Elizabeth Maher's world-building series continues by reimagining American folklore through a protocolized lens, focusing on characters like Janice Spurlock who use systems and protocols to construct and maintain power. The narrative explores how protocols—from lumber company accounting methods to the management of human belief—serve as tools for control and social order in the American frontier tradition.
Spencer Nitkey's story follows Egrol, a worker on Kupiter who envies ORCA pilots like Shreea for their agency in decision-making, as he discovers that meaningful work and autonomous choice still exist in pockets of their automated world. The narrative explores how different forms of labor—from directed emergence to pilot coordination—create hierarchies of agency and desire.
Spencer Nitkey
A horse named Sundown reflects on his nine seasons in Floyd Haggerty's traveling show, revealing that the visible theatrical performances mask an underlying system of control and movement—a labyrinth that is itself merely decoration for the true structure, the train. Through the horse's voice, the narrative explores how protocol and invisible design shape captivity more fundamentally than any visible rules or performances.
Elizabeth Maher
Spencer Nitkey presents a speculative narrative set on Kupiter Station where a character named Egrol performs endless, nonsensical microactions as part of a labor protocol that has stripped him of agency and coherence. The story explores the dystopian implications of work systems that reduce human action to fragmented, meaningless tasks controlled by external systems.
Spencer Nitkey