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Jacob communicates with Alpert and he tells him he must protect, watch over his people, and move the island so that the ones from the outside world cannot get in and lead the world to destruction. Richard becomes the protector of the island and works to figure out some way to release Jacob and ultimately change the future. However, Alpert knows there is absolutely nothing he can do to change the final outcome, except perhaps hide the island.


Alpert knows there are very specific rules of time travel:

1. Someone from the past (and only from the island itself) can travel to the future safely only through the Tunisia portal exit.
2. The person who travels from the past to the future, now knowing the future is the only person that can actually change the outcome of the future events.
3. Since only a person from the past can change the past and alter the future, fate/time will not allow any person from the past to actually change anything and will trap them when they go back from the future to the past or kill them altogether as they get close to a time when they can change important events. (Richard and Jacob did not know this initially)
4. A person from the future can travel to the past (like Alpert), but cannot actually change anything in the past. This is because the future has already compensated for anything they can or will do and has course corrected for them travelling to the past and trying to make any changes. (This is what Desmond had to show Charlie). Also when travelling to the past that person will not begin to age again until they reach their future period of existence.

1. If a person from the past on the island travels outside the island through the Tunisia portal to the future they cannot come back to any point in the past on the island without being trapped in a time limbo or dying. (This is why Widmore does not himself go back to the island as he travelled from the past into the future off the island and now cannot come back)
2. As a rule, no one leaving the island through the time wheel can ever physically come back to the island alive without being trapped in a time limbo or dying. However there is one exception, a person traveling off the island through the portal can only come back if they exit and come out of the portal in the same present off-island time. (So if the off-island present is 2007 and the on island present is also in 2007 the person who turns the wheel and ends up exiting the portal in 2007 can come back to the island). This is only because they have not travelled to the future, so in travelling back to the island at a past point they cannot change anything from knowledge gained and therefore time/fate would not have to course correct them.

Two other important points to make about the Lost concept of time travel:

1. There are not multiple time loops as some deduce, there is only one absolute line as Faraday explains and no parallel universes with different outcomes, therefore there is absolutely only one chance to change the future.
2. This answers why people like Ben would not have already known the Losties since we now know they appear in Dharma time. When Ben first meets them they had not yet travelled to the past, because of this while all knew that certain individuals caused these events Ben, Alpert and crew had no idea how they get into Dharma time and therefore killed everyone and sealed the island to cover all the bases. A good example of this is when Charlotte dying suddenly remembers that Daniel Faraday is the scary man who told her never to come back to the island. She only remembers this now because Daniel has stopped in the time of Dharma when she was young and he will now become that scary man who warns her.

Richard Alpert has the island moved through Jacobs's instructions. Alpert also buries the time wheel so no one can get to it ever again. Unfortunately for Alpert and gang fate/time course corrects and they move the island smack into the middle of the slave ship, the Black Rock. On board the Black Rock is Magnus Hanso. It is possible that Alpert recognizes the name as being important for events from the future and Hanso and his crew are either killed or made to live out their days on the island, but this will not change fate.
The journal of the first mate somehow comes into the hands of Tovard Hanso who later sells it to a future Charles Widmore. On the island itself, Alpert identifies a young native man named Charles Widmore to lead the islanders. During the intervening time the island remains well hidden, however a U.S. military team in the 50s stumbles upon the correct coordinates and makes their way onto this mysterious island with an H-bomb that they are going to test. It is this H-bomb that will likely lead to the destruction of the island and of the world, and maybe (given the unique time qualities of the island) the end of the space time continuum.

Unexpectedly, Richard Alpert and Charles Widmore at the very same time are visited by a man from the future, a John Locke. The time wheel has long been buried, so this is a very odd event. John Locke tells Alpert that Jacob has sent him and that he is to be the leader of Jacobs's people. Locke then mysteriously disappears. At the same time, a young Eloise Hawking is visited by a man from the future, a Daniel Faraday who also disappears after he tells her how to protect and encase the bomb. This seems to be a change from events as Alpert knew them to be and because of this, new beliefs are formed by him and the islanders. Alpert and Widmore now believe John Locke could be the person who can change the future. While Hawking knows of Locke, she will also eventually leave the island and come to believe that her own son who she names Daniel Faraday is possibly also a key to changing the future. A course begins to be set as to who will influence the future, and sides and alliances start to form.

Eventually, Alvar Hanso descendant of Magnus Hanso, possibly armed with the secret knowledge of the island, forms the Dharma Initiative to get back to the island, find the buried time wheel and stop the destruction of the world.