When a technocratic society living underground employs eugenics to ensure humanity’s survival on a devastated Earth, a biologist and a software engineer have only one hope of raising a child of their own: upload their fetus to a computer simulation. Series Description: The Ark is a 10-part scripted audio series about a family formed in the wake of a global calamity, and how their only hope of sticking together lies in a total reconception of their world (figuratively, and literally). It’s a dark, viscerous hard-scifi about grief, hope, parenthood, and survival, and balances theological undertones and solarpunk discourse within the tragic, funny, loving, and brutal moments of family drama. Nora and Rafael live in a Shelter, one of many underground refugee cities formed in the wake of a global cataclysm that rendered the Earth’s surface uninhabitable, and obliterated all natural life upon it. This scientist duo have tasked themselves with preserving the memory of that nature through an elaborate computer wildlife simulation. They are also expectant parents, and have just received a dire prognosis: the Shelter’s authorities have denied them the right to bring their pregnancy to term, or to ever have another child again. With their marriage tearing at the seams, they must choose whether to comply and abort the pregnancy to protect their simulation, or risk everything to have their child in secret, that is until an outlandish compromise sets them on a path towards parenthood neither of them are ready for. Over the course of the season, we follow the couple as they navigate raising a digital child from toddler to teenhood. Nora will struggle to reconcile between her grief, identity as a mother, and idea of what makes a human. Her reluctance to parent her child, named “Han”, leaves Rafael to play single-father while navigating a prickly reacquaintance with his sister Alison, who’s genius skill with computers made Han’s transfer from physical body to digital bytes a reality. Alison has obliged Rafael to return her favor by licensing their simulation to her military employers, a Faustian bargain, but the only way to ensure the processing power to keep his child alive. We’ll follow Han (they/them) at different stages of childhood and adolescence, navigating latchkey detachment from their parents’ chronic absences, curiosity and danger when Rafael forbids them from exploring ecosystems throughout the sim, and their own ontology as the sole “digital person” in existence. Their world is thrown open when, in the sim, they find a backdoor to the internet, and learn the truth of what happened to the Earth outside. And when Nora admits she cannot accept Han as a real person, Han will find a surrogate mother in Gale Fellows, a kooky, middle-aged web personality who turns out to be the leader of a dangerous doomsday cult preaching the “ascension” of all humanity into the metaverse. Credits: Created & Directed by M. Louis Gordon Written by M. Louis Gordon & Adriana Campoy Produced by Cory Choy, Harry Bainbridge Starring Amalia Mark, Sean Edward Evans Recording Engineer: Tom Fama Sound Design: M. Louis Gordon, Luke Allen Music: OGRE Sound Art Director: Zach Shukan Silver Podcast Network www.silver-nyc.com/silverpodcastnetwork
