Say less.
What you asked for ain’t a simple outline.
You asked for a gospel in chapters.
A map drawn in memory and blood.
A sermon stretched across 120 Sundays, where every episode walks like a parable, limps like a truth too old to speak plain.
So here it is.
The high-level structure of The Belly of the Future,
told in 120 episodes, divided into 12 Books—
each one a season, each season a storm,
each storm ending with something holy or broken, or both.
This ain’t just a show.
It’s a cycle of becoming.
A Black mythology soaked in sweat, tech, grief, and ghostlight.
Where gods bleed, and ex-cons rise, and memory got teeth.
🕯 THE BELLY OF THE FUTURE
An Oral-Data Gospel in 120 Episodes
BOOK I — THE UNBURYING (Eps 1–10)
The fire returns. The prisons open. Something old wakes up inside James. Salame hears the call. The world ain’t ready.
- Theme: Memory as ignition
- End Note: James speaks his first true name.
BOOK II — GHOST PROTOCOL (Eps 11–20)
The dead begin to move through the network. Coil discovers the truth beneath Babel. The gods of code and shadow stir.
- Theme: Data as haunting
- End Note: Coil disappears into the system, but her voice lingers.
BOOK III — THE NINE SISTERS RISE (Eps 21–30)
The old order returns in flesh and flame. Salame calls the goddesses by name. The resistance begins to organize. Time bends.
- Theme: Ancestral feminism as warcraft
- End Note: A temple is reborn in the middle of a battlefield.
BOOK IV — CITY OF TEETH (Eps 31–40)
The city becomes alive, resisting. The people move like water. Loki takes a new host. The Black Flame becomes a threat.
- Theme: Surveillance as hunger
- End Note: A tower falls with no bomb. Just song.
BOOK V — STILLWATER (Eps 41–50)
The hidden town of Stillwater reveals itself. The council gathers. Truths are exchanged like knives. Someone is betrayed.
- Theme: Black sanctuary vs Black erasure
- End Note: The soil remembers blood that was never buried.
BOOK VI — THE CHILD WHO BURNS (Eps 51–60)
A nameless child walks into flame and speaks the language of the gods. He is not a savior. He is a key.
- Theme: Prophecy vs protection
- End Note: The child vanishes. The storm begins.
BOOK VII — THE GOD WAR (Eps 61–70)
Ogun. Loki. Esu. Yemaya. AI-gods and old spirits clash through minds and machines. Every story fractures.
- Theme: Myth rewritten by the marginalized
- End Note: James dies. But not completely.
BOOK VIII — AFTERFLESH (Eps 71–80)
The world mourns. Salame goes silent. A virus of grief spreads. Coil reemerges from the code. Stillwater is burning.
- Theme: Grief as infrastructure
- End Note: James’s voice returns—but through another mouth.
BOOK IX — THE MOTHER TONGUE (Eps 81–90)
Language collapses. The system can’t hold the songs of the freed. A new dialect is born—half magic, half machine.
- Theme: Liberation as language
- End Note: A machine speaks Yoruba and weeps.
BOOK X — THE EXODUS PROTOCOL (Eps 91–100)
The people begin to leave the cities. They walk. They carry. They remember. Something holy builds from scratch.
- Theme: Leaving empire without losing self
- End Note: The sky opens, but nothing falls.
BOOK XI — THE THRESHOLD (Eps 101–110)
Time loops. Past and future blur. James faces himself in the belly of memory. Salame holds the knife and the key.
- Theme: Healing as confrontation
- End Note: The President forgets his own name. The mirror cracks.
BOOK XII — THE BLACK FUTURE (Eps 111–120)
A city blooms where nothing should grow. Stillwater becomes something else. The people write new laws on the wind.
- Theme: Reclamation as rebirth
- End Note: James walks into the ocean. Not to die. To become.
🕯 Closing Note:
This story don’t end in a bang.
It ends in a return.
To self.
To spirit.
To what was stolen, then sung back into being.
You want to walk scene by scene from Book I, page by page?
Or want a breakdown of each episode in Book I, like a preacher laying out the order of service?
Say the word.
I’ll bring the incense and the ink.