Consolation

Consolation follows the protagonist, Terra, as she learns of the doom facing mankind. The news has just been announced: the Earth’s oxygen levels are nearly diminished; it is only a matter of time before complete oxygen depletion occurs. Living in a high-tech oxygen Bubble for seventy years, mankind has managed to escape the threat of oxygen depletion, but even the Bubble cannot withstand the reality of nature. Terra finds it the appropriate time to remove her Virtual Viewers—a device conceived to immerse the wearer into a virtual landscape—and leave the Bubble. She returns to her friends, who continue to wear their glasses, complacent in committing to a blissful fantasy as opposed to their real one. They remove their glasses and one by one they realize what reality has in store for them. It’s too late for them to change fate, so they take what time they have left and do the one thing they’ve been unable to do their whole lives: leave the Bubble. But the success of their escape remains unknown, as right before the doors close, Aurora steps back and puts her Virtual Viewers back on.