The same five people, in both futures
The same five people, at the same moment, in each of the two futures. Nothing about them changes. Only what the world around them was built to permit.
Five questions about your own life
Five questions. Nothing is stored, scored against you, or sent anywhere — the whole thing runs in your browser and forgets you the moment you close the tab. It is a mirror, not a test.
Eight patterns that keep repeating
Not prophecy. Momentum. Read across both columns for long enough and the same eight mechanisms surface in every century — which means they are, in principle, interruptible.
Every photograph, and where it came from
Every photograph in this piece is a real historical record with a named source. One of them is generated and says so. Here are all — of them: what they are, who made them, and under what licence they are used.
On the images we could not use
The photojournalism that defines modern conscience — Amnesty International's testimony, National Geographic's field record, the Magnum and Getty archives — is under active copyright and cannot be lawfully reproduced here without a negotiated licence. Using it anyway would be theft dressed as tribute, which would rather undercut the argument.
So everything below is drawn from public-domain and openly licensed collections: the U.S. National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Wellcome Collection, NASA, national museums, and photographers who released their work to the commons. Where a defining image is missing, it is missing honestly.
Licensing the rest is a solved problem, not a blocked one. Amnesty's media team, National Geographic Image Collection, Magnum Photos and Panos Pictures all license for editorial and exhibition use. That is a budget line, and the slots are built.
This map isn't finished.
You are still holding the pen.
One day someone will ask what we did. Let this be part of the answer: we told the truth, and we kept a record of both halves of it.