 Alpert tried to recruit Locke again in the 1970s, this time into an internship program with Mittelos Laboratories in Portland, Oregon, but a teenage Locke turned it down.In 1973, in "The Man Behind the Curtain", Alpert encountered a young Benjamin Linus (younger, Sterling Beaumon; older, Michael Emerson) in the jungle.Ben expressed a desire to run away from his father, a member of the scientific research group called the Dharma Initiative, and join the Others.