The narrative of Worlds Apart is split between two primary planetary bodies and various specific settings that highlight the themes of control, degradation, and hidden truth.
Earth is presented as a dystopian, polluted, and heavily regulated planet where life is only tolerable through forced medication.
Description: A large, bare, plain white facility where patients diagnosed with schizophrenia are housed and staff live in austere dormitories.
Significance: This is the starting point of Peter Cross’s realization. It is a symbol of absolute control and deception. The patients’ white uniforms and the staff’s minimally different attire reinforce the pervasive, mandatory conformity. The facility features holographic exits designed to trick inhabitants, suggesting that the appearance of choice is an illusion.
Description: The outside world is desolate and dangerous. It is defined by the constant threat of “Radio Rain”, polluted rain that causes instant aging and death to anyone caught in it.
Significance: This setting contrasts the sterile control of the institution with the brutal chaos of the world the medication is supposedly protecting people from. It justifies the mandatory medication program while simultaneously exposing the government’s failure to maintain a livable environment.
Description: The location where Peter, Ali, and Jocko are ambushed by the police.
Significance: This is where the police demonstrate their ruthless authority, culminating in the execution of Jocko Doyle, establishing the high stakes of being an unmedicated fugitive.
Description: The hidden locations used by Pagan’s group, “World,” and other revolutionaries that Peter and Ali are associated with.
Significance: These clandestine meeting spots represent the last vestiges of genuine freedom and unmedicated thought on Earth, operating beneath the oppressive surveillance of the government and Captain Beel’s droid assisted search teams.
Lunar Angeles is introduced through the character of Detective Marsh.
Description: Marsh travels from Lunar Angeles to Earth to find his wife. The setting is primarily referenced through Marsh’s backstory and his interactions with his superior, Captain Beel.
Significance: Lunar Angeles represents a different form of existence, suggesting that there is a world separate from the suffocating one Peter knows. The narrative twist at the end, where Peter and Marsh discuss their current location, suggests that what they believe to be Earth or Lunar Angeles may be a profound deception.
