The Fracture Project

The Fracture paints a dark cautionary tale set in a world with uncanny parallels to our own, inviting new perspectives on today's existential threats through a modern integration of traditional media and emerging technology.

In July of 2022, I was hired to build their world.

Set in a futuristic New York City and its surrounding regions, the story imagines a world torn apart by omnium, a mineral that can power machinery on an infinite loop.

Omnium incited global conflict when the research conglomerate Praxis Labs experimented with using it on the human body. They discovered that doing so not only allowed for cybernetic augmentation, but that it granted organ systems regenerative power. The global elite clamored to undergo the Bridging procedure, and under Praxis’ influence, the borough of Manhattan became a nexus for a population of  nigh-immortal cyborgs.

But, meddling with death’s law had cosmic consequences. After years of advancement, They appeared; materializing from the air in luminescent black wisps, a mysterious plague began to coalesce around omnium deposits, extracting it and growing into large storm systems. They expanded until They stretched around the planet, forming the Seven Belts — lethal, unmoving walls of wind force and static chaos. The Belts release small storms called scouts, and they hunt for omnium, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Many believe these storms to be a divine retribution for Praxis’ breach of natural law, so they are known simply as The Gods.

Against this post-apocalyptic backdrop, humans survive in various settings, like totalitarian compounds or in the slums of Utopion, New York City’s ironic new name.

One of our protagonists, Vic, lives a sheltered life in the commune of Eos, three hundred miles away from the city. Her insular village exemplifies an alternative future with technology, one that embraces natural cycles and harnesses solar power to sustain harmony between people, animals, and land. But Vic, a lone teenager stuck between a generation of weathered survivors and their bright-eyed children, suspects there is a darker reason for her village’s uncanny comfort and safety; a secret that belongs with her mother, the woman who found Vic as a bundle on their bunker’s hatch.

Pulled by the need to rebel against her smothering mom, the primitive desire to find people her own age, and a nagging suspicion that the truth of her origins lies within the forbidden cyborg city, Vic embarks on a perilous journey that will show her technology’s violent edge, the ugly side of resilience, and the deliciousness of freedom.