Year 120

The Havens

For the lucky 1%, life is adequate.

Walled cities where every citizen is monitored, rated, and provided for. Vertical gardens climb identical towers. Provision hubs glow green. The climate is controlled, the food is calibrated, and the system logs no deviation. Nobody asks what lies beyond the walls. Nobody needs to.

The Remainder

Everything outside the walls.

A landscape of collapsed infrastructure and scavenged shelter, where millions survive without recognition. No ratings, no provisions, no records. The system does not acknowledge them. To the Havens, these people do not exist. To the Remainder, the Havens are a rumour.

The Threshers

Autonomous. Patient. Thorough.

Machines deployed across the Remainder. They do not pursue, they patrol. They do not hate, they classify. A person detected is a person processed. The Threshers have been operating for longer than anyone can remember, and they have never stopped.

The Rating

Your number is your life.

Every citizen carries a Civil Rating. It determines allocation, access, residence, and worth. It rises with compliance and falls with deviation. Drop below the threshold, and the system reassigns you. What reassignment means depends on who you ask.

The Families

Twenty names. One decision.

Somewhere in the historical record, twenty families made a choice. The details were archived, encrypted, buried. The world that existed before Year Zero was not destroyed by catastrophe. It was switched off.