10K BLACK PEARL RING

Split rings are great for securely keeping keys on your key chain. They're not so great when you need to separate, say, the car key from the house key in a hurry. We think it's the number one cause of broken finger nails and pinched fingers. This classic design is a super-slick solution: the two halves stay together until you press the plunger, which releases a spring-tensioned ball bearing and allows disconnection. Goes back together just as easily. Cheaper versions have a much-less secure coupling mechanism (the ball bearing tends to fall out after a few uses) which puts you in danger of losing half your keys. Ours are of excellent quality materials and construction; made in Taiwan. So popular that we sell them in sets of four; for larger quantities order multiple sets.

The two-part episode The Incident presents two stories in parallel: a science-fiction adventure involving time-travel, electro-magnetism, and a mad scientist hoping to change things with a hydrogen bomb; and a fantasy myth involving mortals enslaved by ancient demigods, trying to change things with a knife and sacrificial fire. (In keeping with the disclaimer introduced earlier, it must be noted that ‘science’ and ‘fantasy’ are terms loosely applied, and that perhaps even the Jacob story might craft a more plausible scientific explanation than the Incident itself.) This work of fiction exists somewhere at the intersection of drama, sci-fi, and fantasy, but wholly within the category of Mythology. The episode’s first images evoke the dawn of human culture, the harnessed power of fire, shelters made of rock, hand-spun clothing and sandals, and primitive tools to gather fish from the ocean. After mankind adapted the necessary technology to survive, his mind began to expand to other pursuits, darkening his bare walls to produce painted images, carving majestic statues into rock, weaving decorative tapestries dyed different colors, telling stories through language, and even building ships to explore the seas (and planes to conquer the skies). Although Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey still holds the record for the longest flash-forward in cinema history, the centuries-long transition after the opening scene achieves a similar narrative effect. Even though man has evolved from taming the Promethean fire to building Edison’s light bulb to unleashing the power of the atom, our civilization is still in its infancy. Human beings themselves have not matured at the same rate as our technological progress. “They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.” The same petty jealousies that motivated the biblical rivalry of Jacob and Esau, also inform our nuclear-age warfare. A doctor can now perform once-unthinkable paralysis-saving surgery on your spine, but can that same doctor ever fix his own backbone when dealing with his father? Even our artwork, after generations of progress from cave paintings to wireless transmission of digital media, have also taken us from Homer to New Kids on the Block.


LOCKE: Years later a visiting prince came into Michelangelo's studio and found the master staring at a single 18 foot block of marble. Then he knew that the rumors were true -- that Michelangelo had come in everyday for the last four months, stared at the marble, and gone home for his supper. So the prince asked the obvious -- what are you doing? And Michelangelo turned around and looked at him, and whispered, sto lavorando, I'm working. Three years later that block of marble was the statue of David.

Two special artifacts from this classic opening scene, which are revisited at the ending of the episode, deserve special attention. The first is Jacob’s tapestry. The meticulously hand-crafted decoration initially appears in incomplete form. He has emblazoned the top section of the tapestry with ancient Greek lettering, a phrase from Homer’s Odyssey: “May the Gods grant thee all that thy heart desires”. Under those letters, the Egyptian symbol of the Eye of Horus, a symbol of divine power, occupies the center, between two massive wings. When Ben arrives at the statue centuries later, Jacob’s masterpiece is complete. Arms stretch down from the eye, towards nine human figures, while two kings observe from both sides. The image offers a visual representation of Jacob’s long-term plan, to give each piece ‘a little push’ into place for his endgame. Presumably, those nine individuals correspond to Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Ilana, Locke, Sun, Jin, Jack, and Hurley (although Ben might be the final person, as Ben received Jacob’s touch rather than Ilana). Much like the sequence of literal and figurative long cons that preceded this one, the tapestry doubles as a metaphor for the show’s writing process. The gods of this particular story, writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, strung the audience along for several years, slowly revealing pieces, painting each character with care, until it was time to unveil this man behind the curtain. Of course, they understood that the journey was more important than the final destination. As Jacob later confesses: “It takes a very long time when you're making the thread, but, uh... I suppose that's the point, isn't it?”.



Allusions to outside mythology, of course, occur quite frequently on Lost. For every direct reference that the show makes, there are a dozen other meaningful comparisons to be made, some intentional (such as Apollo the son of Zeus, or Everything That Rises Must Converge) but many others are merely fortuitous. Minds working independently across the globe tend to converge on the same core ideas or mythemes. Mythology scholars have produced a number of different theories to explain why authors from different cultures, without any direct contact, produce leg

Warning: Mature content

XIV
A MIND OVER TROUBLED WATER
The Golean Mons incident:

Considering the entire process had been based purely off of haste fully assembled theories and speculations, the first four jumps had gone far more smoothly then anyone could have ever anticipated. Timing had been critical, repeating each jump in the exact same manner as the original, almost immediately after they had completed the last. Plan fast had been the word, and move swiftly had been the action. The threat of Coalition activity had the fleet running the gantlet in a fashion that garnered them less then fifteen minutes worth of prep time in normal space between jumps to prepare for the next.
Emerging into normal space, the Alice Paul and her sister ships the Zena Licica, and Emma Edmond would immediately move forward and fan out on patrol, reaching out just far enough that they could turn back in time for the next jump. Under the watchful eye of fifteen lingering Duel and War Hammer class battleships, the trio of advanced destroyers would make full use of their powerful sensor systems, sweeping deep into the quadrant for any range able communication signals, sensor nets, and any other Coalition or Paparian threats, while the rest of the fleet scrambled to make ready for the next jump.
Timing each jump right down to the minute, the fleet had some how managed to avoid disaster thus so far, including such fleet wide devastations as heavy flux matter storms in hyperspace, vessel to vessel collisions within the tight nit cluster of conglomerating heavy war ships in between jumps, and scraps with random mine fields or aggressive enemy man of wars. In truth, it was fare to assume that any collective Coalition activity within range of detecting the fleet, or even a formidable Paparian privateer unite, would most assuredly be making tracks in the most hell bent way possible, in any other direction, considering what their sensor screens would be ballyhooing the moment sixty heavy Alliance man of wars and the single largest space station of it’s time had suddenly popped up on their screens. In fact, by the time they had completed the fourth jump, the only genuine casualty had been an early Flora class cruiser that had been forced to turn back after suffering a potentially mortal crack in it’s cores containment housing. A thorough inspection of the damaged housing had reveled microscopic imperfections in the seal welds as the source of the malfunction, more likely wrought on by her lengthy tour of duty rather then the welds themselves.
The wayfaring had been text book, but as far as Captain Shoemaker or anyone else for that matter was concerned, there was no such thing as a free lunch, and one had to figure that it really was just a matter of time before the other shoe dropped. They had managed four successful jumps without encountering any serious complications, but it seemed that with every incident free jump, it really only increased the risk of something gravely ungrounded taking place on the next.
Having swept the quadrant, the Alice Paul and her sister ships quickly retreated the moment the call was made.
“Com, con! Ebb!” Came the call from the radio shack, booming though the over head at one M.C., and the crew responded in routine. A quick look to Shoemaker at the con, and a light nod in response, and the helmsmen rolled hard to starboard, aiming the Alice Paul back towards Century station and the fleet. The proverbial stop watch had begun to count down, and as if they had been rehearsing the maneuver in their sleep, the drive room responded to the tight turn without so much as a wasted word. “Hard burn.”
Shoemaker knew this crew, and they knew him. When the clock was running, time wasted on obliged requests were not the sort of thing Shoemaker tolerated. Ebb had been called, the ring was assembled for the next jump, and with or without them they were going. At eighteen hundred clicks out, a hard burn had them screaming back at the fleet in no time flat, closing on Century station high and fast at her forward port side. Dipping the nose, the Alice Paul lumbered underneath Century station, like a rabid banshee. Clearing the stations belly with a comfortable two hundred meters worth of open space between them, the Alice Paul then cut hard burn from the primaries and let lose with all of her aft break thrusters to slow their assimilation back into formation. Directly below the stations keel, the Alice Paul’s crew then simultaneously fired both the forward most starboard and port aft maneuvering thrusters, launching the cumbersome vessel into a controlled ninety degree whoopty-do, while taking wrenching gravitation from the primary thrusters that had reinitiated the hard burn. A split second contradictory aptitude burst from the forward port and starboard aft vents, and the Alice Paul was back in formation near the exact position it had been at not fifteen minutes ago, and not a moment to soon. The blister that would become