One of my favorite things about the show (aside from its achingly beautiful character arcs, jaw-dropping performances, genre-shattering story twists, industry-defying production quality, and epilepsy-in-a-good-way-inducing ability to reinvent itself every season) is that the producers are keenly aware of, and grateful to, their core audience: geeks. That's because Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are themselves geeks of the first order. They've embraced a long-running dialog with their audience: offscreen, they engage in Q&A podcasts, video podcasts, bulletin boards, goofy name-the-website type contests, etc. Onscreen, they even occasionally wink at the hardcore fans by tossing in a red herring or joke that's specifically aimed at geek speculation. 

But two geek-friendly activities have elevated "Darlton" (as the fans lovingly call them) to nerd godhood. The first is their annual appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con, where they pack the gigantic Hall H, bring a few stars from the show, and hold court for an hour, taking questions from the audience without ever really answering any of them. It's an amazing tightwire act, and they pull it off masterfully each year. 

The second great gift to the nerd community is the inventive collection of off-season activities they develop each year, to keep the fans engaged during the long, long wait (eight months this year!) between the end of one season and the beginning of the next. In the past, they've launched a variety of books, videos, mobisodes, etc., but the best have been the ARGs that take fans on elaborate treasure hunts around the internet -- and sometimes even around the real world -- in search of clues that will reveal tasty tidbits of upcoming LOST secrets. My personal favorite was the "Alvar Hanso/Rachel Blake" saga that ran after Season Two. It presented a months-in-the-telling, multisegmented spinoff story set in the LOST universe, which ultimately gave fans the meaning -- or at least a meaning -- of the infamous LOST "numbers": 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. 

This year, because we're coming into the sixth and final season of LOST, the producers have lovingly dedicated the off-season adventure... to the fans themselves. The fun started at Comic-Con, where LOST stars Jorge Garcia and Michael Emerson appeared in the audience, asking questions as if they were fans themselves. A few minutes later, comic Paul Scheer stepped up to the mic to show off his delightfully awful painting of "Damon, Carlton and a Polar Bear"... painted on black velvet, of course. I thought it was a cute self-promotional bit by a small-time comedian. When he plugged his website, www.damoncarltonandapolarbear.com, I still thought he was kidding. But in the last week or so, it's turned out that Scheer and his velvet paintings ARE this summer's game. A story is unfolding in which the mysterious "Ronie Midfew Arts Gallery" is trying to stop Scheer from unveiling his next batch of paintings. There are numerous clues popping up which confirm that not only is this an "official" game, but they're actually doling out some tantalizing clues about the start of Season Six. For instance, we know that the season premiere will be titled "LA X" (with a deliberate space before the 'X', giving it some added significance). At the end of Season Five, a bizarre nuclear/magnetic "incident" may have "reset time," sending the entire six-year saga back to the beginning. The passengers of Oceanic 815 were originally flying to Los Angeles, so it's certainly possible the new season will open with the plane landing safely at LAX and the passengers happily disembarking, blissfully unaware of the island and its mysterious inhabitants. The question will be: how do they get out of this "false restart"?

For me, the biggest unsolved clue appears on roniemidfewarts.com, where -- in addition to some stuff about the humorous Scheer story-- a mysterious slogan/tagline states: "15 will be lost. The 16th will be found." While everyone else speculates about the phrase's meaning in relation to Scheer and Midfew, I wonder if it isn't a fairly straightforward clue about the start of Season Six? It even sounds like the kind of promo tagline ABC would use to hype the premiere. 

If that's the case, then perhaps we'll discover that 15 characters have been "lost" in the time reset -- they've been sent back to their original paths before the island intervened in their lives. They have no idea the island exists, and they're living the (empty, messed up) lives they had before. This was hinted at by the funny commercials released around Comic-Con: Hurley is rich but miserable, Kate and Jack have never met, etc. This would also reinforce the hint Scheer dropped when he found a "broken rose" in an ABC dumpster: Rose, one of LOST's favorite supporting characters, will die of cancer if she never goes to the island. 

So if "15 will be lost," the question is: who are the 15 lost souls? Is it the 15 remaining survivors of Oceanic 815? Kind of depends how you count. Or maybe it's the 15 people Jacob touched before the incident? We saw him touch about 6 or 7 in the Season 5 finale... 

And if "the 16th will be found," does that mean one of the characters will somehow be aware that this reset timeline is wrong, and that they have to get back to the "real" timeline, where everyone's on the island again? If so, who's the 16th person? Is it Desmond, who seems to be slightly unstuck in time? Jack, our primal hero? Faraday, who knows more about time than just about anyone?

Or... perhaps the 16th is Juliet, who we saw die at the end of Season Five when she triggered the time-resetting bomb. Maybe she's now alive, but oddly aware that she shouldn't be. In order to set things right, she'll have to tear the time fix apart... and die again. That would be an epic character dilemma worthy of LOST. 

In any case, just sayin': if we start seeing real ABC promos for Season Six using the phrase "15 will be lost... the 16th will be found," we'll know I'm on the right track.

We now return to our regularly scheduled space-time continuum. Namaste. 

Now, there are a few questions we need to resolve before we get too deep into this Posterous dealie. First: does my email app's formatting carry over into the Posterous entry? That is, can Posterous handle italics, underlining, boldface... or combinations of all three? Similarly, can Posterous deal with things like...

1. This is point number one.
2. This is point two.
3. Wow... point three! Who'da thunkit?