The A.R.C.

A deadly virus, triggered by lying, spreads globally after taking root at a climate conference attended by global elites. Aboard the cruise ship, The Veritas, a scrappy band of shipmates must reckon with the disease, and work together to survive it. A lethal new virus is wreaking havoc across the globe, but this time hand sanitiser isn't going to fix it. The A.R.C. begins at the Concordia Centre in the heart of the Amazon, where a who's who of global elites from business, finance, fashion, entertainment, technology, and online activism have gathered for the Global Reinvestment For Tomorrow Conference (GRFT), promising to solve the problem of climate change once and for all. Very little problem-solving occurs before the GRFTers are infected with a lethal, highly contagious virus, dubbed Amazonian Recombinant Cytoneuropathy (A.R.C.). The A.R.C. virus has peculiar and unfortunate characteristics: it is wildly contagious but undetectable in its dormant phase; it is 100% lethal; and the kicker is ... it's activated by lying. This proves deeply problematic for a world drowning in an ocean of lies and misinformation. The GRFTers board their private jets and spread the virus worldwide. Chaos ensues. Most of The A.R.C. plays out on a supposedly "sustainable" cruise ship, The Veritas, where an unlikely band of passengers and crew members: a single mum and her teenage daughter, a born again preacher and his wife, the grizzled Norwegian ship captain, an underemployed photographer and her retired stockbroker father, a pack of libidinous business bros, an unscrupulous payday lending magnate and his Russian mail-order bride, and others, reckon with the spreading virus, survive a bloody attack, and together figure out what is driving the disease, and how to live alongside it. Some of them make it. Most of them don't. Our plucky survivors make landfall on terra incognita just as The Veritas sinks beneath them. Ashore, they encounter a band of fellow travellers. We get a glimpse of the post-lie world they build together. The A.R.C.'s diagnosis is discomfiting for its accuracy. A pandemic of lying really is killing us, all of us, accelerated by the force multipliers of ubiquitous social media and AI. The A.R.C. offers no safe spaces for left, right, or centre, gleefully wielding satirical humour like a scalpel and...