I am making a video game. It’s called Firmament, and it’s an interative novel + RPG set in a domed society at some point in the future. The dome provides everything that society needs, and was created with a manual detailing instructions for perfectly static homeostasis. Naturally, our player arrives at a time when homeostasis is not perfect, nor static, and is in fact very imperfect, and dynamic. I am making a video game.
A Scenario
Scenario: In a quasi-distant future where mankind has the ability to atomically bend the physical world to its will, it has an Idea. This idea, it’s classic science fiction trope, and probably because it’s so obvious and fundamental to what a species is. The idea is to collect a seed of genetic material, and send it out on some spaceship-cum-terrarium to probe space for a suitable place to dig in and start a colony. Procreation. Fundamental.
A Twist
Instead of searching for habitable worlds, humanity produces a perfectly hermetic enclosure to host its germed society. Also in the tradition of science fiction, it’s a sweet ass Dome. All matter needed to sustain human life is present in the correct quantities, and no matter ever exists or escapes the Dome. Through the magic of nanotechnology, everything is perfectly recycled from food into shit into clothing into capacitors, into anything and everything else, ad infinitum. Such a system is unfathomably complicated, and the Dome itself is an immense computer used to coordinate everything inside.
A Problem
The ensclosure is built to self-repair, to some extent, but any system which relies on dead reckoning will suffer from drift. To solve this, humanity shipped the Dome with a monstrous Manual, which covers any troubleshooting or manual repair in extreme and specific detail. And since, by far, the most likely thing to break this society once formed is the people within, it contains a great mass of Confucian-esque wisdom, societal rules, filial responsibilities, and traditions.
And, at long last, the Pitch
The progress of man is inevitable. Or: Life finds a way. Eons pass in this society, innocent and pastoral, provided for by an inexhaustable garden. Things are good, until they become bad. A religious sect, concerned with different forms of transcendence from and integration with base reality, begins to grow more intense. Another sect, traditionally in charge of maintenance of the nanotechnological machinery, discovers methods to fool the Dome into producing arbitrary goods. And through it all, the staunchly classic maintainers claim that these deviations from the Manual will destroy us all.
Enter you, Domebound. On a strict timer, fresh genetic material from the cache is reconstituted and released into society. Quite conveniently for myself, the author, you are one such person, and your birth coincides with a inflection point in the persistence of your species.
It’s called Firmament, and it’s an interative novel + RPG set in a Domed society at some point in the future. The Dome provides everything that society needs, and was created with a Manual detailing instructions for perfectly static homeostasis. Naturally, our player arrives at a time when homeostasis is not perfect, nor static, and is in fact very imperfect, and dynamic.