The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.
It is to live and to thrive
On new earths.
It is to become new beings
And to consider new questions.
It is to leap into the heavens
Again and again.
It is to explore the vastness
Of heaven.
It is to explore the vastness
Of ourselves.
- The Book of the Living, Parable of the Sower
"Do you think we can really do it? Live on the surface again?"
- Fixer, 1000xRESIST
(This post contains spoilers for Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Sunset Visitor's 1000xRESIST. It is not necessary to have read Parable, but I highly recommend playing 1KxR first.)
I finished 1000xRESIST a few weeks ago and I'm still turning it over in my mind. One of the strands I've been following is its theme of futurism (and its roots of speculation, desire, and hope). 1000xRESIST is a game filled with regret, nostalgia, and ghosts. It also carries a longing for change, for a future that can either exist in spite of the past or because of it. It is a game that requires you to move on, because there is nothing else you can do.
1000xRESIST is a monument to science fiction's ability to speculate. It is the ludonarrative analogue to Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, dreaming not of an end to the apocalypse but the beginning of something new. Speculative fiction does not claim to predict the future, and I would argue that it doesn't even posit a possible future (regardless of how possible their worlds may seem to us; the world may burn, but it will not be by fire). We cannot possibly predict the future, but we can imagine what it would be like to be comfortable with uncertainty, and we can imagine a present that works for a uncertain future.
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1000xRESIST imagines a subterranean society of clones, over a thousand years after the Occupants came to Earth, bringing with them a disease that killed nearly all humans. You play as Watcher, one of six "shapen sisters" each with a "function" to serve your creator, the ALLMOTHER, who carries immunity to the Occupants' disease. You dream to join the ALLMOTHER on the "other side", where she will grant you immunity. This dream is never realized: the game cold opens with you, Watcher, murdering the ALLMOTHER.
In playing through the events leading up to the ALLMOTHER's death, I knew that our world was dystopic, and that the Sisters needed to shed their nostalgic, reactionary beliefs and traditions if they wanted to move on. But I never once considered what would happen after ALLMO's death, and the game never asked me this question either, until it was too late. The majority of 1000xRESIST's narrative weight derives from the baggage of a dead god, and a society that does its best to move on, and a dream of a new world (the other side; the surface; the Earth) that persists. 1000xRESIST's futurism is not focused on merely toppling tyrants, but one that forces you into the depths of the revolution; it is not post-apocalyptic, as much as it may seem to be. It is just apocalyptic, because the apocalypse never really ended.
We also cannot imagine an end to Parable of the Sower's apocalypse, in which the excesses of global warming, capitalism, and fascism have been pushed to their limits. In Parable, we will never know what it is like to kill President Donner, nor do we particularly care about him. Yet regardless of our ability to bring an "end" to the way things are, Parable's future is one rooted in change. Its protagonist, Lauren Olamina, spends the novel travelling across a ravaged California to spread her religion, Earthseed, and to find a suitable place to begin the first Earthseed community. The primary tenet of Earthseed is that "God is Change". Earthseed's dream is to "take root among the stars": it believes that, if we are to survive, we must change and be moved. Butler's futurism in Parable of the Sower is one centered on diaspora. As followers of Earthseed, we are migrants, both through space and time. We will live to see the other side, and we will build something new there.
1000xRESIST, like Parable of the Sower, imagines a diasporic future. A large portion of the game involves exploring ALLMO's memories, when she was a teenage girl named Iris in the 21st century. We see her trauma and the trauma of her parents. We see the apocalypses of the present, and we see what happens when we migrate away from them. Iris's parents met during the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests; though they live in Canada during Iris's lifetime, their loyalty to Hong Kong never wavers. They hold on to the dream of returning, even when they're sheltered in their apartment at the height of the Occupants' pandemic. In the end, they remained. But it does not have to be that way for us.
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Both Parable and 1KxR ask us to remember the past. But they do not ask us to be nostalgic. For you, playing Watcher, to remember is your function; it is who you are, it is the labor you perform, and it is a burden to you. The most difficult choice 1000xRESIST asks us to make is what to forget and what to remember. Diaspora does not exist without a homeland. We need to remember what we once were. Even among the stars, we still remember the Earth we came from; even under the oceans, we remember the city we were born in.
Speculative fiction may not be able to predict the future, but it can remember the present. Parable of the Sower and 1000xRESIST haunted me when I read and played them, because the things they were remembering were the same as what me, and everyone else on the planet, was living (Parable even begins in the year 2024!). It was a haunting of the past, of lost futures, and of an uncanny present. It reminded me of where I am now, and where I came from. The diasporic futures of speculative fiction do not ask us to carry the past. It's enough to know who you are, and to take that with you when you leave.
To survive,
Know the past.
Let it touch you.
Then let
The past
Go.
- The Book of the Living, Parable of the Sower
"We have to go to the surface. There's nothing left for us down here. We'll die out."
- Fixer, 1000xRESIST
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