Drafting a Dystopian Detective
Author Matt Harry discusses the challenges in drafting a dystopian detective in a world where going outside can kill you.
How do you find a murderer when stepping outside can kill you?
That problem is at the core of my new dystopian detective novel, Ash Land. When a swarm of self-replicating, flesh-eating microbots escapes a lab in France, 20 percent of humanity is killed in the first month. The remaining people seal themselves inside plastic-coated buildings to survive.
Kai Braddock is one of those survivors. He used to be a cop, but now he’s a divorced father of two who tracks down escaped criminals from his 700 square-foot studio apartment in downtown Los Angeles.
When I thought up this scenario, I immediately knew it would be a rich setting for a mystery. Good storytelling is about obstacles, after all. How could Kai interview suspects, look for evidence, or chase down culprits if he’s stuck inside? To answer these questions, I needed to develop some tools for my dystopian detective.
The first one I came up with already exists in our world: remote-controlled drones. But my drones had to be more ubiquitous and user-friendly than they are currently. And I needed several types of them: construction bots, flying advertisements, autonomous vehicles. I even came up with sealed transport services that could shuttle people from one location to another. Since I always appreciate a little gallows humor, I had the characters nickname these transports “coffins.”
As I was developing this tech, I realized I had to invent some rules about “drone etiquette”: no spying on people, no touching someone else’s drone without their permission, no buzzing by windows at all hours of the day.
Kai’s drones also needed to be able to “tag and bag” lawbreakers. Since criminals usually don’t pick up Zoom calls or answer emails, his devices come equipped with a tranquilizer gun, virtual headset connection, and a variety of camera lenses. And because there’s no one outside to plug them in, all drones have to charge on induction plates.
But what about tasks that a drone couldn’t complete? For this, I needed another tool: human surrogates. Folks willing to risk their lives and operate outside the law. Enter the Scrappers, quasi-legal helpers who can be paid under the table to don a homemade hazmat suit and venture out into the world.
Kai’s favorite surrogate/investigative partner is Tevin, a former bouncer and high school football player who lives with his sick mom. But when Tevin is killed while helping Kai locate a missing scientist, the detective realizes he’ll have to do something almost no one has done in two years: He’ll have to go outside.
This led me to the third major tool that I needed for the world of Ash Land: hazmat suits. Of course, these already exist as well, but I needed suits that were more functional than the current models, even fashionable. Several questions came up as I plotted the novel. How much air could a person comfortably wear on their back? What happens if a suit is breached? And how does one go to the bathroom if you’re in a sealed suit for eight hours? (There are three unfortunate solutions I found while researching this last question: catheter, diaper, or using your suit as a toilet. You’ll have to read the book to see which option Kai chooses.)
Communication was also a big issue. It’s fine if you’re wearing a hazmat suit in a lab and everyone’s on the same audio channel, but Kai needed to roam all over Los Angeles. Mobile phones are too tricky to operate with thick protective gloves, and how would you hear it through the helmet? So I outfitted my suits with forearm tablet touch screens that could send and receive audio from inside. And since I also wanted to obscure the identities of some hazmat-suited characters, I added sun shields, like the kind astronauts use.
And if I had people using hazmat suits to go outside, that also meant I needed air locks. Once Kai starts investigating, the people he meets with would want to make sure that he doesn’t bring any microbots into their homes. So every building is fitted with an air lock and a toxic spray that kills the Ash. Kai even has to fight off an attacker in one such air lock.
Lastly, it wouldn’t be a sci-fi mystery if I didn’t use the Ash as a murder weapon. My fictional microbots can kill people in five minutes, so at one point the killer sends attack drones to shoot out Kai’s apartment windows, hoping the tiny machines will get rid of him. Does it work? To learn the answer and to read more about Kai’s dystopian detective tools, you’ll have to check out Ash Land. I hope you enjoy reading about this world as much as I enjoyed creating it.
Check out Matt Harry's Ash Land here:
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