Act 1, Final Struggles
What Happens
Arcadia's environment collapses rapidly, famine, disease, chaos. The AnthoGenesis Protocol slowed the decay but could not reverse it. The atmosphere is thinning past survivable thresholds in the lower city. Old Arcadia is the first to go.
Key Beats
- Open with the image: what a dying world looks like on a Tuesday. Not apocalypse-movie drama, quiet, grinding, terminal.
- Oxygen rationing has returned, worse than before
- Flora Industries is gone but the infrastructure it controlled is failing without management
- The Protocol's partial effects: pockets of green in the grey, but not enough, nature is trying and losing
- Establish Arcadia as something the reader has come to love, so the loss means something
Characters
GAIA (observing), Aphrodite, ensemble