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The chair springs muttered like discontented chickens as Hurley shifted his weight, which seemed less than fair. True enough, furniture rarely missed a chance to complain that there was too much Hugo. But it could have cut him some slack when he was dreaming
As dreams went, this one was sneaky. It had done a good job with the interior of the Hatch. Even the trained eye of the couch potato’s couch potato (thanks for that one, Sawyer) could not spot a flaw in the backdrop. The Dharma orangeade he was drinking tasted like the real deal.
Only this new dude’s wardrobe told him he was in La-La Land. Implausibly good-looking folks crawling out of the woodwork might be business as usual on Wes Craven’s Tropical Paradise, but no jungle-dweller of the waking world would wear a military greatcoat like the guy sitting opposite him right now. So, a dream. Time to go with the flow, drink some fictional fizz, and kick Salvador Dali’s ass.
“I’m glad you’re taking this so well, Hugo.” A booted foot nudged the bottle of orangeade back across the table towards him. “Your friends were a bit more… volatile when we arrived.”
Hurley frowned. “We?”
The stranger glanced towards the Room with the Button. Hurley followed his gaze - slowly. You turn around cautiously in dreams, in case the world you are balancing on your head falls off.
At the computer sat an Asian woman with straight black hair. For a moment he thought that she was Sun (probably pissed that Jin had sneaked off to hang in Hurley’s head the last time he was dream-sequenced, and looking for a piece of the hallucinatory action). This chick wore glasses, though, and somehow Hurley doubted that she hailed from The Korea We Are Cool With. His stomach lurched as he saw her fingers darting across the keyboard. Suddenly this wasn’t looking like a dream.
“She shouldn’t be touching that!”
“Relax, Hugo. We’ve touched far more sensitive instruments than yours. Competent judges have praised our technique.”
“What have you done with my friends? Where’s Jack? And Kate? And…”
“Ah… the reluctant leader, the con-man, the torturer, and the thief. But enough about me.” The stranger smiled. Nothing short of a piano should show that much ivory. “Your four friends are all taking a nap next door. Debriefing got kinda wild.”
The woman at the computer flushed a neat shade of pink, but kept typing.
Hurley’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you here, dude?”
“To clean up the shipwreck.”
“The Black Rock? But that’s like… ancient.”
“The Black Rock isn’t the shipwreck. It’s just part of the shipwreck’s camouflage.”
“Camouflage?”
“It must have crossed your mind that this island is too perfect, Hugo. All those oven-fresh beaches and palm trees like momma used to make… Ever wondered why it looks too good to be true?”
Hurley’s throat was dry, despite the orangeade. “Uh-huh.”
“It isn’t.”
“Isn’t true?”
“Isn’t an island. When she crashed in the Pacific, unpiloted and shattered, after the War, she just made herself look like what you’d expect to see. Stealth mode set to ‘Eden’.”
Hurley shook his head. “That’s impossible.”
“As impossible as the fact that we’re both speaking in French right now?”
“”Non… I mean, no, I mean…”
“Trust me, Hugo.” The smile no longer reached the stranger’s eyes. “She can fix you in ways that would make you wish you’d stayed broken. But I think that you people have already found that out, haven’t you?”
Hurley licked his dry lips. “That still doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”
“We’re here to help her start to die.” The man in the coat glanced over towards to the computer. “Are we done?”
The woman shot a brief smile at Hurley, and nodded.
“Good. What are the Numbers, Hurley?”
“Huh?”
“The Numbers that led you here, so that you could make them.” The stranger sighed. “The Numbers are her last song, Hugo Reyes. Her kind always sing before they die. Why do you think this station’s called the Swan?”
Hugo looked down for a moment. Then, meeting the stranger’s gaze once more, he said them.
As slender fingers rattled across the keyboard (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42…) Hurley felt a rush of vertigo. The Numbers, he dimly realized, were rippling out from this, their point of origin. Into the fabric of history they burrowed, to lurk like some creature of fairytale under the bedclothes. Why Grand-Ma, what big integers you have…
“And then there was one.” The stranger stood, and stretched. “Congratulations, Hurley. You just created yourself. Not many people get to be a truly self-made man. I’d suggest that you lie down now, though.”
“Why?”
“Because of the sedative. You probably shouldn’t have drunk so much of that orangeade.”
Hurley saw, but would not remember, the stranger’s smile.
FINIS