PILOT. I Can't Remember. Scenario 1: Market Forces.

TREATMENT
By 2050, climate change has reshaped everyday life without fundamentally changing the global economic system. Governments continue to rely on technological innovation and market competition to solve environmental problems. Artificial intelligence, automation and private investment have transformed agriculture, infrastructure and resource management. The economy continues to grow, yet prosperity is distributed unevenly as increasing numbers of workers become economically redundant.

Two teenage girls spend an afternoon overlooking vast automated farmland on the outskirts of their town. Drones move methodically above precision-managed fields while autonomous machinery quietly tends crops engineered to withstand extreme heat and prolonged drought. Beyond the horizon rises the headquarters of the corporation that owns most of the region's land and water rights.
The girls have grown up believing this landscape to be normal.

Their conversation begins with playful teasing about escaping their small town before gradually turning towards their families. One girl explains that her father has just lost his job after thirty years as a groundskeeper. The company's learning systems had monitored his work for years, recording every movement until his knowledge could be reproduced by autonomous machines. His dismissal is presented as a routine efficiency measure rather than a personal tragedy.

Without employment, the family can no longer afford the corporate licence granting access to irrigation water, community allotments and subsidised food production. Nothing has been confiscated. They have simply lost the ability to pay for services that were once considered public goods.
Her friend suggests that her own father might know someone looking for seasonal workers. Such opportunities have become increasingly rare. Human labour survives mainly where automation remains temporarily uneconomical.
As they speak, an autonomous maintenance vehicle passes nearby. Neither girl pays it much attention. Machines have become as ordinary as weather.
The conversation turns to the future. One girl insists that new technologies will eventually create new jobs, just as people always claim. The other quietly asks what happens when the machines learn every job before the next one is invented.
Neither has an answer.

A notification appears simultaneously on both of their phones.
The corporation proudly announces another breakthrough in agricultural automation. Food production has increased while labour costs have reached a historic low. Investors celebrate record profits. Consumers are promised lower prices.
The girls read the announcement in silence.
One finally remarks that her father's photograph had appeared in the promotional video several years earlier, demonstrating how the company's artificial intelligence learned from experienced workers.

Now he no longer appears.
The drone continues across the fields.
The crops continue growing.
The market has worked exactly as intended.
The film concludes with the girls looking across the landscape. Nothing appears broken. The harvest is plentiful, the technology efficient and the environmental targets are being met. Yet beneath this apparent success lies a quieter question: if the market can replace every worker more efficiently than it can create a future for them, who ultimately benefits from progress?