, vehemently urging Desmond to dump Penny and head to the Swan Hatch anyway, almost as if it were a given that he would do so. When he’s hesitant, she seems worried and annoyed. According to her own course-correction theory, she shouldn’t have to be worried... no matter what choice Desmond makes, the button would eventually get pushed by someone. Yet Hawking definitely *was* worried - a violation of her own conjecture. She knew Desmond could, and would, change things - unless he was thoroughly convinced that he could not.

So how did she know about Desmond? How did she meet him? How did she know the man was about to die?

Faraday says time is like a track. You can go forward and back but there's no getting off. So what is Desmond remembering about Charlie's future when he saves Charlie's life over and over? Another track? Some kind of correction? If this is all about fate, and Desmond can really escape fate because of his ground-zero hatch location, then how come he couldn't permanently save Charlie?

Also the island time-travel theory is now turned on its head. Before we had people (and at least one lab-rat) pass out when they go to another time mentally, but it's always within their lifetime. Now we have our losties appearing on the island before they arrived. My first thought was that it was the island that had the "consciousness" that made the time jumps. But that doesn't make sense because the island wouldn't take the inhabitants with it--and it certainly wouldn't take some while leaving others.

And then we have Richard, who seems to be suspended in time, looking the same age when he visits Locke as a kid to now, with the neat twist of him not only knowing when and where Locke pops up, but when and where he's going. And to further put the nail into the coffin about the rules of time-travel, he seems to expect things to change if Locke has the compass when he meets Richard for the first time.