‘If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my Constant.’ – Quotation from Daniel Faraday’s Journal
To begin, let me attempt to clarify the meaning of the above notation. As I am sure you remember, the episode The Constant had Desmond’s consciousness flipping back to his past where he encountered Faraday and explained his predicament to him.
Desmond: “Um. . . Sorry. I’m Desmond Hume, and um. . . I was told I could find you here. I think I’ve. . . just been to the future.”
Dan: “. . . The future?”
Desmond: “Yes. Uh, I spoke to you there, you told me to come here, to Oxford, to find you. You said you’d help me.”
To begin, let me attempt to clarify the meaning of the above notation. As I am sure you remember, the episode The Constant had Desmond’s consciousness flipping back to his past where he encountered Faraday and explained his predicament to him.
Desmond: “Um. . . Sorry. I’m Desmond Hume, and um. . . I was told I could find you here. I think I’ve. . . just been to the future.”
Dan: “. . . The future?”
Desmond: “Yes. Uh, I spoke to you there, you told me to come here, to Oxford, to find you. You said you’d help me.”
We know what happens next. Faraday used Eloise the rat to explain how Desmond needed a Constant to resolve his situation, and so Desmond used Penny in 1996 with a phone call in 2004 and voila! Instant Constant! But sticking with Faraday for a second, he makes an important point.
Dan: “Alright, this, this future version of me. . . Uh, he referenced this meeting, right? Obviously, so, so I would remember you coming to Oxford, right? I would remember this, here, right now.”
Desmond: “Actually, um, no.”
Dan: “No.”
Desmond: “Maybe you just forgot.”
Dan: “Yeah, right, how would that happen?”
The question of why 2004 Faraday doesn’t recall this meeting in 1996 is important, and places a lot more importance on his journal. See, for all of his cynicism, it would seem Faraday genuinely did forget this meeting. Indeed, it seems something happened to his memory right across the board. Charlotte was doing the memory test game with him, for one thing, as an indication that something had happened.
Probably if Season 4 had allowed more time with ‘The Freighties’ we may have been given a clearer picture of this. As it is, The Constant merely makes a throwaway suggestion that Faraday not wearing protective headgear whilst conducting his studies may eventually effect his memory functioning. I’ll suggest an alternative further on.
But back to the journal, and the message Faraday left himself. ‘If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my Constant.’ What I have to impress upon you here is that this message was permanent. It was always there. When Faraday was travelling on The Freighter, that note was in the journal. When Faraday parachuted onto the Island, that note was in the journal. It did not appear retroactively. It did not turn up because Desmond appeared in the past. The note was always there.
Personally, I think Dan wrote it shortly after Desmond visited him, to serve as a form of insurance policy. A ‘Constant Guarantee’ if you like.
Of course, with Faraday’s memory loss the note would not have made much sense to him. If he had skimmed over his notes whilst he was on The Freighter, for example, and read ‘Desmond Hume will be my Constant’ then it wouldn’t have meant much. He didn’t remember Desmond. It was just a name. It was only afterwards that he went scrabbling through his journal and discovered the message he had left for himself and realised the importance of it.
Does this not beg intrigue at what else is contained within this journal? What other relevant stuff has Dan once known and since forgotten, but at least made note of? And how did he know it in the first place?
Let’s end this with some far-reaching theory. Currently we have the interesting possibility that Faraday may have gone to the past on the Island. Possibly this paves the way for him to spend time with the Dharma Initiative in their heyday, and get to learn about The Swan and The Orchid and The Tempest. What if, at some stage during this time, Faraday gets this information to his younger self?
I’m loathe to suggest that he might do the old ‘mind time travel consciousness shifting’ and go back to his younger self, write down a bunch of notes in his journal, and then return to his original timeline. But it would be an explanation. Alternatively, he could have mailed notes to himself, perhaps? Or sent a piece of video (like Pierre Chang) with some crucial information on it?
The idea I like best? That he does get involved in some ‘mind consciousness shifting’ to his younger self, but it’s not a temporary thing. It’s permanent. Possibly it’s the result of the infamous ‘incident’ at The Swan. And the process frazzled both minds in the fusion, causing memory problems and a sense of confusion.
Remember when Faraday was sat in front of the television, watching news of the Oceanic crash? He was crying, and he didn’t know why. Maybe in that confused, future memory-addled brain of his, the truth of it all was tucked away there, weeping its way out. . .
(This theory isn’t as weird as it sounds, especially if you’ve read Slaughterhouse Five, of which this crying scene appears to be a direct reference.)
‘If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my Constant.’ Maybe Faraday did need a Constant. Maybe he did use Desmond when things went wrong. But maybe, instead of having his consciousness reconciled with his present, it instead got reconciled with his past – and so it remained, permanently.
