Gone opens with an exterior shot of a spaceship and a data display. We're told it's 9 years past its estimated arrival date, though the destination is "unknown". There are 0 lifeforms on board, and then, with a paraphrasing of an old koan, the number is updated to 1.
That "1" is seemingly the little golf ball figure. It's called an AssistA, but as demonstrated by the two caption boxes - one that Lyndon White letters in a block text, the other in a lighter, flowing text. The block text sticks largely to basic command/response, while the cursive navel gazes and wonders where "Ankita" is as we move through the ship.
Simon Birks keeps the story at a leisurely pace, allowing artist Juan Fleites time to show the layout of the ship. Some sections have pristine walls and floors, a very Star Trek view of space travel. Other parts are overgrown with plant life, to the point it pushes its way out between the seams of the wall or floor panels. The emphasis is usually on the trunks or limbs, brown and thick and in the way. What leaves there are a dull green, dark, almost invisible against the larger body of the plants.
The flowing text gradually explains some of what's happened, while revealing more about the person behind it and Ankita, who appears to have been a lover, possibly estranged, certainly higher up in the hierarchy than the narrator. All the while, we see the state of the ship as it continues to explore. The little bot has a variety of tools within, but just the eyespots, pixels, whatever for a face. So Fleites moves those around the gray square as much as possible, draws it staring at its reflection or hesitating at a junction, to get across emotion.
It creates a sense of disconnection, where I didn't feel entirely drawn into the story. The decisions were made sometime in the past, and are only seen in flashback, if at all. Those flashbacks don't involve any actual conversation, just more narration in caption boxes. Fleites adds a grainy texture or scattered black spots to those panels, like watching a recording that's either low-quality or been played until it decayed. Which helps reinforce the distance. Things are being told to AssistA, after the fact, and we're like someone sitting on its shoulder. AssistA's limited capacity to express itself mutes the reader response as well.
The last third explains where everyone's gone, including what's going on with Ankita and the thoughts inside the AssistA. I don't really understand how the conduit for what's happened to the AssistA can work, based on what we learn about why the people on the ship fled Earth. If there's a plague that exists within all the life on Earth, then it should exist within the bio-engineered key to the process, since it's also derived from Earth life.
Maybe that's what Birks is going for, and why the disconnected approach. Humanity tried to keep going by leaving a home trying to kill them, and it didn't work. One person thought he found a workaround, but there won't be any workaround. No perfect save state, no immortality. In that sense, everything is already over. There's nothing to fix, so why get worked up about it? All that we see here is just the fading echoes, dying ripples on the pond, take your pick of metaphors.
I don't know if it's a good approach or not. It left me feeling dissatisfied at the end. Not like Birks, Fleites or White did a bad job, more that it didn't leave any particularly strong impression on me. No emotional impact heft at the end.
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