The Resistance (Birth of a Climate-State, Part 2)
What will the world look like after environmental collapse?
Continued from Part 1, Birth of a Climate-State.
When Mei shut off the Reality Beam with her mother, it was 8:00AM, and the day was already bright from the already-risen sun, hidden behind the haze of an unshielded sky.
Mei shook out her messy braid, remembering her mother’s questioning look, and hoped that she had not inadvertently given something away. She moved quickly to put on her protective suit, which she had been avoiding in favor of her personal bioshield bubble. Now that she was on going out on her own, she knew that her store of Lüdu’s clean atmosphere would be quickly depleted with no chance of refills, and besides, she wanted to turn off anything that would transmit data back to the servers in Lüdu.
Once suited, she switched her bioshield bubble off and removed her computerized contact lens as well. She put all of this in a magnetic bag that prevented unwanted data transmissions in either direction, and stuffed it all in the bottom of her pack.
Mei felt naked without the stream of information that had filled her field of vision since childhood, adding layers of necessary context to the physical world. Overwhelmed both by all that she could no longer see, as well as the new details that she was beginning to notice, Mei plopped down in the raw, untreated, and likely toxic earth.
She sent a silent goodbye to her parents, whom she realized belatedly, she might have just seen for the last time.
#
Mei had always loved nature.
Even as an infant, when she was finally healthy enough to be taken home, her parents had found her to be listless indoors in the carefully constructed infant care environment that the doctors had prescribed. It was only when one day, her father was so concerned by her unresponsiveness that, out of sheer frustration and distraction, he walked outside with her in his arms, that she finally began to stir and cry.
Marveling at what had just transpired, his father began carrying her outdoors more frequently, and every time, the result was the same: she would be silent and still indoors, as if in hibernation, and an active infant outside.
At first, her mother Eva was hesitant about her husband’s methods, pointing out that ‘normal’ infant development based on pre-bioshield health standards were meaningless. She insisted that they move the entire infant care environment outdoors as well. But as soon as they placed her back into the modified crib, Mei’s stillness would return.
“She’s like a little bear that only wakes up when she can feel summer in the air,” her father, Xia, joked, and that was how she got her pet name, Little Cub.
Eventually, Eva gave in to Xia: for most of Mei’s early years, the young family spent their free time outdoors, under the blue skies and sunshine of the bioshield. Eva, ever the scientist, noticed that in comparison to other native-born infants, most of whom spent their first months in that same infant care environment, Mei seemed to develop more quickly and healthily. (Later, Eva would write a paper with her observations, leading to broad changes in infant care.)
By the time that Mei was school-aged, her love of nature was amplified by an insatiable curiosity and an equally big appetite for risk-taking. She wanted to explore every centimeter of land within the biosphere, and was particularly fascinated by the patterns of the stars, the history of the earth and the rocks, and the rich biodiversity within her bioshielded world. At school, she often stumped her teachers with detailed questions about everything from pre-Collapse religion and philosophy, the deadliest epidemics of the Collapse, and the latest in quantum physics — which she had gleaned from overhearing her mother’s conversations with colleagues at the Atmospheric Bioshield Control Center, which her mother ran.
On their off-days, the family ventured into the parks around Lüdu City and then, gradually, further afield into the carefully cultivated wild lands at the edges of the biosphere, hiking, camping, and engaging in recreational fishing and farming. (Lüdu’s actual food was grown in aquaponic food towers at the center of the climate-state, for easy distribution to its various markets).
Mei remembered those early days vividly — the vaguely woody smell of the tall grass, the buzz of the summer cicadas, the heaviness in the air that portended a coming rainstorm, and overall, the sense of well-being that she always felt in exploring the physical world with her two favorite people.
Years later, long after nature had lost its appeal, Mei would still feel a residue of that old serenity whenever her mind stumbled upon these old memories.
#
One day, when Mei was eleven, she came home from school to hear raised voices from her parents’ bedroom. This was unusual in their household; her mother was cool-headed (cold-blooded, some whispered), and her father extraordinarily good-natured. If there was ever a higher decibel among them, it was almost always a result of her own rowdiness.
Mei stole upstairs like a soft-footed feline to eavesdrop on her parents’ argument.
From behind the closed door, she heard her mother hissing, “We agreed that you would not interfere in my job!”
Her father’s footsteps echoed across the bamboo floorboards. “Eva, this is not just about your job, when every decision touches upon my life, our family’s, and those of our five million neighbors!”
“That gives you no right to go behind my back and undermine my authority — “
“That’s not what I meant –“
“But that’s exactly what you did!” There was a level of vitriol in her mother’s voice that Mei did not recognize. Then, she made out a creaking sound, and imagined her mother sinking heavily onto the coils of her bed.
When her mother spoke again, it was so softly and slowly that Mei had to crack open the door to hear.
“Do you know how many fires, literal and metaphorical, my department puts out every day that nobody hears about, because we’ve already handled it? Do you know how hard it is to come home, exhausted and fearful of the long-term consequences of my actions not only for us and our neighbors, but for thousands of generations to come? And then, to not be able to confide in you because you always hated making the hard calls? It’s bad enough with you, but then I have to put on a smiling face and pretend that this little — ” she searched for the right word, spitting it out when she found it, “dystopia that we’ve created is just as perfect as Mei believes it to be?
But no, I make one difficult decision, out of a thousand every day, which somehow finds its way to the sensitive ears of my husband, Mr. ‘Uninvolved’ Chairman of the Board, and rather than try to understand my thinking, which once upon a time he trusted completely, he reverses it in front of my entire team.”
Silence, and then another creak as her father sat down by her mother. “I’m sorry I haven’t been more supportive.” Beat. “But you don’t have to shoulder this yourself, you know. We never promised anyone a perfect world.”
Eva shook her head. “Maybe we didn’t, but now that life has stabilized, people have higher expectations. Just imagine if everyone found out that the sun and stars that they see everyday aren’t real — let alone any of the other ugly realities that power the Climate-State. There’d be a crisis in confidence!”
Mei’s breath caught at these words. She had loved star-gazing with her parents, loved learning both the connect-the-dot mythologies of past civilizations as well as the more scientific theories that her mother provided. Now, Mei felt a sharp pain in her chest: what had her mother meant in saying that the stars weren’t real? And what did this mean for the rest of what she had always understood to be reality? With these questions heavy on her mind, Mei fled for the outdoors that had been her refuge, but which she now examined with skepticism.
When she returned home later that evening, her parents seemed to be back to their loving selves — though there was a frosty politeness in their interactions. She looked up the new word that she had just learned : diss-toe-pea-ya, and began looking for signs of it everywhere.
Meanwhile, her father overcame his apparent disapproval of her mother’s decision-making, and her ascent in Lüdu’s political-scientific system only accelerated.
One day, her parents sat Mei down and told her that her mother was being considered by the Board of Directors, from which her father had stepped down after their argument, as the next president of the climate-state. How did Mei feel about this, they wanted to know.
She shrugged, feeling both of her parents’ eyes fixed on her own. She tried to focus despite the slew of messages and notifications running across her pupils. “Congratulations… I guess.”
“Do you mean that?” From across the table, her mother reached for and squeezed her hand.
“You’ve worked hard for this.” A beat. “I guess it’s cool to be the president’s daughter.” She perked up. “Does this mean that I can do whatever I want now?”
“No, Little Cub,” her father said, chuckling. “Nothing changes for you — or for our family. Your mother will have a lot more responsibility, and will be even busier than she is now, but if that’s something that she thinks she can handle, we’ll be supportive, won’t we?”
Mei nodded.
“And when it’s the three of us, it’s still just us.” He took Mei’s and his wife’s other hands, closing their circle of trust, but the girl could only remember the fight that she had overheard, and wondered what dystopias her mother would create in the years ahead.
#
One Friday night about a year into Eva’s presidency, right before the family was scheduled for a rare day together on one of Lüdu’s recreational farms, Mei joined her father on the balcony, visibly upset.
Xia had been reading the physical copy of an old English-language novel, Oryx and Crake, which ordinarily would have drawn snark from his increasingly sassy daughter, and he looked up at her despondence.
“What is it?” He asked.
“Dad, I don’t want to go to the farm anymore.”
“Huh,” said Xia non-commitally. “Why is that?”
“Because none of it is real!”
Xia put down his book, and waited for his daughter to continue.
“A guy in my class today said that everything in the bioshield is fake, and that anyone that believes otherwise is an idiot!”
“Where did you hear that? Which ‘guy’ said this?” asked Xia. He examined his daughter carefully. Mei had been extra moody, and he and Eva did their best to separate what they believed was typical teenage existentialism from something more serious. Though he stayed out of politics as much as he could, he had still heard the murmurs that new quasi-religious ideologies were popping up , not only in Lüdu, but in other Climate-States around the world, with surprisingly similar undertones.
Mei glanced up quickly at her father, but stared at the ground as she answered, “Just a guy,” said Mei, evasive. “But I also overheard you and mom fighting about it once.”
At this, Xia clucked his tongue; his alarm was replaced by a feeling of guilt that his daughter had overheard and been affected by his and Eva’s marital discord. “And that’s why you shouldn’t eavesdrop, Little Cub. It’s not that simple.
Your mom can explain the science more precisely, but you misunderstood our…discussion. Even as our technology gets better at creating a breathable atmosphere, the pollution in the rest of the air gets worse. The poison clouds around the bioshield are pushed higher and higher up, so sometimes, the pollution actually fills the air above the shield and covers the actual sky, and we have to project one instead.”
Watching his daughter’s face carefully, he worked to inject an upbeat tone into his speech: “But what are the stars anyway, other than pinpricks of light that reach us millions of years after they’ve already died? By the time that starlight reaches us, the stars don’t even exist anymore. So what’s the difference between that and a VR projection recorded — and actually seen — by humans a hundred years ago?
Don’t you feel more connected to the universe by seeing what they had seen and left behind for us?”
Mei shrugged. “Maybe,” she finally acknowledged. And then, “Don’t tell mom about this, OK? I don’t want to disappoint her.”
Xia considered his daughter’s request for a moment before nodding his acquiescence, wanting to extend the moment of vulnerability, increasingly rare, that he and his daughter had shared.
Father and daughter sat in silence in the night breeze, as the video of a shooting star that ceased to exist eons before, recorded by a human that had lived a hundred years before, flitted across the vast expanse of the bioshield.
Still, the next morning, Mei refused to visit the farm.
“But you love the outdoors!” Her mother, who did not know of the previous night’s conversations, pleaded.
“Not anymore I don’t!” Mei growled, aware of how childish she sounded, and not caring.
Finally, Eva returned to the Presidential Office, and Mei tried not to resent her mother’s gratefulness, which she could not fully hide, for the extra day of work.
After Eva had left, Xia tried to reach out to his daughter as well. He sat on the edge of her bed and touched her shoulder, “Hey, is this about what we talked about last night?” He felt her stiffen, but she let out a sulky “no”.
“Are you sure?”
Mei sat up, and exploded, “I’m not a child anymore, and I’m just not going to be so naïve about things that don’t even exist! I know that that ‘wilderness’ that I’ve been obsessed with my whole life is just a creation of mom’s lab — if it isn’t just some hyper realistic VR or RB [reality beam] crap!”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, and I hope you reconsider what I said last night. Things aren’t as black and white as they might seem,” he said to his daughter, hoping that Mei would grow out of the worst of her tempestuous teenage years soon.
“Despite everything else that has changed, maybe one constant is teenage rebellion,” Xia mused to his wife, that evening. He did his best to forget the deeper concerns that he had about his daughter’s existential crisis, and his doubts about the wisdom of keeping his daughter’s words from his wife.
#
It was not until he heard his wife’s panicked calling of his name at the Forum, and her subsequent harried explanation about Mei’s suspected disappearance, that he remembered his own suspicions about their only child.
When the couple had finally shared their notes, they rushed back to their room to call an emergency meeting of the National Security apparatus in Lüdu.
Back on the border of the Climate-Protectorate 18, Mei trudged on through the white haze.
Designer’s Note
The challenge for this installment of Futures was to delve further into our probable future than we usually go. Whereas a Future Casting Sprint typically takes us 5–10 years out- we pondered a world decades past environmental collapse. And although we don’t set out to create dystopian visions, we also don’t set out to sugar-coat where we might be if we don’t pay attention. Our author, Eileen Guo, came to us with a striking concept for how culture and climate might define our future.
Eileen’s lush literary style and strong aesthetic made the development of the Climate States’ world a joy. Almost immediately I could imagine how the rift between the past and future would define the visual themes — with the bioshield protected city of Ludu being a curved, blue beacon of an idealized new world safe from the harshness and truth of the outside world, whose“Wild” lands and ghost cities of the past flattened into red blocks in the fog of the problems left unattended to.
I set out to develop a clear distinction conceptually and visually between Ludu’s interior and the outer world. The concept of a climate state could usher in a drastic conceptual change to the mentality of the population — a declaration and unwavering belief that environmental purity must be assumed. Associated with this could be a drastic shift in shape design language for new artifacts — away from the square and structured shapes of traditional Chinese architecture — and toward circular, spherical motifs. Additionally, the use of greens and blues with reflective, manufactured, modern material surfaces could take precedence over red and authentic natural materials. Purity — and purified nature — is the theme.
The resulting imagery was meant to mirror the story’s ask for the viewer to question utopia and the wisdom and health of isolation. One of the visual cues I had fun playing with is the vibrant, multi-colored oil slick — using this as a dual-purpose motif to both define the hazardous haze outside of Ludu and imply the spectrum of life missing from the monotone interior of the idyllic city.
In the progression of keyframes developed for Climate States you’ll notice a juxtaposition of cool and warm tones not only in the environments, but the characters as well. Mei is defined with warmth, her tele-presence is red, she is lit in orange while spying on her parents, and this conveys her growing connection and curiosity to the past. In contrast, her mother is coolly lit, with her cheongsam inspired dress accented with Ludu blue. In moments of transition, the bubble of Ludu shines behind Mei, and the oil slick reflects the life she is leaving to discover the artifacts of her culture’s past. The artificial night of the Ludu bioshield is a dark ocean against the warm, pondering perch where Mei and her father look upon the falling star.
In terms of shape-design, the architecture of Ludu is a nod at the fluted and curved roofs of traditional Chinese craftsmanship. Forgoing traditional grids for concentric curves that define the city as a sort of Zen Garden of Eden.
Carrying this over to artifact design- the Hazmat suit worn by the citizens in CP-18 and Mei later in the story, draws inspiration directly from dynastic ceremonial armor, with emphasis on squared sections and warm tones. They, like their culture, have been left behind by the progress of Ludu.
Design Challenges: Atmospheric Bioshields and Believability
Self-contained bubble cities have become a hallmark of science fiction since introduced in 1881 by William Hay. First appearing as a city under a glass dome under the ocean — this visual extended to cities on distant planets in fantastic contexts. I found it fun to contemplate this visual feeling taking place on earth — with earth being that weird, hostile yet beautiful new land, the clouds thick like water, and the city pristine underneath a protective bubble.
But a strong visual doesn’t matter if there is not a good story supporting it. Eileen introduces the concept of a bubble city through the study and experiments of a team working on off-world atmosphere isolating technology- and this opened the door for me to explore how grounding the bioshield technology in real break-throughs in science could make the seemingly impossible seem probable. To connect the dots between nanotechnology, materials science, air filtering experiments, and a grand and classic sci-fi visual.
At DX we’ve had the opportunity to work with companies using advanced nano-materials, which can be used to filter hazardous chemicals out of the atmosphere. We also looked into the latest in scientific research at studies done on charged rain particles to cleanse the atmosphere of pollutants and at practical efforts like Studio Roosegarde’s Smog Free Project, and Wynd to provide localized pure air. Making creative use of collected debris was also on our minds as we came across projects like Air Ink and a Beijing artist’s “Dust Pan” in which he formed a brick from vacuumed smog.
The resulting bioshield design was conceived as a vast pouch of self-healing nano-fiber pluming out from massive towers and monitored by drones. This surface would be pressure reactive, hardening with increasing applied force, and selectively permeable- visitors could pass through and the material would self-heal. I chose to depict the break-through moment where Eva successfully creates the first bioshield prototype as a way to foreshadow the structure of Ludu and build Eva’s character as an intelligent visionary. In Ludu the final form would mirror the curves and language of the new world, and the towers would double as giant recycling units — attracting pollutants and flushing them along the city’s edge to collect and use for various applications.
Keyframes and Composition
After fleshing out the designs of our hero artifacts and defining our thematic direction we proceeded to rough out key moments in Eileen’s story. Which moments would successfully elucidate the technology of this new world, establish a sense of character and culture, and strike the highest emotional chord?
I was especially amazed at how Eileen tackled the coming of age of Mei — and pondered a great deal as to how best show her evolving relationship with the “nature” presented to her in Ludu, her family, and the pull of an obscured culture.
In the final aesthetic of the rendered pieces we strove to match the simultaneously rebellious and proud connotations of Chinese propaganda art with the grand visions of future worlds as depicted by concept artists like Feng Zhu, with a dash of the nostalgia of destination posters like the Visions of the Future series by Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
It is my hope that through these designs the themes of the story are made concrete, and the characters reinforced so that we can inspire conversation about the futures on our horizon, their valence- either good or bad- and how we can be active participants in ensuring the future we desire.
