Gobekley Tepay is on a wellness retreat in the Mojave Desert sponsored by his employer, Alphabet Inc. Only upper management and high-level creative developers were “invited” to attend, but it’s not like there were necessarily grounds to refuse for any of them. The fifty-two attendees flew in a couple days ago from SFO to LAX on a privately chartered jet, then drove four and a half hours into the desert and have been sweating it out ever since. They are staying in groups of two in relatively luxurious yurts - each unit has air conditioning, running water, and smoking hot wifi. The yurts are arranged on the circumference of a circle ten meters in diameter with each yurt representing an individual letter of the alphabet. The open entrances point toward the center of the circle, where an enormous hologram replica of the Rosetta Stone stands. Gobekley is rooming with the new VP of Acquisitions, Jim Campbell in Yurt Q. They both suspect that the yurt assignments are hierarchically arranged, as everything at Alphabet must exude some sacred logic or reasoning.
On the perimeter of the yurts, there are twenty four stylistically-varying archways; each structure representing both a letter in the Ancient Greek alphabet, but also a unique point in human history and development. The first three arches; Alpha, Beta, and Gamma appear to be some sort of Neolithic dolmen, the first is made of light brown sandstone with reliefs of snakes and reptiles; the second of grey limestone, slightly taller than the first and much taller than the third, with no etchings; and the third is short and stout with no etchings, much heavier than the others. As you move around the circle, from Zeta to Lambda, the arches become more refined as stone is sharpened into precise edges and individual bricks. Moving further to Omicron, Pi, Rho, and Sigma, the arches become more ornate: beautiful doric, ionic, and corinthian columns support highly adorned carvings and intricate designs painted on the structures. Highly detailed keystones center these configurations, depicting various mythological deities and symbols. Further around the circle, the arches nearly begin to fade away; they trade ornamentation for simplicity and seamlessness. Reflective black marble and mirror-finished metals create nearly perfect geometric formations in Tau, Upsilon, Phi, and Chi. They are smaller, sleeker, and lighter than their predecessors. The last arch in the circle, the Omega, is barely visible. You can only see if from certain angles; it appears to be almost completely transparent, reflecting a subtle iridescent sheen like an oil slick. When you go to touch it, however, it’s completely solid; impenetrable.
Gobekley, Jim, and all the other participants have been microdosing osiris, unbeknownst to them, for the last seventy two hours. Nearly everything they’ve been ingesting - from the adaptogenic protein shakes they were given upon arrival, to the miso soup and kombucha they have everyday at 11:30am, and the plant-based burgers with kimchi they’ve been eating for dinner every night. The Great Founders, Larry and Sergey, were firm believers in the potential that psychedelics had to unlock hidden forms of creativity and insight in the human psyche. It’s part of the mythology of the company - when The Great Founders first collaborated on what is now considered sacred text, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” they had been microdosing LSD and psilocybin for weeks. Anyone in the company could have guessed The Great Founders might be up to something like this; trying to force transformative spiritual experiences in their employees to unlock heretofore unforeseen levels of innovation and development. Gobekley knew ten minutes after he finished his adaptogenic shake what they were up to with the retreat, not only because he wholeheartedly believes in the company mythos, but also because he microdoses psilocybin in his reishi coffee two weeks out of every month for this exact purpose.
Tonight is the Ceremony of the Hieroglyphs. Just before dusk the Rosetta Stone in the center of the circle sounds a loud, soothing humm, beckoning everyone out of their yurts. The scripts etched into the stone begin to shift and a display appears that assigns each yurt letter to a corresponding arch, leaving out Yurt A, which houses current CEO and CFO, Sundar Pichai and Ruth Porat, who will oversee the ceremony. Gobekley and Jim walk to Arch Sigma, where they’ve been assigned. Almost twenty minutes later, the Rosetta Stone begins to play one of the most amazing pieces of music the group has ever heard. It is an algorithmically perfect aggregation of each individual participants’ taste in music, so it sounds equally good to Gobekley as it does to Jim and Sundar. Beginning at Arch Alpha and Arch Omega, working in opposite directions, Sundar and Ruth place one tablet of osiris into each participants’ mouth. As they make their way around the group, through the metaphorical history of human innovation and growth, they arrive at Arches Miu and Niu. Both are versions of 17th century Baroque-style arches with gilded ornamental columns, capitals, and keystones centering detailed reliefs and scenes from Ancient Greek and Roman mythology.
The music stops when Sundar and Ruth administer the final tablets of osiris to themselves in front of Arches Miu and Niu. They turn to face each other, clap twice, then clasp their hands together and bow to each other. All participants begin to do the same; Gobekley and Jim in Arch Sigma turn toward each other, clap twice, and bow. Everyone joins hands and starts chanting “OMMMMM” in succession; the music begins again, but this time it provides the rhythm for the chanting. What feels like hours, but is actually only five minutes, elapses. The music shifts slightly and a soothing female voice emitting from the Rosetta Stone instructs participants West of Arch Omega to move backward in history toward the arch next to them, and participants East of Arch Alpha to move forward in history toward the arch next to them. Gobekley and Jim are now standing under Arch Rho.
The music begins to shift again, playing a repetitive bass note that everyone can feel deeply resonating within their bodies. Gobekley feels as if every cell in his body is awakening and gaining agency. He is fully swept up in the energy of the moment. Sundar and Ruth have walked to the center of the circles and are standing on the North and South ends of the Rosetta Stone hologram, facing outward toward the group. Standing under Arch Rho, with its immaculate painting of Dionysian chaos centered among intricately detailed Corinthian capitals and marbled columns, Gobekley looks across the sky and sees the most indescribably beautiful sunset he’s ever witnessed. He doesn’t know whether the hallucinatory effects of the osiris are beginning or if it’s really just that colorful and divine. Lost in awe and wonder, his mind drifts from his body and he begins to float away; upward toward the horizon.
As he quickly delves into a deep hallucinatory state, observing himself from above, everything begins to make sense to him. Gobeckley feels as if he’s tapped into The Great Founders’ secret consciousness, he can finally understand their language. Everything; all of humanity’s most significant innovations have been catalyzed by our ability to create systems that universalize phenomena. We make understandable that which we can only observe and communicate through armature. Alphabet, the Rosetta Stone, the yurts, the circle of arches - Gobekley can see it all perfectly below his astral body, still floating in calm observation. The Rosetta Stone is the key: as Egyptian hieroglyphs and demotic script fell out of fashion in the beginning of the last millennium, the documentation of an entire society was erased from human memory; its language unable to be discerned. Though much like the scribes of ancient Memphis offering a bridge between Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Ancient Greek, the Great Founders have offered a bridge between all systems, erasing any barrier to access the depths of humanity’s vast output.
With this new insight, Gobeckley gives himself over entirely to the Ceremony of the Hieroglyphs - he targets his meditation and interdimensionally projects his astral body to the specific historical context each arch represents. He allows the situated knowledges to flow through him, gaining deeper insight into the entirety of human history at every stop. Under Arch Rho, he astrally projects to Keizersgracht, Amsterdam in Holland, 1667. As he takes in his surroundings, he observes the bustling port: a fleet of ships has just returned with exotic goods from the East Indies. His consciousness readily absorbs everything significant from this time period and how it relates to the present of his physical body: the creation of the first global megacorporation, the embodiment of national sovereignty in the Post-Westphalian city-state, the decoupling of actual and perceived value through the newly invented stock exchange, it all just made sense to Gobeckley.
As the Ceremony continues, he moves backward through human history. At Arch Lambda Gobeckley astrally projects to a troop of Bronze-Age steppe warriors, taking in the Roman Empire as it succumbs to the new age religion of Christianity at the height of its stability and control. Under Arch Delta, he projects to a family of shepherds tending their small herd of goats in the outskirts of Uruk, near a tributary of the Euphrates River. Here, he witnesses the proliferation of agricultural society, aided by seemingly extraterrestrial beings accelerating their technological capabilities. As he finally makes his way to Arch Alpha, his astral body experiences a strange sensation; the most powerful sense of deja vu overwhelms him as he projects into a Pre-Agriculture, Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement. As he walks toward the stone structures from the hill nearby where he landed, he begins to have the most profound realization yet. . .
SOLARSTEADING IN MARIELANDIA
Intro
Narrator: The most dismal predictions of the climate catastrophe began to unravel in the 2040’s after unpredictable weather coupled with an extreme rise in temperature led to widespread social unrest. The existing structural regime slowly imploded and formerly democratic systems of governance that were founded on slow, instrumental change could not keep up. The rational basis for modernity had ended; the myth of progress becoming untenable as the inescapable reality of our impact on the planet increasingly required collaboration on platforms that had long since disempowered what was once known as society. In the 2050’s, a deus ex machina came in the form of scale-able carbon sequestration technology and countries all over the world began to engage in an arms race for reigning in carbon emissions and rapidly scaled up their efforts to combat the forces of nature already at their doorstep. By 2062 the efforts paid off in official global carbon neutrality. What might have seemed like a pipedream to anyone alive in the early 2000’s was a reality; no longer was humanity reliant on fossil fuels and outdated modes of production. Many countries began to decouple themselves from the seemingly inescapable religion of permanent growth in the political and economic arena, beginning a new era of degrowth in a post-scarcity world. Moreover, we realized as a species that our primate intelligence and capability was merely a strata within the planet; not a layer above and beyond its grasp. Our best interests were inextricably fused to the planet itself; gaia was becoming self-aware.
Despite humanity’s efforts, a large portion of the planet had become virtually uninhabitable around the entire equator; from Africa to Central America. Everywhere from Kisumu to Quito, mass exit was unavoidable. A 3°C rise in temperature by the 2030’s had produced over 100 million climate refugees. From the accelerationist perspective, the polemical silver lining of global warming meant that regions that had never been available for permanent human settlement now harbored a mild climate- the most notable region being West Antarctica.
Historically, Antarctica was an unclaimed continent that hosted small groups of international scientists year-round on fortified micro-settlements operating exclusively for research purposes. Nowadays, nearly 100 million people hailing from all corners of the planet call the bustling urban metropolis of Marielandia, West Antarctica home. Unlike other cities that had undergone hundreds to thousands of years of territorial disputes and culture building, Marielandia was a tabula rasa for an entirely new model of what human civilisation could be. The oldest Marielandia-born citizens are in their forties, meaning that nearly everyone originally came from somewhere else; it is a truly global city wherein the ideologies that defined cultural and political strife in the early 21st century, i.e., nationalism, liberalism, etc., are outdated and obsolete in the Marielandian ecosystem.
Large groups of displaced climate migrants continue to flock to Marielandia to partake in the post-catastrophe worldbuilding. Over the coming weeks, as many as 1.2 million newcomers will be trickling in as a significant portion of the Midwest region of the North Atlantic Union begins a large-scale rewilding project in order to restore equilibrium and continue to stabilize the planet.
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Full screenplay available upon request