David J Byrne

To Be Determined David J Byrne

To be determined. By our environment. By our generation. By our roots. By our nature. To make a choice. The struggle to not be determined by these things. By the paths we see in front of us. By the paths we choose to take. By the paths we didn't - well, they determine us too. James, a minted octogenarian, has endured a pre-internet childhood back in the 1980's, the rise of the Internet in the 1990's, Web2.0 of the 2000's, the SHAME! of the 2020's, the Noveau Existential Crisis and the Great Spread of the 2030's and 40's, and the Molecular Revolution of the 2050's. Now he must endure the recent loss of his dear wife, Agnes. He tries to find himself as a widower for his ultimate days. He spends some nights alone, in his head, and other nights exploring the optionality from modern technology with famous musicians, local nobodies, friends, family, and thanks to the new bereavement options, the apparition of his recent wife, Ag. He quickly finds that being old and alone is nothing like he could have ever imagined... Alice was born to James and Agnes in 2020. During the chaos of the SHAME! Fortunate to not have any direct fallout from the disaster, she came of age during the Noveau Existential Crisis and The Molecular Revolution. She has carved out her own independent and successful life, raising her daughter with only the help of an apparition of a father, Boris. Seemingly happy and confident in her life choices, Alice begins to wonder if she has it all wrong. The loss of her mother and the resulting conversations with her father send her into a recursive line of thought. She grasps for stability, for faith in herself. She dives into her past to identify the holes, the paths not taken. She explores herself while asking who or what to fill them with. Olga, Alice's daughter and therefore James & Agnes' granddaughter, hasn't endured any major cultural shift in her budding life. She is 18 and about to enter the world as an independent, still trying to find out what that is for her. With all of the optionality at her disposal from The Molecular Revolution and the invention of apparitions, she somehow feels bored. While also processing her first experience with death she starts to dive into history for inspiration. Three generations of the same family, question what it means to be determined, by their roots, by their generation, by their nature, by their environment. Three generations of the same family determined to find their own way to rise above it.