Synopsis

In the year 2415, humanity has dwindled to a small and fragmented population in a climate-changed world. As the opera opens, teenaged companions Val and Bluejay capture a recording of two travelers playing a mysterious game on the beach. Later, they deliver this documentation to two imposing figures––Time Priests––who remind them that they are not to make contact with humans. It is revealed that Val and Bluejay have been collecting documentation for over 4 centuries, delivering it annually. Bluejay laments their condition as immortals, finding it both tedious and disturbing, while Val feels wonder at their ability to explore the earth in perpetuity.

Later, Val and Bluejay observe two beachcombers as they find the corpse of a deep sea goblin shark. The beachcombers recover some intriguing relics. After they leave, Bluejay approaches the shark, noting that they have not seen anything like this before, and is entranced. Meanwhile, the shark reminds Val of a long-ago interest in academic theories of monstrosity.

Time passes, and Val and Bluejay see the beachcombers again, this time on a mountain. The beachcombers hear the sounds of a glacier from a distance, and are drawn to approach it, becoming transfixed by its beauty and scale. Val and Bluejay note that the odds of seeing the same travelers twice is extraordinarily low, given the sparseness of humanity’s remaining population. That evening, Val gives Bluejay a tattoo of a snowshoe hare, and they reminisce on the early days of their immortality, noting that they used to directly interview people all the time, breaking the Time Priests’ rules, but increasingly withdrew as the earth changed without them. In an interlude, snippets of interviews with humanity in the early 21st century are heard.

In a burned forest area, Bluejay hears the ghost of a long-extinct bird, the Cryptic Treehunter, singing from the ether. Together with Val, they hold a seance to summon the bird’s spirit and hear of its experience, but are only able to contact it for a short time before it is swept away by a devastating wind.

Later, the beachcombers are writing a song by a campfire. Val and Bluejay stumble across them, and are astonished at encountering the same people a third time. Hesitantly and hopefully, they decide to make contact.