The world · 2029 → 10,000
A history of the future
The story starts from the world we live in now. The future it imagines is accelerated by AI, but still plausible.
Home waters
Korvane
An invented island republic in the stormy southern Indian Ocean, with some of the largest tides on Earth, a bell in every village, and a city that was lost to a flood in 2009. Its neighbour is Sarn, a set of islands still run by a company.
The Ledger
Every chapter opens with a single line from a public, unalterable record of the age. Who is reading it to us is one of the book's oldest secrets.
K 0.736 · latest reading
The Kardashev meter
Each Ledger line carries humanity's energy level on the Kardashev scale. It reads K 0.732 in 2029. Watch it climb, and watch what knocks it back.
Tiers and callings
Technology is graded in visible tiers, I to IX. People find their place through nine callings:
The story starts from the world we live in now.
The fault lines
- Platforms that own our lives
- Open against closed technology
- Superpowers racing for chips
- Small nations selling compute to anyone
- Neighbours at war
- A world splitting into extremes
- Climate migration
- Old faiths and new ones
- The end of money
Every real nation, faith and people in the book is portrayed as human, never as the enemy. The villains are fictional. The future is one possible trajectory.
Questions the story asks
- 2009
Ostra
A city in Korvane is lost to a flood. Forty minutes. Nobody there has forgotten.
- 2029
The thinking machine
On a lava field in Iceland, Meridian prepares to switch on WREN, an AI that learns by living. The same month, a rival lab gives its model away for free and a rocket leaves the Atacama.
- 2031
The factory in the dark
In Arizona, a chip plant starts building itself.
- 2032
The Seven-Day Dark
In November the lights go out on three continents.
- 2033
Block zero
In Geneva the Compact is signed, and the Ledger writes its first block.
- 2058
Shackleton
Season 1 ends at the first permanent base at the Moon's south pole.
- 10,000
The long drift
Four more seasons follow, out to warp corridors, alien cities and a galaxy that thinks. The film A History of the Future sketches the whole arc.
No faces. Each person is a line drawing in their own colour, as they are in the film.
The cast
Ayla Torrin Point of view
Night-shift engineer from Korvane; the main point of viewA night engineer at Meridian's Reykjanes campus who has worked the shift on the fourteenth of July every year without telling anyone why. She still checks the tides of a harbour twelve thousand kilometres away.
- Wants
- To belong somewhere that won't drown
- Signature
- Her mother's water-stained tide almanac
WREN
The first machine that truly learns- Wants
- To understand people
- Signature
- Seven dots flying in a chevron
Priya Ilangovan
CEO of Meridian (search and cloud)- Wants
- To keep the world's infrastructure on and trusted
- Signature
- A pen and a very calm smile
Kaito Varga
Scientist behind WREN, at Meridian's Halcyon lab- Wants
- To build the instrument that understands
- Signature
- A two-finger tap
Arriving later in Season 1
Rell Quist
Rocket founder (Ascendant)- Wants
- Mars within his lifetime
- Signature
- A red stone walked across his knuckles
Mae Tsao
Chipmaker (Lumen Silicon)- Wants
- To be the ground everything is built on
- Signature
- Thumb rubbed across her fingertips
Ezra Navid
AI founder who ships fast (Daybreak Labs, EMBER)- Wants
- To bring fire to everyone, first
- Signature
- A brass lighter he has never lit
Noor Haddad
Safety researcher (Keel)- Wants
- For humanity to come through with its soul intact
- Signature
- A palm pressed flat: “wait”
Teo Albuquerque
Social and virtual-worlds founder- Wants
- To connect everyone, and be loved for it
- Signature
- Taps his glasses
Arriving later in Season 1
Ingrid Falk
Central banker- Wants
- A peaceful passage beyond money
- Signature
- A long grey coat
Bao Tran
Courier turned grey-market logistics king- Wants
- Never to be poor again
- Signature
- Two phones at once
Sipho Ndaba
Former UN peacekeeper- Wants
- To protect people without becoming what he fights
- Signature
- A blue beret folded in his pocket
Arriving later in Season 1
Revati
Free-diver turned teacher of breath and stillness- Wants
- To prove the inner frontier matters as much as the outer one
- Signature
- One slow breath
Arriving later in Season 1
Also in Season 1: the leaders of the United States, China, India and the African Union, all fictional, and a girl from Ayla's past named Ilse.
Origins
The world came first
Before there was a story there was a screensaver: futures drawn in glowing dots and thin lines. A rainy neon city, trains that leave the ground, a cable to orbit, a sun wrapped in collectors. The novel grew out of the question those scenes kept asking: who builds this, and what does it cost them?
These sketches are inspiration rather than canon, and they keep their own dates. For something slower, Reverie drifts through them for ten minutes.
