Alberta

By 2040, Alberta’s landscape bore the scars of its shifting fortunes. The province that had once epitomized the boundless optimism of oil wealth now grappled with a future marked by uncertainty and shadows. The transition away from petroleum as a primary fuel source had not been seamless, and Alberta stood at a crossroads, its past haunting its present.

The pivot from oil to advanced petrochemical production seemed, at first, a lifeline for the province's faltering economy. Polymers and high-performance plastics became the new gold, keeping Alberta’s refineries and industrial complexes humming. But the demand was fickle, and Alberta’s reliance on this niche market left it vulnerable to global price shocks and corporate intrigue. Petrochem, SovOil, and other megacorporations, which had once held Alberta's fate in their iron grip, now warred over dwindling profits and control of CHOOH2 derivatives. These shadowy battles often played out in courtrooms and boardrooms, but whispers of sabotage, blackmail, and even murder were impossible to ignore. Corporate campuses in Calgary and Edmonton operated under heavy security, their fortifications as much to keep secrets in as to keep enemies out.

Rural Alberta, too, had felt the sting of decline. Abandoned oil sands and ghost towns dotted the landscape, their ruins a reminder of better days. Environmental reclamation efforts were slow and often thwarted by strange phenomena. Workers in the oil sands spoke in hushed tones of strange lights flickering above reclamation sites, of shadowy figures glimpsed on the edges of the boreal forest. Machinery, pristine and state-of-the-art, would inexplicably fail, and some whispered that the land itself was fighting back against its long abuse. Local Indigenous communities warned of spirits stirred by decades of exploitation, though their words were often dismissed—until workers began to vanish without a trace.

The urban centers, Calgary and Edmonton, had fared no better in the face of Alberta’s waning prominence. Calgary, once the gleaming heart of Canada’s oil industry, had become a fortress of paranoia. Corporate surveillance drones buzzed constantly over the city, a grim reminder of the battles waged behind closed doors. Edmonton, meanwhile, teetered on the edge of chaos. The city had embraced technology in its quest for reinvention, but that reliance had become a double-edged sword. Cyber-attacks and rogue AI outbreaks were increasingly common, and some claimed these digital intrusions were not merely human-made. Rumors swirled of a rogue intelligence haunting Alberta’s networks, born from corrupted reclamation programs and fueled by the province’s history of exploitation and decay.

Even Alberta's famed natural beauty seemed touched by darkness. The Rockies remained majestic, but hikers reported strange occurrences—phantom voices on the wind, inexplicable tremors deep within the mountains. Lakes and rivers, once pristine, were often choked with an eerie bioluminescent algae, a side effect of decades of industrial runoff. Some said the algae pulsed like a heartbeat, and there were those who swore it responded to human presence.

The province's agricultural heartland had become a battlefield of its own. Genetic engineering, once a boon to Alberta's farmers, had spiraled into something more sinister. Crops grew larger and faster than ever, but some fields took on an unsettling life of their own. Farmers spoke of wheat that seemed to whisper in the wind and cornfields where livestock went missing. The rise of bio-plastics had brought prosperity to some, but others were driven to desperation, their livelihoods crushed under the weight of corporate monopolies and failing infrastructure.

Politically, Alberta was fractured. The conservative stronghold that had dominated the province for decades was eroding, its unity shattered by internal strife and public disillusionment. A new, fringe movement had taken root, fueled by paranoia and desperation. Its leaders decried the province's reliance on foreign megacorporations and whispered of conspiracies that tied Alberta's decline to shadowy, supernatural forces. They were dismissed as radicals by most, but their rallies grew larger by the day, and their message resonated with those left behind by Alberta's faltering transition.

By 2040, Alberta was no longer the confident powerhouse it once was. It was a province adrift, caught between the weight of its past and the uncertainty of its future. Its people struggled to hold onto hope, even as the shadows deepened around them. And beneath it all—beneath the Rockies, the prairies, and the corporate fortresses—something ancient stirred, watching and waiting as Alberta's story unfolded in the twilight of its former glory.