SPOILERS AHEAD!
1) The Highlands have long believed the earth to be hollow, though there is some disagreement regarding the nature of whatever lives below.
2) Highland Hollow was founded in 1902 by Parker’s great
grandfather, Hammish Highland, aka G-pop, crypto-geologist and Laird of Loch
Lomond. He is thought to have disappeared on an expedition in East Antarctica
while looking for the North Pole entrance to the Hollow Earth.
3) Parker’s father Dr. Highland is a geology professor at
the nearby Rutherford University. Parker, despite her youth, is a geoscientist
in her own right; she interns at his office.
4) Quite mysteriously, Dr. Highland receives G-pop’s Hollow Earth journal in the mail. He consults it regularly.
5) Parker’s mother, Hillary Highland, disappeared two years
back. She is believed to have fallen into Highland Hole, a cave just outside town.
It is the deepest cavern in North America, and local teenagers, parking in the
adjacent field, use it as Makeout Point.
6) The drinking age in Highland Hollow is 18. Lloyd’s Liquor Land, where Parker sings
nightly, is the local hangout. Think Peach Pit by way of Bang, Bang Bar.
7) Apple Shack is an
international corporation headquarted in Highland Hollow and known primarily
for manufacturing handheld transceivers. Or Walkie Talkies. They’ve just
produced the Talk Ten, the latest in transceiver technology. People don’t text,
they morse.
8) Taylor, who owns Planet of the Tapes, and Lloyd, who owns Lloyd’s Liquor Land, are twin brothers. They both have eye patches. Though on different eyes.
9) Bartitsu is an eclectic martial art reductively describe
as self-defense with an umbrella. Parker is the captain of the high school
team. Her weapon of choice is an heirloom umbrella called Black Betsy.
10) Reese Axelrod, newly arrived from California, is half
German. His father has a low level job at Apple Shack, and, during the war, his
late grandfather was a high-ranking scientist for Apfel Hutte. He and Parker
are dating.
11) Two weeks before the first episode, there is an earthquake. A little girl disappears and animals act irrationally.
12) During the earthquake, rocks of an unknown alloy are,
ostensibly, discharged from the hole, along with a strange saucer-shaped craft.
The craft attracts a crowd. Someone calls it a Foo Fighter. Apple Shack takes
control of the situation, maintaining that the object is nothing more than an
ordinary security drone used to surveil the factory perimeter.
13) Five men try to turn it over, then to open it. They
appear to hear something the rest of the crowd cannot. A sound that seems to
infect them. They begin behaving strangely, repeating the Apple Shack slogan,
“Have you heard?” over and over. They become violent. They’re referred to as the Foo Five.
14) It is discovered that Apple Shack, which professes to be
as “American as apple pie,” is, in fact, a German company called Apfel Hutte.
They may have collaborated with the Nazis.
