BACK STORY
2049 sees the world’s leading energy corporation, ROAD CORP, begin the exploratory mining of methane clathrate on the Alaskan North Slope. A borehole explosion, instigated by the terrorist sect, GREEN GAIA, has methane explode up the borehole, initiating a methane burp and subterranean fire that cascades across the arctic. The shock proves apocalyptic. The north and south polar regions melt completely into the sea, world geography is redefined, and future global climate comes to labor under a pollutant-fired, black-clouded sky, transforming surviving land masses into tropical swamp. The resultant world’s surviving 2.5 billion citizens are placed under the authoritarian rule of a single world governing body (WGB). To maintain order, the WGB engineers the bodily implanted registered profiling chip (REP), to be monitored by the specialist enforcement arm, citizen profile security (CPS). On the approach of the 22nd century, the world looks to a savior.
NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN US EAST ARCHIPELAGOS
North Atlantic flood waters have seen the east coast of the US transformed into two distinct archipelagos chains, the Northern US East Archipelagos and the Southern US East Archipelagos.
GREATER NEW YORK ARCHIPELAGOS
State divisions exist within the two island chains. One such division is the Greater New York Archipelagos, consisting of the islands Staten, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Neo-Manhattan, formally Manhattan.
NEO-MANHATTAN
Preserving much of Manhattan’s former glory, and unique among the islands, Neo-Manhattan is surrounded by a dam wall, points of its serving as beacon and safe harbor for water traffic. Built into the wall are pump stations regulating the flow of water through the old streets transformed into lock-managed, trafficked canals.
This level of the city, known as the CANAL LEVEL, is home to the city’s poorest and most disenfranchised, existing on marginal or slave labor employment.
Separate from the canals, open areas of land at this level are largely swamp. Some of these areas have seen the growth of independently governed shanty tent towns that rise above the swamp on stilted decking fortified by a bulwark of understructure and guy wires secured to the city’s old and new towers. The extensiveness of the tent towns has become such that this ‘mid-level’ of the city is colloquially referred to as the TENTER LEVEL. It is home to a new class of citizen, largely surviving on black market activity, and startup enterprises.
The city’s towers are identified as the SKY LEVEL. Broad concourses, expansive bridging, and exclusive domed shopping, pleasure districts and resorts, serviced by an extensive network of elevated ways (eways) and transport straws (t-straws), makes up this level, home to the average citizen, and most notably, the elite.
All intellectual property © Art Bébé.
The Art Bébé Project 