Tim Disney with Jordan Weisman
About the event
Lies turn deadly in this satirical graphic novel by author Tim Disney.
The A.R.C. begins at the Concordia Center 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.
The A.R.C.’s diagnosis is discomfiting for its accuracy. A pandemic of lying really is killing us, accelerated by the force multipliers of ubiquitous social media and AI. Yet for all of its acidity, the book runs with a just-perceptible strain of hope. As the characters stumble, confess, relapse, and reach for something like honesty, the story suggests that truth is not a purity test, but a shared aspiration. In a world where outrage is easy and trust nonexistent, The A.R.C. offers something more valuable than cynicism: the idea that our broken world can be rebuilt not by saints or saviors <!--StartFragment --> — <!--EndFragment --> but by flawed people trying to mean what they say. Maybe we are not doomed. Maybe honesty is contagious, too.
