A mini-series from 2019 about Aleph Null, a young person who has spent years signing up to be a test subject for different studies which may work, or may not. Either way, Aleph takes the money and uses it to try and make themselves into what they think feels right. Magnets under the fingers, all sorts of bits of software or hardware that work, some of the time. Because Aleph's obsessed with finding the future, finding where they fit.
That future might just exist in the town of Laurelwood, but once Aleph gets there, they find the future's not much of an improvement, not in the ways Aleph might hope, anyway. There are still factions, humans fighting and squabbling over different interests. The ones who want the technology destroyed, whose futures lie in the past. The corporations, looking for the next thing that will make them big bucks, whether it's Laurelwood or Aleph. The people who think they can win a big fight and fix everything.
It seems like Sebela's writing about control, who has it, who doesn't. Aleph wants control of themself at least. That's what they've been striving for in one way or another. To not lose people, even if that means trying to stay away from everyone, or by experimenting on themself, make themself into whatever they can manage, because at least it'll be their choice.
In the town of Laurelwood, mirrors are actual portals that people can move through. Most of the time, they just spy through them. Like all the experimental studies they were part of, doctors sitting behind fake mirrors, watching to see what happens to the guinea pigs. Hickman draws those people as dark shapes with big empty eyes peering out, to the point Aleph takes to sleeping in a trunk suitcase to stay hidden. Trapped in a box within a larger box. The world behind the mirrors is a mess of dark hallways and twisting stairs. Another maze for Aleph to find their way through.
It can lead anywhere, but that doesn't really matter because Aleph finds much the same thing in every direction. They're always being manipulated, always seen as the key in someone else's plans. Even the piece of the future, however it frames what it's doing, has its own designs and desires for Aleph. But that isn't only Aleph's problem, as they know. The doctors that watched the studies were themselves watched by someone else. Even those mysterious, faceless suits were being watched by what exists in the town. Everyone's being watched, everyone is a potential tool for someone or something else.
Hickman rarely usually panels that give expansive views. Even panels of the town are wide but short. You can't see beyond the buildings, and usually not beyond whatever street Aleph's looking at. The future is not a wide universe of possibilities. It's still a bunch of confining spaces, small boxes and test chambers.
Aleph ultimately is able to do some good for other people in a similar state, and maybe find some measure of peace for themself. Some acceptance of who they are, assuming that's actually how they feel, and not something imposed on them by the one helping. That seems to be the best one can hope for. The world's not presented as one where there will stop being conflict. As long as there are people and their wants, the same themes will occur, and that's not going to change, even in the amorphous future.
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