Where to start? Emily and Roger Linus welcomed Ben into the world 2 months early, in the woods, 32 miles outside of Portland (OR or ME?) about a week before Christmas sometime in thelate 60's. The birth resulted in Emily's death, an event that Roger never forgave Ben for. As Emily and Roger stumble out of the woods and to the main road, Horace and Olivia Goodspeed happen upon them and helped them. Will this be the one moment that started everything in motion in the present? Fast forward about 12 years and we see Roger and young Ben arriving on the island with a group. Roger was offered a job with DI through Horice. (just for timeline purposes, this would be about the late 70's) During this period, Ben has his first encounters with the island, and "the hostiles". He sees his dead mother, hears whispers, and ultimately runs away and happens upon a young Richard. Of note, while most refer to them as "Hostiles", Horice calls them "the Natives" and Ben later calls them "the original inhabitants". Fast forward an undetermined amount of time (at least 10 years, possibly as much as 20) and we see The Purge. While the Natives are gassing the compound, Ben is in the plateaus gassing his father. This purge allows for Ben's wish to live away from DI to come true. When he comes back to the compound, he takes a long pause over the body of Horice, but we do not see Annie. We get a sense of Ben's life by the fact that his father never once celebrated Ben's birthday. Even more, he openly blamed Ben for killing Emily. He was a drunk, and he never showed love for Ben. There are many holes in Ben's back story that I hope will be filled eventually. Now in the present. Locke has called Ben's bluff and showed up with cooper's body, demanding answers. Ben starts to tell Locke all about Jacob. Nobody but Ben has seen, heard, or spoken to Jacob, and nobody knows where he is. Locke explains the the Wizard of Oz theory to him, and says that he knows that ben is not just a liar, but a fake. Ben does not want to take Locke to Jacob, and gets the perfect excuse once Patches shows up and tells Ben about Naomi. Not wanting to miss the chance to finish this game of mental chess that has been going on since they met, Locke beats patches into silence, and announces to the entire group that he was going to see Jacob. This all shocks the others. I think this shock is for two reasons: 1) Those that believe can not believe that Locke could be equal to Ben, could knock Ben off his pedestal, could take Ben's power. 2) Those that do not agree with Ben can not believe that this day has come, someone that can knock Ben off his pedestal and expose him so that he loses his power. Jacob and the cabin. I spent the most time on this section, at least an hour total, because I did not want to miss anything. I know that I am awful about missing things and hearing wrong....butI DID see Jacob the first time! First, the cabin: The cabin has had a ring of some grey substance placed around it. Ben gets very upset over Locke taking time to try to figure out what it is. Ben was also very careful to step over the ring and not disturb it. Once inside the cabin, we see various items: oil painting, pot bellied stove, dining table and chairs, cupboard with a proper sink(no faucet), canning jars, ropes, chains, curtains, and a rocking chair. All of these seemed in place with the mid 19th century, and possibly connected to Black Rock and the slave trade theory. These were also little touches that suggested that not only was this cabin actually meant to be a home (not just barracks) but that a woman lived there as well. After what can only be described as a Norman Bates moment, Locke tells Ben off, and turns to leave. This is when it happens...we hear Jacob say "Help me". I think this would have had to have been through telepathy, because Ben did not hear it. Through telekinesis, Jacob throws things around the room, including Ben. We see Jacob sitting stone still in his chair, and a close up of his terrified eye. When Ben comes out of the cabin, he is visably shaken. After this, Ben takes Locke to the pit that holds all of the DI bodies, and shoots him. I do not think that Locke will die....yet. Somebody has to tell the secret. Back at the camp: Everyone finds out about Naomi, Juliet's secret, and Ben's plan. It is insisted that Juliet told Jack about the raid. Jack says that it's time for everyone to get caught up....finally, everyone is going to share! ok, now for random stuff I think that the reason Ben shot Locke is because he knew that Locke would figure out his secret. Ben is holding Jacob prisoner. That was what the ring was about, and why he asked Locke to help him. But where did Jacob come from, and what is Jacob, and how did Ben learn to capture and control him? Is Jacob the same thing that "smokey" is? What about the whisperers? I honestly think that Ben's comment to Richard about birthdays came from the fact that they have been on the island so long, that some things in time have become irrelevant...kind of like our camp not mentioning Thanksgiving or Christmas. Christmas is about a week away, and not a peep....Nikki mentioned that "Thanksgiving was 2 weeks ago". So, it's sometime in the late 70's when Ben arrives on the island. There is another group that lives on another part of the island that are called "Hostiles", "Natives"or "original inhabitants". But are they native? Where did they come from? Why are they so afraid of a group of ragged and tattered unarmed survivors? If I had been stuck on that Island for so many years and i see a group of scientists and the like with all kinds of technology and a way off the island, i would try to talk them into helping me.....and would slowly harbor a desire to kill them if they refused. If that is the case, that DI refused to help them...I have to wonder if it was because they did not want anyone to know about the island, or their "utopian society". Young Richard's clothes are from the early 70's (dashiki shirt and funky vest) when we see him first , in the late 70's. We know that he is educated and comfortable in the outside world (in Juliet's FB) All of them are wearing very tattered, but machine-made clothing. Richard's is the only close-up. This means that this group would have been on the island less than 10 years....and they were there before DI. I am thinking that they landed there the same way everyone else did. Now if Ben was about 12 (guessing the age of the boy playing him) and Richard (at the youngest) was about 20 in the late 70's, that would put them at about 37 and 45 now...this is fair seeing that the actors themselves are 53 and40 (respectively,according to IMDb) and gives us a period of 25 years from the time that Ben got to the island to now for The Purge to have taken place.I'm thinking that the purge did not happen very long ago, seeing that DI is still making drops and the DI jumpsuitsand clothes are still in good order. But it would have had to have happened at least 16 years ago, because Ben took Alex. And who is running everything on the outside if Ben is the only DI person left alive? How many of "the others" are from Richard's group, and how many of them are people that Ben tricked into staying? If nobody has ever seen Jacob before, how did Alex know that Locke would need the gun? When Roger is asking Horice about the gunfight, i think he said that they were driving back from the plane.....if so, would this be the plane that brought Richard's group to the island? What happened to Ben in the untold years of his back story that would cause him to kill off everyone that had ever bothered to show him any kind of love or sense of family? I can't wait to see how they tie all of this together!http://community.livejournal.com/pondering_lost/113362.html#cutid1