Deadhorse

Arc 1: Deadhorse '77-Theodora
Theodora, 12 when the story starts, moves to Deadhorse, Alaska with her adopted parents. They discuss their excitement about the move and the prospects this new home could hold for them.

Meanwhile, a golden orb bursts from an oil rig in Prudhoe Bay. Workers respond, and upon investigating it, it opens up and kills one and mortally wounds the other who investigates after hearing what happened. Thea’s parents are called in to help and load the surviving worker and the orb onto the helicopter. Unfortunately, the orb scans once more and releases another blast, crashing the aircraft and killing everyone on board.

Thea is taken in by one of the few other families in Deadhorse, but it’s not a good situation. She watches her new adopted mother try to convince her adopted father to let her stay. The argument gets heated and he hits her with an open hand. Thea reacts and draws attention to herself, and her adopted father looks at her and something in him softens for a moment and he allows her to stay, Thea slips outside and makes her way to the wreckage and discovers the golden Orb. It opens up and scans once more, but does not kill her, instead going dormant.

Not long after, Thea realizes the golden Orb, or as she calls it, the Timepiece, has the power to animate electronics. Inspired by Return to Oz and convinced the Timepiece is trying to communicate with her, she cobbles together a crude automaton with the few belongings she kept from parents, hoping it would bring them back to her. It begins to move when she puts the Timepiece in it and it leads her out of town to a hill. The wax cylinder begins to play and the robot falls apart, the Timepiece melting through it straight underground. Disappointed, Thea returns home. Unknown to her, Kal, short for Kalluk, was watching.

Kal was brought to Deadhorse with his father when he moved to work on the oil rigs. Upset at leaving the traditions of his tribe behind, he ran away and now lives off of whatever he can steal or find.

Years pass and Theodora is now 17 and sick of how she’s being treated as one of the only women in Deadhorse and how she essentially has to be a voice for all women as a result. She exacts her revenge, luring the worst of the bullies into a trap, but gets overwhelmed. Kal, who has not aged a day since we first saw him, steps in to help her out, but can’t do much and they end up fleeing after Thea stabs one of her tormentors in the shoulder.

Kal takes her back to a cave he’s been staying in and explains he’s been watching her, and after the wax cylinder sonata incident, the back wall of the cave had opened up. He fell asleep in the new chamber and when he awoke, several years had passed. The two of them venture into the chamber, mistaking it for a temple and finding that the technology in it is vastly superior to technology they were used to. They fall in love and fall asleep together. When they wake up, almost 100 years had passed.

Arc 2: 2077-It Tore Your Heart Out
In their sleep, they learn of the “secret history of the earth.” The Timepiece is actually a perpetual motion engine of some sort created by an ancient race of space-faring people. It essentially points to the centermost point of the universe and gathers the energy it generates in doing so, eventually creating a near-infinite source of power. A similar device had been discovered almost 100 years prior and a society was made to protect and study it. Back to the present, while Thea and Kal are sleeping, the Timepiece is discovered once more and technology advances everywhere, eventually automating all jobs and putting people on a level playing field. However, a series of diseases and plagues keeps people from each other, isolated in their homes which provide them with all they need, save for company. Robots are created to supplement that, and they are called The Saints, each perfectly tailored to someone based on data it's been gathering on them. They also serve to make everyone have a similar mindset.

When Thea and Kal wake, there is a ceremony to give The Saints out to the first new people, but a group of people have been feeding the AI conflicting information. Predicting a disaster waiting to happen, Thea and Kal convince each other to stay and fight rather than run away. Kal tells her about his thematically appropriate dream of a thunderbird and a panther.

The first person reaches out to embrace their Saint, but due to the tampering of information, the Saint rips their heart out, as do the rest of them. Thea and Kal make their way into the Labyrinth, the central operating base for the Saints where the mega computer is stored. Kal and Thea are separated, Thea getting taken away by security persons, giving Kal the Timepiece before she’s gone. He gets to the center where the computer is stored, using the Timepiece to open doors on his way, but the room it’s stored in is unfit for people to be in; the air is unbreathable and toxic and the floor is scorching hot. Kal brute forces his way in and shuts down the system, but collapses upon completing the task. Thea manages to drag him and the Timepiece out before it’s too late and they return to the temple, where they fall asleep once more, this time for 1,000 years.

Arc 3: 3077-No Land Beyond
After the Saints incident, people realize that having an AI overlord is a bad idea and stop the uses of machines, though they no longer have the knowledge to live off the land or the resources to drive anywhere. They create new, crude technology, which accelerates the speed of global warming. The world floods, people spread out across the world, and the Caecus, the society that first discovered the Timepiece, gathers everyone who knows anything about technology into their institute atop Denai, bringing back the use of technology, but ensuring that there’s no overarching communication network. In their institute, they invent immortality, but in doing so, they’ve messed with their genetics enough that they can no longer have kids.

They turn their research and experimentation onto woman volunteers to try and make them fertile, but somehow instead invent a new race of giant women who they call The Grand Matrons. The Grand Matrons have insane motherly instincts and adopt their creators as their children. They create a honeycomb of chambers, in which, their “children” can enter virtual reality and live blissful lives. To monitor them, The Grand matrons invent snake-like robots called Serv-pets who administer updates and the like.

In wanting their “children” to have children, they realize they have to administer changes to their DNA, but they’d be unable to see the changes unless they go into stasis in between each change. So that’s what they do.

Then, the people in virtual reality begin dying. In having only positive and happy emotions, they don’t actually feel consistently happy. The Grand Matrons decide the best way forward is to increase the level of happiness, but it doesn’t work and more people die. The Grand Matrons, in desperation, begin networking again, which was taboo.

Meanwhile, Kal and Thea learn more of the secret history of the earth. Humans aren’t native to earth, and had invented immortality. They explored space, but their AI began to act as if it was superior to the humans that created it and a planet of machines began to hunt them down for use of their perpetual engines. They shut down technology, only keeping the engines going. They eventually began sending pairs of people out to other planets to try and escape their enemies. The couple headed to earth were pursued, and used up all the energy in the engine to escape, but in doing so, they became mortal and stranded on earth, their ship eventually becoming what Thea and Kal have made their base.

Upon learning of this history, Kal latches onto the idea that there’s other people in space that he could join and learn more about his heritage, while Thea wants to integrate some of their ways into everyday life and improve.

Thea and Kal take a serv-pet to study, but it manipulates Kal into latching onto his idea harder until he is changed from the caring person he was to a desperate, stubborn man. Thea realizes that if she uses the same protocol that the first humans did to shut down the perpetual engines powering the institute, she could save humanity. Upon hearing this, Kal locks her in a room and leaves to launch them back into space to rendezvous with any surviving humans. Still, he listens to her and asks the ship if there’s anyone out there anymore, and there isn’t. He then learns about what all is happening with the Grand Matrons and realizes the error of his ways. He rushes to free Thea and apologize, but she hits him over the head with a metal bar and goes through with her plan. In doing so, the ship falls from the sky into the sea and all the people in the institute die at once. The world begins to go to shit.

Thea is knocked out by falling rubble, but before all is lost, Kal wakes and escapes with her into the ocean, but is unable to tell up from down. As he’s about to run out of air, a seal swims past and the air bubbles it releases tells him which way is up. He surfaces and props Thea up on floating rubble. After a few tense moments, she coughs up water and breathes, and the two of them sit on the wreckage and let the waves take them to a forest that somehow still has some life to it. They drag themselves onto shore and into the woods to find shelter, but unknown to them, a serv-pet survived the chaos as well.