“Stateless” is a journal, written by AI visual journalist Jerr in the mid-2030s. Jerr’s lived a life of complacency and comfort in Baton Rouge, an all-but-walled city insulated from the multiplying crises of near-future America. Saltwater incursion is solved by de-sal machines, urban flooding is avoided by a robust pump system, unhoused people are “cleansed” from the streets. Only when Jerr starts poking at the city’s pleasant façade does he realize all is not what it seems—and death threats are quick to follow.

Jerr hits the road toward a dreamy California, armed just with his sketchbook-journal, and sees, for the first time, the real America — flooded, disenfranchised, and on the precipice of collapse. He also realizes how America tries to “solve” these problems — by disenfranchising each and every person who is a burden on the system. Complex medical care? Climate refugee? Lost your house? Political activist? As quick as a snap, their citizenship can be revoked and they can be deported to contemporary internment camps.

On the road he meets Debra, a member of the medical resistance who is convalescing after a recent mission. She tells him the story—she is a nurse in the medical resistance, her husband is a mole in law enforcement, her 13-year-old daughter is training to be a nurse as well—and as Jerr begins to understand her family’s remarkable commitment and sacrifice, his journal becomes something more than his daily accounting: it is a record of one family’s determination to fight against the cavalier violence and massive disenfranchisement that has gripped the nation, a document of Debra’s struggle to choose between her family and her cause.

As Debra’s story accelerates toward its dramatic conclusion, Jerr’s drawing also gathers momentum, and even as his art supplies dwindle (the journal’s spine breaks, his pages run out, and in the end, it is “collaged” of every scrap of paper he can find), he finds his hand again after years of AI-assisted drawing have atrophied his capacity to draw. What starts as a journal and witness story becomes a call to arms as Jerr, through his journal, slowly realizes exactly what is at stake.