The Stranger: A Cultural View of Mount Inostranka by Pearson Moore (The Event)

The Stranger:
A Cultural View of Mount Inostranka
Analysis of The Event, Episode 1.01
by Pearson Moore

She doesn't know everything.

This was the primary revelation tonight. The disappearance of Vice President Jarvis and CIA Director Sterling an hour before the assassination attempt carried little importance in comparison. The disappearance of Flight 514 into an unearthly blue glow was as nothing.

"They saved us," she said, looking into the sky, surprised. Sophia. Wisdom. Holy Wisdom. Святая София. She is the wisdom of President Martinez and the wisdom of the ninety-seven on Mount Inostranka. "I haven't told you everything," she told the President. Those last five words were not the contrite admission of a woman caught in deception. They were words intended to obscure the fact of her surprise, her lack of control, her ignorance.

She doesn't know everything.

It was the greatest revelation, the stuff from which great stories are drawn. This story has depth, character, a sense of daring. Let us begin the great adventure.



Something Old



There are no photographs of the event.

It occurred on October 18, 1867, in Sitka, Alaska. The soldiers to the right are the representatives of Tsar Alexander III, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, surrendering control of 1.5 million square kilometres of frozen taiga and tundra to the Americans, who purchased the land for 7.2 million dollars.

Years before, far north of Sitka, a missionary surveyed a tall peak. He was a stranger to the native Inupiak, Kutchin, and Tanara inhabiting the land. Of course, the missionary, this priest of the Holy Russian Orthodox Church, believed the Inupiak and Kitchin to be the strangers. He called them иностранцы (inostrantsi): foreigners.

One has to wonder what possessed this priest when the time came to affix a name to the mountain he had so diligently surveyed. Did he discover something unusual on the peak? Did he obey naming conventions of the time? Or was he perhaps struck by something truly bizarre, something remarkable, in the bearing of one of the native women?

He named the mountain Иностранка (Inostranka): foreign woman.

The peak may have disappeared into the obscurity of pre-purchase Alaskan history but for one important event seventy-seven years later, during World War II. The OSS (Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the modern CIA) needed a facility. It had to be someplace barely accessible, because the facility was to house a secret so important that even a partial revelation of the facility's mission would cause widespread panic. With the President in failing health, and his attention focussed squarely on defeating Hitler, neither he nor the Secretary of War would notice a few million dollars of black budget money dedicated to a facility that existed nowhere in the official record.

The secret of Mount Inostranka is our final goal. The political intrigues of attempts on the President's life are several steps removed from the mountain's secret and are of no consequence. Even the Event itself, almost certain to take place sometime in the first season, is not our final objective. We seek the truth known only to the foreign woman--to Inostranka.

Why was the OSS drawn to this particular mountain? Did the missionary's unusual name for the peak have anything to do with the OSS's need to build their facility here? Did the mountain's secret influence President Johnson or Secretary of State Seward's decision to purchase Alaska? 1867 was an auspicious year. It was the year Canada was granted confederation. It was the year the Black Rock crashed into Tawaret... but I guess that's another story.

Something New



From the extreme Northwest tip to the extreme Southeast tip to Florida, we cross the continent and jump over the last sixty-six years of history. Forty-eight years after the Cuban missile crisis a Cuban-American is the Commander in Chief. The CIA is telling President Martinez no more about Mount Inostranka than the OSS divulged to President Roosevelt. It took Simon Lee or someone of like mind and motivation to bring the secret file to the President's attention.

We naturally cast suspicion on Blake Sterling and Vice President Jarvis for the attempt on the President's life. Raymond Jarvis, after all, is a member of the opposition party, and Blake Sterling has no love for President Martinez. But would they really go so far as to kidnap a seven-year-old girl and her mother, then murder her grandmother, all to force an airline pilot to use the jet as a guided missile to depose President Martinez? The assassination attempt is a sub-plot, but we lack strong enough evidence to fix motive or even cause.

It seems to me we cannot know whether the abductions were causally related to the assassination attempt. Perhaps the abductions are not cause, but effect. They are possibly necessary to the Event itself, and not any part of a plot to turn Michael Buchanan into a Kamikaze pilot. If someone kills my wife they've already destroyed the best part of me. Kidnapping my daughter and granddaughter is not going to make me responsive to their unholy demands.

It seems to me a more likely explanation of this chain of events is that Michael Buchanan is a true believer. He knows of the 97 and at least part of their secret, and he is willing to sacrifice his life--and the President's--to prevent anyone from finding out about their mission and the coming Event.

These are some of the new elements. But the most remarkable new element, in my opinion, occurred just outside the cockpit, while the Air Marshall had his service pistol aimed at Sean Walker. We heard a gunshot and we saw Walker flinch. He was not harmed, of course. The shot had come from inside the cockpit. It was a moment of subterfuge, but context tells us we should not believe this is the last time THE EVENT will play with our sensory organs in this manner, attempting to mislead us.

And that brings us to the topic of--

Something Borrowed



Non-linear storytelling. Unreliable narrative. Mythology a kilometre deep and years long. An unrelenting barrage of questions. We spent six years on the Island, and we learned a lot. Not just about the mythos of Lost. We learned how to analyse story, how to wring every last drop of significance from the most abbreviated scene and apparently meaningless interaction.

Piecing together the narrative based on fragments is old hat for us now. While this awareness may not give us any more insight into the nature of the Event, its consequences, and the underlying secret, it is certainly true that our post-Island enlightenment gives us a more realistic expectation of those parts of the story we might be able to grasp.

There's no hand-holding here. Veterans of the last six years are not going to take time to explain the OSS memo of 1944; you're going to have to find it on your own, and you're going to have to make your own determination of its importance to the story. For example, the Valenzetti Equation did not figure into the filmed portion of Lost, but the 121 episodes were only the tip of the Island, as it were. The Valenzetti Equation was an important part of the story, and in fact, it is possible to organise the entire mythology of Lost around this equation. In the same way, the writers of THE EVENT are going to expect all of us to do our homework, to study the satellite view of Inostranka, to listen to the audio recordings, to know the particulars of the OSS history on the mountain.

Lost had no reliable narrator. When the demi-god, Jacob, told us he'd given all the Candidates free choice, we knew he was speaking from a warped perspective. He forced hundreds of people to the Island. Ninety-seven percent of his Candidates died there. In what way did that kind of heavy-handed, murderous coercion constitute the granting of "free choice"? Yet, Jacob was arguably the closest Lost ever came to a reliable narrator.

What Lost taught us is that we cannot trust any one of the characters to give us a straight story, about anything. THE EVENT is going to move at a take-no-prisoners fast pace, and not one of the characters is going to have the complete picture, or stop in some Shakespearean soliloquy and tell us what's really going on. They're going to say and do things based on incorrect understandings of their situation, and yet their words will be communicated as if gospel truth. We have to realise their perceptions are faulty. We have to keep in mind, too, that every character has an agenda unique to herself, and often times that agenda will require that she make a bald-faced lie. Deception and misdirection are all par for this complicated course.

The Something New, as we learned in this episode, is that THE EVENT is going to play with our senses. With that gunshot from behind the cockpit door we are being given fair notice of intent: THE EVENT is going to force us to pay attention to what is really happening before our eyes and ears. We will have to interpret not only character actions, but we may have to deconvolute sensory observations as well.

This could be very interesting, a new twist to keep us on our toes while we watch.

Something HUGE



The closely-guarded final secret, the one we will not know until the end of Season Five of THE EVENT, will probably be simple. Lost's final secret was not much different from the highly-value treasure of "One Tin Soldier", the famous 1969 antiwar song: Peace on Earth was the essential message. I expect THE EVENT's final message could be along those lines.

But the journey's the thing, and the journey through the Event and out the other side and then through years of seeking its secret origin and its final disposition will be laced with revelations no less profound than the Event itself. We know the journey will be eventful because of Sophia's words to herself: "They saved us."

They

Not her. Not us. They. They are whatever entity caused Flight 514 to travel through the spacetime portal that opened in the sky. They are not one with Lady Wisdom, they are different from her. They are not among the 97, but they are known to the 97. She is surprised that they intervened. She had told Simon Lee that the truth about the Event could not be released publicly. Was she in Florida to ensure the President would be assassinated rather than divulge the existence of the 97, or make statements leading to public revelation of the Event?

The Internet has been full of empty speculation about the identity of THEY for the last several months. THEY are extraterrestrials. THEY are time travelers. We know they're extraterrestrials, we're told, because Inostranka in Russian means "alien". Ну, извините пожалуйста: That's not what Inostranka means. Inostranka means foreigner or stranger. Yes, it can mean alien, but not the kind of alien with green skin and antennae. Alien, in the Inostranka sense, would be like our understanding of the term "illegal alien"--a foreigner. Alien in the science fiction understanding--little green men from another planet--is expressed in the Russian word Чужой (Chuzhoy). If you wish to be absolutely clear about meaning, you would use the word Внеземная (Vnizemnaya), which means extraterrestrial.

Now, Inostranka could mean extraterrestrial alien, of course. But the primary intent of the word seems to be the idea of foreigner, stranger, something different from ourselves, and not necessarily out-of-this-world kind of different.

That THEY are time travelers seems already evident. If they do not control time, they at least control some aspect of spacetime, or matter-energy. They've perfected a time warp, or they have a very advanced copy of Mr. Scott's transporter beam. Whatever. They have advanced technology. But I doubt this is anything directly connected to the Event.

The Event



Based on the disappearance of Flight 514, we expect the Event to be something physically enormous. Aliens are bent on destroying the Earth by diverting an gigantic asteroid into the planet's orbit. Or the poles will shift in some way or even flip. Or we will become food for the aliens ("Alien") or for computers ("The Matrix") or (my favourite!)--for ourselves ("Soylent Green"). Earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... Perhaps.

I think it more likely the Event will consist of a quiet statement with profound, history-altering significance. I hinted at this in the first several section headers: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed... a wedding is a profound statement of love between two people. Perhaps the Event is the statement of a profundity that exceeds imagination. The marriage of alien and human to form a new species. The birth of a super being of some kind. The arrival of a messiah.

My first novel, TRINITY, concerns the emergence of a genetically distinct population. Although possibly not obvious without a bit of thought, any such occurrence would have immediate and dramatic effect in every sector of society. If the genetic characteristics bear significant differences from those of the average human being, would their propagation endanger the qualities we identify as human? Would a population sufficiently distinct be considered human at all? Would we allow the propagation of any such new species?

The Event may not be a bang. It may be a whisper. Elijah was witness to earthquake, crashing thunder, and all manner of spectacle. But in the end it was a "still, small voice," a whispering voice, that changed his life, and changed history.

Complexity



A mountain is the result of an upheaval. Massive forces, more powerful than the greatest hydrogen bomb, play out over time scales of millions or hundreds of millions of years. Masses rise and fall, move hither and yon, cut by river and glacier, pelted by snow, wind, and rain.

In the photograph above, hundreds of metres of sediment fell to the floor of an enormous ocean over tens of millions of years. Uneven forces underground pushed the sediment high into the sky on one end, forming the striated mountains we see beyond the green valley. The mountains were the result of complex forces acting in ever-changing ways over a long period of time.

We can expect events on Mount Inostranka to be no less complex. The Event is only the first layer. Underlying the Event, giving it form and substance, is yet another, older layer. And under that layer we will find another, not the final revelation, but a fascinating new facet of the story. Eventually we will understand every facet of the mountain, the relation of one layer to every other, and when we achieve this level of understanding, we will be ready for the final secret.

We have met Wisdom herself. But even she is baffled. She knows the Event is due, she feels it coming. But she doesn't know everything. Most of all, she doesn't know the mountain's secret. We will have to find that secret on our own. Here is story worthy of our time: an adventure with depth, character, a sense of daring.

"I haven't told you everything." She can't, because she doesn't know everything. We're on our own. It's going to be one hell of an adventure.

PM