Synopsis

This narrative is a premonition of two parallel futures occurring on different timelines. In both, a child is watching the end of their known world.

It begins on a count down from 5 billion years in the future where the sun is falling. We see it fading through their eyes - a future we know to be probable. As the sun spirals away, we rewind to 4 million years where humans cultivate a new home on a different planet. The narrative reels back further to 3 thousand years in the future, where our earth’s buildings fly through the air. The numerical countdown suddenly breaks, with the child saying, “Too bad” instead of beginning with 2. This disruption yet adherence to the countdown pattern marks the second future. Rather than the sun winding down into darkness, we witness its expansive descension reflected in the child’s eyes. In one second, the world is radiant, then plummets to black.

Both futures are real. The first is the child recalling millennia of human growth sustained until the sun’s light dims. The second is the child witnessing a nuclear fall-out. The child is one & the same. The time where they exist is years apart. The time where we experience both realities is a handful of seconds.

Which child will we comfort as the sun falls? Nuclear attacks may feel as though they are 5 billion years away. However, that “distant” reality is not & was not a luxury for many. Nuclear warfare is not conscious. It does not think or make decisions. The humans that develop & execute it do. War impacts all extant life on earth. Which sun will we watch at the end?

This narrative about the future is told through moving illustrations. This is a visionary scenario where the sun falling is a metaphor for a nuclear attack.

The first scene depicts the sun “disappearing”: a probable future. The illustration’s aesthetic is meant to appear juvenile and innocent, demonstrating that this is a child’s point of view. After, a plausible future is revealed where the narrator imagines a new planet to call home. Then, another plausible future is described where buildings are flying. The sun falls in a different motion from the first scene, demonstrating a different scenario. The narrative ends with the screen fading to white and then black, leaving a vague ending up for interpretation. Each dialogue begins with a countdown, the first scene starting with the number five. The second scene begins with “too,” which phonetically rhymes with the number two. The rest of the countdown follows for the rest of the scenes. While the child describes billions of years in the future, this narrative occurs in seconds. This is parallel to how this piece tells a probable future where the sun will disappear in the future, but in reality, it depicts a plausible future of a nuclear attack. This story shows the temporal progression of the sun falling, starting with the sun “disappearing” and then the sun “falling”. The narrative begins with 5 billion years into the future where the sun falls; in the middle, plausible futures are explored through a child’s imagination; at the end, the bomb explodes through the imagery of a falling sun. While we imagine that nuclear attacks are far away into the future or entirely unlikely, many others do not and did not have the luxury of such a mindset. War impacts all and involves innocent individuals, putting their lives at stake.