Tourists

At first, the strangers might be ordinary visitors. They photograph commuters, cafés and street corners in the city of Rotorua, paying an unusual amount of attention to places whose significance Jo Ellis cannot see. Then one of them cries at the sight of her. The reaction is personal, unsettling and impossible to reconcile with the idea that these people are simply enjoying a city they do not know.

They have come from the future. The week Jo is living through has become historically famous because everyone in this part of the city will soon be dead. To the visitors, ordinary life is something already lost, available for one last look before the event that gave it meaning in their history. To Jo, it is home, and the people moving through it are still alive.

The tourists operate under strict rules that prevent them from revealing exactly what happens. Their presence offers proof of a catastrophe without providing the explanation that might prevent it. Jo must work with the terrible distance between their knowledge and her own, trying to understand a future whose witnesses can look directly at its victims while withholding the information those people need.

With days left, she has to discover what turns her neighbourhood into a monument. The visitors' interest makes every ordinary detail difficult to read. Are they observing something meaningful, or simply preserving a scene made poignant by what comes next? Some seem drawn to Jo in particular, suggesting that her own place in the history may be more specific than she understands.

Tourists is a speculative thriller about the cruelty of knowing an ending without being allowed to explain it. A woman living through the last ordinary days of her home must discover what the future has made of her present—and whether being remembered for a catastrophe means she is powerless to stop it.