WELCOME TO MY WORKING WEEK

In the future, Sayid has landed one of those cushy jobs.

Nice perks.

Pays well.

Excellent benefits.

Slight Faustian downside.

The pieces of the O6 Rebus puzzle seem to be spelling out the message that you don't need to die to go to hell. For many of us hell is a 9 to 5 ritual Monday to Friday. Sayid hasn't gotten trapped in a cubicle archipelago like that, but doesn't mean he's gamed the system.

Not like this chick anyway. She's got the Best Boss Evah!

Check this out: Aide wanted, v. high salary, work 2 days/yr., shop for Economist. Must be hot looking blond with European accent. Requires a certain moral flexibility.

Like his latest hot blond conquest, Sayid's job also seems to require an unusual skill set. It seems that on the way to his illustrious career as an Iraqi Torture Master, Sayid took some time out to obtain a fine European education. "Strauss awaits."...(Wait a minute! Sayid listens to Strauss?) ... It's all coming in very handy in this shiny new future. He's got a cool Jarrah, Sayid Jarrah kind of thing going on,

with a touch of that je ne sais quoi hitman chic.

"

Not everyone is so lucky of course. In the words of former union man Lane Kirkland, "If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves."

Maelstrom, for example, seems really pissed off that he took this crappy job. He wants to get it over with and he's apparently planning to bitch nonstop until he gets the hell out of there. Gimme a gun. I wanna gun. Why does she get a gun? When am I getting a gun? It's my gun in the first place. Gimme a gun. I wanna gun.....

Lapidowsky doesn't let work stop him from feeling groovy. In fact, I think he's sneaking a toke behind that tree whenever Jack's not looking. He ain't looking to be no Senior Management.

Although he's got Desmond on his ass now. He's convinced that Penny paid for his passage. He's gettin' outta tha'!

Daniel loves his job!

Why they let this fragile being into the Lion's Den is a mystery. But he's having the time of his life. He's that lucky kind of guy for whom his work is play. In fact he made a major discovery! He used this highly sensitive instrument, which kind of reminded me of an Odyssey of the Mind project

(using only cereal box prizes and gum, you have 30 minutes to create a working model of something an alien could use to determine the magical qualities of an imaginary planet ...Go!) to discover that this:

minus this:

equals...uh, something none of us understand.

You see? Time slooooows down on the Island. By 31 minutes....which is rather random. (Though not as random as 31 seconds, which was apparently the original plan.) What's up with that? Since we're taking this week off from WikiPhD, I shall only briefly note that this is evidence of something called Time Dilation and I've got too much of a headache right now to deal with it. Let's just say Ooooh! Time is 31 minutes slower on the Island!

Which means?

Like Lapidus said, some things on this show go way over my head and the rest of them go way way over. Is the Island constantly slowing down? From what reference point? Is it always 31 minutes slower than real time or do the 31 minutes keep adding up? If the Island is 31 minutes behind the freighter, then how are the voices communicating via radio? Are only solid objects effected by the time fart, while waves can sail through? And what happens to those minutes?

Does this phenomenon explain the way time turns to mud whenever Jack and Kate start having one of these stupid Kevin & Winnie moments? I hope Daniel can figure this out, because I think we'd all be grateful if he could find a way to just. make. it. stop.

"Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them." - Dion Boucicault

Naomi's corpse was pronounced "just meat" last week by Miles, the angry young ghostwhisperer....and everyone seems to have taken him at his word. She's laying out there in the hot sun. Meat doesn't do well in the sun. No one has had enough respect to even close her eyes.

Except for Sayid, who alone mourns her soul.

In the often Manichean world of this fantasy, Sayid is perhaps the most deeply twisted. Sayid's life's work is Suffering. He has tortured other men.

Thank you for that one, btw.

He has even tortured a woman...while her cat watched!

He betrayed his friend who was like his brother.

He may always look composed and serene, with his thick flowing mane of adamantine hair.

He may have a regal bearing and a noble heart,

but the fact is he seems to be on a backward redemptive arc. He went from making people wish they were dead, to making sure they were dead. And the tragedy is that, unlike Jason Bourne, Sayid knows exactly what he's doing.

"We may hate evil and want with all our hearts to do good, but what we find is that we not only continue to do evil, but even take delight in doing what we hate. Is it not as though two souls were warring within us? "-- St. Augustine

Why, Sayid? What made you sell your soul to Ben? What made you trust him?

The employment contract is based on a kind of trust. The boss trusts you to do your appointed tasks. You trust him to pay you. But trust can be a flimsy basis for a relationship.

Sayid easily trusted Hurley

but Tubby's done being used as everyone's favorite punchline.

Hurley trusted Locke . But it seems he's having some bigtime Recruit's Remorse now. They always make it sound so cool in the pamphlets, but then you get to boot camp

and you realize you signed up with Drill Sergeant LSD. And then they don't let you go home!

Locke trusted that Jacob would be there to tell him what to do

but then Jacob just picked up his cabin and transmogrified elsewhere and didn't even leave little Johnny a forwarding address.

Lapidus is trusting Daniel's judgment about flying back out to the freighter through the time swallowing atmosphere

...which I think you almost have to be stoned to believe.

Kate is trusting Jack to get her ass off this island...so she can get back to jail, natch. (Hey, no one ever accused Kate of being a genius.)

In one of the only genuine moments in the whole episode, Sawyer trusts Kate not to stomp on his tender beating heart...again.

Sounded like a proposal to me, Kate

...although I get the feeling this is where the not being a genius part is going to come in.

I want you to think this all the way through, girl....Cause it's not like this is difficult.

Sayid almost trusted Elsa. He almost caved.

Wrapped in those painstakingly positioned blankets, nestled on her taut little belly, Sayid almost trusted for a second in the biggest illusion of all...love.

But he snapped out of it in time.

And sent Elsa the way of all Lost gynocide victims - the ever reliable post-coital bullet to the gut.

But that doesn't answer the million dollar question. Why did Sayid trust BEN? Of all people? And how did this little piggy

turn himself into a globetrotting doggy doctor?

Look at this! While Jack is hoping to crashland in another planeload of innocents to get back to the island, Sayid and Ben already have that angle completely aced.

So, when did this new alliance begin? Did it begin here?

Or here?

Did it have anything to do with the discovery of Ben's own magical Wardrobe? Sayid learned a lot about Ben right before being thrown into the Game Room of Bondage with him.

For one thing he found out Ben is definitely gay.

No wire hangers!

For another thing, like that famous Beat guru Dean Moriarity, Ben goes On the Road quite a bit.

But that really doesn't tell us how Ben convinced Sayid to kick it up a notch on the Evil-meter. How did he recruit him to upward mobilize from torture to killing? He's really got Sayid by the balls too, doesn't he? He's sending him off on another mission as soon as the doggie drugs take effect. And even though Sayid has become almost a decoy now, for whoever Ben's nemesis is, he is going to obey his employer.

Sometimes it seems things are just about to come into focus. Sayid got this close to kiling the Economist. And the Economist got this close to killing Sayid. Who is this guy?

Who is The Economist?

I'm going with Number 4 myself, but I'm not ruling out the dude in the diapers. Or Keyser Soze over there on the hard right.

"Remember what happened the last time you thought with your heart and not your gun."

Whatever happened when the Oceanic Six escaped the Island, it's clear that all it earned them was passage into new circles of suffering and torture.

When Sayid tenderly lifted Naomi's wrist and removed her bracelet,

it seemed like he was "remembering" into the future, to the moment when he did the same thing with his murdered lover. The future bleeds into the past in a vicious karmic wrestling match. Only Sayid thought to bring Naomi's corpse home. And as the chopper lifted off, and the Island receded into a mirage,

Sayid looked down and around like a tourist trying to imprint the memory indelibly on his brain....

"When death overtaketh one of the wicked, he saith, "Lord, send me back again, That I may do the good which I have left undone." - Qu'ran

...and it already seemed like he was remembering how it will be when he is finally able to come back.

It's not just a job, man. It's a karmic adventure.