THE PRODUCERS of ABC's "Lost" want you to know that everything's under control.

Their control, naturally.

So if, like me, you've occasionally found it difficult to keep the faith, as the passengers of Oceanic 815 met up with everything from polar bears to their own pasts, and time and space were twisted in ways that seemed to kill each new theory while giving rise to three others, there may yet be reason to hang in there for a couple of more seasons.

Because executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse still insist they know where they're going.

Sure, there have been bumps along the way.

When they got ABC to agree last year to three more 16-episode seasons, they weren't factoring in the writers strike that cut this year's allotment to 13, the ninth of which premieres tonight after "Grey's Anatomy."

Counting the two-hour season finale on May 29, that's 14 hours we can expect to see in 2008, the remaining two to be carried over so 34 hours remain.

That's enough time for "Lost" to fall off a cliff a half-dozen times. And maybe even bounce.

But when pressed in a conference call with reporters to say that, yes, they know exactly how this thing is going to end, down to the last scene and line, they were convincingly confident.

"The last line of dialogue, we need a little bit of wiggle room, but the last scene has definitely been determined," Lindelof said.

"We've got both pieces of bread that are eventually going to make the sandwich that is the remaining two seasons of the show, and now it's just a matter of deciding how much mayo we want to put on," he said.

Eschewing the lunch metaphor, Cuse took a different tack.

"We sort of view the show as a mosaic . . . and we're putting tiles in all over the mosaic, and when the mosaic is complete, 'Lost' will be complete," he said.

Then again, maybe it already is. Between the flashbacks and the flash-forwards, "Lost" has messed with the idea of "the present."

"It's entirely possible, as we move into future seasons, that that notion of what is the past and what is the future and what is the present on the show could change," Cuse warned. "I don't think we have any hard-and-fast rules about what we must or must not do."

"There is the story on the island, which we perceive to be the present, and then the story of the Oceanic Six, which is happening off the island in the future," said Lindelof. "But if we were to sort of switch perspectives at any time and suddenly we were off the island, focusing on the Oceanic Six trying to get back, that would be the present and what was happening back on the island would be either a parallel present, possibly a past, possibly a future, who knows?

"So when you hear that whoosh noise, the question becomes: Where does that take you?"

Other nuggets from the "Lost" boys, while you reach for the aspirin:

_ A liberal arts education can pay off.

"When I was in college, I took Philosophy 101, and the big joke there was that it was an easy A, and everybody who had a philosophy major, you know, would never have any cause to use it out in the real world, because who's going to pay a philosopher to sit around and think?" said Lindelof, a New York University grad.

"But that class proved to be enormously bountiful, creatively, for the show . . . It was just a 101 class, I never took anything beyond it, but I learned all about Locke and Rousseau . . . and all the thinking that came out of Europe in the Age of Enlightenment, so it's proven to be pretty sweet."

Added Cuse, who studied American history at Harvard: "It's amazing how many things that we both read during our college careers . . . kind of play into the show."

_ Assigned reading for upcoming episodes?

"Continue reading the Bible," Cuse suggested.

_ On the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle, "all we can say is that Sawyer is not one of the Oceanic Six, and Jack and Kate are," Lindelof said, before adding, "We think that both fans of Sawyer and Kate, otherwise known as the Skaters . . . and Jack and Kate - the Jaters - will have a bounty of romantic scenes" before this season's up.

_ They expect Season 5 to begin the last week of January 2009.

_ They haven't forgotten about those other lovers, Penny (Sonya Walger) and Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), whose relationship, Lindelof said, was meant to be "an epic love story."

"We will certainly be returning to it. Unfortunately, Sonya is a very in-demand actor, and is in 'Tell Me You Love Me' for HBO," he said.

_ Oh, and whatever you may have heard to the contrary, they haven't forgotten the four-toed statue, either.

"It will definitely be back in the show at some point," Cuse promised. *

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