Premise
My dystopia is set within a futuristic, transhumanist society where a majority of humans have elected to undergo a brain-computer interface implanation procedure to augment their cognitive abilities. Abe, unfortunately, cannot afford this procedure. Drifting from place to place, he is unable to find stable employment due to his lack of the neural lace. He spends his days scrounging for odd jobs and sitting by a lake, staring aimlessly over the surface. One day, he is approached by a mysterious woman (Clarissa) offering him a job. He accepts the job, but as he is being transported to the “job site”, she reveals she is part of a contracted company rounding up and expelling implant-free humans from the cities. Abe panics in the back of the car. About to be thrown outside the city and left for dead, he starts pleading and yelling random words. Right as he is about to be thrown, he shouts a certain sequence of words, and all the guards and Clarissa suddenly stand upright and listen to his every word. He realizes that he has accidentally found a backdoor implanted in the neural laces very long ago.
Abe, now on the run, must avoid the authorities, survive in the cities and forests, and discover the mysterious origins behind who planted the backdoor and why.
Story Map
Politics: authoritarian yet nominally democratic. Centralized authority concentrated in a plutocratic class of neurobiologically-enhanced elites
Economy: free-market capitalist, but excessively so to the point where externalities dominate (i.e. environmental pollution)
Culture: simultaneously homogenous (groupthink) and also scattered, with the rate of communication at the speed of thought
Society: Social class graded by quality of implant and thus wealth, like a futuristic caste system
Project Plan
I’m likely to face technical challenges, so I am frontloading this timeline such that I have adequate time to iterate and revise.
Oct 16: Finish first draft of premise and map
Oct 19-20 weekend: Finish MVP of feature-complete game (plot stub)
Oct 23: Playtest and iteration 2
Oct 26-27: Playtest, iteration 3, potentially deploy
Oct 30: Final edits
Nov 1: submission
Setting the mood / warming up
Abe stirred from his usual resting spot on a park bench at the rustlings of a stranger approaching. He squinted his eyes to scan the visitor for a scar behind the ears, a tell-tale mark of the procedure, or the little square computing unit, which juts out and makes the skin around it protrude a bit. Seeing neither, Abe greeted the stranger: “Not many of us left around here.” The stranger replied: “Hello Abe, I’m Clarissa. I heard you’re one of the few without the procedure. I want to offer you a job.”
Abe froze, then let out a deep, shuttering exhale laced with emotion and pent-up anticipation. He reclined his head against the park bench’s armrest, and his gaze drifted towards the brackish park pond. “Thank God. There’s been nothing for me to do without the procedure. I couldn’t afford it. The ones that have done it—they talk to each other without opening their mouths, speak differently, remember everything. I can’t do that. I thought I’d be useless for the rest of my life. Day after day, it’s just me and the fishes. A couple little minnows.”
Clarissa turned her head towards the pond. “I don’t see the point of these fish. Minnows once played a role in the ecosystem. Other animals would eat them up. But this park pond is manmade. We control the ecosystem. So what’s the point of the minnows?” Abe shrugged.
Clarissa offered her hand and helped Abe up. As he left the park bench, Abe thought he noticed a slight, makeup-covered scar behind Clarissa’s ear, but he dismissed the thought.
