But Novikov and Lossev argued that this seemingly impossible scenario just might be possible...if you were willing to apply some creative thinking. The title of their paper is something of a wry nerd joke, one that Lost fans can appreciate. In The New Time Travelers, the author (whose name I wish to deliberately withhold for now) explains that a ''non trivial'' solution is physicist speak for ''not the obvious answer.'' As for the other part of the title, the term ''Jinn'' is another word for the kind of genies you might find in Arabic fairy tales. Novikov and Lossev used the term Jinn to describe things like that magical novel I mentioned earlier — things whose existence defy conventional explanations. According to the mysterious author of The New Time Travelers, Novikov and Lossev were drawing on the depiction of a kind of Jinn that you find in the Koran; they are ''a race of spirits that can appear suddenly and unexpectedly.''
A race of spirits that can appear suddenly and unexpectedly. Just like Jin in last night's episode. Just like Christian Shepherd in last night's episode. And just like Desmond in last night's episode — Desmond, whom Faraday in the season premiere called ''miraculously unique.'' Just like a Jinn.
The implication of all these ''clues'' is that there seems to be some kind of time loop in play, one in which some or all of the castaways are the Jinns in the aforementioned magical novel analogy; they are objects that must be returned to where they belong in order to avoid catastrophic paradox and preserve the established time-space continuum. Which, I think, is a pretty good explanation for what Ms. Hawking and her off-Island crew of quantum mechanics are attempting to do. (Too supernatural for you? Well, tough. The naturalists in the crowd got a big disclaimer from Faraday last night when he said: ''Bringing back to the people who left to stop these temporal shifts, that's where we leave science behind.'')
Crazy. Okay. But here's where all of this gets really great. The mysterious author of The New Time Travelers? His name is David Toomey. Ring bells? It should. David = Dave, Hurley's imaginary friend from the Loony Bin. Another Jinn. Toomey = Sam Toomey, another victim of The Numbers' curse. Best friend to Leonard Simms, one of Hurley's loony bin friends. In fact, the whole reason Hurley went to Australia was to find Toomey. Instead, he learned the dude had shot himself years earlier.
(Look, you should just be grateful that I'm not going to spend the next 1000 words comparing the Island to the Novikov/Lossov conceit of a ''clever spacecraft'' moving at time-warping light speed. Because that would REALLY get you calling for my termination. PSYCHOPOMP!)
NEXT: Ghost dad delivers a message
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