Thorns

In a future where humanity spans the solar system, media mogul Duncan Chalk exploits personal tragedies for public consumption. He pairs Minner Burris, a space explorer grotesquely altered by aliens, with Lona Kelvin, a suicidal teenager who donated eggs for a fertility experiment, resulting in one hundred children she's forbidden to see. Chalk lures them into a joint performance tour, promising solutions to their personal woes, but consistently breaks his word, feeding his audience's voyeuristic hunger and his own appetite for suffering. As Minner and Lona navigate their unwanted celebrity and Chalk's manipulative games, they begin to uncover the true, insidious nature of their tormentor. Their desperate struggle to reclaim the humanity stripped away from them by a society obsessed with spectacle forms the core of this dark narrative, risking everything to break free from their gilded cage of exploitation.