S6E15 DHARMA LIGHT

In Season 5, Dr. Chang was at the Orchid station during its construction. As the workers were nearing the pocket of energy, there was an accident and a worker was hurt. Chang came to the sight and told them to stop digging.

When asked what they were going to do with the EM, Chang said that it would be used for time travel experiments. A worker laughed about going back into time and killing Hitler to avoid World War II.

The Orchid station was constructed above the FDW chamber. We know that early island inhabitants made the donkey wheel during MIB's human life time. We are not sure whether MIB completed that project, or that new arrivals took up the cause to harness the light energy of the island. But at some point, someone finished the FDW and turned the wheel. It should have a) moved the island location and b) transported the turner in time and space. That is what we saw happen to Ben and Locke.

Unless, it is an illusion.

We are aware that the smoke monster can take memories of individuals are recreate matter (in the form of Kate's horse, Locke's body, poisonous spiders). Is it possible that the smoke monster can also mind control (from scans of people's brains like it did to Locke and Juliet)?

I wonder if MIB's memory of "clever" people with ideas about the life energy could use it to change the past. There are a few common things that both Jacob and MIB would jointly like to correct: a) MIB killing CrazyMom; b) Jacob killing his brother and turning him into Smokey; or c) CrazyMom killing Claudia. The search for time travel may have been the quest, "the progress" of the brothers to make amends with their own Past mistakes. Once they can achieve it, their misery ends.

We have only seen the ability of the island forces at most 140 years in the past (2004 to prior to Black Rock's 1867 crash) when the main castaways were flashing between time periods on the island. And maybe that was the real problem facing Jacob: how to use the light in order to go back 2200 years to his island birth. He does not have the technology or knowledge to use the light to fuel his time travel quest. And if the light force is finite, he may be actually running out of time and resources to accomplish his goal. Further complicating the matter, the ghost of his brother, MIB, has soured on the idea because of centuries of failure to "reclaim" his human body and humanity that Jacob took from him. MIB's soul now wants Jacob to suffer as much as he has on the island. If Dharma was the last, great hope of Jacob to find his time travel machine, then the purge may have been MIB's plan to thwart it.