Eloise

[Kiowa Warrior]

I was watching The Constant again, and the scene with Eloise reminded me why time-travel will never be my best friend...

Okay so Daniel ray guns her using the numbers Des gives him



and this makes her consciousness travel an hour into the future when Daniel teaches her how to run the maze, meaning that she can run the maze now, in the present.



Then Des jumps to the future again and wakes up to see Daniel scribbling away on his board



with Daniel telling him that he was out for almost 75 minutes.

Des then see poor Eloise dead from an (unconfirmed until autposy) brain aneurysm.



So am I right in thinking that during the time Des passed out until the time Eloise died Daniel would still have to teach her to run the maze, because if he didn't run through it with her then where would her consciousness have been able to jump to in order to give her the knowledge of how to run it?

And that's assuming that Eloise didn't die mere minutes after she came back to run the maze.

Or did Daniel just get on with his calculations straight away and didn't bother with Eloise any more.
(You can see that the work on his board is different from when he first comes into the room with Des, and while I know next to nothing about physics I'm guessing his new work (the sceencap above with the spiral drawing) took more than a couple of minutes to get down?)



So surely Dan must somehow have had to give her the knowledge of how to run the maze for her past self to have taken? And how long would that have taken anyway? Would he have time to do so before Eloise died? Would present Eloise that got ray gunned still have been able to run the maze if she wasn't then later taught how to?

Or should I just stop confusing myself by thinking too much?

[Murgatroyd]

I think we have to assume that during that 75 minutes Daniel did teach Eloise to run the maze, otherwise things just get too confusing, but I do think the writers were shooting themselves in the foot a bit by attaching such a short time frame - it's a bit much to believe it'd take the rat such a quick time to learn ....

[The_abbott]

I think daniel said I haven't shown her for another hour so if it took 60 minutes to train Eloise she died in the next 10-15 minutes. But then he would have had to examine her and stuff.

It is very confusing though!!

[Reed]

This makes me laugh because it is exactly the sort of thing that puzzles me and I am not so bad with the time travel stuff as others appear to be.

Good spot however but perhaps the future is there until it is changed, and it changed the minute she died. The teaching of the maze was erased from history WHEN Eloise died, but it was there for her to travel to and learn up until this point. If that makes sense. That is my take on it anyway but I completely understand your point of view because it does not really make sense does it?

Even though Daniel did not teach her it, he was going to and this "going to" was in the future.

[Reed]

Originally Posted by Murg

I think we have to assume that during that 75 minutes Daniel did teach Eloise to run the maze, otherwise things just get too confusing, but I do think the writers were shooting themselves in the foot a bit by attaching such a short time frame - it's a bit much to believe it'd take the rat such a quick time to learn ....

But she had already been to the future so Daniel could not have tought her AFTER she time travelled because she already knew how to run the maze. Not to mention she had already obtained the information from the future - i.e. it had already happened in the past.

Unless of course time travel is not straight and is not as simple as that. In Planet of the Apes [2001] a theory about the ending states that one person can time travel first but come out the other end last because time travel is not necessarily straight.

[D-Roc]

Interesting question.

I have to assume that either Faraday did show Eloise the maze, or (more likely imo) that he didn't need to:

Imagine that your consciousness is sent 1 day to the future. You watch the lottery and memorise the winning numbers. Your consciousness is the propelled back to the present time. When tomorrow comes, you'll still have the winning lotta numbers in your 'memory', therefore you wouldn't need to watch the lotto to know the sequence of numbers that come up (you'd just have to remember to buy a ticket!!).

This is an example of what I believe Eloise experienced with the maze - Daniel need not have to show her again, since it's already in her memory. She was already shown the maze by Daniel in the original perceived time - however time-travelling Desmond gave Dan and Eloise "new memory" which erased (or overwrote) the original memory of Dan showing Eloise the maze. To show her the maze again wouldn't be necessary.

We have two variables and one constant - Eloise and Des are both experiencing a different perception of time, whilst Faraday is remaining constant - the constant has a 'constant' perception, thus information he receives overwrites the action he would have taken in physically showing Eloise the maze.

Incidentally, this could well be how Hugo won the lotto, and how Jack 'knew' he was going to fix Sarah, and how Locke knew he had purpose and why Faraday was crying..

New memory or the impression of memory which hasn't yet come to pass..

The one thing we can be sure of is that the future is fixed, but the memory and impression we gain during time-travel (or someone elses' time-travelling) can, I believe, influence our perception and memory (I guess some people also call it dejavu)

It's often believed that memory is something from the past - but I don't think that this is necessarily true, cos as Faraday and Des (and the rat) showed in 4.05, "new memory" can overwrite the original copy without creating a paradox. This is where I believe memory can be interpreted as a sense of destiny, or purpose..knowing something important is within you, before it has come to pass in your current perception of time - Destiny without details, I like to call it.

Well, that's my opinion anyway

[firebreathingfishies]

oh bloody hell, if you want to turn my brain to mush just take the gun and get on with it!

anything with time-travel involved can be majorly confusing, especially when it starts getting all paradox-y. but i suppose that if desmond hadn't turned up - which he shouldn't have really, Faraday wouldn't have blasted Eloise and then she wouldn't have died however long after and he would have just carried on as normal to teach her the maze an hour later so then he didn't bother... or does that not make any sense? reading it back it's gibberish...
but i think i know what i mean. but didn't Faraday say you can't change the future? but it was obvious he was wrong, because then he wouldn't have gotten the note in his journal, which mustn't have been there before or else he would have known everything already and Penny wouldn't have been expecting that call.

you know what? i'm going to do something simple, like play with string with my cat. this is too much of a head screw up for me

[D-Roc]

Originally Posted by firebreathingfishies

oh bloody hell, if you want to turn my brain to mush just take the gun and get on with it!

Draws gun..I'm good at drawing

anything with time-travel involved can be majorly confusing, especially when it starts getting all paradox-y. but i suppose that if desmond hadn't turned up - which he shouldn't have really, Faraday wouldn't have blasted Eloise and then she wouldn't have died however long after and he would have just carried on as normal to teach her the maze an hour later so then he didn't bother... or does that not make any sense? reading it back it's gibberish...
but i think i know what i mean. but didn't Faraday say you can't change the future? but it was obvious he was wrong, because then he wouldn't have gotten the note in his journal, which mustn't have been there before or else he would have known everything already and Penny wouldn't have been expecting that call.

Ah, but the future wasn't changed (otherwise there would be a paradox and the Universe would course correct it) - basically the update in his journal is what I call a "new memory" - it's something he can't remember doing because he didn't do it originally (and it wasn't there before Des time-travelled), it's only due to Desmond's time-travelling that the note-book was 'updated' by past-post-Desmond-meeting-Faraday. This 'new memory' can be compared to dejavu imo - something which isn't familiar, yet at the same time it is.

The update in his journal isn't changing the future, it's just an adjustment..an addition, if you will. You could argue that if such an addition was set to change Faraday's path, then the Universe had alrerady course corrected it by making him forget, and giving him 'memory issues' (as we've seen in previous episodes).

I think the key thing is that whilst Des' perception has been changing, Faraday's perception has remained the same, therefore he is only now realising that Des has influenced his past with 'new memories' - such memories do not change the future, but they can alter future mindset..

I'll try another way to explain my thinking on the notion of 'new memory': "It's not how you get from A to B (since fate governs your future), it's what happens in between getting from A to B and how one experiences it."

A similar metaphor was "Eggtowns" reveal that Sayid and the chopper boys hadn't yet made it to the ship, despite us knowing that he survives - the mystery wasn't that Sayid lives, it was finding out what happened to him and the choppers boys on the way out of the island - i.e they ended up half a day ahead of their previously percevied time.

That's how I understand it at least

you know what? i'm going to do something simple, like play with string with my cat. this is too much of a head screw up for me

That's actually quite fun

[firebreathingfishies]

i knew i could rely on you to simplify things roco

the new memory thing makes sense i suppose... it might be just me but it seems a bit too much to get my head around. i don't know, i think i'm fanciful to the idea that the letters just magically appear like in Back to the Future when people start disappearing

and i tried playing with the string, but my cat got jealous and scratched me

[D-Roc]

Originally Posted by firebreathingfishies

i knew i could rely on you to simplify things roco

Your wish is my demand

the new memory thing makes sense i suppose... it might be just me but it seems a bit too much to get my head around. i don't know, i think i'm fanciful to the idea that the letters just magically appear like in Back to the Future when people start disappearing

Yeah, I mean I could be wrong and it'll probably be something completely different I'd hate it to be exactly like B2tF - I think they've made some key differences, but they have certainly used films like that as a template

and i tried playing with the string, but my cat got jealous and scratched me

Scratch her back, i mean wounds heal differently on this island

[Kiowa Warrior]

Originally Posted by Reed

But she had already been to the future so Daniel could not have tought her AFTER she time travelled because she already knew how to run the maze. Not to mention she had already obtained the information from the future - i.e. it had already happened in the past.

Unless of course time travel is not straight and is not as simple as that. In Planet of the Apes [2001] a theory about the ending states that one person can time travel first but come out the other end last because time travel is not necessarily straight.

So if Daniel didn't teach Eloise to run the maze after she'd time travelled because she already knows how to, where she got the knoweldge of how to do so before she died is what's doing my head in! She couldn't just have an information dump or anything; she'd have to actually learn how to do it. And I don't think I'm capable enough of any more complex time travel theories at the moment, lol. Or any time during the next few decades I'd imagine...

Originally Posted by D-Roc

It's often believed that memory is something from the past - but I don't think that this is necessarily true, cos as Faraday and Des (and the rat) showed in 4.05, "new memory" can overwrite the original copy without creating a paradox. This is where I believe memory can be interpreted as a sense of destiny, or purpose..knowing something important is within you, before it has come to pass in your current perception of time - Destiny without details, I like to call