Essentials

[Music plays; TV screen shows logo and then © 1975 The Hanso Foundation ORIENTATION]

Alvar Hanso: I'm Alvar Hanso. If you are watching this film, you already know and have worked with Gerald and Karen DeGroot, founders and masterminds of the DHARMA Initiative.  By now, you also know there are many research goals for our joint venture. What you may not know, is why we have assembled the DHARMA Initiative, why we have assembled the greatest minds in the world and given them unlimited funds and access. As with all you've already been told, you are bound by your honor and commitment to keep what you are about to hear a secret.  In a few weeks, after your induction counseling and survival training, you and your colleagues will be shipped to a top secret facil[ity...] The precise location of the facility is known only to myself, the DeGroots, and the few high ranking members of my organization. Why all the security, all the secrecy? The answer is simple: Your research is intended to do nothing less than save the world as we know it.  In 1962, only thirteen years ago, the world came to the brink of nuclear war. The United States and the Soviet Union almost fulfilled the promise of mutual assured destruction. A promise they continue to foster through a destructive Cold War. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, both nations decided to find a solution. The result was the Valenzetti Equation. Commissioned under the highest secrecy, through the U.N. Security Council, the equation is the brainchild of the Italian mathematician Enzo Valenzetti. It predicts the exact number of years and months until humanity extinguishes itself. Whether through nuclear fire, chemical and biological warfare, conventional warfare, pandemic, over-population... The results are chilling, and attention must be paid... Valenzetti gave numerical values to the core environmental and human factors in his equation: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Only by manipulating the environment, by finding scientific solutions to our problems we will be able to change those core factors, and give humanity a chance to survive. Although the equation has been buried by those who commissioned it [STATIC] panic. It has always been my belief that we ignore warnings at our own peril; and thus, the DHARMA Initiative was born. DHARMA is an acronym for Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications. It also stands for the one true way. [STATIC] ...and through your research, you will help human... [STATIC]. We have constructed several stations on the island, underground laboratories with the facilities you will need to do your research, with optimal expediency...all of the support you will need, including regular medicine and food drops will be made in perpetuity. A radio transmitter has also been erected on the island broadcasting in a frequency and encryption known only to us. The transmitter will only broadcast the core numerical values of the Valenzetti Equation. When, through your research, you manage to change the numerical value of any one of these factors, when you have created through science the [inaudible] ... We will know that the one true way has been found. That is the work to which you have committed yourself. Change the core values of the Valenzetti Equation, and you will change the course of destiny. The fate of the human race is in your hands. Thank you and namaste.

[The end of Part 1 is displayed on a television monitor next to a man in a white labcoat who is standing in front of a small audience.]

Thomas Mittelwerk: We all know what happened - the DHARMA Initiative failed and in spite of every effort of the Foundation, we are gripped in the tyranny of those six numbers. We have tried to change those values by manipulating the environment in many, many ways. We have done our level best, and yet this inscrutable equation keeps bringing us back to the numbers. So now, we have to take radical action and I just want to tell all of you, that I trust you to do what is best.  The villages of Filan and Vetul-Milani have allowed us to test our vaccine on them. They think they are infected by a virus carried by local macaques and they believe we are bringing them the cure, so when you go in, you have to keep up the story. You know it by heart, don't waver. When the deaths begin you must comfort everyone with compassion and empathy then the bodies of the dead must be brought to the station immediately for full genetic work-up. We must make absolute certain we are hitting precise genetic targets we have engineered into the virus. The optimal mortality rate is 30 percent. Our operatives at the Vik Institute have verified this figure. If more or less people succumb, we have failed. We need not take any more lives than is absolutely necessary.  [Student in audience raises hand] Yes?

Scientist #1: But Tom, these are people, innocent human beings, and we're just-

Mittelwerk:  If you knew, with mathematical certainty, that you could end all famine, war, and poverty, what would you do? Exactly, you'd find the best way to get it done - precisely, surgically, without allowing for any more suffering than is absolutely necessary. [Sighs] It is not fair that innocents have to die so that we can perfect this virus but I promise you, someone is going to hell...  Is there something reflecting in the back?

Rachel Blake: Oh God!

Mittelwerk: Somebody grab her! Hey! Hey! Get her! [Incomprehensible shouting]

Blake: No! Get off me! Get off! No!

Scientist #2: We got her.

Blake: Get off me! No! It's-