Whip asked me to do another recap because of a hectic work project. She'll do the next one, and then we'll switch off again for the last episodes of this season.

“The Constant”

We start out with Sayid, Desmond and the pilot on the helicopter. Desmond is holding the picture of him and Penny that Naomi had. The pilot is following the coordinates exactly, which takes them through a thunderhead. Desmond grabs his seat, which takes us to another time, we don’t know if it’s forward or backwards. He’s lying on a cot, grabbing the edge, and wakes from a terrible nightmare. He’s at a military academy and is asked why he was slow in coming to attention. He says he was having a dream. He was on a helicopter heading towards a storm, and then he can’t remember what happened. His superior then makes everyone go outside to do pushups in the rain. We flash again to Desmond on the helicopter. He starts panicking and he tries to undo his seatbelt. Sayid tries to restrain him from the back, and the pilot is just concerned he doesn’t push them off course. Desmond suddenly doesn’t know who Sayid is.

Back on the island, Jack and Juliet are asking Daniel and Charlotte where the helicopter could be. Jack and Juliet are suspicious that Daniel and Charlotte aren’t telling them something because Charlotte seems totally calm and not worried about where the boat could be. Finally Daniel says to Charlotte, “We should tell them.” Daniel explains that their “perception of how long they’ve been gone isn’t how long they’ve been gone.”

Back on the boat, Desmond is freaking out even more. He is completely disoriented, he doesn’t know Sayid, and he doesn’t know where he is. He’s upset and scared. Two of the men on the boat come to the helicopter and tell Sayid they’re going to take Desmond down to the sick bay so that their doctor can look at him. Sayid wants to go, too, but they say first he’ll go down on his own, and then Sayid can join him. Again, Desmond flashes and he’s back at the military camp, disoriented. He’s trying to explain to his friend what is happening, saying that during their situps, he left, and he was on a boat and he had a picture of him and Penny and then he was back. He goes to call Penny and he flashes again, back to the Boat. The same two men who met the helicopter are escorting him down to the sick bay. The one (who was one of the creepy guys from 3:10 to Yuma) introduces himself as Kimi (?) and the other one as Omar, and says he’s from Vegas and Omar is from Florida. He says they are there to help. They leave him in the sick bay while they go to get the doctor. Someone calls to Desmond, he turns to him and the man is lying strapped to a cot. He says, “It’s happening to you, too, isn’t it?”
I PM’d Whip because the guy in the cot looked so familiar to me, I couldn’t remember when we had met him before, but apparently I remember him from the movie Short Circuit.

Back on deck, Kimi is arguing with the pilot. The pilot walks away and Sayid asks him what’s going on. They took off at dusk and now it’s daytime. The pilot reassures Sayid he’s there to help him, so Sayid asks to use the phone. He says he can exchange it for the gun, but don’t bother trying to call Baghdad, the phones only call eachother. Sayid calls Jack and Juliet back on the island. He starts to explain what’s going on with Desmond, and Daniel asks for more symptoms. He wants to know if Desmond had recently been exposed to any radiation or electromagnetism. Jack says no. (Um… hello? When the hatch exploded?!) Juliet asks if he has Amnesia and Daniel says no.

Desmond is still in the sick bay. The man he was talking to is looking comatose. He comes to and says he was just on a ferris wheel. He starts raving and the doctor comes in. He gives the man a shot in the arm to sedate him. He puts down the needle when Desmond doesn’t want a shot, and the doctor says he just wants to check his eyes. He pulls out a small flashlight to check his pupil’s reactivity and asks Desmond to tell him the last thing he remembered. *Flash* Desmond is back at the military facility about to call Penny. She wants to know what he wants, he says he’s in trouble, something is happening, he’s confused, he needs to see her, she says he broke up with her and of course he’s confused because he’s still calling her, he asks to see her, she says no *Flash* Sayid and the pilot come into the sick bay to bring the phone to Desmond so Daniel can speak with him. Daniel asks Desmond what year it is and where he is. He says it’s 1996 and he’s at Camp Miller. Daniel thinks for a second and tells Desmond that as soon as he’s back at the camp, he needs to get on a train to Oxford University, go to Queen’s college, physics department and find him.

Daniel gets out his journal. He explains to Jack that the displacement can be hours or years. He tells Desmond to tell the Daniel at Oxford that the device should be at 2.432 oscillating at 11 hertz. He says if that still doesn’t convince him, tell him he knows about Eloise.

*Flash* Desmond is in the phone booth holding the phone. He goes to see Daniel and tells him he’s been to the future. Daniel thinks it’s a prank until Desmond tells him the first code. He stops, but is still doubtful, and then he tells him he knows about Eloise. Daniel takes Desmond into his lab. He introduces Des to Eloise, who is a rat. Daniel puts on a radiation vest, but doesn’t give one to Des. Des asks him about it, and Daniel says he does it throughout the day so he needs protection from prolonged exposure, but Des will be fine. He makes some adjustments, puts Eloise in a maze. He lets his contraption sit on her for a second, waits a minute while Eloise is still, and once she is alert again, lets her loose to run the maze. She makes it to the end. Desmond wants to know what’s so amazing about it and Daniel says he just built the maze that morning, and he was going to teach Eloise how to run it an hour in the future.

*Flash* back on the ship there’s a kerfuffle in the sick bay. Sayid and Desmond are locked in the sick bay with the comatose guy. He is now awake and introduces himself as George Minkowski, the ship’s communications officer. He says there was a flashing light on the console they were ordered to ignore, and they were the calls from Penny.

*Flash* Desmond wakes up in a chair in Daniel’s office at Oxford. Daniel says Des was out for 25 minutes, but Des says he was only in another place for about 5 minutes. Daniel advises Des to be careful crossing streets. Des notices Eloise dead in her cage. Daniel hypothesizes that she died because her brain shorted out. He advises Des to get a constant so his brain can handle the time traveling. Des asks if it can be a person and Daniel says yes. He calls Penny, but her number is disconnected.

*Flash* Des wakes up on the boat and says he needs to call Penny. George says someone sabotaged all the equipment on the boat, and he could have fixed it if he hadn’t gone nuts. He tells them where the communications room is and when they ask how they can get there, George points to the open door. He says they must have a friend on board.

*Flash* There’s an art auction going on. A painting of a ship is on display, and the item up for bid is a ledger from the ship. The item number is 2342 (which is similar to the 2.342 number Daniel told Des earlier) and it is sold for 380,000 pounds to Mr. Whitmore (Penny’s dad). Desmond goes to find him and tells him he needs to speak to Penny. Mr. Whitmore assumes it’s about their breakup and that Des has changed his mind. He gives Des Penny’s address.

*Flash* George describes what happened. He says they were anchored and bored, waiting for instructions, when Brandon, another crew member started acting crazy and then died. They’re now in the communications room and see that all the cords and wires have been cut. George falls and has a terrible nose bleed. As Desmond is helping him, he sees a calendar and sees that the date is December 24, 2004. George stutters, “I. Can’t. Get. Back.” And then dies. Sayid asks what happened and Des answers it’s the same thing that will happen to him.

*Flash* Des wakes up on the floor of the men’s room where he was talking to Mr. Whitmore. He splashes water on his face and then goes to find Penny. Her address is 423 Cheyne Walk. He pleads with her to listen to him and she finally obliges. He tells her that he just needs her number so that 8 years from now he can call her. She says she will if he’ll go away. He says he won’t call her until Christmas Eve, 2004. She gives him her number: 79460893, which he repeats and she asks why he doesn’t bother to write down. “It won’t matter”. She shows him the door and he starts begging that she won’t change her number, just “Believe me! Believe me!”

*Flash* “Trust me!” Sayid has the phone fixed and asks Des if he has remembered the number yet. Des repeats it to Sayid and Sayid hands Des the phone. Penny answers.
“Penny?”
“Desmond?”
“Penny, you answered”
“Where are you?”
“I’m on a boat. I’ve been on an island. Is that really you?”
“yes”
“You believed me”
“I’ve been looking for you. I know about the island, I’ve been researching it. I talked to your friend Charlie….***static on the line***… I love you”
“I’m sorry. I love you too”
And they vow to come together again. The call is over. Sayid apologizes that that is all the time he could get out of the battery, Desmond tells Sayid thank you, it was enough. Sayid asks if he feels better, and Des does.
Back on the shore, Daniel is flipping through his journal. He’s going backwards and comes upon a note he wrote some time ago that reads, “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.”

So.... What made George do the time travel switch thing? Who cut the wires? Who is Ben's mole on the ship? How does having a constant really work? And what's going on with the Oceanic 6 and why don't they have these time traveling issues? Or do they?