Circle of Salt
Indigenous wisdom supersedes artificial intelligence
The scenes below are part of a larger script, which I envision transforming into a graphic novel and game-based magic leap AR project controlled by the personalized biosphere suit. The chosen fragments all take place in 2030, and are intended to both establish the storyworld (backstory, main characters, organizations and settings), but also to remind us, in the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, that “Maybe there is no such thing as time; there are only moments, each with its own story.”
Prologue:
In 2023, another wave of the pandemic, a more fierce mutation than the last, coupled with increased environmental disasters, and ongoing civil unrest presented an excuse for global powers to create the Biometric Patriot Act. This was followed by the creation of a global immune system, Akasha, whereby they could surveil, monitor and control citizens around the world in the name of planetary well-being.
However, there were those who questioned the motives, the false altruism, of these omniscient powers. They attempted to undermine the complex network of social control, prediction and quantification through subversive technologies, believing that tech was the answer. But some, like our protagonist, had a greater belief in the capacity of indigenous knowledge and nature to restore our common humanity.
Circle of Salt follows the life of Aki Wabanak, a queer, mixed-race teen tech whiz who joins a counter-surveillant underground organization, the Endellions, as they attempt to restore democracy and human autonomy. But after the botched mission to dismantle the U.S. government and install an AI President who goes rogue, she realizes the revolution is bound to fail.
Disenchanted with the Endellions, Aki turns to the Almanak pressed into her hands by her dying grandmother, which drops her into a secret universe of pre-scientific knowledge that holds the only seed to societal regeneration.
EXT. Brooklyn, Prospect Park, Aki (2030)
Someone patched up the fence in the southern corner where she used to sneak in, next to the Japanese Maples. Aki could see the Black Adder’s Tongue, one of the plants Abuelita asked her to find. She could hear her, “Don’t be fooled, it’s yellow, only the forked tongue is black, a reminder of the two truths.”
There was a small cluster within arms reach, but her gloves were too thick. No one came around here anymore, she thought. It’s safe, for a moment.
She quickly slipped her hand out and thrust it through the narrow opening, then up to her shoulder, her biosphere suit bunched up. She felt around on the damp earth for the roots. How strange her arm felt, exposed to the gentle breeze and heat of the sun. A ladybug tickled the back of her hand. “Preciosa, muy tierna,” she smiled, not wanting to move.
Then, there was a sudden rustling in the leaves, and it flew off. A figure, with no protection, just a black T-shirt on, army pants & boots, darted across the meadow. Startled, she grabbed the closest patch of flowers, and pulled her arm out carelessly, scraping her bare forearm on the rusted metal. She shoved her hand back into the glove, and pushed down her sleeve to contain the blood. She deposited the flowers into her decoder bag for 3D scanning, strapped across her chest. It felt so lifeless with the gloves. Haptics could never match actual touch, she reflected.
INT. Antarctica, Global Institute for Planetary Well-Being, Akasha (2030)
Dr. Norbert von Neumann felt a vibration on his arm just as he lifted a spoonful of potato soup into his mouth. He pulled up his sleeve to reveal text scrolling up his arm:
Akasha — Alert
ID_7652305
**GEO**
Location: 40.6694° N, 73.9624°
Environment: Urban**ENVIRO**
Air Quality: 201
Temperature: 98
Humidity: 72
Barometric Pressure: 1085 mbar
Visibility: 51**PHYSIO**
Blood Flow: 120 mmHG
Cortisol: 710 nmol/l
Brainwaves: 30–100
Heart Rate: 60
FNIRs: Irregular patterns
Cursing under his breath, he quickly excused himself, and cut through the glass tubes connecting the cafeteria with various tributaries. He entered the vault, bent over the retinal scanner, and proceeded into Akasha.
Like an orchestra conductor, Dr. von Neumann moved his hands apart from one another in a circle and closed his fist to silence the alarm that was still sounding.
As he walked to the center of the room, all 2.7 billion point-clouds reconfigured around him.
He opened his arms out wide into a T-pose, then gathered them together to zoom into the aberrant node, which was pulsing. Once close enough, ID_7652305’s full profile pops up, and Akasha reads out the display:
Oxygenated Blood: -3.7
Radiation Level: 7.2 — High
Impatient, Dr. von Neumann bellows, “Skip environmental.”
Akasha reshuffled and continued reciting personal data:
Name: Aki
Age: 14
Gender: F
Race: Mixed
School: P.S. Hub 134
“Akasha, play video footage at highest cortisol spiking,” Dr. von Neumann orders.
A close up video of Aki scraping her arm replays.
Now annoyed, Dr. Von Neumann huffed, “Akasha, why so dramatic? You must stop crying wolf over such minor incidents.”
Akasha defensively, “But Dr. von Neumann, she broke into off-the-grid territory.”
“Just increase her daily dose of Serennaide by +02,” Dr. von Neumann chuckled with a crooked smile. “It will deter her adventurous spirit. For good measure, check her connections.”
Point clouds clustered, new read out:
ID_5437802 — Mother: Doctor
ID_4965205 — Father: Deceased
“Akasha, access video archive. Let’s run ID_5437802’s full history, from 2023.”
Akasha quickly pulled up the node and reshuffled, pulling up a stack of overlapping files, and began to list the contents of the first file.
“Camila Wabanak: Research scientist at Rockefeller University, Hybrid Fertility Lab. Lab established in 2025 to address de-population in the U.S.”
“Gather all research papers,” Dr. Von Neumann queried.
Akasha enumerated: “47 papers, keywords: ‘egg harvesting,’ ‘gene-splicing,’ ‘epigenetics,’ ‘trauma,’ ‘genetic coding,’ ‘tissue nano transfection,’ ‘TNT,’ ‘selective chip process,’ ‘re-diversification,’ ‘deep learning,’ ‘biorobotics,’ ‘robotic chromosomes,’ ‘bioinformatics.’”
Dr. von Neumann drilled down further, “Current studies.”
Akasha replied, “Access denied, sensitive material.”
Exasperated, Dr. von Neumann retorted, “That can’t be possible. We have the highest surveillance clearance. Never-mind, let’s keep digging. Most recent paper.”
Akasha cited:, “Wabanak, Camila. “Phylogenetic Diversification Combining Tissue Nanotransfection and Convolutional Neural Networks, 2027.”
Dr. von Neumann continued to hone in, “Funders.”
Akasha replied again, “Access denied, sensitive material. “
Dr. von Neumann ignored, “Number of births?”
Akasha computed, “152 per month.”
“Cryo drone drops, flight pattern,” Dr. von Neumann ventured.
A stream of ID numbers populated the screen, then shot out across a map of the globe into a colorful spider web of tangled data visualizations.
“Dr. von Neumann, come quickly, the Director needs you in Psycho-Neuro-Immunology,” a research assistant hailed.
“That will be all.”
Akasha switched back to default, global immune system monitoring — a pulsing holographic cloud of dynamic activity.
EXT. Brooklyn, Prospect Park, Commissary, Aki (2030)
Aki was lying at the center of eight giant cedar trees, facing the sky, but fast asleep. Drones above, circled erratically like dragonflies.
From inside her face shield, Aki’s Conversational Agent Parent (known as C.A.P.) appeared in her field of view, “Aki, time to get up. Sun’s almost down, your Abuelita is going to be worried. Drones have been hovering, and the Arg-bots will be doing the rounds soon, curfew is near.”
“Oh, man. What time is it, C.A.P.? Something just came over me.”
C.A.P. promptly responded, “5:43 pm. Don’t forget, we need to stop by the Commissary. It’s A-H pick up week.”
Sluggishly she rose to her feet, “Let’s play Virus Blaster on our way. Can you set the shield’s optical image to 50 nm?”
Bounding down Coney Island Blvd, she used her gloves to destroy virus particles lingering in the atmosphere. Her shield became a Heads-Up-Display, racking up points as she used her index finger and thumb to continuously fire at spiky balls clinging to passersby, door handles, crossing signals, and sidewalks.
Approaching the Commissary, she instructed C.A.P. to “Pause & Save Game.”
Inside the commissary, there was a line. On the way in she held the palm of her hand up to the scanner, which places her family name, Wabanak, on the giant screen in front of her: 7 minutes, window 18. A wall of various-sized doors with numbers on them appear.
Bored, Aki commanded C.A.P. to pull up the leaderboard. “300 more points until I get to the next wave? Impossible.”
C.A.P. feigned annoyance, “Stop obsessing, your number is up.”
Aki pulled open window 18, grabbed the neatly stacked boxes, and dropped them into the collapsible shopping bag stored in the leg of her biosphere suit.
As they exited, she told C.A.P. to “Resume Game,” and continued to destroy spawning virus all the way home.
INT. Somewhere in Brooklyn, Aki’s Home, Aki & Abuelita (2030)
As Aki entered the apartment, she set down the bag of food, pulled the decoder over her head, then stepped out of and hung her biosphere suit in its spot. She closed her eyes as she hit the switch for the purifier mist to run its cycle. When it stopped, she entered the apartment, and called out “Abuelita, I have a surprise for you.”
No one answered, just the crooning of Juan Gabriel from the kitchen. She cruised through all of the rooms on both floors, and found the window in the attic open.
She crawled out the window into the small arched greenhouse. Her abuela was hanging up dried herbs as the sun sets through the ribbed plastic. She snuck up behind her and gave her a hug, placing the Black Adder’s Tongue just below her nose, so she could smell it.
Grasping Aki’s forearm, so she didn’t lose her balance, she rubbed against the dried blood. Feeling the flower, Abuelita exclaimed, “Oh, marvaillosa, lo encontraste, mija! What other mischief have you been up to today?” She cut the tip off an aloe and handed it to Aki.
As she rubbed the aloe over her scab, Aki began recounting her day.
“I saw this man, well, boy maybe without protection. Just a T-shirt and some army clothes. He was thin. He was running across the meadow, shouting to someone, but I couldn’t make it out.”
“Sounds like you had a run in with a Chaneques,” Abuelita teased.
With a skeptical brow, Aki asked, “A Chaneques?”
Her abuelita continued playfully, “Dwarves with faces of children. We had many sightings in Chihuahua when I was a child, around your age. That’s why the Raramuri are known for being fast runners! There are two types; the good ones that live all around us and the bad ones that hide in remote places, like caves, rivers and hills. The good ones only do mischief without causing harm; the bad ones kidnap children and make them their servants. But you need to watch out for the angry Chaneques; they can make you sick and zap your vital energy. To protect children, we would make masks with deer eyes and wear walnut necklaces. Or you could just put your clothes on inside out!”
“Awh, Abuelita,” Aki exclaimed, “Como crees seas historias?! You don’t scare me!”
They both laughed.
Reaching for her cane carved with the talons of an eagle, she nudged Aki, “Let’s go in and prepare dinner for your Mom.”
INT. Hybrid Fertility Lab, Rockefeller University, Camila (2030)
With her hands placed into two rubber gloves on opposite sides of a vacuum sealed fish tank to ensure a contaminant-free environment, Camila cleaned harvested eggs.
Her mind wandered as the miniature wipers clearing the water spray from the magnifying glass remind her of the night she got the call about Aime. It was a heavy summer rain.
I had just finished my second double. The cab driver gestured to put a mask on before he would unlock the door. As I fumbled for a civilian mask, my phone vibrated. All I remember after the call is crawling into the cab and collapsing. I hardly saw the dissolving skyline between the windshield wipers.
At the beginning, we had both been working double shifts to quell the first waves, Aime at Mt. Sinai, me at Brooklyn Methodist. But after work, we’d meet at the protests. It’s where we felt most alive. We were part of something larger than ourselves. The energy in the streets made change seem palpable. Not only possible, but radically transformative. But then the numbers at Bellevue kept doubling, so he was transferred. For months, he worked seven days straight in emergency, and we were staying at a hotel to protect my Mom, who was taking care of Aki. But his breathing became increasingly labored, and he was told to stay home. By the end he could hardly feed himself.
While Camila removed the cleaned Oocyte, subdivided it into eight PCR tubes, then injected sperm into each, along with isolated RNA, she ruminated…
Now I understand why shortly after Aime died I switched over to hybrid fertility. I thought it was a way to bring him back. He was just one of the black and brown bodies lost to COVID-23 and police killings, rampant in our communities — my community — which was being rapidly de-populated. Not that there weren’t already disparities in health care; it was the main reason I pursued medicine: The more than ten times higher mortality rate for women of color. The lack of equal treatment of the sick. Sure, I was young and idealistic, but I thought my research into hybridity would level the playing field. I thought that I could create more equity, diversify the demographics, have a say in the repopulation phase. A trim tab.
But my colleagues didn’t follow the same ethics rule book. Hard to get invisible bias out of institutions. So I became more covert in my work. So? I re-engineered these designer babies. Now there are better ratios in the population. Using some of the findings from my graduate research on epigenetic trauma, I substituted RNA for DNA during the Polymerase Chain Reaction phase. I found that I could alter certain genes, features, so the next generation didn’t bear the pain of the former. I wanted to stop the cycle, so my mother’s pain, which seeped into my life, wouldn’t shape Aki’s.
But every invention can be turned into a weapon.
I desperately needed funding for my research to keep food on the table for Aki and Mom, and also needed more genetic samples. So, when I overheard my boss talking to the big five tech companies who wanted to offload a massive repository of unused frozen eggs, I suggested our lab could make use of them. They were from female employees whose families had signed waivers allowing their eggs to be used for science. No need thinking about the past.
Camila labelled and placed the prepared cultures in the fridge, and then took off her shield, mask and scrubs for the day to head home.
INT. Brooklyn, Aki’s Bedroom (2030)
C.A.P. flashed on, “Aki, Wake up, wake up, and brush your teeth, it’s time to start your happy day!”
Aki groaned, “I need 30 more minutes.”
C.A.P. continued: “Your programming class starts in exactly 15 minutes, and 23 seconds, and you have a quiz.”
Aki reluctantly rolled out of bed, and jumped in the shower. When she got back to her desk, Abuelita had placed a delicious Bomba and chocolate milk next to her gesture controllers.
Reaching for her VR headset as she logged onto the PS 134 Hub. As she walked over to her desk, and took a seat, her avatar captured her skeleton. Just in time, she thought.
But Mr. Singh caught her, “Nice of you to join us, Aki.” In a Green Panda avatar, he directed her to the coding challenge on the board:
You and your friends enjoy playing a real-time strategy game that consists of two 5-player teams fighting each other on a virtual battlefield. Each player picks a virtual hero to start. Can you predict the outcome of the game based on the character each player picks? Use the training data on OpenLab to make your predictions.
Aki (under her breath), “Boring snoring. It’s easy. Just run a decision tree.” She quickly ran her fingers over the keyboard, and submitted her solution.
While she waited for everyone to catch up, Aki pushed her headset up, and started fiddling with some sensors, wires and a microcontroller on her desk. Grabbing a miniature fig tree from her window sill, she clipped a sensor on the leaf, and pushed another into the soil. She hit “Run” in the sketch, and sounds emanated.
“Yes!!” Aki exclaimed, jumping up and doing a little dance. She threw all the electronics into her decoder, then rushed downstairs. Abuelita was cooking in the kitchen with the TV blaring some Turkish telenovelas dubbed to Spanish.
“Abuelita!! Abuelita!!” Aki called out. “My invention works. I am heading to the park to test it out.”
“But it’s only 10 am. You skipping school again?” She grinned at her knowingly.
“Don’t worry, I left an instance of my avatar in every classroom, mapped to my gesture database, and programmed a chat bot if I’m called on. “
EXT. Brooklyn, Former Botanical Gardens, Underground, Endellions (2030)
Aki reasoned to herself: I can’t tell Abuelita about my mission, she would just dissuade me with more of her old school folklore. I want to find out what is going on in the Botanical Gardens. I couldn’t sleep last night.
“Now, where is that hole in the fence?” she muttered. “C.A.P. can you retrace our path from yesterday? And don’t ‘but your Mom’ me.”
I remember the last time I was inside the garden, just before they finally shuttered the doors when COVID-23 hit. It decimated half the population, and people began exiting the city in droves. Well, those that could. Trying to maintain some normalcy, we had a picnic in the cherry orchards for Abuelita’s birthday. While adults talked about politics, I played soccer with my cousins until the ball whacked me in the face. On the blanket with ice on my cheek. I could make out bits and pieces of my Tios and Tias speaking in Spanish about the mass deportations and ongoing protests.
C.A.P.’s voice dissolved her memory, “Aki, Right here, 40°40'09.3 N 73°57'46.7 W.”
Aki pulled out the wire cutters, and crawled through, and got up slowly behind a large oak tree. She scanned the meadow with her binoculars. No one in sight. She walked quietly along the periphery of the former Japanese garden, but as she stepped into open space to get across the bridge, a rubber bullet smashed into her backpack, causing her to fall forward onto the ground from the force.
Quickly turning and getting to her feet, she saw a pair of black work boots, camouflage pants, and the same black T-shirt with a fist and ethernet cables standing directly above her. This time the Chaneque was wearing a pixelated face mask with varying geometric shapes.
As she began to give him a piece of her mind, she heard C.A.P.’s warning cry stop mid-sentence, and her sensors abruptly de-activated. The inside of her biosphere suit heated up and the helmet fogged. Suddenly feeling overheated, she fainted.
When she woke up, the Chaneque, mask off, was just a boy around her age.
The boy, seeing her stir, shouted down, “Who sent you? Who are you?”
Aki fired back without answering. “Who are you? Why do you dress that way? Why aren’t you wearing any protection? Is this some kind of LARP?”
He smugly retorted, “Of course not. I’m Zeno. Why are you here?”
Aki, scrambling to her feet, replied, “I wanted to test my new invention.”
Zeno, doubtful, asked,“Invention?”
Aki quickly searched for her decoder bag, but couldn’t find it. When she turned anxiously back to Zeno, he smiled and dangled the bag in front of her face.
“Give me that,” she demanded, snatching it back. She then pulled out a circuit board. “It’s a musical instrument. You attach the sensors to the leaves of plants, branches, soil, and it plays music. It’s a way of communicating with the natural world at a different time scale.”
Finally putting down his guard, Zeno snickered, “Well, aren’t you the little genius. Come with me.” He sprinted over the bridge above the lily pads.
Still not fully trusting him, she gave way to a curiosity that propelled her to chase him through the labyrinth of overgrown and unkempt gardens.
“Wait,” Aki called after him, “What are you doing in here. The garden is closed.”
He called over his shoulder, “We live here.”
Aki, in disbelief, “Here? Why don’t you have to wear a biosphere suit?”
Slowing down, Zeno replied, “Thought you talked with plants. Don’t you know they’re a natural inoculant?”
Out of breath, Aki nodded, “My Abuelita would agree with you.” She looked up, and saw they were standing in front of the former Greenhouse. “Isn’t this where they kept all of the manicured, miniature trees?”
“Good memory” Zeno rejoined. “My Papi does his best to keep them alive. Our Headquarters are in the basement. I’ll show you around.”
When they got to the bottom of the spiral staircase, Aki was greeted by a sea of computers, network cables and people with checkered make-up milling about, like the command center in the old movies she’d go see with her Father at the Pavilion before the rats started scurrying underfoot.
Zeno proudly announced, “Endellion Headquarters, and this is my Papi, Huic, the leader of the Revolution!”
Huic gently reached for her gloved hand. “Nice to meet you, Aki. You live around the park?” Aki, flushed from the heat of her helmet, just nodded. “You know, you can take your suit off in here.”
Zeno interrupted, “I found her in the meadow. Tech whiz, thought she might be able to help you fix the network.”
Aki, a bit hesitant at first, nervously pulled back her helmet, but kept the rest of the suit on. She breathed in deeply, and looked around. “What are you all preparing for?”
Huic’s eyes crinkled, “Perceptive young woman. Well, at first, we invisibly supported social movements — with humor. Our inaugural mission was in 2016. We hacked Snapchat glasses to racially profile Trump supporters. It created quite a media spectacle for a minute. But now, we’re building a revolution to overturn surveillance capitalism and restore human autonomy, and dignity.”
Not quite following, Aki asked, “So, what are all these computers networked to?”
“Nothing yet. We’re trying to access Akasha to scramble the global databank that collects and stores citizen information.”
Excited by the challenge, Aki blurted out, “Can I take a look?”
Humoring her, Huic walked her over to the main workstation, “Sure, Aki, take a peek.”
Aki quickly surmised the situation. “Looks like your target IP has a load balancer and proxy in place. You’ll need to inject SQL code nested in a polymorphic shell.” Her fingers danced on the keyboard as her face became determined and focused.
After several hours, she finally looked up bleary-eyed, “Resuelto!”
She noticed that the room had emptied. Some time must have passed. Her Abuelita must be worried sick. She dashed up the stairs, struggling to pull her helmet up over her shoulders. “Zeno, I’ll be back tomorrow…”
