Forest of the Future
We always knew the world would end, but this soon? In this way? That was unexpected. Forest 404 is set in a technologically advanced world populated with humans. Pan is the protagonist of this modernised society. She is in her 20s, has brown skin and black hair. She works as a librarian sorting through piles of mixtapes with recordings from the past (the “slow world”). Drastic measures were taken the day Pan found a tape with the sounds from forests. Daria reported her to the hands. Pan’s memory of the forest sounds was wiped and she fled after realising something was wrong. Thus began her journey to find answers. During her adventures, she gains a greater understanding of the situation she and her community are in. As she dives deeper into her quest, the big mystery starts to unveil before her, and what she finds could end in a catastrophe. However, will friendship and compassion prevail over this greater evil? Or will the world be left in desolation? Along her journey, Pan finds the only known survivor from the ‘slow times’, Theia. She is a cranky old woman with a fiery will and she is where Pan’s answers lie. However, Daria and the hands are hot on her heels, desperate to stop Pan from spreading a deadly virus. All the while one big question bothers Pan. What are these sounds from?
Slowing it down in ‘The Fast Times.’
In the thrilling society of the “fast world.” People are hustling and bustling to fulfil their debt to society. Whether that be running numbers in the highest of this worlds super towers, stunned by the bright, hyperactive, metropolis below, all the way down to the darkest depths of the worlds, well beneath luxury, where people are brought into labour to fuel the city above.
The storyline of Forest 404 takes place in a sci-fi fantasy over 300 years in the future. In a period that they called ‘The Fast Times.’ We are rapidly introduced to our main character and protagonist, Pan. Who, when working at the library of records, is introduced to a mysterious virus called “the rupture.” From which, Daria, Pan’s boss, decides to report to the law enforcers of the Fast Times, the Hands.
This is where the story begins, as we finally are introduced to the main problem of the series when the Hands invade Pan’s home and in a heart-breaking moment for Daria, erase her memories. Though of course this not the end of our beloved hero’s story. We see her escape the hands when she once again finds out about the ‘rupture.’ Where she takes us to the deepest, darkest parts of her city, Fumetown, and perhaps even deeper.
I personally loved the characters in the piece, they have such a deep storyline and their emotions are so in tune with their past that I feel as if these lives were almost simulated. Pan is resourceful and fast thinking, which explains how she can so effectively do her job as a storage clearer, which was her career before the virus, and even how she was able to so effectively able to escape from the Hands on multiple occasions. Daria, I believe, has the best story to tell, albeit a slightly depressing one. In which we realize that the crazed demonic madness she has inherited in the series is due to her childhood trauma, which still affects her to the end of the series. Her character is so well written to accommodate this madness though, she acts professional and reasonable on the inside until Ep7: where she starts showing her inner demons. She starts speaking in an insane manner and tone, especially when describing the rupture. The specific order of the words, the way it was said and the context it is from just made my hair stand on edge. It is definitely, while not one of the most important parts of the series, one of the best played out.
The story is filled with unexpected plot twists and realization. The moments where you go “Ohhhh! I remember that!” Are pretty common in this podcast, as it hints at its plot twists early on in the podcasts. It also plays on the target demographics knowledge. For example, it is revealed to us that ‘the rupture,’ is correlated to the death of nature. Throughout the series, we simply assume that when they talk about parks, it is a block of land with tree’s plants, insects. They never, however, specified such a thing, and so when we realise at the same time as the character that these parks are not how they should be, just with different perspectives on what our parks are currently.
One increasingly annoying part of the episodes is that every single one ends in a cliff-hanger. ‘That’s not so bad,’ you probably may be thinking, but what is infuriating is the fact that it ENDS on a cliff-hanger! In short, the story does not resolute, but it also doesn’t really have much to go on for a season two. I’m guessing there is no plan for a season two, and so we end on an unsatisfactory ending. Taking into account all the backstory, plot twists, and character development, I really hoped that there would be one final surprise at the end. There is not. What it does leave you with, is a message, an important one, this shows a dystopian world caused by climate change. What makes this so scary is that we are facing climate change now, and it is not going leaving the way we’re going. If anything that should be what convinces you to listen to the episodes. Since everyone needs a bit more education on how our future is heading.
The Natural Way of Education
People of this day and age are ignorant idiots. How can I say such a thing? Where does this come from? The fact that you are not aware of your ignorance shows how ignorant you truly are. All the enthralling episodes in this series are accompanied by a respective pod-talk in which a guest speaker comes onto the podcast and share their beliefs and ideas about the topic for that week. Most times, an expert in the field of question will come on and speak about a subject that ties in loosely to what the episode revolved around, such as the impending effects of global warming, for example. The pod-talks are solely information-based as opposed to the fictional nature of the main episodes, almost to a stage where a listener would not be able to recognise that the two franchises were interconnected unless told. The topics of the talks vary in each instalment of the talks, always maintaining the listener’s interest. I cannot speak on behalf of others, but in short, I was hooked.
The talks mostly concern current affairs and issues and obstacles that the new generation of humans will face. Some of the major themes in the talks include the natural world and its interactions with us humans, global warming and climate change, the advancements in the robotic world and the final days of humanity. Even though there is an abundance of problems which our generation and the generations after us will have to go face-to-face with, we seem the least concerned out of all the generations. The new generation is too engrossed in the latest designer clothes, or the newest edition of Call of Duty to realise that we will be fighting a losing war if we do not do anything about the dire situation the earth is heading towards. This links to why I stated that people these days are morons. We focus too much on relishing ourselves in the present and choose to ignore the issues we are facing on the broader spectrum.
In Talk 1: Why Should I Listen to Trees?, Talk 2: How is the Sound of the World Changing, Talk 3: Could I Live in Darkness? and Talk 4: Why do Trees Live so Long?, the main theme of focus is the natural world. The first two of the talks present interesting facts about the audible natural world, and the benefits of being around that environment and listening to nature. Talk three, I found to be the most engrossing out of the four. In talk three, guest speaker Herman Wijnen is invited to speak regarding what life would be like if we were to live without sunlight. Wijnen describes how humans use circadian rhythms to configure their bodies, somewhat like an internal clock. According to Wijnen, circadian rhythms existed in organisms as early as when humans were still specs of bacteria, and the vastness of how advanced a miniscule being could be was astonishing to me. The pod-talks are a vast ocean of interesting facts and figures which are relevant to our modern world, and that is what makes them such a valuable addition to the episodes. The next three episodes briskly move on form the natural world to the modern digital age, and futuristic concepts such as humans becoming fully half robot, and governments ruled entirely by AI.
Accompanying pod-talks were not the only addition to the episodes. Some of the episodes had glimpses of the slow world that Pan was listening to within the episodes, and you cannot truly experience a phenomenon if you have never sensed it, and sounds can be an integral method of recreating the past, or even reimagining the future.
Nature to my ears
Imagine a picturesque view next on the beach, staring out into a vast body of water. Clear, crystal-like water. The serene sound of waves lapping at your feet. After a long week, your brain is tired and fatigued, but the idea of a trip to the beach takes part in relaxing and calming your brain down. Forest 404 is a complex and unique story. Each drama episode is accompanied by a lifelike soundscape typically playing the sounds of nature whether it be from a forest or from the depths of the sea. These soundscapes relate to current events happening in the story and typically last for 2 to 8 minutes. These sound sessions add an extra but necessary segment to the already jam-packed layout.
The first nature soundscape we are presented takes place deep in a Sumatran forest. Numerous sounds enter my ears but each of them are distinct and easily distinguishable. I can hear the birds chirping, the churring of insects, wind whistling around disturbing the leaves and the throaty howls of the monkeys. Just about everything you would expect coming from a rainforest was in this soundscape. During my listen, I would just shut my eyes and envision myself meandering through the forest. I would picture fallen logs and ferns littered across the floor, countless multi coloured birds perched on steady branches and of course the countless animals roaming around. Overall, this was a very dulcifying soundscape, but it wasn’t soothing enough to completely put me to sleep. The occasional churring and buzzing of the insects perturbed me, my hairs would stand on end, and I had the uneasy feeling that an insect was crawling on me. During my listen I felt like my stress was slowly seeping off my body and my mood was steadily raising. It was an absolute pleasure to listen to this soundscape, so I think it is worthy of a 9/10.
The next soundscape we have here is S6:Pan’s Dwindling. This is a full playout of Pan’s dwindling as her system shuts down. It consists of a collaboration of sounds of nature not from a specific setting or area. They include whale moans from the abyss, rough waves crashing into white noise and birds somehow transmuting into monkeys. These were all-natural sounds, but they were distorted. These machinelike sonances make me questioned if my hearing was all right. Unlike many of the other soundscapes, I don’t think this one was made to relax people. The static noises sounded like a slithering snake hissing at its prey. In this soundscape some of the sounds were extremely similar and, in some instances, I couldn’t tell which one was which. There was one section which sounded like razor sharp knifes scraping across a metal fence. I felt like this section was taken straight out of a horror movie, in fact this whole soundscape could act as a soundtrack for a horror movie. Although most of this soundtrack was very disrupting, the waves crashing into the white noise was strangely pacifying. Before listening to this I was in a heated argument, but the white noise just quelled all my racing emotions. This soundscape deserves a solid 7/10, if not for the white noise it would have scored much lower.
The soundscapes aren’t just some fillers you can listen to, they are just as important as the pod talks or even the main episodes. The soundscapes enhance the overall experience of the main episodes and without the enhancements the episodes would be increasingly lacklustre and featureless.
Conclusion
A wild adventure with a plot twist, ending in mystery with much to be desired. This was not how I had expected the podcast to end. The plot twist hit me unexpectedly and I was in a state of shock. The entire community was built and populated by robots. The humans had in fact created their own demise with their ever-increasing advances in technology. This was their downfall. Eventually, the robots took over. It was only a matter of time before they began manufacturing their own ‘humans’. Pan, Daria, the hands, they were all robots. The last human alive on the Earth was Theia, and she ended up dying too.
Trees and forests. These are the underlying themes of Forest 404. However, rather than exploring the relationship between humanity and nature from the perspective of a human, we hear this rather melancholic story from a robot protagonist that had believed that she was a human.
Forest 404 was overall a great experience. Although there may have been one or two sessions where I fell asleep while listening to this podcast series, the other times when I did listen astounded me. My expectations had been mercilessly blown away as I was astounded by the depth of the emotions and the ever-surprising plot. Forest 404 creates their own definition of the word ‘podcast’, as I have never heard of a controversial topic such as humankind’s advancements in technology manipulated into a story, no a performance that can bring people to tears. Whether it was the hurt in Pan’s voice when she was backstabbed or the display of bloodlust from Daria, Forest 404 a mix match of several broken pieces to create a wonderful masterpiece.
