Scenario Prompt: In approximately 500 words, Describe or narrate a scenario about a document found a few years into a future in which society as we know it has come apart. Your description should address issues related to climate and elicit feelings of resentment.In approximately 500 words, Describe or narrate a scenario about a document found a few years into a future in which society as we know it has come apart. Your description should address issues related to climate and elicit feelings of resentment.
Results:
The Document of Betrayal
It was found in the ruins of a collapsed municipal building, buried beneath layers of ash and dust that had blown in from the scorched plains. The survivors who uncovered it were not archivists or historians—they were scavengers, searching for scraps of paper that could be burned for warmth. Yet when they brushed away the soot and unfolded the brittle pages, they realized they had stumbled upon something far heavier than fuel. It was a climate policy draft, dated only a decade before the collapse, stamped with the insignia of a government that no longer existed.
The document was clinical in tone, filled with graphs, projections, and recommendations. It spoke of rising global temperatures, the acceleration of droughts, the collapse of agricultural yields, and the inevitability of mass displacement. The language was precise, the warnings clear. But what struck the survivors most was not the science—it was the footnotes, the annotations scrawled in the margins by officials. Phrases like “politically inconvenient,” “economic disruption too severe,” and “delay implementation until after election cycle” appeared beside recommendations for urgent action.
Outside the ruins, the climate’s wrath was visible everywhere. Rivers had shrunk into cracked beds, their absence leaving communities desperate for water. Crops no longer grew in the poisoned soil, and hunger gnawed at every stomach. The air itself carried a bitterness, thick with dust storms that scarred lungs and left children coughing through the night. The survivors who read the document could trace their suffering directly back to the decisions—or indecisions—recorded on those pages.
Resentment rose like a tide among them. This was not fate, not some unavoidable catastrophe. It was negligence, deliberate and calculated. Those in power had known what was coming, had seen the numbers, had understood the consequences. And yet they had chosen delay, chosen convenience, chosen profit over survival. The document was proof that the collapse of society was not an accident but a betrayal.
One survivor, a former teacher, read the words aloud to the group. Her voice trembled, not from weakness but from fury. Each sentence was a knife, cutting deeper into the wound of their present reality. The group listened in silence, their faces illuminated by the dim light of a salvaged lantern. When she finished, no one spoke. The silence was not emptiness—it was heavy, charged with anger that had nowhere to go.
The document was folded carefully and placed in a tin box, not as a relic of history but as evidence. Evidence of the arrogance and cowardice that had led to the unraveling of the world they once knew. It became a symbol among the survivors, passed from camp to camp, a reminder that their suffering was not the result of nature alone but of human failure.
In the end, the paper was more than words. It was a mirror reflecting the resentment of a generation forced to live in the ruins of choices made by those who had every chance to act—and refused.
Reflection:
The Document of Betrayal is an example of speculative writing. A way of imagining a future to help us think about our present. The story describes survivors discovering an old government climate policy document that reveals how political leaders ignored warnings about climate change. It connects directly to what Dunne and Raby (2013) call speculative design, which uses imagination to ask “what if” questions and encourage discussion about better possible futures.
Dunne and Raby (2013) explain that speculative design is creating believable scenarios and not fantasy worlds. It helps people reflect on real problems and values by presenting them in new contexts. The gen AI story does this well. It doesn’t show an impossible future but it shows one that feels disturbingly real. The discovery of a government report marked with phrases like “delay implementation until after election cycle” makes readers feel anger and disappointment toward past inaction.
This emotional response fits with what Dunne and Raby (2013) describe as the positive use of negativity. Where using dark or uncomfortable themes to make people think critically rather than simply entertain them.The resentment in the story is meaningful because it pushes readers to consider responsibility and the human choices that caused the ending.
As a reflection on AI gen work, the output shows that generative tools like Copilot can be part of what Dunne and Raby (2013) call “social dreaming”; creating stories that challenge us to imagine alternative futures. The story’s details about climate change, policy, and survival make it believable and grounded, which strengthens its impact.
The piece succeeds in turning data and politics into something emotional and human, where they warn the reader through imagination. Like Dunne and Raby suggest, speculative design helps us reflect on what kind of world we want and what kind of decisions we need to make now to prevent stories like this one from becoming reality.
Reference
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: Design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT Press.