Waking Up | Episode Ideas
Each episode explores one day in the life of a specific character. The episode opens with that character’s experiences leading up to the moment of their infection. Their moment of infection is followed immediately by them waking up to their post-infection life on the day of the episode. The episode ends the next time they fall asleep.
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1 - Someone wakes up and learns that it is their tribal role to learn the waking and sleeping ceremonies that day.
They must perform the ceremonies for the 2 shifts that wake up and go to sleep eight hours later. The whole ceremonial process is laid out and the episode ends with that person undergoing the sleeping ceremony themselves.
The theme probably deals with the personal turmoil of meaning/purpose in a life that is set on repeat forever. It’s also a metaphor for how many people live anyway, so maybe the character had a particularly repetitive life? Or maybe they were especially afraid of being trapped in a boring life?
There are three shifts and only two are awake at any given time. So the person interacts with her own shift and one other shift… then wakes up the next shift… then puts the other shift to sleep. There could be overlap there where all three shifts are awake. Would there be value in that? Wouldn’t the waking shift need time to adjust causing there to be little interaction between shifts even if there were overlap?
Would the same person/people perform both ceremonies?
The people going to sleep are likely tied down and drugged. That could cause some suspicion that the drug is what is actually causing the memory loss. There would need to be a way to untie everyone at once very quickly in case of emergencies.
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2 - Someone wakes up with no journal and has to try to piece together what is happening.
Maybe they wake up in a fire which destroys it?
Maybe they are alone and drift off accidentally?
Maybe they are being or have been robbed?
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3 - Someone decides to intentionally trick their future self into thinking something false so that they will do something harmful without guilt.
A man can’t bring himself to commit suicide, so he sets a deadly trap and then writes in his journal that the thing is safe so that his tomorrow self will accidentally kill himself in the trap.
A man is jealous of a couple that still have each other, so he writes in his journal that the husband killed his wife so that his future self will kill the husband.
A woman is angry at a man for raping/leaving/beating her and wants him dead but can’t bring herself to do it, so she writes in her journal that he killed their child or is going to kill her or is actually able to make memories and is just using her condition to keep her captive. Her future self kills him.
A loner in a tribe hates everyone for some reason and wants them dead, so he replaces his journal with a note that says not to trust anyone and to kill them and run away.
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4 - Someone wakes up and they are a captive.
Maybe they are given a lie to keep them docile, like the world blew up and it’s too dangerous to go outside for example.
Maybe they are given a drug to sedate them.
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5 - Someone wakes up and they are the captor of a bunch of people.
They have to get adapted and then jump into continuing the imprisonment of their harem.
Probably lots of backstory on this one to show how someone might become the kind of person who would make the decision to keep doing that every single day.
They could be already criminal in nature, or an incel with mass shooter tendencies, or a sexual predator like a priest.
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6 - Someone wakes up and they are living with a person who can make memories.
Their life is actually pretty normal since the other person can learn new skills and can travel and make plans for the future.
They are suspicious of the other person.
Maybe the person says they are sexual partners but they think they might be kidnapped.
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7 - A scientist wakes up and learns that they have been working on a cure for the memory loss.
They have lots of notes from years of work and have to get caught up and continue the work as quickly as possible.
They might try to stay awake for days at a time and then sleep for long stretches so that they don’t have to waste so much time relearning their research.
There would need to be a community of people supporting them so they can focus just on their work.
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8 - A teenager wakes up in an adult body.
Their parent is there and they have to deal with their parent being freaked out by them being in an older body.
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9 - A parent wakes up and has to deal with meeting their teenage child in an adult body.
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10 - A person who was pregnant when they were infected wakes up and has to deal with meeting their pre-teen child.
The child is able to make memories and deals with this same interaction every day.
Maybe the child leads the tribe. They might keep the truth from their parent some days. Maybe they tried telling the parent the child was dead, or the child had gone away and was happy, or some other stories in order to see which way was least traumatic for the parent to experience.
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11 - Someone who is uninfected is living in the world years later and then gets infected and wakes up even later.
How would they get the virus? Maybe they were starving and had to eat an infected person?
Maybe it stays in the brain? Or the blood? Probably not the saliva.
Maybe they are visiting a tribe and the tribe feeds them human flesh and that is how they are infected. The tribe might not know it is contagious or maybe they do and it is done as a defensive action rather than killing the person.
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12 - Someone wakes up in their own apartment alone in the building years after the infection.
The episode shows how they manage to produce food and water and heat in a sustainable way.
The backstory of the character would likely be a bigger part of this episode. It would also explain why they have the skills to do all of the things needed to survive on their own when they aren’t able to learn new skills any longer.
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13 - Someone wakes up as a member of a group of bandits who survive by raiding other tribes.
Their band has prisoners for pleasure. Maybe they have slaves to work for them, too.
They are not sure if they chose this life or if they were forced or tricked into it, but if they quit, they know they will die so they have to deal with participating.
They might long to escape and try to join a tribe, but it’s too risky.
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14 - Someone wakes up in their panic bunker years after the infection.
It is the day that they have written down that they must leave the bunker because supplies will run out soon and they need to find more supplies or some other way to survive before that happens.
Maybe they’ve already left the buker a few times and they have learned enough that there is some critical decision to be made on this day, like going far enough away that they will not be able to return to the bunker to sleep for example.
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15 - Someone wakes up and it’s been like 40+ years since the infection.
This one would be iffy since it requires committing to a specific future for the world or at least part of it.
They could have kids with memories who have had their own kids and are living a thriving life.
Maybe someone ends up getting infected that day?
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16 - Someone wakes up and it’s early enough in the pandemic that things are still pretty normal.
Maybe it’s the day after their infection so they only lost part of the prior day.
Maybe they’ve lost a full day or two but the world still hasn’t caught on to the problem.
This lets us explore the pandemic in real time rather than just the opening sequences of each episode.
This could work with the scientist working on a cure episode but might be better on its own.
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17 - Someone wakes up and it’s late in the pandemic.
Society is still falling apart and we can see the chaos before the mass destruction.
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18 - Someone wakes up and it’s shortly after the pandemic.
The world is starving and people are desperate and violence is everywhere.