World Three: Episode 1: August 5, 2019 from Fourcaster on Vimeo Next »
The transmission opens with the Anchor, clad in a hazmat suit, considering a Rubik’s Cube. The date in the top left corner reads August 5, 2046. When messages start coming through TERI’s processor, the Anchor is utterly overwhelmed, and even their Telepathic Interface needs recalibrating. Viewers learn that the Anchor has been trapped in isolation in this room for a year. They were very uncertain about whether TERI would again make contact and feeling mounting despair. They explain that it is not safe outside the room, but that they need to reach the SPORE nonetheless.
Viewers suggest the Anchor explore objects that are located on three podiums at the back of the room. When they do so, a forcefield prevents them from approaching too closely. The Anchor informs the participants from 2019 that they have some so-called “algorhythms” to share, but that first TERI must answer a question to prove adequate communication. The question is: “For one year, I’ve lived in total isolation. All I hear is the hum of the SPORE. But I miss the sound of birds singing in the morning when I woke up. I need to remember that world. In your time, what sounds do you still hear when you wake up?” Some answers from 2019 include: rain falling, cicadas, birds chirping, frogs sometimes, people talking in the streets, thunder, and the wind in the trees.
The Anchor is refreshed and inspired by these answers, and instructs the viewers to watch the algorhythms. They then conjure three glyphs in the air: a triangle, a horizontal line, and an X that appear on the screens of viewers. The Anchor informs the viewers that they cannot see these shapes, and that only the people from 2019 can do so. The Anchor asks what they should do next. Through trial and error signaled by sound cues (that amount to no, close, and yes), the 2019 participants come to understand that they must direct the Anchor to create these shapes with their body, and align themselves behind the glyphs. When all three glyphs have been reproduced, the room flashes white.
The Anchor is then free to approach the first podium, where they collect pieces from the game Go (which also appeared in the first version of 2049), and show it to the viewers. A strange ghost-like shadow appears in the room with the Anchor. Then, suddenly, the transmission cuts.
Following the live broadcast, a text file streams a memoir written by the Anchor. It reads:
August 5, 2046
Before I took my vow of silence, I allowed myself to think fuller thoughts that mushroomed out across my world. And then I met the Fourcasters.
When the Terrarium was first built, it felt like anything was possible. The Fourcasters, the researchers and visionaries who brought this place into existence, were so full of ideas. This experimental research facility, this biodome, was built atop historical ground, the birthplace of nuclear energy. This was the site where the graphene bricks of Chicago Pile-1 stood years ago. And then, on December 2, 1942, the world’s first successful nuclear reaction took place—success or geotrauma, depending on one’s perspective. Either way, it was realized. This moment sowed the seeds of human-generated apocalypse that would be even less forgiving in its aftermath than the Flood.
From the ashes of a phenomenon both brilliant and horrifying rose the SPORE device. We named it a “spore” (at first) precisely for this reason. Like a fungus, a decomposing organism, it grew upon the waste piles of the past, drawing rich nitrogen from the decaying stuff of death itself. Even in the bleakest circumstances, mushrooms find a way. And so our SPORE device, when we discovered its full potential in the 2040s, gave us a way to combat climate change and save a world that was spiraling out of control.
In all of this, I never lost you, TERI. Even when everything else was gone, your neural network ensured that you would continue to develop and evolve. But in an instant, I lost every person who created you. Are they still a part of you? Will they ever come to me, except in my dreams? It might be a hallucination but I still read their voices in the ways you phrase some of your questions. Maybe this is wishful thinking: my desire to see some dimension of them alive in you. But I know they are all gone.
And I am alive in this bunker, by accident: the last remaining witness of the small shared world that is the Terrarium.
