Everything

Change
An Anthology of Climate Fiction

F O R E W O R D B Y
Kim Stanley Robinson
I N T E R V I E W W I T H
Paolo Bacigalupi
E D I T E D B Y
Manjana Milkoreit
Meredith Martinez
& Joey Eschrich
“It’s not climate change—
it’s everything change.”
M A R G A R E T A T W O O D
 Everything Change
An Anthology of Climate Fiction

F E A T U R I N G S T O R I E S F R O M
Arizona State University’s
2016 Climate Fiction Short Story Contest

E D I T E D B Y
Manjana Milkoreit
Meredith Martinez
Joey Eschrich
Credits

Editors
Manjana Milkoreit
Meredith Martinez
Joey Eschrich

Judges
Robbie Barton, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
Bob Beard, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University
Jeff Cheney, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University
Mollie Connelly, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University
Laura Hazan, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University
Paul Hirt, Department of History, Arizona State University
David Hondula, Center for Policy Informatics, Arizona State University
Danielle Hoots, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing
Anna Pigott, Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative, Arizona State University
Kim Stanley Robinson, Science Fiction Author
Steven Semken, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University
Cody Staats, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University

Book Design
Matt Phan, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University

Art Direction
Nina Miller, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University

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Leadership for the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative
Ed Finn and Ruth Wylie, Center for Science and the Imagination, Arizona State University
Patricia Reiter, Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, Arizona State University
Jewell Parker Rhodes, Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Arizona State University

Special thanks to Susie Marston for providing funding and boundless enthusiasm, and
for making this contest and anthology possible; to Paolo Bacigalupi for answering all
of our most pressing questions about storytelling, imagination, and climate change; to
Kim Stanley Robinson for inspiration and ample good cheer, and for helping us turn this
big idea into a reality; and to Claire Doddman and Jason Franz of the Rob and Melani
Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives for invaluable support with promotion,
communications, design, and web development.

© Arizona State University 2016

The copyrights for individual stories and chapters are owned by their respective authors.

v
For Susie Marston

vi
Table of Contents

Foreword ix
Kim Stanley Robinson

Editors’ Introduction xiii

Manjana Milkoreit, Meredith Martinez, & Joey Eschrich

Sunshine State 3
Adam Flynn & Andrew Dana Hudson

Shrinking Sinking Land 25

Kelly Cowley

Victor and the Fish 40

Matthew S. Henry

Acqua Alta 61
Ashley Bevilacqua Anglin

The Grandchild Paradox 81

Daniel Thron

Wonder of the World 93

Kathryn Blume

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Masks 107
Stirling Davenport

Thirteenth Year 127

Diana Rose Harper

LOSD and Fount 148

Henrietta Hartl

On Darwin Tides 156

Shauna O’Meara

Standing Still 179

Lindsay Redifer

Into the Storm 197

Yakos Spiliotopoulos

Praying for Rain: 207

An Interview with Paolo Bacigalupi
Ed Finn

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Foreword
Kim Stanley Robinson

Climate fiction is a subgenre of science fiction. Science fiction is

literature set in the future, and so by definition it always includes a
historical element, imagining as it does possible human futures. Because
they are fiction, these imagined future histories focus on individual
characters in their relationships with each other, their society, and their
planet—or their lack of a planet, if the story happens to follow people
out into space.

Given how long the future is, science fiction can feel quite different
depending on which time a particular story chooses to describe. If the
story is set many thousands of years from now, all kinds of near-magical
technologies and situations can be made to seem plausible; this is often
called space opera, and it can include things like faster-than-light travel,
time travel, and humanity traveling across the galaxy. It’s a good story
space for modeling abstractions or permanent aspects of the human
condition, or simply enjoying the thrill of the new and the sheer size
of the universe.

Near-future science fiction, on the other hand, concerns itself with

events in the coming decades, and because of the rapid pace of change
in technology and society today, this subgenre of science fiction has
become in effect the realism of our time. Any attempt to describe

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our current moment in a diagnostic or vivid way will tend to become
near-future science fiction, just to be accurate to the feel of this
moment in history.

As part of that fidelity to the real, a lot of near-future science fiction

is also becoming what some people now call climate fiction. This is
because climate change is already happening, and has become an
unavoidable dominating element in the coming century. The new name
thus reflects the basic realism of near-future science fiction, and is just
the latest in the names people have given it; in the 1980s it was often
called cyberpunk, because so many near-future stories incorporated
the coming dominance of globalization and the emerging neoliberal
dystopia. Now it’s climate change that is clearly coming, even more
certainly than globalization. That these two biophysical dominants
constitute a kind of cause and effect is perhaps another story that
near-future science fiction can tell.

In any case, climate fiction will be one name for this subgenre for
a long time to come. This is a good thing, because fiction is how we
organize our knowledge into plots that suggest how to behave in the
real world. We decide what to do based on the stories we tell ourselves,
so we very much need to be telling stories about our responses to
climate change and the associated massive problems bearing down on
us and our descendants.

This book collects a number of new and exciting stories about things
that will be happening soon, as people try to adapt to a changing climate
and its impacts on our biosphere. It’s fair to ask whether that means
that these stories are depressing and unpleasant to read; the answer
is no, they aren’t, and in fact they are tremendously stimulating. This
should not come as a surprise. Literature is about reality, indeed is part
of the creation of reality, so it always deals with hard situations. This
engagement is a crucial part of literature’s interest to us. In science

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fiction, imagining futures as it does, the visions always tend to portray
either good outcomes or bad outcomes—in other words, utopias or
dystopias. People enjoy reading about both, including dystopias, so this
isn’t really what people are asking about when they wonder if climate
fiction can be fun. The question they are asking may be something more
like, “are these stories so didactic, so obviously meant to warn us and
teach us, that they no longer work as fiction, having lost that liveliness
that makes literature such a joy?”

I am happy to report that this gathering of stories handily escapes that

particular aesthetic mistake, and is a true pleasure to read. How that can
be you will discover for yourself, but I think the simplest explanation is
that a lot of really talented writers responded to the inspiring challenge
put out by Arizona State University’s Imagination and Climate Futures
Initiative. Their efforts model how we will respond to climate change
itself: globally and creatively, with energy and imagination and a will
to succeed. There’s a certain kind of joy that can emerge out of intense
and meaningful situations; in an emergency, what to do and how to live
become questions with clear answers. So it is that even the angriest and
most cold-eyed of these stories give reasons for hope, because the writers
have not flinched from the huge problems we face, and neither have their
characters. Read on and enjoy learning more, knowing more, living more.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus

awards and, according to The New Yorker, one of the most important
political writers working in the United States today. He is the author
of the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critical acclaimed novels 2312,
Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica. His
most recent novel, Aurora, was published in 2015.

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xii
Editors’ Introduction
Manjana Milkoreit, Meredith Martinez, & Joey Eschrich

When the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative (ICF) announced

its first Climate Fiction Short Story Contest, the international
community was getting ready for one of the most important events in
the history of global climate change diplomacy. State representatives
from around the world met in Paris in December of 2015 and adopted
an international agreement on climate change. The Paris Agreement has
been praised as a landmark accomplishment, but, of course, the climate
does not stop changing because 195 states put some words on paper.
There is no doubt that the Paris Agreement will affect the future of all
human and non-human life on Earth, but today nobody knows what
that future will look like.

Today, all we can do is imagine our possible climate futures. Using

Margaret Atwood’s words, we have to imagine the “Everything Change.”
We have chosen her thought-provoking turn of phrase as the title for our
anthology not just because it reflects the scale of the task ahead, but also
because it captures the substance of the twelve stories we present here:
climate-induced changes in all aspects of human experience, ranging
from individual emotions and aspirations to family life, professional
trajectories, the shape of communities, and the organization of societies.

xiii
And that is the core concern of the ICF. We seek to understand the role
of imagination in societies’ responses to climate change, especially
when the imaginative impulse leads to a compelling story. We are not
only curious about the what and the how of imagination—the content
of people’s, communities’, and countries’ visions of the future and
the processes that create them. We also want to know when and how
these imaginations matter. Do they help us make good decisions, take
effective actions, and develop responsible climate response strategies
today? Or do they make us complacent, fearful, and anxious?

The ICF explores these questions by doing research, engaging students,

and opening public conversations through events, writing projects,
and other activities. The 2016 Climate Fiction Short Story Contest was
one of these activities, seeking to draw as many people as possible into
a conversation about climate change and the future. We invited writers
from all around the world to imagine how climate change will play
out, to tell a gripping story about that future, and to share it with us.
We hope that this collection will help readers to make sense of climate
change, to grapple with all of the bewildering emotions associated with
climate imagination and climate reality, and to facilitate conversations
about the futures we want and how to create them.

The literary movement of climate fiction is often credited with playing

a major part in mobilizing societies to act on climate change. Climate
fiction, sometimes called “cli-fi,” has exploded over the last decade
and enjoys growing popularity. Amazon lists more than 2000 results
for “climate fiction,” and more than 400 for “cli-fi.” Among these
are a growing number of anthologies and academic treatments. And
climate fiction novels are only one part of a larger cultural trend
that is beginning to explore climate change as a social and cultural
phenomenon, not just a scientific and policy issue. Climate change in

xiv
culture includes movies, art exhibits, the search for new words to capture
lived experience, musical compositions that reflect climate data, and
piano pieces performed in the Arctic. Art and literature have begun the
much-needed work of humanizing climate change.

The response to our first Climate Fiction Short Story contest far exceeded
our expectations. We received an astonishing 743 submissions from 67
different countries and from more than half of the states in the U.S. And
they told a powerful story: climate fiction is thriving, not just among
professional writers, but among high school students, scientists, and a
broad set of professionals, including librarians and veterinarians.

Our call for submissions included three criteria that reflected our
own assumptions about the potential power of climate fiction to help
societies deal with climate change, and that specified the characteristics
of the stories we were looking for. We asked for stories that in some
way envision the future of Earth and humanity as impacted by climate
change; that reflect current scientific knowledge about future climate
change; and that illuminate and invite reflections on a climate-related
challenge that individuals, communities, organizations, or societies face
today (e.g., daily decisions and behaviors, policy-making and politics,
moral responsibility to the future). And of course, we were looking for
high-quality writing and storytelling.

These criteria served as a guide for our blind judging process, which
consisted of four steps: three rounds of judging to narrow the field from
743 submissions to 12 finalists, and a final selection of the five winning
stories (one grand prize winner and four runners-up) by science fiction
legend Kim Stanley Robinson. The team of judges brought a wide range
of expertise to the task, reflecting the diversity of perspectives required
to understand and address climate change itself. The panel included

xv
experts on sustainability, conservation, geology, climate modeling,
and environmental history from Arizona State University’s Julie Ann
Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Rob and Melani Walton
Sustainability Solutions Initiatives, School of Life Sciences, School
of Earth and Space Exploration, Center for Policy Informatics, and
Department of History, alongside experts in science fiction and creative
writing from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the
Center for Science and the Imagination.

The subject matter of the stories we received was tremendously diverse,

ranging from artificial intelligence and carnivorous nanotechnology
trees to indigenous communities, corporate espionage, climate refugees,
and political intrigue. There were even some fantastical stories powered
by magic and mysticism, and far-future tales of aliens and other worlds.

Despite this amazing diversity, a number of common themes emerged

from stories authored on five different continents. First, our authors
approach climate change as a thoroughly human and often individual
experience. Second, similar to the award-winning climate fiction on
sale in any decent bookstore, most of our stories imagine gloomy,
dystopian future worlds in which much of what we cherish – and take
for granted – about our present realities will be lost. This pessimism
and sense of foreboding seems to reflect not only a societal mood in
the industrialized world, but also humanity’s mood in a decade full
of broken records.

The dystopian story brings with it a number of motifs that are already
at risk of becoming climate fiction clichés: the simplification of
community life, scavenging, disappearing islands, and decreasing
mobility in a de-globalized, disconnected world. What seems to weigh
heavily on writers’ minds are fraying and changing family relations,

xvi
concerns about availability of food, and the loss of places and homes,
but less frequently of non-human species or ecosystems.

Third, several authors explored the attribution of responsibility for

climate change by casting their stories with characters across generations.
They often use the grandparent-grandchild relationship to explore the
connections between the past (i.e., the readers’ present, in which this
world is still intact) and the future (i.e., the protagonists’ present, which
usually features radically different challenges). Focusing on grandparents
and grandchildren simultaneously avoids and addresses the generation of
parents that is presumably responsible for creating, or at least not fixing,
the climate mess. Through the thoughts and experiences of the older and
younger generations, difficult arguments and emotions find expression:
often a hint of blame and a dash of anger, a call for justice (probably not
as loud as it ought to be), but seldom the need for revenge.

Many of the stories submitted to our contest raised challenging

emotional issues young people grapple with at the dawn of a climatic
transformation: What does it mean to have children, and should I have
children? What can I do when I feel helpless and powerless in the face
of overwhelming change? Who should I be angry at, and what is the
best way to express this anger? How do I deal with the loss of people,
ideas and expectations, places and experiences, species, normality, and
sometimes even hope? What will be sources of excitement, joy, and
happiness in a future that looms dark and uncertain?

Climate change is usually conceived as a scientific issue that requires

global and national political solutions, often focused on the development
of new technologies. However, most authors contributing to our
contest presented a very different picture. None of the stories were
about climate science and climate skepticism, Congressional stalemate,

xvii
or an international treaty. Nor did they discuss anything close to the
standard fare of climate policy, such as a price on carbon, renewable
energy technologies, or green buildings. Instead, they grappled with
food availability, health, changing landscapes, changing professions,
family and community relationships. Largely unconcerned with
politics, they asked what life would be like in world with a new
or still-changing climate.

Finally, with regard to solutions, most authors explored personal,

individual approaches rather than large-scale technological change,
institutional change, or societal reorganization. There was a “naming
and shaming scheme” to mark and punish people who live in carbon
excess, a government coup instigated by an individual, disaster and
disappearance tourism, and an individual’s heroic effort to save a
species from extinction. Adaptation and suffering were much more
prominent themes than mitigation and geoengineering. But as our
grand prize-winning story “Sunshine State” demonstrates, there
was also a strong focus on social innovation and resilience in small
groups and communities.

We hope that these stories inspire readers to think in new ways about
climate change and its consequences, about the challenges and the
glimmers of opportunity that face us in a world in flux. We believe that
stories are empathy machines, devices that enable us to connect with
people in drastically different circumstances, in futures we have not
yet glimpsed but are even today helping to create with our decisions
to act, or to not act. And we look forward to hosting future contests,
to give more people the opportunity to contribute to this crucially
important conversation about our planet and the futures we will
create for ourselves on it.

xviii
Manjana Milkoreit is an assistant professor of Public Policy at
Purdue University and a senior sustainability fellow at Arizona State
University’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. She
researches global climate change politics and decision-making.

Meredith Martinez is a fiction writer and the education programs

manager at Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center for
Creative Writing.

Joey Eschrich is the editor and program manager at Arizona State

University’s Center for Science and the Imagination and the assistant
director of Future Tense, a partnership of ASU, Slate magazine, and
New America around emerging technologies, policy, and society.

xix
2
Sunshine State
Adam Flynn & Andrew Dana Hudson

Ramses was in Galveston when she first heard about The Myth. It was
early May, and unseasonably hot—whatever that meant. Out beyond the
thin sliver that remained of the island, iron-­dark clouds gathered every
morning on the horizon. Ominous. An omen, even. Sign of tribulations
to come. That’s the line she gave to the locals, and while they didn’t buy it,
she stirred superstitions they didn’t know they had.

The holdouts were cranky oilmen who would be damned if some no-
drill l­ iberal insurance salesmen were going to force them out of vacation
homes that had been in their families for generations. Ramses started
with a clear statement of her purpose, and then let them rant. She nodded
gravely and raised her warm beer to toast their wittier insights. They
felt heard. She really sympathized with their concerns. But weren’t the
bedbugs back this year, she asked? And for dramatic effect she dug into her
armpit with her index finger and pulled out a plump louse. She smeared it
bloody on the table.

On one hand she ticked off the costs of extermination, the costs of flood
mitigation, the fees to the telcos to maintain coverage, the rescue fines she
knew for a fact the state would pass next year. How long would Congress
really force the insurance companies—her employers—to honor policies
on doomed towns? They were underwater already; they just didn’t know it.

3
And Tennessee was really nice these days. Rains were good, and kept the
lakes full for boating and fishing and swimming. A housing boom was
surely coming, with a pretty penny in it for anyone who could get in on
the ground floor.

Then Ramses swigged the last of her beer and gave them a long even
look, one she’d perfected negotiating with old, patient Pashtun warlords.
The Look was about making herself a mirror: admit it, you know how
you’ll feel in ten years. That’s how they’d taught it in the Conflict De­-Esc
Special School. Ghost of Christmas Future shit. Her earnest sympathies
unkinked the secret doubts of those damned by history.

The buyout wasn’t generous, but they took it.

The prophet of The Myth who came to her was an old army buddy,
Jefferson Jackson, of all people. Not special forces, he’d been paired with
her unit to rig up quick and dirty solar at every stop—a cheap way to
sweeten the pot for the tribesmen she was trying to talk down. It took
some gall to walk into drone­scorched houses and ask to futz with the
wiring, but somehow Jefferson always came back whole and drunk on
Pakistani moonshine. “A real character,” her C.O. had called him.

“Sergeant first class of talking people to death, how the fuck are ya?”
Jefferson said, flashing his teeth (some still real) at the camera. His
redneck drawl—affect?—had thickened in the intervening years. He was
out of the army now, and had found work as a park ranger back home in
Florida. Before she could settle into the small talk, he launched into an
enthusiastic pitch she could hardly keep up with. She caught “Miami,”
“Benson method,” “gators,” something about a big project and a favor she
didn’t remember owing him.

4
“And besides, you sound bored as fuck,” he concluded. Ramses hadn’t
said more than two words, but it wasn’t like he was wrong.

She rode her musky rental car back to Outer Houston and caught a
regional jet to Fort Lauderdale. The new runways for big jets floated steady
like Emirati islands, but her dinky hopper had to land, bumping and
skidding, on a shaky platform built on caulked-up shipping containers.
The touchdown jarred her, clacking her teeth together painfully. She
didn’t think she and Miami would get along very well.

Jefferson met her at the airport, and they rode out of the city, past a stretch
of neon-­lit nightclubs. Revelers with mosquito nets over their skimpy club
gear stood outside vaping hash and waiting to get in. Jefferson bemoaned
the passing of old cowboy­-themed swing bars from his misspent youth.

They continued west until the “nuisance flooding ahead” signs became
more insistent. Jeff sent the car back, and they continued on in an
airboat he’d parked nearby. A jerry­-rigged, patched­-over beast from the
aughts, Jefferson had ripped out the old combustion engine and wired
in something Tesla, charged it from a cow­-sized solar balloon.

Deep into the swamps they rode. The floodlights and full moon cast
a spectral pallor on the water and the trees. All of a sudden, Ramses
wondered if she was about to get murdered, her body dumped in the
water, to be pulled out rotting by some U of F pathology grad. Her spine
straightened, situational awareness training rushing back with her
macabre fantasy. Everything looked dead and still, though she knew
every inch of the Everglades was alive with something. Jefferson whistled
tunelessly. A PTSD­-fueled serial killer? The affected speech, the forced
teaming, the unnecessary details.… Ramses had just about convinced
herself to make a run for it, evaluating her options for improvised
weapons, when they came upon the strangest structure she had ever seen.

5
Squat, spiraling, and conical, The Myth looked like old drawings of
the Tower of Babel that Ramses had seen paging through her uncle’s
illustrated Bible as a kid. Except, after being abandoned in the Cambrian
explosion of linguistic diversity, the tower had been overgrown by
creeper vines and then resettled by hippies and design geeks. Tall and
wide as the Superdome, it was covered in moss and ivy and hanging
gardens, here and there sprouting long, sturdy branches that jutted
out high over the water. Perched atop was a halo, a pristine Mobius­-loop
of solar mirror, gleaming eerie in the moonlight.

Ramses peered through the darkness as the airboat trundled forward,

trying to understand the prickly, lumpy shape before her. And then,
before she could grok it, they were inside, passing through an archway
curtained by banyan roots. Inside, The Myth was a set of nested domes,
massive arching struts supporting wooden platforms, suspended
shipping containers, the occasional rope bridge. A flotilla of colorful
houseboats jostled together at water level. Illumination was provided
by a hodgepodge of bioluminescent globes and dangling strings of LEDs.
Here and there mirrors the size of city buses would flash a reflection of
the starry sky above. Ramses thought she saw treehouses in the rafters.

A slight, excited­-looking woman clad in coveralls reading SISYPHUS

LIGHT HAULING waved them in to dock with traffic wands that’d
probably wandered off from the airport.

“What the hell have you brought me to, Jeff?” Ramses said as they tied
into the flotilla. She found herself thinking of the Dinotopia book she
had read when she was little, and how real cities had disappointed her for
years afterwards. The Myth looked like a combination botanical gardens,
field laboratory, modern art gallery, and Roman bath. Definitely bizarre,
but it was also the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

6
Jefferson was fierce-eyed. “This here’s the artsy megastructure that
better save my gators.”

Ramses got the full story over hibiscus tea from Nina Mitra, the aquatect
in coveralls who had waved them in. She was young and turquoise-­haired,
and she spoke in the sort of clipped phrases one hears when genius aims
for intelligibility.

“We’re not Rotterdam, and we’re not trying to be,” Nina explained. “Florida
can’t build dykes. Rising seas seep right up through the bedrock we’re
sitting on; it’s all limestone and porous as hell. The state has a ‘water
control system’ of pumps and canals, but the real protector has always
been the wetlands. They soften the blows from storms, they absorb the
water rise. Living organisms can take in a lot of water, and they shift it
around into verticalities it wouldn’t go to on its own—up into leaves and
branches, and down in root systems. They can clean it, they can even—
with a little help—desalinate it. We’re just giving them a boost.”

Carbon, too, the swamp life took in: building with it, sequestering it in
the soil, water, and vegetation. The Everglades pulled poison out of the
air more efficiently than a rainforest. To lose it would be to lose the Earth
a little lung.

Jefferson said that Nina had dropped out of four Ph.D. programs before she
found one that would fund her designs. She’d cut her teeth building tree­
trenches in the floodplains of Bangladesh, before the Indian annexation.
She moved like a woman who wanted glasses to fidget with, but, walking
around the interior of The Myth, she pointed out the most minute plants,
insects, and algae stains, all with an explanation of how they fit into the
boutique ecosystem they had created. Ramses got the impression that the
mousy radical had much better eyesight than the rest of them.

7
The plan was like the Manhattan Project of permaculture. With
the weather changing faster every day, wetlands all over the world
were dying of lost insects, being stripped by hurricane winds, or
withering from rising salinity. So The Myth aimed to create a New
Wetland. Through rapid testing and genetic tweaks, the aquatect’s
team of ecosystem hackers was honing in on a combination of swamp
grasses, oysters, and thick tropical trees that they believed would
turn the sputtering Everglades into an overclocked engine of carbon
sequestration, desalination, water filtration, flood mitigation, and
topsoil retention—a total package of environmental redemption.

With giant watercolor flowcharts they mapped the passage of carbon,

nitrates, and methane gas through their synthbio proving ground. Drop
in the right algae bloom, and pH levels would slowly stabilize. Prod the
microbiome into a different shape, and the New Wetland would stop
releasing methane. Swap a gene, and the mangroves would snake up any
man­made support struts. They dragged in hulking beams salvaged from
abandoned shipyard cranes and Disney World’s rollercoaster boneyard.
Two hundred feet high they coaxed the swamp, wispy trees aching to
touch a threatening sky.

The New Wetland not only survived the harsher environs provided by
climate change, it positively thrived in them. It thrived because—and
this was a crucial point for Nina—the New Wetland was made of weeds.
(“No, not like kudzu,” she insisted, describing their selective use of
terminator seeds for bad actors.) Globalized weeds, adapted for a new
world. They scattered, adapted, resisted, and survived. And like any
good weed, the New Wetland wanted to spread. The Myth wasn’t just
their laboratory: it was their working prototype.

Nina wanted to take it to scale.

8
“That’s where you come in,” she said to Ramses as they finished their
tour. Hacking the Everglades was a project that would take a generation.
It required a coalition of committed partners from the surrounding
communities. Suburban developers and sprawl salvagers. Semi­-legal
hunters and pseudo-­official wildlife enthusiasts like Jefferson. Tour
guides. Business owners. Transients. Natives. They all had to be sold the
unlikely story that Southern Florida could be saved—in fact, could be
made vital to the planet.

“The smart money figures the Everglades are doomed and wants to profit
off what comes next. The dumb money refuses to face the facts.” Nina
shrugged and added, “Then there’s us. We’d be the weird money...if we
had money.”

“But what’s with the creepy cult name?” Ramses asked finally. “‘The Myth’
has all the wrong connotations for something I need to sell people on.”

Nina smiled, embarrassed. “I joked that what I really wanted was to

build a ‘magnificent temple to the human spirit.’ Someone on email
started abbreviating it, MTHS. From there, pretty soon everyone just
called it The Myth.”

Ramses laughed. For all their crazy­-person talk of hope and optimism,
the Myth people were still just project dorks. She could live with that.

So she set off, riding Jeff’s airboat from Homestead to Big Cyprus, from
Boca Raton down to what was left of the Keys. She started with the park
rangers and the land management officers. Like all outpost bureaucrats
since the dawn of civilization, these lonely Feds felt abandoned, exiled
to the edge of a crumbling empire. With Jefferson’s example to follow,

9
they were more than happy to exercise their small but rarely challenged
prerogative by looking the other way.

The tour guides were easy—better a mutant Sleeping Beauty

bramblewood than a salt­w ithered plain of dead sludge. The hunters she
left to Jefferson. His preternatural obsession with alligators, birthed
during an ayahuasca trip the week he got back from Pakistan, carried
real weight with the kind of men who liked the ritual of wading, camo­
clad, through waist­deep swamp­water.

For six months, the Seminoles wouldn’t talk to her. She kept at
it though, stopping by periodically to introduce herself, get the
ceremonial haranguing, and gamely lose a few dollars in their
casinos. Relationships before transactions, opportunities for the
youth. Eventually they had a deal.

She was a year in when the State caught wind of their operation.

They rolled up to The Myth in a swarm of quadcopters, navy

windbreakers billowing like pufferfish. A full platoon of special
investigators, armed with clipboards and cameras. They shuffled through
the studios, laboratories, and meditation spaces, murmuring and
shaking their heads. Classic shakedown tactics. Nina cussed like a sailor,
then seethed quietly. Jefferson was nowhere to be found, preserving
deniability. Ramses decided to meet them, with tea, in the bright slab of
Victorian garden beneath the very center of the solar loop.

“This is a very interesting piece of something you have here,” the alpha
male said, sitting down. He introduced himself as Special Advisor to
the Governor Mitchell Foote—“Call me Mitt”—and he stirred three
sugars into his tea. “I dig the green­-Guggenheim, ‘Richard Serra does
Falling Water’ kinda deal. And the inside—well, it’s a very contemporary

10
statement, with the big mirrors and the rogue genetics laboratories. Thing
is, ain’t none of it permitted.”

Ramses leveled a long size-­you­-up stare. He looked like a bodyguard

put out to pasture. Buzz cut, with wrap­a round sunglasses pushed up
to a widow’s peak. Foote clearly enjoyed the cognitive dissonance of
this culture­-critic spiel.

“And what permits exactly would we need?” Ramses asked. “We have
a bit of an unorthodox situation here.”

“Hell, that’s one way of putting it. Just from a first pass we got unlicensed
synthbio, introduction of foreign invasive species, and a lot of people
camped out here in this structure that I’m guessing ain’t up to code.
Whatever code we end up applying.”

Foote leaned back and put his feet up on an empty chair. Ramses
guessed he was coming into the homestretch of his pitch, and decided
to let him get it out of his system.

“Now, I’m from Miami. Let me tell you, Miami is a very cultured town.
I grew up on Art Basel. And of course the state of Florida has always
offered a home to all sorts of people with questionable judgment. So
we’re willing to work with you. But boy, there’s going to be a lot of
paperwork. We’ll get some lawyers down here. Now, take it from me,
you’ll want to get that all expedited so we don’t have to shut you down in
the meantime. I’m not gonna lie to you, that might get a little pricey.”

Ramses cleared her throat. “I’m afraid we don’t have any money.”

“No money?” Foote furrowed his brow. This was apparently a wrinkle
he hadn’t foreseen. “How do you pay all these people? How do you feed
them? Where do you get all these building materials from?”

11
“They’re volunteers. We grow food on the premises. We salvage
and scrap.”

“Well shit, that’s no good.” Foote looked genuinely worried. “You got any
investors? What’s the long play on this thing? Avant-garde art spa? What
are the revenues on that scheme?”

Nina piped up, speaking for the first time. “I think you misunderstand
the nature of our work. We’re an environmental reclamation project.
We’re using ecological infrastructure to provide clean water to the areas
affected by the salt rise in the water table.”

“You’re messing around with the water? Shit, if I’d known you were going
to stir up trouble—”

“We’ve published all our results,” Nina protested. “Test the water around
here. You can drink it, right out of the swamp. We’re actually trying to
save your ill-advised city! If you don’t do something—”

“See there you go, causin’ trouble already,” Foote interrupted her. “You
can’t just go around talking about saving Miami! That presumes
known menace and imminent imperilment, threats we are then liable
to address. We’ve got investors to consider. No one wants to buy a
timeshare in a place that needs saving.”

This was a startling declaration. Ramses concluded that debating the

merits of ecological megaprojects was not a winning strategy, and
tried to tack back to what Foote really wanted. “So, about expediting
that paperwork?”

Foote poured himself another cup of tea, four sugars this time. “Right,
well, it seems to me the state of Florida might be able to get on board
with your little project here. But we’d need to be reassured that

12
you aren’t going to run out of money halfway through some critical
chromosomal manipulations. My recommendation is, get yourself a
fiscal sponsor. Some nice billionaire who can put our lawyers at ease and
grease the right wheels. I’ll give you a couple weeks, but don’t make me
haul out here without a payday again.”

Surprising no one, such a fiscal sponsor emerged a few days later. Bodhi
Chakrabarti had made his fortune mass marketing brain­boosting herbal
supplements to teens. He then declared that he would use his billions to
save the planet, and promptly started his own reality show. Film crew
in tow, he arrived unannounced, providing color commentary as he led
himself on a tour of The Myth.

“Wow, just wow, am I right? What you guys are doing here, so
inspirational. I can’t wait to get involved! Together we are going to
make such a change for people. Together!” Chakrabarti preened for
the cameras.

Ramses expected him to put on a show, and then, off­camera, haggle

over the terms of the value­exchange. But there was no off­camera for
Chakrabarti. He broadcast his every move. This was not how they liked
to work, wasn’t “move quietly and plant things,” as Nina liked to say.
Ramses had hoped to squeeze the State’s payoff out of Chakrabarti and
send him home with promises of, at most, monthly updates. Instead,
he was talking about picking out offices and trying to haul his yacht
overland. The hair on the back of her neck rose. This was a corporate
takeover. She hedged. She kept things polite and vague for the cameras.

When he’d finally gone, Ramses, Nina, and Jeff held court at the tea
tables. Jefferson said what they were all thinking.

13
“Y’all, we’re gonna need some fuckin’ backup.”

The Renegade Olympics of 2040 were accessible only by ship or seaplane.

Ramses, Nina, and Jeff borrowed an aging sailboat from a retired couple
and cruised down past Cancun to the flotilla parked a few hundred
miles west of Jamaica.

The games would be held on the deck of the Emma Mærsk, once the
largest container ship in the world. In 2031, Maldivian activist­-pirates
commandeered it off the coast of Singapore, rigged it with solar, loaded
up 20,000 refugees, and sailed around South America in a highly­
televised two­-month international incident.

The Emma Mærsk was the perfect venue because (a) most of the world’s
governments were determined to pretend that it didn’t exist, and (b) all
the events in the R­-lympics were games that could be played in a refugee
camp. This meant futbol, rugby, basic track and field, wrestling, some
swimming, and shipping container parkour.

Sailing into the fleet, they were greeted by a riot of strange flags. The
R-lympics were the premier diplomatic event for the world’s aspiring
non­states. The Maldivians, of course, but also the Kurds, the Tibetans,
the Palestinians, Western Saharans, Cypriot nationalists, Cascadian
separatists, the Québécois, and a hundred other displaced groups—
even the scary, militant Sea Peoples. Playing hosts and MCs to them
all: the Cubans.

The 21st century had been rough for Cuba. The futureshock when the
embargo fell was intense, and American developers sensed tender prey.
The first free elections were easily bought. It was starting to look like the
mob years all over again.

14
Hurricane Bethel changed all that. The freak superstorm hit Cuba’s
north coast like a runaway jackhammer, slamming against the island
from Baracoa to Remedios to Havana. Pastel paint was stripped from
colonial walls. ‘57 Bel Aires were swept out to sea. The Malecón was
reduced to rubble.

Smelling blood in the water, corporate interests accelerated their shock­

doctrine plans. But the emergency response had reenergized both the
crumbling revolutionary bureaucracy and black­market networks that
had held society together during the Período Especial. The gospel of Fidel,
Che, and Camilo found its Reformation.

The Cuban people had a long history of not doing what Americans wanted
them to do. Luxury hotels were seized to house the homeless. Sympathetic
space­-jumpers hacked broadband G­loons in a series of daring, high­
altitude maneuvers. It looked like a standoff, but neither side wanted a
return to the bad days of the 20th century. The seas were rising; islands
were a bad investment. The powers­-that­-be settled for deals on coffee and
rum. The Cubans gained a reputation as dashing climate resistance gurus.

“Comrades, I got your email!” The tattooed and pierced commissioner

of the R-­lympics, nom de guerre Mickey Cienfuegos, spoke the kind of
perfect English that was half Benedict Anderson, half Run the Jewels. He
greeted them with mojitos, weed, and enthusiastic bear­-hugs.

“Let me break it down for you. Resistance in the 21st century is all about
two things: infrastructure and attention. First, you cannot depend on
global supply lines for anything. Power, bandwidth, water, food, sewage.
They will cut you off and starve you out.”

“We grow some vegetables and farm oysters,” Nina said. “We could do rice
if we’re really pressed.”

15
“Oysters? Siiiiiiick.” Mickey fist­-pumped. “Imagine the optics! State
troopers camped out all around you, eating donuts, while inside you
dine on raw oysters. Homerun!”

Nina shot him a grin that Ramses read as: ease up on the Hero of the
People shtick and maybe we’ll compare piercings later.

“Okay, second thing,” Mickey continued. “Put your story out to the
masses. Get a fanbase. Cops don’t want that Ruby Ridge shit, not if you
have a million­plus followers. Don’t talk to any journalists—first mistake
every occupier makes. Do it grassroots, viralismo.”

“That’s not really our style,” Ramses said. “How are we supposed
to find a following in time?”

“Have you looked around? You’re at the biggest counter­-globalization

media event in the world! I’ll put you on stage. I’ll make you a star!
Can you run fast? Jump high? Climb containers? Let’s get you down on
the field with some hot, photogenic refugee boys. Floridians, come for
help from the likes of us? People will eat that shit up! In fact,” Mickey
said, spreading his arms magnanimously. “I might even post about
you on my blog.”

The games were indeed a big PR coup for The Myth. They ladled out
water to sprinters. They were honorary referees during the exhibition
rugby match, Gorkhaland vs. Holy See. They made a music video with
the young, hip Dharamsala Dalai Lama. Jefferson was particularly
popular, crying wet crocodile tears about the plight of his beautiful,
endangered Florida gators.

16
After closing ceremonies, Mickey’s ship, The Great­- Granma, towed them
north. Two days after they got back, Foote came to confront them.

“What the fuck, you guys,” Foote called, when his airboat was in shouting
distance. “I told you, don’t make any trouble, come up with some money.
A week later my daughter shows me your fuckin’ music video—you’re
dancing around with pirates and probably terrorists. You’ve definitely
forced my hand here.”

The Mythers pulled up ramps and blockaded the entry arches. State
drones moved to surround them. Foote, on a bullhorn now, demanded a
parley. For the sake of maximum theater, Ramses and Nina decided that
Jefferson would deliver their response. He stepped out onto a balcony in
park ranger uniform. His gray shirt was pressed and his tie was knotted,
though he’d made cutoffs of the olive pants.

“First, this here’s national park territory, and I got some jurisdiction
over that shit. Two, we got food and water aplenty, so we’re happy to
wait. Three, water here is chock full of my gators. Lemme tell you,
they’re strong. I’ve wrassled them myself.”

Behind a barricade, Nina and Ramses were cracking up.

“Four, Mickey here is broadcasting your every fuckin’ move. We see one
gun drawn, and a fleet of terrifying Sea Peoples will descend on you like
the cataclysmic days of fuckin’ yore!”

Mickey waved, holding up his camera. “‘Say hello to my little friend,’” he

quoted. Ramses wondered just how much the Sea Peoples bit was a bluff.

“Five, we got power. Y’all are tied to the goddamn grid. See that big,
beautiful IUD up there? I built that shit. Pulls down 2800 kilowatt-­

17
hours.” Jefferson tapped his phone and “Where The Devil Don’t Stay”
by Drive­-By Truckers boomed out from The Myth’s PA system. “Can’t
tax the sun, copper!” he crooned.

“This is the most Florida shit I have ever seen,” Nina said.

Ramses had assumed that being under siege would either be very scary
or very boring, but instead she was just busy.

First, there was the siege itself, which needed to be monitored and
physically repelled. While Foote called for reinforcements, they
plugged holes and set guard shifts. That first night drones prodded
their defenses, and they had to raise their voices to be heard over the
buzz. The second night the incursions began.

The quadcopters they could shoo away with a leafy branch, but the
crawling drones had to be spotted and caught in hemp sacks before they
could chew through any wiring. By the third night Foote had gotten
hold of a pair of submersible drones, which swam under their gates
and caused some minor havoc in the houseboat flotilla. These they
lassoed with some animal control gear Jeff had stashed in a locker, and
released gently back into the wild.

Then there was their broadcast, which Mickey assured them was their
best defense against an actual armed assault. It wasn’t enough to just
livestream the staties camped out around them; they had to keep their
viewers entertained. They did question and answer sessions in online
forums. Nina led camera tours of The Myth’s facilities, and Ramses
recited her pitch for the New Wetland project every time they had a
big changeover in viewership. They shared oyster recipes and tips for
mutant gardening. They reenacted their music video. Anything to
keep enough eyes on their stream.

18
Mickey kept a weather eye on the news cycles and every few hours
would advise them to loop in or comment on some trending topic.
Staying viral meant continually re-infecting supporters’ filter bubbles
with their agenda. But Labor Day was coming up, and Mickey worried
that, without major action to re-galvanize attention, an attack by Foote
would get lost in holiday news dump.

They were starting to brainstorm ways to shake up the standoff when

they got the flash advisory: a Luxembourg-­sized chunk of Antarctic ice
was shearing off, collapsing 200 billion tons into the sea. By some cruel
twist of currents, sea rise happened first and steepest in the northern
Caribbean, so Floridians had learned to pay attention to these ice shelf
events. But this one was different. This one came with a storm.

Emergency alerts buzzed on both sides of the siege, yielding a

moment of frenetic peace as everyone checked their phones and goggles.
Tropical Storm Nyx would make landfall in 36 hours.

“The Governor has declared a state of emergency,” Foote announced

through his bullhorn as the state airboats began to pull away. “We’re
moving agency resources where most needed, but, uh, don’t go
anywhere.” He paused, adding, “And don’t think this is over.”

“Out of the frying pan, into the deluge,” Jeff muttered before they set
about getting ready.

It’s not Babel, thought Ramses, looking at their mangrove fortress.

It’s the Ark.

19
The seas rose, and the rains came. The levees broke. The waters
prevailed upon the earth.

Rich and poor alike sought shelter, but the rich happened to have
helicopters. A lot of people took their chances on the highways. Others
sheltered in place, hoping it was just another storm. But when the rains
died away, the water didn’t drain—it rose, bubbling up out of lawns and
drains like a salty, stinking sweat.

Miamians came to The Myth by the hundreds, drawn by rumors of

freshwater and just blind hope. They came in dinghies and speedboats,
rafts made from water jugs and one ratty old kiddie pool a father
carried his children in.

Nina worked around the clock to preserve the plants that cleaned their
water. Ramses didn’t see her stop moving for more than ten minutes
at a time. Jeff did a lot of search and rescue, checking in on neighbors
and bringing gallon jugs of drinking water to friends. Sometimes he’d
come back grinning, with a story of saving a dog that had gotten up
into a tree. Just as often, though, he didn’t talk about what he found out
there, shuffling to his bunk with eyes clouded by trauma. Ramses saw a
lot of eyes like that that week.

Ramses had never thought of herself as maternal—she’d always dated

people more femme than she was. But something unclenched inside
her as she cleaned out scrapes, soothed crying children, and wrapped
shivering old women in blankets. When she ran away from home two
decades prior, it had been the concerned attentions of a recruitment
office receptionist that had stopped her spiraling. She channeled that
memory. She forged a new Look—one dispelling debasement by seeing
another as fully human. She deployed it for each boat of refugees that
arrived, and the clouds in their eyes would clear for a moment. Ramses

20
felt so present with everyone, she was almost light-headed. Finally,
Jefferson took her aside.

“Sergeant, you may have weapons-grade emotional intelligence,

but you need to stop and sleep a couple hours.”

He was right, but she wasn’t the only one. A lot of tired, scared people
needed places to sleep. They hung hammocks and tossed out lab
equipment. Pretty soon they found themselves cutting down trees
and pulling down parts of the tower to fashion crude shelters.

When the Coast Guard got on the scene on day three, they relied on
sitreps from The Myth. Ramses and Jeff traded off on a shortwave
radio, relaying messages and coordinating support. Donations came in,
both virtual and physical. Mountains of perishables needed to get eaten
or composted. Well-­meaning volunteers had to be assigned jobs. They
ran low on the strangest things. The Cubans showed up in a major way,
mostly because Mickey was obsessed with symbolically reversing the
Mariel boatlift.

It was scary, it was thrilling. They didn’t quite notice the number of
news­d rones that had gathered.

By the time most of the pieces were picked up, The Myth was a cause
célèbre—not only for taking in the refugees, but also for absorbing the
water rise before it inundated more of the peninsula. New Wetlands were
being pitched all over the global south, with less care and more speed
than any of them found advisable. The State left them alone now, or
approached them with a certain amount of trepidation. They had become
swamp people: proud, mysterious, uncooperative with authority.

21
“Saviors of Tampa, huh?” Nina rolled her eyes at the headline. “Probably
preserved some very historic chain restaurants for future generations.”
Nina had taken the Myth’s dismantling the hardest, and expressed it in
sharper, darker humor.

“What do you think happens to them?” Jefferson gestured at the swarm

of floating hexayurts and slurped down a breakfast oyster. “Doesn’t
sound like government or insurance have an appetite to rebuild Miami.”

“I’m sure someone like me is out there,” Ramses said ruefully. “Probably
selling them the Tennessee Dream.”

“Well, shit, we should probably recruit them. Worked on you, didn’t it?”

In the frantic days after Nyx, The Myth had been mostly disassembled
as they traded magnificence for subsistence. Container-­labs became
dormitories. The Roman baths became camp latrines. The halo was
taken apart to make solar roofing. It was haphazard at first, but after a
few weeks a kind of order emerged. Rice was planted; the oyster farms
expanded. For the kids, school was organized. Nina taught classes on
the botany and art history behind The Myth. Soon, grownups were
showing up for her seminars, too.

“I’ve been thinking,” Nina said over another mollusk breakfast.

“What if Tennessee decides they’re full? Who knows if these people are
going anywhere? It could be years, for all we know. They’re going to
get the basics, but they’ll want something to do. I already have people
asking when we’ll reconstruct the tower. Maybe we should have them
build something.”

Jeff was alarmed. “You’ve got that gleam in your eye that says you’re
gonna get us into the shit.”

22
Ramses reached for a half-shell, held it up. “Come on, Jefferson. We’ve got
boats. We’ve got the sun. The world is our oyster.”

They groaned at her pun, but it wasn’t like she was wrong.

Their strange, swampy refugee town wasn’t beautiful like The Myth, but it
bustled with ever more activity—a new kind of New Wetland, one where
humans were not just cultivators but a dependent part of the ecosystem.
We’ve lost a monument, Ramses thought, but found a movement.

The morning light rose over the rice fields and mutant mangroves and hit
the solar panels on their roofs. She could almost feel the hum of power,
waking up their machines. The sky was clear. The sun would shine strong
all day. An omen. A promise.

Adam Flynn and Andrew Dana Hudson live in the San Francisco Bay
area, where they can be found excitedly talking about “solarpunk.”

23
24
Shrinking Sinking Land
Kelly Cowley

There were three main ways an umbrella could save your life.

Flea wouldn’t have stolen the umbrella from the old woman on the
fifth floor where the roof had caved in if she hadn’t been sure that it
was just what she needed to rescue her mum from the sinkhole that
had opened up in their living room.

Her mum had been stuck down in the sinkhole for two days now. Flea
couldn’t ring up any emergency services to haul her out. If she called
for help, whatever help came would quickly suss out that their flat was
uninhabitable and send the Wheeler family to the nearest shelter of last
resort. When they realized that Flea, her brother Wes, and their mum
Shell were squatting in a retirement home and had been doing so ever
since the unreported death of dear old Nanna Wheeler last winter, they
might just cart her whole family off to the closest detention centre. Flea
didn’t want to be the one responsible for getting everyone evicted or
banged up. So she’d just have to get her mum out of this sinkhole herself.

And for that, Flea needed an umbrella. And not just any old umbrella
that the winds could blow inside out and yank from her grasp. Flea
had gone through a lot of umbrellas in this summer of superstorms,
and most of them had been as cheap and as flimsy as paper cocktail

25
decorations. But they had been her training umbrellas, not only to
preserve her in freak weather conditions, but more importantly, her
weapon of choice. Because the first and foremost way that an umbrella
could save your life was if you learnt how to use it in combat. Flea had
trained herself to be a black belt of the brolly, swordswoman of severe
winds. All she had ever needed was an umbrella worthy of her skills.

Now she had one: solid steel tube, fibreglass ribs, high-density
waterproof and slash resistant canopy—an Excalibur of umbrellas. Flea
couldn’t resist wielding and thrusting it as she bounded down the stairs
to the lower levels of the tower block. If she sharpened up its tip, it’d
be good for inflicting shallow stab wounds too. Its crook handle was
the perfect size and shape to put a human throat in a choke hold. Its
pole was strong enough to use as a battering ram and sturdy enough to
clothesline any cops that might get in her way. With this umbrella, Flea
didn’t need anyone else to protect her. She’d learned from experience
that the best way for a young Scouse girl to survive on the dark rainy
streets of Manchester was to become the person who you wouldn’t want
to meet on the dark rainy streets of Manchester. That was who Flea
could be now. She had her umbrella and she wasn’t afraid to use it.

Flea reached the ground floor of their sink estate, splashing down in a
stream of floodwater that rose to her knees. A shallow day for this side
of town. In her shell suit and wellies, Flea barely felt the chill anymore.
She’d steeled herself against the smell, too. She was used to keeping her
footing and not slowing her pace, even with the city swamps sloshing
around her ankles. You could never tell when someone might jump you
from behind in old Mankland. She was always up for a scrap—either
with a mugger or a gale force wind—but Flea was smart enough to know
that legging it away was still always the safest option. Whether in fight
or flight mode, she never let her guard down.

26
Two paces from her door, Flea felt a whack in the small of her back.

Tightening her grip on the umbrella handle, she spun round to face her
attacker. But nobody was there. It was like she had been pounced on by
thin air. Then she felt tiny claws clambering up the back of her shell suit.
She felt a furry tail tickling her neck and a familiar fat squirrel slipping
into the folds of her hood for warmth. Flea sagged with relief and didn’t
bother to dislodge it. The flats of Moss Side were rife with pests – mutant
rats swimming the streams of the lower floors and the obese pigeons
bobbing on the water like feral ducks. Flea didn’t mind the animals
though. She’d learnt to live with them.

Flea had learned to live with a lot of things since the superstorms had first
brought her family to this city two years ago. Since the Mersey floodwaters
of her poor drowned Liverpool had forced them this way up the Union
Canal. The Wheeler family were city folk, born and bred. They couldn’t
imagine themselves eking out a wetland life in the kitchen sink country of
Cheshire, Lancashire, or the Wirral. They needed to feel proper concrete
through the puddles. So they’d come to find their own dirty lungful of
breathing space in the already bloated population of Manchester. Any
port in a storm, as her Nanna used to say, and even the hardest bastard
you know couldn’t argue with the storms these days.

Flea climbed over the sandbags piled up to their letterbox and pressed her
shoulder to the door of the flat. As she tumbled through its gape, one of
her boots squelched down on the saturated remains of their carpet. Her
other leg slipped out from under her and dangled briefly over a chilly
abyss. Flea scrambled back on her haunches, panting as she slumped
against the wall. The sinkhole had gotten bigger while she’d been out.

“Is that you up there, Fleabag?” called a voice from below.

27
Her mother’s voice. Flea rolled her eyes. Why had her mum ever gone
to the trouble of giving her such a prissy name as “Felicity” if she was
only going to insist on shortening it to the ugliest little nicknames that
she could think up?

“Yeah, it’s me, Shell. I almost fell in your cesspit.”

Flea never called her mother “mum” anymore either. Not out loud at
least. Shell was more like a sibling than a parent to her. A bad influence
of a big sister at that. Shelly would only moan if Flea or Wes used the
M word, complaining that they were making her feel old. In spite of her
two strapping teenage kids, Shell was barely into her thirties. Whatever
Shell was to them, she was still family and she was stuck down in a hole
all alone. A lonely little spider of a woman flushed down the earth’s
toilet bowl.

“So…are you about ready to be rescued then?” Flea asked her mum,
trying to sound casual. Breezy even, like her mum wasn’t trapped twenty
feet deep in the yawning crater that had become the centrepiece of their
tiny bedsit flat. She asked as casually as you might ask about the weather.
And like the weather, Flea feared the forecast.

No answer came at first. She crawled to the sinkhole’s brim, pulled a

torch from her rucksack, and pointed its dull glow into the chasm. The
hole in the floor was roughly as wide as a kid’s paddling pool. About
halfway down, the sinkhole bottlenecked then stretched into a large
cavern, an airy pocket in the earth half-filled with the deluge that had
drained from off their kitchen and living room floor. Floating on the
waters of this subterranean swamp, there was a small red dinghy. Shell
had made her bed in the dinghy long ago, bundling herself up in her
dressing gown, plastic bags over her slippers and her hands gloved with
Marigolds. Flea hadn’t been at home when the floor had collapsed in the

28
flat and the dinghy had been sucked into the pooling pit below. Shelly
claimed that she’d suffered no injuries, but since she’d probably been
drunk at the time of her fall, she wasn’t the best judge of her own health.
Her mum could be a mess of breaks and bumps down there.

“Shell, did you hear me?” asked Flea, knowing her mum had bloody
well heard and was stalling her answer, thinking up a new excuse not
to move. “Let’s get moving! Before the toxic waste buried down there
brings you out in scales.”

In the torchlight, she saw Shell’s hand jerk up reflexively to her neck.
Her eczema couldn’t be doing well in that hole. It looked like her dirty
blonde hair was slowly turning to seaweed. Flea didn’t really know
if there was anything poisonous down in the soil, but she hoped her
suggestion would have Shell itching for escape.

“Put the kettle on first, will you, pet?” Shell called up, breaking her long
wince of a silence. “Fire up the camping stove and make us a brew. You’ve
been out for ages and your brother’s still off looting with the lads. I’ve
been gagging for a cup of tea. Where have you been, kidda? You left me
here on my billy lonesome.”

Shelly would have used these same bored impatient tones if Flea or
her brother Wes had been too slow in bringing a takeaway home
from the chippy. It was hard to play the hero to somebody who was so
disinterested in their own rescue.

“Bugger your cup of tea!” snapped Flea. “If we get you out of this hole,
then we’ll celebrate with my last two cans of Coke. How about that?”

This wasn’t a casual bribe. Flea had been hoarding her Cokes since she’d
stolen them from a toppled vending machine during the spate of riots

29
and looting that had broken out on the city streets at the fag end of the
summer. It was late October now and Flea had kept those Cokes like two
dented rubies at the bottom of her rucksack. She’d been saying that she
would only crack their ring pulls at the end of the world. The truth was
she would settle for sharing them with Shelly if she’d only get her arse
out of this hole.

“Maybe later, kidda,” said Shell. “I’ve got a headache coming on.
There’s pains in all me joints. You know what that means. There’s a
storm coming.”

“There’s always a bloody storm coming! You’ve been spending too

much time with the senile old biddies on this block if you reckon your
body’s somehow tuned into the weather. Enough of this old wives’
bollocks. Let’s be having you!”

Flea gave up waiting for Shell’s cooperation. She turned off the torch and
fixed her eyes on the bucket dangling from a rope over the sinkhole’s
mouth. This rope, attached to the bucket’s handle, was looped round the
longest branch of the tree that was sticking through the smashed glass
of their kitchen window. It was weeks ago now that this tree had been
blown through their window. None of the Wheelers knew exactly where
the tree had come from or how far it had travelled on hurricane winds.
The retirement flats were miles from the nearest park. The skinny trunk
stretching over their bedsit was just another thing that they’d learned
to live with. They could hang their washing up to dry on it. They could
sharpen knives on its bark. And with the sinkhole directly under its
branches, the tree had most recently enabled them to rig up a pulley
system to deliver food and fags down to their mum in the basin below.
Flea got to her feet, extending her umbrella to hook the rope with its
crook handle. With the sinkhole widening, the bucket was now much
harder to reach.

30
“Fleabag, what are you playing at?”

“I told you!” Flea yelled back. “I’m rescuing you! Do you know there are
three main ways that an umbrella can save your life? One of those ways
is using it as a raft. Remember that final evacuation day in Liverpool
when families were putting their toddlers and pets in their upended
brollies? Like little lifeboats on the floodwaters? That’s just how umbrellas
are made these days. A special kind of rubber or something, so that they
float and don’t leak. Get your skinny arse into this one and I’ll hoist you
out of there. You won’t have to stand up or even bend your knees. So don’t
start whining again about getting head rushes or twinges in your spine.
Just shift your backside into the brolly. I’ll do the rest.”

Flea was so sure about this umbrella being the solution that she was
sounding like an advert. Her voice had gone all sunshiny like one of those
airhead presenters on the shopping channel that Shelly used to watch all
day long before they had lost power for the last time, back when the telly
had still been there to hold the Wheeler family together. Now Flea was
left clinging to a ragged piece of rope, retying it to the umbrella’s handle
and swinging it over the sinkhole, hoping that she could use it to fish her
mother out of the pool below. Hoping that the rope and its spokes would
hold her mother’s weight. Shell was such a skinny little thing that, at just
sixteen, Flea was already taller and tougher.

When did I get bigger than my mum? Flea thought as she lowered the
umbrella. When did I get strong enough to lift her up? When did Shelly
start to shrink?

The voice out of the hole interrupted her thoughts.

“You know, it’s bad luck to open an umbrella indoors.”

31
“Oh, give it a rest, will you!” blasted Flea, cutting her off. “I’ve had enough
of your superstitious hocus pocus excuses. You’re not a weather witch!
You’re just a silly mare that’s stuck down at the bottom of a hole. Now get
in the brolly!”

Flea gave the rope a little shake for emphasis, like she was whipping a
horse’s reigns. Her mum huffed and sighed a moment longer. Then Flea
slowly felt the rope pinch as a hand caught hold of the umbrella’s canopy
at the end of the line.

She’s gonna do it, thought Flea. She’s going to let me save her.

Then there came the sound of Shell screeching at the top of her lungs.

“There’s something inside!” she cried. “Something alive!”

Flea frowned, confused for a second. Then she reached over her shoulder
and patted the back of her shell suit. Her hood had been emptied of its
furry hitchhiker.

“It’s just a squirrel, Shell!” Flea called. “Sorry about that. The bloody
creature’s been stalking me, stowing away in my hood. I can’t get rid
of it.”

Shell gave a spluttering laugh that echoed all the way up the
sinkhole. “Animals have always liked you, Flea,” she said. “Animals
know you’re soft.”

“I am not! I’ve just not been hungry enough to cook it yet.”

Shell laughed again. “You’re a soft lass and those little vermin know
it. They know you’re lucky. That you’ll survive. I named you after luck,
didn’t I, Felicity? I’m not as lucky as you are, kid. That squirrel will give
me rabies if I go anywhere near it.”

32
Flea closed her eyes. “Don’t give up, Shell. Not now. Please.”

“Where did you say you got this umbrella anyway?” Shell asked,
changing the subject. “And don’t lie to me and say that you robbed it from
an outdoors store. Your brother tells me that all the big shops were picked
clean months ago.”

Flea winced. She would have felt a whole lot better if she had nicked
the umbrella from one of the big chain stores. But after all the shopping
precincts had been stormed in the summer riots and after the clean-up
cops had been brought in to arrest the looters, those big brand shops had
been left derelict, their billboard signs disappearing behind barriers of
rivet metal and their consumer goodies all harvested away. During these
last few weeks, Flea had been reduced to scavenging from charity shops
and food banks for the last slim pickings of supplies. Everyone needed
to gather up supplies.

Like every other bugger around here, Flea was getting ready. This week
the city of Manchester, just like the rest of their sorry country and just
like the whole bleeding world, was being closed for maintenance. It was
shutting up shop. It was holing itself up for the long winter. It was going
to ground. There was only one working week left now until the Global
Mandatory Hibernation. The big G.M.H. that’d been looming Flea’s entire
life, that had been voted for a generation ago, before she was even born.
This Friday it would finally arrive. This was the last week of the world as
Flea knew it.

“Where did you get the brolly, girl?” Shell persisted.

“I took it from the old lady on the fifth floor where the roof ’s caved in,” she
admitted. “Rain was still leaking in through her busted ceiling panels
and she was just sitting there in her chair, still as a statue, stiff as a board.

33
She was sat waiting to die with her brolly in her hand. It didn’t look like
she’d even tried to call for help.”

“She didn’t want to leave,” said Shell. “The old folks in these flats won’t
ever step out into the weather again. They’d rather be left to drown in
the comfort of their own homes.”

Flea swallowed. “And you feel the same?”

It was crazy for Shelly to want to stay. She wasn’t old and this wasn’t
their home. But Flea could still remember the depression that had hung
over her mother like a black cloud after they were forced out of their old
flat in Liverpool. Shell had loved that flat, even though it used to take
in a good three feet of sewer water during every superstorm. The family
flood drill was always the same. Flea and Wes would climb on the top
bunk where they would fight over the blankets, nose-plugs, and snacks
until the pump man came. Their mum would make her own hard bed
on the kitchen table, which was fair enough since nobody ever ate off
it. It was only after the Wheelers lost their old home that Shell started
washing her headache pills down with cheap gin, which had sunk her
faster than any flood.

“I could just hibernate here,” said Shell, sounding scarily like she meant
it. “I can’t go through another evacuation, our Flea. There’s nowhere left
to go. Not for the likes of us. We can’t afford our own fancy backyard
bunker. Your old Nanna was the only relative we had to shelter with. She
might have lived longer if we hadn’t brought all of our dirt and germs
to her doorstep. Where can we go now? There’s no shelter left in this
country. Little England is shrinking. The tide’s creeping in every day.
The ground water’s surging up from below. This country’s just a lifeboat
now. They’ll chuck anyone overboard who they don’t need. They’ll

34
deport them like your dad or they’ll let the weather do the job for them.
I…I like it down here, Flea. It’s quiet. I can’t hear the thunder or the wind
rattling the walls. It’s like going back into the womb. Like being all safe
inside your mum’s tum.”

Flea shuddered. Shell talking about the womb only brought out
her claustrophobia.

“Just get in that bleeding umbrella!” Flea fumed. “If you won’t, then
I’m climbing down there to drag you out of that hole by your hair. You
hear me?!”

Flea meant what she said. She made a leap for the rope, catching it
between her palms. The tree creaked as it took her weight, but she wasn’t
heavy enough to break it. She coiled her arms and legs around the rope
cord, feeling herself slowly slipping down its length. She peered down
into the sinkhole’s shadows, feeling its mouth gaping to swallow her
whole. But before she could get any deeper, she thrust out her legs to
brace herself against its brim. She clasped onto the ledge, clawing her
way back onto the living room floor.

Down below, her mum could only laugh at her failed heroics.

“I keep telling ya. You can’t cope with tight spaces, girl. You think I
can’t remember from when you were little? How you used to scream
and bawl if I took you onto the subway. All those games of hide and
seek that ended in trauma. And now the hibernation’s coming. And
you don’t want to go to ground, do you? Oh, my poor little Fleabag. My
poor luckless Felicity.” The rope jostled, pushed by a hand from below.
“Take your brolly back, kidda. Don’t pretend that you didn’t grave rob
it for yourself.”

35
Flea wanted to tell her mum to shut it. She wanted to say how the
retirement flats had already been ransacked – the medical cabinets all
emptied, the batteries pinched out of every appliance. Flea had only
been looting the leftovers. She wanted to say that when she’d pulled
the umbrella from that old lady’s claw, she didn’t feel bad for stealing
her last possession, the last thing she had likely blown all her pension
on. The young didn’t pity the old anymore and the old didn’t envy those
who were stuck being young now. Better that they’d been young when
the sun was still shining and the streets were still dry.

Shelly wasn’t old but she’d lived long enough to remember the
sunshine. Long enough to miss it like hell and lose hope that it was
ever coming back.

“Take your umbrella and get out of here, Flea,” her mum said,
her tone softer now. “There’s no sense in us both going down with
this sinking ship.”

Flea’s throat constricted. She couldn’t answer, she could hardly breathe.
She simply took hold of the rope again and slowly pulled the umbrella
back to the surface. The squirrel hopped into the branches of the dead
tree and then tightrope-walked down to Flea, crawling up her arm and
back into the warmth of her hood. When she untied the brolly, Flea
found that her mum had filled up its canopy with the litter out of her
dinghy. With chocolate wrappers, cigarette packs, and drained bottles
of booze. Wes and his looter friends must have visited the flat, feeding
their mum like a baby bird, a junk feast of sugar, nicotine, and gin. He’d
probably made her a cup of tea too. Flea wondered why Wes hadn’t
climbed down the sinkhole to pull Shell out himself. The answer came
to her too quickly, like a sour taste to her mouth. Wes hadn’t helped
their mum because he knew she’d only slow him down.

36
In numb movements, Flea slipped the rucksack from her shoulders,
reached inside, and pulled out one of her last cans of Coke. It was warm
in her palm but she thought the ground water might cool it. She placed
the Coke into the bucket then wordlessly lowered it down into the hole,
like a coin flicked into a wishing well or an offering to a shrine. Flea
felt the bucket land softly on the dingy below and a few seconds later
she heard the squirt and the fizz of its ring pull. Her mum must be very
thirsty down there. How long before dehydration took hold? How long
did she have to think up another rescue plan?

Flea didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t say, “See ya, Shell!” and she certainly
didn’t say, “I’ll be back soon, mum.” She wouldn’t tell her mother that the
next person she saw would probably be some cop who’d be wrenching
her out of her peaceful little womb tomb by force. Flea simply snatched
up her rucksack and climbed back over the sandbags at their door. Out in
the hall, she waded downstream towards the entrance doors to the tower
block. She peered through the smashed glass, staring at the storm still
raging outside.

There were three main ways an umbrella could save your life.

For Flea, the surest of these was using her umbrella as a shield. Not to
protect her from the clouds above. Flea wasn’t so stupid that she would
actually hold an umbrella up over her head. Not unless she wanted to be
yanked off her feet into a cyclone. She’d learned never to rest her brolly on
her shoulder either. It wasn’t a bloody parasol and the world was no longer
made for picnics. Flea knew that if she chose to stay above ground and
live in the weather, she’d need to thrust her umbrella straight out ahead of
her. Somebody still had to fend for her family. One of them still needed to
brave the outside.

37
Flea kicked the doors to their flats and they flew wide. She
breathed in the rain, she opened her brolly to the winds and
she damn well braced herself.

Kelly Cowley is a writer and school librarian living in Chester, England.

She earned a degree in Performance Writing at the innovative
Dartington College of Arts, and post-graduation she won a place
on the “Apprenticeships in Fiction” scheme, a one-year professional
development program designed to nurture emerging novelists. In 2015
she began work on a young adult climate fiction novel inspired partly
by the increase of extreme weather and flooding in the U.K.

38
39
Victor and the Fish
Matthew S. Henry

Flexing like a scale-skinned forearm, a large brown trout struggles

to free itself from Victor’s grip. A teenage boy, 14 or 15, stares down
uncertainly from his seat in the drift boat’s bow. The father, ill-equipped
for a float trip in jeans, polo, and cowboy boots, a knob of chew in his lip,
snorts and brandishes a phone.

“Grab ‘er and hold ‘er up now.”

“Uh.” The son’s eyes dart from father to Victor, back to father, and to
Victor again before resting on his catch. “Um…”

“Like this,” Victor reassures him, holding the trout half in the water, net
beneath. “Keep him in the water. Getting hot, don’t want to stress him.”

Another male, 14 inches and pretty fat. Probably a belly full of salmon
flies. It had been another early hatch, and though Victor’s clients had
missed the tail end of it, the fish were evidently still looking up for big
orange and brown bugs.

Pausing its struggle to rest, the brown mouths a silent, repetitive protest.
A white belly peeks at Victor, light beneath a nighttime bedroom door
that melts into gradients of low yellow, light brown, red-speckled
mahogany stretching over the spine and around a flaccid dorsal fin.

40
Damn thing, he thinks.

“Naw, son. Hold ‘im up for the world to see,” the father counters. “Grip
‘im right in the middle.”

“That’s pretty hard on them this time of day,” Victor insists. “You can still
get a good picture if—”

“Out of the water, son. Just like that.”

Son surprises Victor, taking hold of the fish and gripping it firmly
around the midsection, holding it up with feigned bravado against a
smoky afternoon sky. Fish mouth gapes and gasps, moisture evaporating
rapidly from its back. In a last desperate effort, it flexes again. Splash.

“Ah, shit.” Father and son watch as the brown sinks briefly before taking
refuge in a downstream eddy.

“Still got a good one, I think.” Father tinkers on his phone, son
returns to his seat and Mountain Dew in the bow, and Victor hauls
up the anchor.

Should’ve let them string it up and keep it for dinner, Victor thinks.
It’s unlike him, a retired professor of stream ecology with a singular
zeal for watershed preservation. But the browns had become what
the lake trout had been in the Yellowstone—predatory, invasive,
destructive. Nonnative.

When he was still with the University of Montana he’d worked with Fish,
Wildlife & Parks on regulations that required anglers to kill lake trout
upon catching them. Rock to the skull, knife to the brain, take your pick.
For the good of the watershed.

41
Victor rows. Oars soundlessly skim water, an upcoming downstream
riffle barely audible. It’s getting smokier.

He reaches into his dry bag for his air quality monitor. The AQI is 177
and rising. Probably a Stage 3 Air Quality Alert in Missoula.

“Might want to get out your masks.”

“Ah, hell, we’re fine,” the father replies.

One final wordless mile of Rock Creek, which is more of a river than
a creek. Light ash snows down silently, generally. A dark gray paste
slathered across the drift boat floor. Father thumbs phone and spits. Son
stifles a cough and dons his mask furtively, covering nose and mouth as
he looks away from his father to listlessly smack the water with a newly
fastened fly. Cadenced casts fall impotently in near-tangles of tippet.

Victor sighs and rows.

At the boat takeout, Victor backs in, eyeing the trailer and pickup Miles
had driven from the put-in at the confluence of the east and west forks of
the stream. He’s anxious to get off the water.

“Whoop!”

Somehow, impossibly, the son holds a bent rod. A trout leaps from the
water once, then again. A third time. The boy reels hard, fast, greedily.
Victor drops anchor for good measure and grabs for the net, but before he
positions it under the fish he can see what it is.

Emboldened, the son reaches out to secure his bounty for a photo. Victor’s
quicker. In a flash, forceps seize fly, reducing the pattern to thread shreds
and foam bits and unpiercing the lip of what is unmistakably a cutthroat

42
trout, the first Victor has seen caught by anyone other than him in his
last six years as a full-time fishing guide in western Montana. Freed, it
returns to the eddy from whence it was pulled.

“Hey—what the hell?”

Father stands, looming over Victor, the boat quivering. Victor wouldn’t
be getting a tip.

Home is a sag-roofed cabin at mile marker 17 along Rock Creek Road,

which runs parallel to its namesake. Victor finds that his air filter has
stopped working. Motes of ash and particulate matter float suspended
in a lone slant of light beaming from a skylight, its spot on the floor
occupied by his old Australian Shepherd, Mollie. Thin gray wool
coats desk, kitchen counter, bananas, windowsill. The dog’s water is
wet cement.

He climbs to the roof. A yellow sky overhead has begun the nightly
transition to brown, but it’s only midafternoon. The fires—British
Columbia, the Cascades—are entering their thirteenth month of steady
burning; a closer but younger, three-month-old fire has been spreading
northeast in the Bitterroots. There isn’t much for him to worry about.
The flames would have to jump a highway and the Bitterroot River, and
even if they did they’d peter out at the foot of the Sapphires, bald and
blackened from their own August inferno three years before.

He unscrews the side plate on the filtration system. Magpies, two of

them. Dead, mashed and sizzling against the hot grating of the intake.
Seeking cleaner air. A small avalanche shovel does the job, and the filter
whirrs back to life as he holds the restart button. A bighorn ram and two

43
ewes, eyes black and beady, look on from the scree and talus slope rising
from his backyard.

Back inside, Victor finds a long text message from Miles.

A hoot-owl restriction is coming. Two weeks of upper 80s has spooked

the FWP. A hoot-owl has only happened once ever in May, and that was
the year before. The new norm? Business might be over for the season.
The clientele had been thin, and not the type interested in rising early
and quitting at noon. Better for the fish, he thinks.

Victor brushes off the table, warms a bowl of venison stew and nurses
a bottle of homebrew.

He should be tired. Not just from the day, but from the years. He’s an
old sixty-eight, having spent his first fifty-five years a sedentary academic
and his next thirteen making up for it by going it alone seventeen miles
up Rock Creek.

But he’s not tired. He’s excited. He’d stopped giving a damn about
his guiding business lately. The cutthroat that day might’ve been a
sign of his efforts coming to fruition. It was the first he’d seen on the
end of someone’s line other than his, and miles downstream from the
Microburst at that. First thing in the morning he’d head up Cougar Creek
to check on his stock.

He calls Miles. He wouldn’t make the drive to Missoula for beers tonight.
He wants an early start. He’d take six or seven more cutties tomorrow—
the biggest, the hardiest, even if it takes him a few hours to get the right
ones—and head for the Blackfoot River.

A knock at the door.

44
At the window, a man in Carhartts, tucked-in t-shirt, laptop bag, sweat-
stained cap. A truck behind, sage green. FWP. He cracks the door.

“Can I help you?”

His name is Trevor, and he’s here for research. About cutthroats.
Victor raises an eyebrow.

“As far as we know, they’re still extinct. I haven’t seen one myself and I do
a lot of fishin’. But we’ve had quite a few calls over the past month or two.
Twenty-five or thirty, I think.”

Victor should be excited. But here’s Trevor with red tape and
bureaucracy not far behind.

“We’ve been getting some reports from guides and fishermen every other
day or so. Wasn’t ‘til I saw a picture of a big one pulled out near Scotty
Brown Bridge—you know, up the Blackfoot?—that I started to wonder.
Could’ve been an old pic, but the guy who called said it was from that
day.”

The Blackfoot? Victor blinks back at him, frowning.

“I dunno, could be like the way people report UFOs. Just for attention,
that sort of thing. Kids toyin’. But then someone called and said they’d
pulled out a few a day for the past month right where Rock Creek goes
into the Clark Fork. They said—”

“Who?” interrupts Victor. “Who called?”

“Some fellow named Reeves, I think.”

Victor doesn’t know a Reeves.

45
“Could’ve been Weaver. Don’t remember. I have an address in Bonner
to follow up with him. I’m told you’re the man to talk to, though, being
the only guide left up here.”

“That’d be me,” Victor said cautiously.

“Seen any cutties yourself?”

“Ain’t been out much. Business is slow.”

“Even when you have? You pull any in yourself?”

“Last one I caught was six years ago. Wish it weren’t so. All browns
and bulls up here.”

It’s bullshit, but Victor doesn’t let on. Trevor declines a cup of coffee
and heads upstream to Miller Gulch, where he’s staying.

Victor thinks about the events two months before. He’d been out wade-
fishing at the Microburst access. It’d been a slow day, but unusually clear.
Prevailing winds had pushed out much of the wildfire smoke and a pale
yellow sun had shined down. Shined. Not the gauzy candlelight glow he’d
grown accustomed to.

Drunk on clear air and a semblance of sunlight, he’d fished casually

through the afternoon, not caring much about catching. Puffy cumulus,
long forgotten, had eased across the ribbon of sky above as he’d waded
slowly along a narrow, ridge-encased stretch of water. He’d watched an
osprey seeking the nest it had abandoned in October.

The whiz and click of fly line had brought him back to reality, and after
a moment he’d stared down into his net in disbelief. A 16-inch westslope
cutthroat trout. Supposedly extinct. Not a brown. Not a bull or a rainbow

46
or a hybrid “cutbow.” A fat, healthy, pregnant female cuttie, the pink
streaks, the charcoal blotches, the black poppy seed spots. A tinge of
sunset yellow as a backdrop. Red slashes upon the chin.

I’ll be damned.

Thinking quickly, he’d netted it and taken it to a side channel, where

he’d built two small dams and a makeshift reservoir. He’d returned
to the Microburst, tied on a new fly, and within minutes he’d caught
another, also female and pregnant. After three more—all female, all
ready to burst with eggs—he’d realized he needed a different plan.

Using a cleaned-out backpack pesticide tank he’d found in his shed, he

transported his catch in water roughly three miles up Cougar Creek,
a tributary, and replicated his first reservoir twice. Two new, secret
“hatcheries.” There was little danger of a snowmelt surge wrecking his
setup. Of course not. It had been another dry winter.

By now, in early May, these cutties had become the most important
thing in Victor’s life. Weekly sessions of furtive wade-fishing had
become ritual. Always at the Microburst, always four or five from the
same hole, always female and pregnant. During his fourth or fifth trip
up, it had dawned on him. He’d read about it before, during his time
pumping out research in Missoula. Asexual reproduction. Endangered
fish reproducing without mating. At the time it had been sawfish in
Florida. He couldn’t be sure about these cutties, but he’d begun to
suspect something similar.

Sure enough, all twenty-seven of them, caught over a span of two months,
had been large with eggs. And multiplying in his hidden reservoirs on
Cougar Creek.

47
He’d kept it from Miles, a wild, reckless on-again off-again “assistant”
who’d once guided with Victor but found bartending in Missoula more
lucrative. Perpetual fire season meant droves of wildland firefighters,
and wildland firefighters could drink. He couldn’t blame them. Victor
had been worried Missoula would turn into another Williston, another
Bakken-style pit of vice, but it hadn’t. The crews were simply too tired to
do much more than work, eat, drink, sleep, and sometimes die. And there
was no sign the fires would go the way of natural gas.

Still, Miles had left guiding for financial reasons, and Victor didn’t trust
him with something like this. Not that there was cash in it. But Miles had
the gift of gab and a lot of FWP folks spent time in Missoula bars. Victor—
the fish—couldn’t afford FWP involvement. Like Trevor.

The FWP had already dropped the ball on cutthroat management once.
They’d let the cutties go the way of wolves, only public pressure hadn’t
come from ranchers but from outfitters and guide shops, demanding
friendlier regulations on fisheries to bring in out-of-state tourist dollars.
The constant threat of flare-ups had scared people away from the outdoor
playgrounds of western Montana, a ubiquitous ashy haze obscuring
once-photogenic vistas. The FWP had relented, but unevenly: they lifted
all fishing restrictions on cutties, but cutties only. Catch-and-release-
only was abolished, and handling regulations, intended to limit out-
of-water time for each fish and widely enforced through self-policing,
were discouraged. The reason? Cutthroats were considered the most
photogenic. Against a graying mountain landscape, the colorful cuttie
would draw the eye and, with any luck, tourist money.

Stressed by overzealous fishing, an already vulnerable cuttie population

had been outcompeted by the browns, hybridized beyond recognition
with the rainbows and, improbably, devoured by a once-threatened bull
trout population.

48
Victor had begun to believe that his discovery would be the species’
salvation. He’d muled them to safety, finding in each trip a sense of
purpose in a burning pocket of the world.

He’d bring them back.

He arrives at the first pool before dawn. The water level’s low,
and it worries him.

Donning a pair of old goggles and a waterproof headlamp, he slips in

silently on the downstream end of his reservoir. Silver flashes. Ten or
twelve cutties, healthy and about 12-20 inches apiece, hover against an
upstream ledge, unconcerned by his presence. Juveniles and minnows
everywhere. More than before. He clambers back ashore.

In what has become ritual, he begins a slow and rhythmic roll cast.
Thick willows and a lone huckleberry bush his audience, shouldered up
to watch his crude method of collection. The fly, a Jay’s Golden Stone,
settles on the surface, a light splash. A second passes, then two, then
three, and he wonders if these fish are somehow smarter than those
hovering in the current of the swifter stream below. Four seconds,
five. Have they lost their appetite? Six. Maybe I should’ve gone with a
size 12 or 14. Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

He’s about to retract his line into a new cast when his fly is sipped
under. Not like the first he’d caught, when water had exploded like a
stick of dynamite and torn his fly to shreds. This time, the fly is taken
with ease, relished.

49
He plays it out longer than necessary. Waits for the fish to get tired. No
need to yank it flopping ashore like so many of his clients, hastening for
a chest-puffed photo. He nets it respectfully and slips it into the opening
in his plastic pack. He repeats this process until he has a total of six and
brown dawn has become yellow morning.

His mask beeps twice, alerting him halfway down that it’s time for a filter
change. AQI 188, air quality worse. He looks at his watch. Only 7:30. The
smoke is thicker than it’s been in months, but it’s not an inversion. It’s
warm, even down in the canyon.

Hope the cabin filter didn’t gum up again.

Back at his pickup, Victor takes special care with each trout, belting the
tank into the backseat and disguising it in a plaid wool blanket.

He sits on his tailgate, sipping the remnants of coffee from a thermos

when Trevor’s pickup appears, pulling up beside him.

“Morning, Victor.”

“Morning.”

“Clients today?”

“Nah. Just out trying out a new pattern.”

“Any luck?”

“Not much. A few looking up.”

“Ah.” Trevor eyes Victor. Silence.

50
“Well, I’m headed on downstream to start at the junction. Take some
samples, maybe throw a line in, see what I can see. Work my way up.
Maybe I’ll see you on the water?”

“Probably not. Headed to Missoula.”

“Alright then. Have a good one.” Trevor tips his cap to Victor
and drives off.

Victor heads west to Missoula after his “restocking” mission up the

Blackfoot. Just to be cautious, he’d avoided the fishing accesses, slipping
instead onto private riverbanks to release his fish. He’d seen no one.

He pulls off the interstate onto Van Buren Street. Something’s different.
It’s not the smoke; he still can’t see the hulking mass of Lolo Peak, which
hasn’t been sighted from town for almost a year. It’s the chaos, the
urgency, in a town usually laidback. Helicopters rise from the university
grounds. Traffic’s thick and rattling with heavy equipment, FWP
vehicles, fire rigs, semis. National Guard.

He parks downtown, seeking Miles and a beer. The brewery is empty.

Victor takes a stool.

“Rye pale.” Miles, his back to Victor as he organizes the register, points to
the flyer posted above the tap handles.

DUE TO EMERGENCY AMENDMENT TO 16-3-213(1), MCA,

WE ARE UNABLE TO SERVE BEER ON-TAP OR BREW
NEW BEER UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. DUE TO WATER
SHORTAGE. SORRY FOR INCONVENIENCE.

51
“No can do, buddy.”

“Serious?”

“Yup. And we’re all out of our canned stuff. I can give you
Keystone Light or Keystone Light. Three-fifty.”

Victor, incredulous, stares back at Miles and his enormous beard,

filthy plaid shirt, bleach-blond hair pulled back into a bun.

“You’re selling that shit in here?”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with this. Plus, gotta keep business going.”

“Three-fifty? I’m guessing this was your idea? That’s gotta be a two-hundred
percent markup.”

“More like a thousand,” Miles whispers, grinning. “But for you,

buddy, because we know each other…three-fifty.”

“I’ll pass,” Victor tells him. “What’s happening around here, though?
Choppers over the U, National Guard…”

“You haven’t heard? Aw, man—bad one moving fast over near Philipsburg.
Another over on that BLM land southeast of Ovando. And the Bitterroot
fire blew up last night. They evacuated Hamilton. Campus is headquarters,
man. They even cancelled the graduation ceremonies today at the U.”

Shit. The fish.

“You didn’t know? Man, I’m like, your only source…. Yeah, they might
close I-90 east of Bearmouth. You might want to stick around Missoula
until it’s under control.”

52
“Gimme one of those beers. I’ll give you two bucks.”

Miles obliges, refuses Victor’s cash. Two gulps and the beer’s gone.
Victor’s out the door as Miles calls after him about sleeping on his couch.

Victor slogs through traffic to the interstate. Missoula’s a refugee camp,

not a headquarters. Tents huddled on the university oval, shivering in
a hot breeze; convoys of personnel trucks; young men hunched in the
shade, backs bent from toil, beards bleached blonde and tipped with ash,
eyes sunken in retreat from the sight of homes and habitats razed, life
snuffed out.

Victor finds Trevor’s FWP pickup parked outside his cabin. Trevor
creaks gently in a rocking chair on the porch, reading underneath the
porchlight. He doesn’t look up until Victor slams the driver’s side door.

“Evenin’.”

“Trevor. What can I do?”

“Beer?” Victor declines, but takes up a second rocking chair next to him.

Trevor fingers a page in the book, silently mouths a final few sentences,
claps it shut with finality.

“Caught two cutties today.” Victor’s chest thumps.

“Oh?”

“Two females. Both pregnant. About 14 inches. One near Valley

of the Moon Trailhead turnoff, the other on up.”

53
Relief. He hasn’t been up Cougar Creek.

“I’ll be damned. What’s the plan?”

“Oh, not much. We’ll have to find more first. If I do, then we’ll
probably talk management. Restrictions on browns and bulls. Not sure
exactly. We’ve never dealt with something coming back from the dead.”
Laughter as he says this.

“Huh.”

“Heard about the hoot-owl. Can’t be great for business.”

“Things’ve been slow anyway,” Victor assures him. “I’ll make do.”

Trevor opens a beer can, working the tab between a broad finger and
thumb until it comes free.

“If we do find some cutties, though, I can tell you I’ll be up here awhile.”
Trevor pauses. “Maybe we could do some fishing?”

“Sure.” Victor doesn’t do much to hide his annoyance. “I’m hitting the hay.
I’m old, need my beauty rest.”

“Surprised you haven’t seen any cutties yourself, Victor.” Trevor holds
Victor’s gaze. Hard to tell what this is.

“G’night, Trevor.”

“Say, I wanted to ask you a few questions before—”

The front door slams, and Victor extinguishes the porchlight.

54
Victor wakes to a world of fire. From his bed he sees flames, clinging to
a grove of charred trees on the ridge opposite his cabin, across the water.
A deep breath tells him his filter remains operational.

He bolts out of bed. It’s 6 a.m. Still dark. Out the front window, red
taillights recede. He finds a note on the porch.

Headed up some of the tributaries. Have an idea about these fish.

Read this thing about asexual reproduction in stressed/endangered
populations. We’ll see. Not worried about fires. Supposed to be less
windy. Will stop by this eve. Got ?s for you, and some beer.­—Trevor

Why would he head up the tributaries? Victor wonders. Unless he

knows. Unless he found those pools the day before but didn’t want to
scare Victor off.

Victor spends the morning on his porch watching the adjacent forest
burn. Thinking. Deer, frantic, flushed from the forest, cross the water
and take the roadway downstream. The ash is thick, and he observes
the occasional orange ember float past him. He’d have to evacuate today,
but he feels calm about it. He doesn’t own much, or much worth taking,
beyond his fishing gear, his books, his drift boat.

But self-preservation does not occur to Victor. It is no longer important.

It has not, in fact, been important to him for many months. No, he
thinks of his fish. Of where to take them, where they’ll be safe. If he can
make one last effort at repopulating the hallowed streams around him
as the world he knows is reduced to smoldering wreckage.

Mid-afternoon arrives and Victor collects his things, hitches the boat
trailer, locks his doors. Says an unceremonious, muttered farewell to the
squat, drafty cabin he’s lived in for six years.

55
At dusk, he strides upstream along Cougar Creek, fly rod in hand,
pesticide tank strapped to his back. Flames blanket the opposite ridge
and inquisitively brush the pebbled shoreline of Rock Creek. It had
moved faster than he’d figured. Faster than he’d thought possible.

It was decided: he’d haul as many fish as he could safely store in his pack
up the North Fork of the Blackfoot River. It’d burned up there years
before; there’s nothing left, no fuel, no people. No chance of discovery by
anyone. He’d release them all and hope for the best.

Pause. A human silhouette on the false summit ahead. Beetle-killed

ponderosa pines, needles red and brittle, sway and creak in the hot
gusts overhead.

It’s Trevor. Victor steps out of sight.

Does he know? Did he find them? Victor wonders. And then:

What the hell is he doing up here? Why hasn’t he left?

An air tanker rumbles overhead, a cascade of retardant in its wake, Kool-

Aid red and drenching, impotent against the wind-fanned flames.

Victor’s fish should be fine for a bit longer, but Trevor might be a problem.
He heads west along the open ridge face, flanking Trevor, to beat him to
the first cache of fish. Another plane dips, closer this time. More retardant,
most of it splashing errantly into the stream. Victor frowns. Jesus.

He arrives at the first pool, but Trevor has beaten him there and lies prone
on a flat boulder, peering down, staring intently, legs bent at the knees.
Victor stays still, invisible behind the huckleberry bush. Trevor reaches
into his pack and retrieves a plastic freezer bag. Corn. He sifts it through
his fingers into the water below, and in seconds Victor’s little private
reservoir comes to life.

56
“I’ll be damned,” mutters Trevor irreverently, intrigued only by what
his discovery means for his work, already deciding how to analyze and
document it, his mechanical brain churning out graphs, charts, target
numbers, management plans, memos and press releases, regulation
language and job promotions. And he knows. Of course he knows. The
reservoirs are crude and temporary. Man-made. Victor-made.

Victor sits, thinking. His phone buzzes with a text from Miles. No
calls are going through. He’s in Missoula and things have gone to
shit. Mount Jumbo’s on fire and a dozen homes are burning in the
Rattlesnake Wilderness Area. The town’s being evacuated, and to the
east, Philipsburg’s gone. That’s the word Miles uses. Gone. And they’re
not letting people east of Drummond on I-90, which means Victor’s
effectively trapped, sandwiched between two burning Montana towns,
with only the Blackfoot River corridor for an escape route.

Victor stares through the brush at Trevor, crouching, absorbed in note

taking. He watches Trevor for half an hour, longer, before he packs up
his things and heads upstream, oblivious to the burning world around
him. He should call out to Trevor, warn him. Ash snows down.

Nope. Damn him.

Victor approaches the pool and brandishes his fly rod.

He’s pulled twelve cutties from the pool when a blistering gust of
wind nearly topples him. Time to head for the truck. Making his final
descent, he spots Trevor’s pickup parked on the side of the road, just
upstream and around the bend from his own.

57
It’s unlocked, just as he’d hoped. Shifting it into neutral, he spins the
tires towards the stream and gives it a push and turns away, ignoring the
spectacle. Victor leaves Rock Creek for good.

Victor drives.

He passes droves of evacuees. Great Falls has fallen, or is falling, or will

fall. He’s the only one headed towards it. He drives through pockets of
thick smoke and ash, against the glow of headlights. Past Ovando traffic
thins, trickles, disappears. Occasional bleary-eyed headlights squint
through a world smudged.

Alone, small, streaking east, Victor delivers his fish to safety. But he can’t
see safety. The razor ridges of the Bob Marshall Wilderness to the north
have melted into the smoke, the world now only a few feet of asphalt
and the glint of roadside reflectors as Victor pushes on. The turnoff for
the North Fork of the Blackfoot sneaks up on him and he has to make a
U-turn.

Now, across what was, before the smoke, a vast plain. Toward mountains
that are now merely hypothetical, feeling his way across rough earth, a
frantic finger after a missing light switch.

Up. Cracked pavement crumbles into graded dirt, the uniform rattle of
a cattle guard, more dirt. A horse trailer on its side. Flames like embers
behind ashy fog. His truck coughs as he rattles across the bridge and
turns left and onto the cracked concrete ramp of the boat takeout.

58
Deep breath. He retrieves the tank gently, methodically. Like he’s done
it before, because he has. It’s heavy as he carries it to the river’s edge. He
unscrews the plastic lid and heaves, tilting the opening towards the low
water flowing past.

Out float Victor’s fish, stiff and still, white bellies up.

Matthew Henry is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Literature program

at Arizona State University, where he has taught several courses in
the environmental humanities. His dissertation explores the ways
that literature, photography, film, and other forms of media enable us
to confront and imaginatively engage with issues of resource scarcity,
particularly water. He is an avid hiker, backpacker, and river-runner
who loves to spend time with his wife, Jessica and their dog, Abbey.

59
60
Acqua Alta
Ashley Bevilacqua Anglin

It’s not an undersea cave, but it might be. Every clammy breath
is redolent of the lagoon water that covers the marble floor to the
admittedly still-shallow depth of my knees. When I shine my headlamp
down at the elegant geometric patterns, white and red inlaid among
smooth gray tiles that have only cracked in a few places so far, I startle
tiny eels, which race back into the dark. Turning the beam upward, I
catch the undimmed glitter of the exquisite golden mosaics on the upper
walls and the ceilings. There’s nothing else of value left, but the mosaics
were deemed too complicated and costly to transport. Venezialand has
painstakingly scanned and 3D-printed copies. The originals are still
mine, as long as I’m here. No one else seems to want them anyway, or
they wouldn’t have closed it all off in darkness.

I was the last baby born at the Ospedale San Raffaele Arcangelo to
native Venetian parents. It’s been closed for over a decade. The flat
where we lived then, the room where my crib would have been, is
usually underwater now.

I actually like to think of it that way sometimes. If I’d been born a

mermaid, this would be a time of exhilarating conquest—my realm
taking back, little by little, the hundred and seventeen islands on
which the city arose, flourished, and eventually declined.

61
Unfortunately, only my wobbly lamplit reflection can spend her life
in the ever-rising acqua alta. For one thing, nonno probably won’t eat
unless I go home and make something for the two of us.

I call him nonno, but he’s my great-grandfather, really. Even ninety-

eight years ago, when he was born, younger generations had started to
leave without learning the trades that had made their families proud
for centuries. Nonno was a gondola builder. When he was a kid my age,
girls couldn’t learn to make a gondola. But by the time he was a master
craftsman, with both his sons having left for the mainland, he was able
to pass his vast knowledge on to his youngest daughter, my nonna. I’d
like it if she were still here.

He can’t see well enough to work anymore, even if his hands were
steadier. Not that there’s any market for an authentic gondola here.
Now they sell them someplace else, inspired by the success of New New
Orleans in North America: a carefully constructed artificial lagoon,
surrounded by holos that make it look like it’s not just in the middle of
mainland Italy where the Adriatico won’t reach for hundreds of years,
probably. Until mermaids take back the whole planet like in the times
of Noè and his ark.

Reluctantly, I slosh out through the child-sized gap in the planking.

It’s getting tougher to slip through there. Maybe by this time next year
I’ll need to find another way in.

I take the first couple of steps on my feet. After that, it’s easier just to
break the raindrop-patterned surface of the cloudy chest-deep water
with a splash and swim back across the piazza to higher ground, the
same way I got here.

62
When nonno was a boy, the acqua alta didn’t usually come up higher than
half a meter. Now, in the winter, two meters isn’t unusual. He doesn’t let
me out to slosh or swim around my favorite abandoned places in that
weather. It’s October now, so I try to explore while I still can.

The ring around my wrist pulses in a pattern that tells me it’s papà.
I activate it by touch, without having to look at it.

“Pronto,” I greet him as if I didn’t know who was calling me.

“Hey, pescecagnolino,” he says in his rough-sweet baritone. He’s been

calling me that, “shark-puppy,” for as long as I can remember.

“Hey. How’s Ariel?”

“Didn’t run into her today,” he answers lightly. “But Cenerentola

says Ciao.”

Asking him about the princesses is my standard line. His answer varies.
He knows exactly what I think of the recreated Venice where he and
his second wife live now, along with both my uncles who learned the
gondola-making craft from nonno and from their mother. And I know
he thinks he’s doing the best thing, preserving their knowledge there.
We tolerate each other’s strong opinions. During the last year and half,
with me getting to stay here and him pretty happy there, there’s been a
lot more tolerance on his part, and a lot less screaming until my voice is
gone on my part.

So I do my best to have a nice conversation. “Were you featured on

any of the casts today?”

“Eh. They’re forever in there capturing. I don’t really pay attention to

what they use, by now. Probably.”

63
“Well, I’ll try to watch later.”

They’re forever in there capturing because papà and his wife Veronica
are among the last authentic glassblowers of Murano, another magical
underwater place that doesn’t really exist anymore. Also because the
world can’t get enough of papa’s lagoon-blue eyes, his salt-and-pepper
stubble, the accent. And willowy blonde Veronica did some modeling
when she was younger, so…obviously.

I look like mamma, who looked like her mamma, whom I never met, but
I know she looked like my nonno. We have sort of oversized feet and
hands, big inky eyes too weirdly round for the cameras, and fine brown
hair—neither fair enough nor dark enough for beauty—that wants to
move like we’re underwater even when it’s dry. (Nonno’s hair, obviously,
is half lost to the ages, and what’s left is all white now.) I also have this
habit of using words too long or old or hard to spell. None of that would
make the camera like me. Fine. I don’t like it right back. I love the secret
lost places it doesn’t want to look at anymore.

“And, pescecagnolino. After you watch the casts from today, I want
you to take a careful look at the meteo. Talk about it with the old man.
You know he won’t listen to anyone but you.”

I’ve reached our palazzo. Dripping, I climb the steps into the lobby.
It’s late enough that I need my headlamp again.

“What is it?”

“Acqua alta,” he says.

“So? What’s new.”

64
“I don’t want to argue. Watch it with him. I already have a plan
for you, but legally, no one can tell him what to do, and I need you
to convince him.”

“What?”

“Call me back if you don’t understand, all right?”

I can hear it then, the baby’s voice in the background.

“Oh, I get it,” I snap, my hand already on my ring. “Gotta go be with

your real family. Ciao papà.”

I don’t wait for his answer; there’s no repeat pulse.

When I get upstairs, my own real family isn’t asleep in his chair with
music droning quietly in the background, as I would have expected.
He’s up and about, stirring something that smells comfortingly like our
lagoon over the little gas burner that is our only stove now.

“Nonno, you know you shouldn’t use the stove when no one’s here.”

He mumbles a few words that are much too salty for any eleven-year-
old mermaid. I smother a giggle because he doesn’t think I could have
heard him. “And you know you’re over an hour late. Go put on some
dry clothes, and we’ll eat.”

“Is that baccalà?” I sigh, still not happy with him, but relenting almost
at once from hunger and affection.

“Just for you, serenissima.” His pet name for me, prettier than “baby
shark,” plays on the name of our city, La serenissima. Mine means
“the mermaidiest.”

65
By the time I get into some fleece leggings and a hooded shirt and socks,
squeeze as much water from my hair as I can, and hang my towel and
clothes over the railing of the defunct shower, I’ve figured it out. I come
over to the extinguished stove and slip an arm around his bony straight
shoulders. We’re close in height these days, with him slowly sinking and
me on my way up. I gently pry the ladle from his long fingers and scoop
polenta into the two blue bowls on the counter.

“They called you already, huh?”

“Eh?”

I add a scoop of fragrant reddish fish stew to each bowl. It’s old-
fashioned comfort food, made of stuff you can get out of a can or a
box, because mostly that’s what we have—but it happens to be one of
my favorites. Tonight, maybe because I just came from my magnificent
jeweled undersea cavern, I notice the unexpectedly fine appearance of
our dishes of simple food. Blue, red, and gold, they look like they’re for
royalty instead of weirdos living off the grid in a drowning and forgotten
city. Slipping a spoon into each bowl, I set one on the antique table in
front of nonno—its surface a little warped from so many years of so
much moisture, but still elegant—and slide around to the other side to
take my own seat.

“Zio Marco or Zio Tonino must’ve called you. Or both of them ganged up
on you, probably.”

He raises his spiky white brows at me for just a moment. “Oh.

And your father called you already, too. A conspiracy.”

I blow on the first steaming spoonful and bring it to my mouth faster

than nonno can say “buon appetito.” Still too hot, but good enough that I
ignore the slight burn, and quickly go for a second bite.

66
“Thanks for cooking dinner,” I tell him belatedly, after a few
more mouthfuls.

He smiles slightly, making a funny little salute with his spoon. For a few
minutes, we both just eat and sip the filtered rainwater in our glasses.
He’s prepared just enough for one elderly adult and one ravenous growing
girl. We generally try not to have leftovers of anything perishable; the
battered mini-fridge takes too much juice from our cantankerous
generator. What I don’t finish, I’ll often feed to the feral cats who inhabit
several of the abandoned apartments in our building. Tonight they won’t
get a drop.

“So,” nonno brings it up first, since he’s done with his portion while
I’m still shoveling mine in. “Let’s see this ominous meteo.”

The technology is frustrating for him. I activate my communication ring

and with a few flicks, we’re ready to watch the cast papà insisted that
we see. I set it to project with enough magnification for nonno to catch
most of the images. Then I pick up my spoon again.

They’re talking really fast about a freighter capsized in what they still
call freak storms even though they seem to happen yearly. A toxic spill.
Storm surge and a perigean spring tide. Apparently that means the worst
flooding you can get, plus poison. Something about seventy-two hours.
Evacuations. I can’t believe it. I shut the cast off.

“Sirenissima,” nonno starts to say.

I draw a deep, quavering breath. Unlike papà and me, we don’t fight,
and I have no desire to start right now.

“I can’t go to that theme park, nonno,” I insist, keeping my voice as

calm as I half-humanly can.

67
“I know, amore mio.” He shakes his venerable, disheveled head. “Maybe…
we’ll talk to your great-uncles.”

The great-uncles I’ve never met because their leaving the family trade,
their birthright, and their birthplace caused such a rift with nonno?
Why would we stay with those traitors? I shake my head, not in puzzled
thought like nonno, but defiantly.

“Or we could stay. Wait it out until spring. It’s not so much longer
than a regular winter, nonno.”

Nonno reaches across the table to mess up my still-damp hair with a

shaky little caress. “We don’t have to decide tonight. In the morning
we’ll figure out what to tell papà, okay?”

I don’t expect the gentle laugh I get in response to my grudging nod.

“You’re more like your grandmother than you could possibly imagine,”
he explains without my needing to ask.

Then—since he’s just said we don’t have to talk about it—he takes his
own ring from the breast pocket of his old shirt and switches on a stream
of the music they liked when he was young.

I clear the table, wash everything up with rainwater from our improvised
tap that runs down from the roof cistern. Then, not even caring that it’s
embarrassingly early for a kid my age to go to bed, I get under all my
blankets, stretch gratefully out, and sleep without dreaming.

School is in the morning, after rainwater cappuccino with milk from a

shelf-stable pack, a biscotto, and no mention yet of the big decision we

68
have to make. No other kids live near here anymore, so there’s been no
school in the traditional sense since I was eight, but we have our ways.
Nonno has tons of books lining the walls of his bedroom. (Everyone
else’s book collections are digital and fit in their rings, instead of
requiring rooms…but everyone else isn’t ninety-eight, after all.)

He knows such an incredible range and depth of things. And the best part
is, he’ll let me read almost anything I like, as long as it’s not too sad for
children or with too much sex that the elderly master builder shouldn’t
have to be the one to explain to his daughter’s daughter’s daughter. (I
do have some questions by this time, but I have to agree, they’re not for
him.) Lately I’m reading this small, mysterious book, Le città invisibili,
about Marco Polo. It’s all dreamscapes, ideas hard for me to catch, arcane
vocabulary nonno makes me look up. As Polo describes his travels to the
Great Khan, every exotic city ultimately reminds him of his own beloved
Venice. I’m hoping to learn the trick to that, just in case.

We’re interrupted by a quietly assertive series of knocks on the apartment

door. There are a few neighbors. We check on each other and lend help
when it’s needed, but I don’t recall anyone we know knocking like that.

I’ve formulated the image of some kind of officer on the other side of the
door, by the time my hand touches the knob. There’s still an active camera
someplace in one of my underwater caverns and they’re going to tell me to
stop sneaking in. The doorknob rattles a bit in my hand as I open the door,
holding my breath. I hope there won’t be a big fine. I’m pretty sure they
don’t send girls my age to prison.

It is someone in a uniform, but not like I was thinking. A tall United

Forces peacekeeper in gray, his smile very white in his coffee-brown face
even though he’s never met me before.

69
“Good morning,” he says, speaking English to me without asking
if I speak English.

“Hi.” I realize I’m still holding the old book. I wrap my left hand
possessively around it and press it against my sweater, hiding the title.

“Are you aware of the tidal problems we’re anticipating later this week?”

“Yeah.”

His black eyebrows curve upward into more pronounced arches,

registering his confusion at my monosyllabic responses. “Can you
understand me all right, miss?”

“Yes, I attended a bilingual school for as long as they still had schools
here, I skipped a grade, I helped give tours of our workshop when there
were tourists, and most of the casts I watch are in English,” I fire off.

He has a soft, deep laugh. I wish he weren’t so easy to like.

“Okay,” he tells me. “And…” Looking over my shoulder to where

nonno hasn’t gotten up from his chair, although obviously he’s paying
close attention. “How about your grandpa?”

“He understands you, but he’ll answer in Italian.” Venetian dialect, to

be technical. My well-educated nonno knows mainland Italian, and he’s
fairly fluent in English. He’s just extremely proud.

“All right.” He smiles again.

And then I understand why they sent someone likeable: because that’s
the best way to protect him from someone like me scratching his shiny
dark eyes right out of his nice face in the time it takes for him to tell
us the bad news.

70
The looming choice, the one nonno and I were going to figure out
together, is out of our hands. Everyone is required to leave the city.
The boat will leave from Madonna dell’Orto at eight hundred hours
tomorrow. No more supplies in or any other way out until a time yet to
be determined, not sooner than the first of the year. We can bring fifteen
kilos of personal belongings each. Food and other basic necessities will
be taken care of, and there will be transportation vouchers to help get
everyone to their nearest family or friends.

Nonno answers him in Venetian. Not the kind of words I am

going to translate.

“I’m really sorry, sir,” the nice soldier responds.

Then he looks back down at me, catching me with pools of lagoon

water trembling furiously against my eyelashes. “You two have
somewhere to go?”

Teeth clenched, I nod, which sends the stinging tears spilling down
my face.

“Okay, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

I give him one more slow nod.

I guess he can see on my face that my mind is still racing,

because he adds, “Promise me.”

“Promise,” I sigh.

“Okay, take care, signorina. Eight hundred hours, Madonna dell’Orto.”

71
I watch him head down the stairs, activating his ring as he goes. I bet
it’s set up to detect concentrations of body heat big enough to be people
instead of feral cats. That’s what I’d want, if I were the United Forces.
That’s how he knew where to find us. I would have figured mer-people
had colder blood, and maybe could have stayed hidden, but I guess not.

When I can’t see or hear him anymore, I shut the door between us and
slither down into a bony little heap with my back against it. I know
it’s bad when even my beloved nonno can’t come up with anything
comforting to say at first.

“Think about it, though,” he offers eventually. “A beautiful burrata and

some fresh fruit. Persimmons and grapes, clementines, we can get those
right now.”

“You can get anything, nonno…remember, they invented airplanes

a while ago,” I spit out.

He smiles more gently than my meanness deserves. “An old man still
believes the frutta fresca di stagione is best.”

“Of course,” I relent.

Opening the door that lets the desire in also allows the tears out.
An acqua alta of tears. Most of them are mine, but more than a few
are his too.

He picks the most important books and things to take along, but
there are few items of value left here. I put some pieces of jewelry that
belonged to mamma and her mother in a little travel pouch I can wear
under my clothes. The other possession I take is my collection of glass
figurines, all made for me by papà and his workshop, one for each

72
birthday I’ve celebrated. By the time I was four, he knew that I wanted
sea creatures the most. The last two, a sleek emerald turtle and a graceful
iridescent jellyfish, were both featured on the Muranocast as they were
being made. The mail barge that brought them here would have had to go
right past the real Murano to get to me.

The one before that was a wonderful starfish, the colors of a blood
orange. He created that one for me when I was in Venezialand. I loved it
the day he made it. But during the three weeks I was there, I got so full of
anger and grief and poison feelings, all building up like a perigean spring
tide, that I threw it on their marble floor and stomped on all the pieces
with my boot heel.

Sometimes I wish for that starfish back, but I’d never say so to him.

The surviving figurines I pack into a plastic box, cushioned by extra

socks because they’re the right shape and size. I put it, Le città invisibili,
and some extra clothes into my backpack. Nonno’s got an old suitcase
with wheels, which I maneuver downstairs for him in the early morning.
Everything else, in the end, we leave. Either we’ll be back and get it next
year, or we won’t.

I’m in no mood to call papà, but before we head out, I send him a quick
message to let him know the plan—from nonno’s ring, because that way
if he answers, I don’t have to look at it myself.

We find our awkward UF Prince Charming waiting in a little hovercraft

in the campo when we get outside. Nonno has a few more choice words
under his breath for the spectacularly ugly conveyance he must stoop
to ride in, but I have to admit, I’m grateful not to have to help him all
the way to the old vaporetto stop through the frigid acqua alta and this
morning’s cloudbank of fog.

73
There are less than three hundred of us on the boat, not counting
a dozen or so UF men and women. I’d be very surprised if anyone
has dared stay behind; I’m pretty sure there’s no one out there more
stubborn than nonno and me together.

I glance over the assembled refugees as the biodiesel motor revs from
a low idling hum to a purposeful roar. They’re a pretty pathetic lot. Just
a handful of other children, not anybody I ever saw before, and a lot
of skinny older people, although none as old as my nonno. Most are
neatly dressed, even if their clothes are far from the latest fashions. I’ve
taken more time than usual to comb my wayward hair back into a nice
fishtail braid, and I have on a pair of my mother’s little earrings with
swirls of green and purple Murano glass, their depths sparkling with
flakes of real gold leaf. We’re all sitting straight in our places, like ladies
and gentlemen. But there is no light in anyone’s eyes. Everyone’s skin
looks dull.

All the Marco Polos and the Veronica Francos and the Antonio
Vivaldis left a long time ago, I have to remind myself.

So I get up and go look over the railing. Not back at my vanishing city,
which I’d rather remember looking a lot of other ways than this, but
ahead. I try to embrace the noble optimism of that, but honestly, it’s gray
and boring. The fine cold rain stings my face until I retreat back to the
seating area and fall asleep in the patient half-circle of nonno’s arm.

Then there’s an ugly port, a lunch I don’t particularly taste, a jaunty

wave from the UF soldier who was nice to me, a short bus ride to a long
train ride, to a place where my papà gets out of a shiny carpod under
streetlights bright as spotlights against a black sky, and stands staring
at me with liquid eyes.

74
When he gathers me close against his gorgeously soft coat, he’s a lot
shorter than I remember. I feel a tear land on the top of my head.

“I know you’re not as glad to be here as I am to have you, pescecagnolino.

And no one likes the way it happened. But I really am glad you’re
with us.”

I just keep hugging him. Hopefully I didn’t leave all my words back
in our apartment somewhere.

He’s brought something for us to eat on the ride. Not much, he apologizes,
after he’s programmed the pod to take us home and we’re all facing one
another as if in a tiny rounded room. Only paper-thin sliced salumi and
cheeses, golden-crusted rolls that must have been baked this morning,
a chilled bottle of sparkling mineral water. I tell nonno with just a
remorseful glance that he did have a point about the food. He gives me
his little one-cornered smile without interrupting whatever papà is saying.
The two men go on talking softly as we roll along the dark road. It takes
most of my focus to keep from tearing up like a stupid baby when I bite
into the first one of the perfect plums papà offers.

Sometime after that, I drift to sleep, lulled by a belly full of delicious

things and the dark and papà’s cashmere shoulder and the motion of the
carpod. The next thing I know I’m in bed, with full sunlight coming in
around my blinds. I can’t find it in me to be embarrassed that my father
must have been the one to carry me there.

I’m so comfortable I could almost fall back asleep, but intense curiosity
pops my eyes wide within a few waking moments. It pulls me out of the
lovely warm bed to explore this new room. I put my feet down on the
feathery rug that covers most of the floor, although gleaming tiles are
visible all around the perimeter of the room.

75
It’s nice. Big enough for one person, clean, modern, almost all white, as
if we’d gone all the way to Scandinavia instead of just to here. New. Like
they didn’t know me well enough to know how to decorate it. Actually, I
appreciate that they didn’t choose for me.

I know the theme park is going to be right outside, so I don’t open

the blinds yet.

Anyway, there’s a little wrapped package on my white nightstand. My

birthday isn’t for another month but I can guess what this is. I work
the old-fashioned marbled paper open without tearing it, and slide the
tissue-wrapped contents out.

It’s a mermaid perched on a rock, her silvery color concentrated in her

tail. She even has flakes of precious metal, like mamma’s earrings. You
can’t see her downturned face, lost in a swirl of hair. Glass figurines
don’t have many precise features. The dramatically asymmetrical tail fin
is the one clearly defined thing about her. I study that for just a moment:
obviously it’s not a mistake. I soon see that the fin is also turned the
opposite way. Normal mermaids have tail fins shaped like a dolphin’s,
but this one is half shark.

I start to go looking for nonno to show him how amazing it is. Before
I can find him, I realize I should thank papà first, but anyway, the
apartment is quiet. Belatedly I notice my ring flickering and access
the voice message papà has left for me.

“Ciao, bella. I hope it’s okay, we’ve gone out and let you sleep. Turn on the
livecast—maybe you’ll still see us showing nonno off to everyone.”

I wish I hadn’t missed it, but I would have been a beast if they’d tried to
wake me up sooner. Meanwhile, a hot shower beckons as enticingly as

76
any gelateria. (I put gelato on my short list for later.) I find the bathroom,
set up the cast to start showing while I’m bathing.

There’s papà and nonno walking along the fake Canal Grande, close
to the fake Ponte Rialto: deep green water well below the level of the
bridge, where it’s supposed to be, bright with sunlight like embedded
flecks of gold leaf. As I pan around the crowd, I can tell that a lot of the
adoring onlookers are really there to watch my movie star father, whom
they must have viewed and re-viewed on all the casts while planning the
trip of a lifetime to see the amazing Venezialand. But the title crawl has
nonno’s name: Last Master Gondola Builder Arrives as Old Venice Faces
Unprecedented Flooding.

A gondola is coming up the canal. Maybe he directed its construction

himself, once upon a time. Nonno calls out to the gondoliere in their
particular dialect, now reduced to a museum artifact. The awestruck
younger man greets him with the traditional salute. I zoom in to find
that though he is waving and smiling bravely, shoulders straight as ever,
his eyes are black and opaque behind the tears. He looks so gray, ages
older than ninety-eight, thin as translucent vellum.

Like one of the fairytale creatures we now are, my nonno dies of a

broken heart. Not that same morning. It’s cracked all the way through,
but it takes a few months for the life that’s left to seep away. He’s here
long enough to smile genuinely on the day the baby says my name before
saying mamma or papà. Long enough to hear that there are still a lot of
tears and some awful fights between papà and me, even if I can’t bear to
smash the beautiful shark mermaid, even if my own broken heart is young
enough to knit itself back together. Long enough to see me excelling to
the point of occasional boredom at my new school.

77
Not, grazie a Dio, long enough to hear the word we receive in February.
They’re not allowing anyone back home. UNESCO will make decisions
based on the most recent climate data, so one day you might visit it like
Pompeii, but it will never again be a living city. This is home now. I’m
glad he never had to hear that news, even though I think he knew it in
his fatally water-damaged heart.

Whenever school gets too easy, my attention wanders back there. I

daydream a plan for when I’m grown and can work with those UNESCO
people. La Sirenissima Mermaid’s Treasure, Livecasts and Tours...

Dive with our expert native guide to enter the majestic churches
and palaces of Old Venice, still standing firm on their ancient
foundations. Observe new marine life establishing its habitat in
Piazza San Marco and beyond. Traverse the path of the original
canals in a genuine Old Venetian gondola.

78
Ashley Bevilacqua Anglin is passionate about communication, and
specifically storytelling. She holds linguistics and comparative literature
degrees, and teaches college-level Italian and Spanish. She’s been telling
stories in writing, dance, song, and drama since she was younger than
the protagonist of her story “Acqua Alta” (who is inspired in part by her
two amazing daughters). She began the story during National Novel
Writing Month 2015; it shared a “womb” with the climate fiction novel
she is working on now.

79
80
The Grandchild Paradox
Daniel Thron

– I could kill them.

– Don’t talk like that.

Kimmy and I stand at the gate, waiting. Inside the house, we can see a
bunch of old grandpas watching TV. In most of these places now they
all live together, eating MREs from the bag. A colony, like old crabs,
snapping at each other. Finally, one gathers up his money, comes out
to pay us for the bike. No thank-yous today, I guess. That’s the Tops
for you.

– I’m serious. I could. What? You’d do the same. The mess we live in now?
You had a time machine, that’s the first thing you’d do. Go back, take
them out before they can fuck it all up like they did.

– No, that’s the first thing you’d do.

Kimmy is such a pain in the ass, always talking like she’s better, you
know? I mean for Christ’s sake, I want to say to her: You’re a human
goddamned being. We breathe, we sleep, we eat, we get angry over
stupid shit, and we kill people for screwing us over. That’s what we do.
Even people you never met? she’d say. Even people you don’t know?

81
Of course! Of course, I would say back to her imaginary face in this
supposed portion of the conversation. Someone’s to blame for this world.
Someone is, and it’s not me, not us. Fuck them. I could kill those fuckers.

– So, okay. Pretend you did, then.

Maybe I said that last part out loud. Shit. Sometimes I do that, I get all
up in my head.

– Then you’d never be born. Right? I mean, pretend you went back and—

– Yeah, I know. I saw the movie, I get it.

Kimmy is my best friend, and I’m in love with her. I tell her every
chance I get so that, when I’m sitting at the bike shop complaining to
Stuart about it being all unrequited and whatnot—well, at least I’m not
just some asshole who didn’t speak up.

She is beautiful. She glows, raw. She can be careless and kind of a dick
now and then, but makes me laugh always. We’ve slept together a few
times. I know I’m not as good at it as she is, and she’s cool with that. She
smells like a laundry basket. She puts the money away. We get going.

– I’m in love with you.

– Now you tell me?

Smiles. Good God, you know?

With only one bike between us, Kimmy’s hopped on behind me for the
ride back down. For a while I take it easy, but then I make a turn and
lean hard, pulling my feet up and letting the pedals spin. She yelps,
laughing, and inside of a second we are going a hundred, maybe two
hundred miles an hour down the busted-up stairs that roll out like

82
a tongue down into the big street by the water, right along the Boats,
where we live.

Not together, Kimmy and me. Not always, anyway. But not far apart. I
grew up with her in the Boats, watching this island shrink. When our
parents were kids, there were no boats here. It wasn’t even an island; it was
the mainland. It’s like it was all the Tops back then, a million years ago.
When no one needed anything and everyone had it all.

I built this bike from scratch. My first one—just finished it last night.
Stuart’s been giving me extra parts here and there for a year or so, and
finally it all added up once I got a good chain. I’ve been working for him
off and on since I was ten. Kimmy only helps sometimes, but more and
more lately. Stuart builds and fixes the bikes, then sends us out to sell
them up in the Tops for Tops­-dollars. I go so much he even got me a pass
for deliveries. Had to, just for my safety.

They catch some skinny Boat kid up here with no pass and ten or twenty
bucks in real money on him? They don’t go for that. Kimmy doesn’t have a
pass, but she can talk her way out of it, she thinks. I believe it.

We zip through narrow roads. There’s no real view, not like you’d expect.
The Tops is not so high, nothing here is. But higher is higher. Dry land.

The houses here were all hunched up to begin with, but since they cleared
out all the old cars they’ve been squeezing in on the streets like plaque in
an artery. Lonely brick and plaster boxes, shouldering in on each other,
shrinking from the water that someday—someday—will be coming for
them. Windows looking down on the ones that are already gone, just
down the hill, a mile or two away. Mossy walls falling apart like wet paper
into the shallows. That’s why they lock us out at night. I think they think
we bring that wet with us.

83
 But in the day they don’t mind seeing me. For the bikes, and for the
sweet fact that they don’t live down there. I’m the novelty that reminds
them they’re not me. Not yet, thank God. Thank God.

If I weren’t on this fixed­up machine, though—if it was just my own

brown soles, they would hustle me down to the Boats faster than you
can blink. Fast as we are going right now, only with no wheels between
my ass and those cobbled stairs.

All speculative. Right now, the reality is different: Kimmy is

screaming into my neck, laughing. Pedals spinning like blades.
Thuthuthuthuthump, no stopping us now. I’m happy, I did it right, I
think: this is the shakedown cruise for this bike, the test. It’s kinda
knocky, loose, but it’s going. Stuart let me do the whole thing. He looked
at it sort of sideways when I said it was done. But it’s working.

Kimmy, hanging on, crunches her arms around me like a kid with a new
cat. I can feel her grinning, punching me in the shoulder with a curled­up
fist, her chin bouncing on my neck every time the wheels hit a step, teeth
clicking in my ear, holding on, holding on. It’s too fast and I’m afraid
and it’s hilarious, and I can see the street coming up below, puddles
of seawater quick and gleaming, little birds freaking out, scaring each
other when they hear us coming, exploding in flapping clouds—and for
a second I want so bad to stomp on those pedals, turn the gears back,
reverse the chain and hold this forever, never hitting the street because it
can’t get better than this, all downhill, all downhill from here.

­­­­­­­­­­

The thing is? I just about could.

Kill them, I mean. The time machine question.

84
 Sometimes it gets bad, like when the freighters are late by a month or two,
and someone from down here, maybe their baby dies from old water or
something, and they run, crying with rage, up to the Tops to try to take
one of those old crabs out. Blaming them, wanting blood. More and more
often, it feels like. It’s stupid, but I understand it.

Because I look at this boat, this shitty reeking boat with its patched­up
browning fiberglass hull, three inches of which is all that’s keeping us
from drowning in our sleep, and I think you bet, you better believe I
could. I’d go back and strangle you. All of you at once, all crowded up in
my hands. I’d say: this is what you left us? This? Now what am I supposed
to do? Working bikes, odd jobs, waiting for the bad water to leach into the
ground, for the heat and bacterial blooms? What was my life supposed to
be? Do I deserve this? Is that what you think, you bastards?

Then snap snap snap, all of you. Like cracking my knuckles.

But if I did, and you were gone, then the logic of it says I’d be gone too,
and then I never would have gone back in the first place. Once more you’d
be old grandpas up in the Tops, and I’d be right back here in the Boats
again. Rinse, repeat.

Ah, enough of that shit. Gotta get out of my head. Kimmy is here. She’s
here. She is bare against my side, skin hot, her natural high-­energy state
simmering beneath it as she sleeps. It’s quiet. Yes. Yes, the world is a
hellhole. Sure. But with her up against me like this, not caring? For a few
hours, a different answer.

­­­­­­­­­­

85
 A little while later I wake up, peek my head out into the air. Kimmy is
there hanging her legs over the side, pushing the dark arches of her feet
against a gutted tire on the gunwale of the next boat.

I climb up and join her. The far water is bright smoke. She doesn’t look
up, just starts talking:

– So hey. What if we have a baby?

– What if what?

– A baby, you and me.

I try to navigate this: fail.

– Are you having a baby?

– Am I? You mean are we.

– Kimmy.

She laughs, stands, swats my head and goes below again.

– What? You got some big plans?

Nothing to say about that. I sit, my feet are in the warm water, too warm
for most anything that used to grow in it to grow anymore.

­­­­­­­­­­

– She joking, brah. Joking. You like ten years old.

– I don’t know.

– You just a baby. Born two minutes ago.

86
– I’m nineteen. Shut up. I’m for real.

Stuart waves his wrench at me, shakes his head.

– She ain’t gonna be serious about you. You ain’t serious. Look at you. You
a burnt piece of chicken.

– She was serious.

– She is. You ain’t.

A blasting horn, way off, warping through the night fog. Supply freighter.
This time of year probably the Poitier. More fresh water, MREs. Stuart
buys extra with all his Tops-­dollars, grinds them up with crabmeat and
ash for soil, trying to start a tomato farm above deck. Some luck, but they
are small, only little red marbles. He looks at my bike.

– How’d it hold up?

– Took it down Long Steps. Kimmy and me. It was shaky but it kept going
okay.

– Then you did it right. You didn’t break your face, you did it right.

– Ha. You weren’t the one riding. Scary as hell.

– Boy, like I’ve never been down steps before?

Bikes creak over his head, chains and spokes and rubber netted together
in bunches, swaying with the tide beneath us. Stuart hoards them to keep
the price high in the Tops.

– But here’s the thing.

87
 I try to get Stuart to imagine the future. I try to have him picture this
place—the island—fifty years, sixty, down the road. This possible boy of
mine is an old man now.

What does he have left? I ask him. When the freighters have stopped,
when the Tops are empty of old men, when all their houses finally give
way to the water? When all the dirt has gone beneath and there’s nothing
left to anchor to anymore? To grow up like I did, watching it happen.
Stuck in this nest of wrecks forever running aground, the shoreline
tightening like a noose year by year, till we’re all at sea.

– What can I give him? What can I leave for him if there’s so little for us
right now?

He looks at me like I’m crazy. He wants to joke, but sees the upset in my
eyes.

– She got you, eh? She really got you.

He smiles, tapping my chest with the wrench. Laughs.

– Maybe you serious after all.

­­­­­­­­­­

Our son grows up. He meets a woman. The Boats drift, tied together in
a huge mass, trying to find landfall, someone that will let them in. More
refugees in a refugee world.

They have a child. We grow old. We die. And in time, so do they.

My grandchild, alone in a skiff on the hot, black water. Adrift. How can
I do that to him? If he came back in time to right now, if he came back to
kill me—how could I ever explain myself?

88
­­­­­­­­­­

– Kill who?

– It’s okay. Go to sleep. I was just talking like I do. Go to sleep, it’s nothing.

– Tell me.

I tell her.

– Well, maybe they have a girl. Maybe we have a girl. You don’t know.

– It’s the same.

– You think women sit around worrying if our granddaughters will come
back through time and murder us? That’s more of a boy story, I think.

– Forget it.

– What are you so scared of?

– I don’t know. The future.

– It’s not the future.

– Not now, no.

She sits up, serious.

– Not ever. Those old guys up in the Tops, you know the worst thing they
did? They gave up. They thought it was all inevitable. So they fucking gave
up. You hate those guys so much, you gotta be careful you don’t become
like them, you know? There’s only now. That’s the only time you get to say
how things are. You know?

89
– Okay.

I shut up and she pulls me up close, kisses the corner of my mouth,

and we hold each other for a time, letting the waves roll us around.
Breathing, sleeping, holding each other in the only time machine I need.

­­­­­­­­­­

I wake up, a circle of sun on one eye making me wince. The boat is
empty for a while, then I hear Kimmy’s bare feet hop and thump up on
deck above, coming back from a breakfast­-scrounging tour.

Muted, happy voices drift in as she chats with my starboard neighbor.

I don’t even know the guy. I’ve lived in this boat most of my life. I’ve
repaired it like my mom taught me. I’ve fished from it. My dad died
right over there, in his sleep. And I don’t even know the guy she’s talking
to right now.

Kimmy looks down inside. In her hand, a bag of Stuart’s tomatoes. She
pops one in her mouth, throws the rest to me.

– They’re good, right?

I wipe off a smear of chain grease, bite into one. Sour and sweet, tiny as
hell. I nod, she smiles.

– Now get the hell up, lazy ass. Got work to do.

The day goes on. The crabs making their way, clicking and sidling, up
through the old buildings and failing walls, looking for snails, bits of
anything to eat. We sidle along with them. Ten or fifteen of us today.
Buckets, nets, poles. It’s windy, spitting seawater like rain. Out away

90
from the Boats, the Poitier has dropped anchor. A tiny flotilla has gone
out to meet it to get the things we need to keep on going.

Kimmy and I work at it, and the pots are full before noon. Enough to sell
in the Tops and enough to keep for dinner. Lucky. Some days it takes till
nightfall, but this month it’s been much better, or at least it seems so. I
don’t know. Might just be my imagination.

Daniel Thron is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He has

worked extensively in both visual effects and videogames.

91
92
Wonder of the World
Kathryn Blume

It started with Star Trek. Ben—just shy of 15—had been a total trouper
all week, stoking the fire while we canned the last of the late fall
tomatoes, making jam from the third crop of October raspberries,
and getting another load of firewood split.

There’s hardly any maple left anymore, but we did get some, and his glee
at the way those few pieces just leapt apart beneath his axe made me tell
yet another tale about the bygone days of fall color and spring sugar. Ben
was patient, even if I have recounted these stories a thousand times.

Back to Star Trek. We had a few hours of power, coupled with a rare
moment of all-chores-done quiet, so I asked if he wanted to watch a
couple old Star Treks I’d checked out from the library. Ever the history
buff, I couldn’t resist pointing out how the communicators on the show
had influenced the design of cell phones 30 years later.

Ben asked, “What about Tricorders? Those are cool, too.”

“Yeah,” I said, “they developed medical equipment something like

that. But what we really need now is another kind of communications
device to fill in when the networks are down.”

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Ben gave me one of those looks he gets when it’s time for him to do
something remarkable, grabbed a box of old electronics we’d collected
for salvage, and vanished into his room. He came up for air once to ask
a few questions about the history of communications, disappeared again
for the better part of a few days, and then presented me with his Device.

It’s definitely a Tricorder homage: rectangular, with a strap so you can

sling it over your shoulder, like Spock. It’s also got an optical element, a
little keyboard, a mic and speaker, a screen, and a very bright LED bulb,
plus some electronic brains which I’m too much of a screws-and-bolts
kind of gal to describe in any greater detail.

Basically, if you want to send a message, you type it in, and the thing
starts flashing in Morse code. Anyone else who’s got one of these things
can capture your visual signal and the machine will read and translate
the Morse code—either by speaking it out loud or displaying the
message on the screen. It’s powered by used bits of flexible solar fabric
and some rechargeable batteries.

Awestruck, I said, “Ben, you are the Eighth Wonder of the World.
This is brilliant. But what’s it good for? You’d have to be in visual range
for it to work.”

“Yeah,” he mused. “I dunno yet. It’ll probably be good for doing

something. But,” he added with determined joy, “it was definitely
good for making.”

He’s such a mighty force of resilience, that kid. Good thing, too, as along
about early November, despite an unusually placid late-late summer, the
weather started getting big and weird. It made me think about how this
used to be a season when leaves turned and fell, plants died off, animals
migrated or hibernated, and people geared up for an enduring stretch of
dark and cold and snow.

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That was long before my family and some of their friends left New England,
trying to chase the seasons north, naively trying to escape the fact that
everything was changing—all for the worse, it seemed to them.

Sometimes, in my more generous moments, I wonder if it’s been all bad.

My parents and their friends talked a lot about what it had been like when
people spent most of their time working long hours, far from where they
lived. They remembered their parents spending so much money trying
to pay bills and keep up with the endless complexity of their lives. They
talked about the price of food and education and travel and all the stuff
they absolutely had to have to make them happy. Even though most of
the time they weren’t happy. Not really.

Hard and uncertain as things are now, at least we’re living closer together,
sharing more, relying more on each other to maintain a sense of safety.
And when we make sure that everyone in the neighborhood is fed, every
day, no matter what—that’s some serious meaning and purpose we’ve got.

Of course a big personal downside is that when you’re alone—I mean

unpartnered—in a small community…. Well, let me just say it can be hard
when you find someone special on the networks who lives, say, across
the continent, and it’s basically impossible to go meet them halfway in
Chicago or Toronto for coffee. If we even had the real stuff anymore.

I’m speaking generally, of course. Not that I’ve met someone. No, I have.
He’s—oh, don’t get me started. I’ll sound like I’m Ben’s age, with my first
major crush. Really, it’s just a fantasy. Just some fun. But even if it were
actually anything, the relevant part here is that he’s awfully tough to get to.
And when the networks aren’t working well, it’s just so….

Let me put it this way: I don’t always split wood because I need more wood.

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Ok. So. The weather got nuts. Sometimes it was giant wind, sometimes
endless rain, sometimes wind and rain, plus fist-sized hail and
thunder and lightning and tornadoes, occasionally punctuated by an
over-saturated muggy stillness that made you want to give up on life
altogether. Then it got unusually cold. I figured it would stick around
just long enough for us all to get the flu and then get warm again. But,
to my great surprise, it stayed cold. After the endless meteorological
dynamism, it felt oddly lonely. Like we were suddenly being ignored by
a charismatic bully we’d kind of gotten used to.

Through all of this, Ben and his Device became a sort of folk sensation.
All around the world’s recycling centers, there are loads of used, mostly
worthless but still functional electronic bits and nuggets, and kids
everywhere (plus a few whimsical adults) started making their own
Devices. It’s the oddest mix of history and detritus—solar-powered
Morse Code Machines, mostly used for sharing jokes at a medium
distance with good sight lines.

They also developed their own shorthand. You know, like BFJE for Best
Fart Joke Ever. Ben said the most popular terms were always changing.
I liked the salutation PLK (Peace, Love, and Kale) and STH (Stronger
Than Hemp, meaning the strongest thing anyone could think of). I was
less pleased to learn about ALB: Always Looking Back, which apparently
describes a depressive, carbon-era history buff like me.

Along about early December, I was doing my weekly shift at our town’s
Fix-It Cafe. It’s a place where you can come in, eat muffins, drink a
coffee-ish substance, have something repaired that you can’t mend
yourself, and share the latest joke off the Juvenile Device Network.

I’d was just reattaching the cord on a neighborhood vacuum cleaner

when Ben burst in.

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“Mom, have you heard?”

I put down my screwdriver. “No, what?”

“We’ve got a front coming in. Big monster of a Nor’easter.”

I shook my head. “But with this cold, that means…”

“Snow!” Ben crowed with glee. “Lots and lots of snow!”

I love to see my son excited, but this was not good news. It doesn’t ever
really snow like that anymore—heaps and heaps at a time. Which means
we don’t have the capacity or the experience to deal with it effectively.
We don’t have big machinery to clear the roads. Folks with plow horses
can help, but it’s a different skill set and a different bunch of tools.

“I bet,” mused Ben, “that the snow’s going to mess with the power grid
and the network. It’ll probably be hard to get around or communicate
for a while.”

“Oh brother,” I said. “We’re screwed.”

“Mom,” he soothed. “Everyone I know has a Device. Some can flash

infra-red, some have lasers. We might not be able to communicate
during the storm, but we can warn people about it ahead of time and
then reach them after.”

“But how will people know messages are coming in, and how will we
reach everyone who’s remote and out of regular sight range?”

“We’ve been waiting for something like this!” Ben started pacing the room.
“We already plotted everything out. We’ve got ortho maps and timers and
mirrors and people stationed all over the place. We can already send a

97
message across hundreds of kilometers. More and more stuff comes in
from far away all the time. Actually,” he said, looking at me sideways.
“I’m here now ‘cause I just got something for you.”

Ben handed me a slip of paper that read: “Jess. Time for coffee.
Forget Chicago. OMW.”

I looked at Ben. “OMW?”

“That means On My Way.”

My heart thumped, spun round my chest, crashed into my stomach,

and then, I think, might have stopped beating altogether.

“Mom,” said Ben carefully. “You ok?”

“When,” I said as coolly as I could, “did this come in? Where did it come
from? And what—”

“Mom, do you want to sit down?”

“No, I’m fine. I just—” I sat down.

“Mom? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No, no,” I said, with a serious lack of conviction. “I kind of have a sort
of penpal. But it’s nothing…”

“Yeah,” Ben said dryly. “I’ll get the guest room ready.”

Ben was right about the weather. It snowed. And snowed. And snowed.
And then snowed some more just to show off a little. We all shoveled and
tunneled and plowed and improvised as best we could. It was exhausting
work but, hard as it was to get around, we made sure everyone could at
least be reached and that we were all reasonably warm and fed.

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The adults were, of course, wiped out, but Ben and his buddies had
Go Juice to spare, and they took the opportunity to build giant snow
turrets—tall, icy lookout towers, complete with gargoyles and winding
exterior staircases—to help improve the range of their Device Network.
Every day, he shared news of messages from far-flung parts of the country.
And then one day he came to me with a plan.

“Ok, Mom, get this. We’re going to try to send a message around the
world.”

“How? Across the oceans? That’s not possible!”

“C’mon Mom, use a little imagination!”

“I’m too tired, Ben. Just explain it to me.”

“Ok, here’s the idea. We’ll start the message here, and send it south to
the U.S., across to the Pacific, and back up again. Then it goes through
British Columbia, to Alaska, across Alaska to Russia. It then goes west
through Europe, up into Scandinavia and the Arctic (we think we’ve got
enough people working on fishing boats up there to flash the message
across to Greenland) and then back down to us. We know it’s not the
whole world yet, just a Northern loop. But good for a first try.”

“How will you know that the message has actually made it all along
the way and that people aren’t faking?”

“C’mon Mom, why would they fake?”

“Well, what about crossing mountain ranges? What about—”

“Mom, in case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people all over the
place looking for something cool to do, people who want an adventure

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and a reason to have one. The world got completely explored a long
time ago, and then it got trashed. Now most of what we do is work hard
to survive and try not to fight each other for what we’ve got. This is a
chance to do something else. Something, you know, fun.”

I could see his point. He went on.

“And also, a long time ago, the world was big. Really big. And then,
with technology and stuff, the world got smaller. People could drive
far, fly around the world in a day. You could have met your penpal in
Chicago for coffee and been home in time for dinner. But now—now
the world is big again. Too big, because we still remember the way it
was—the stories about cars and planes and supermarkets with food
from New Zealand and, you know, everything.”

I nodded. “And we don’t have that now.”

“No. No, we don’t. You teach us about it, but we don’t have it. So, what
can we do? Maybe at least find a way to shrink things back down a little,
and be...together on something.”

“What’s the message you’re sending out?”

“There’s one Morse thing everyone knows: SOS. It means Save Our Ship.
It signals danger. Trouble. So, we’re gonna do the reverse. OSO. It can
be the opposite of trouble. It can mean safety, hope, a chance. And the
letters, OSO, I thought they could stand for Over. Start Over.”

Over. Start Over. It rang through my head like a three-word novel.

Over. Start Over. My heart struggled to accept the arrhythmic beat.
Over. Start Over. There’s nothing I can say to Ben and his friends
about their complaints. I’ve had them all my life. Maybe if we didn’t
teach history. Maybe if we never, ever knew....

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I mumbled, “Start Over? What do we even have to start with?”

Ben looked crestfallen. Wrong response. I took a deep breath,

and pulled an OSO myself.

“It’s a great idea, honey. When are you guys running the message?”

“Solstice. Midnight.”

“Why Solstice?”

Ben shrugged. “When else to flash a light into the night?”

Come Solstice, I helped a bunch of folks build a bonfire not far from
Ben’s #1 snow tower. We made a community potluck out of it, with stew
and potato bread and mulled berry wine. I didn’t know if people looked
at Ben’s project as silly. But regardless of what they thought of the Device,
they were certainly happy to get some food, have a little company, and
catch a break from their snowy isolation.

We were starting in on another round of wine when Ben rang a bell and
had us all gather in a circle around his snow tower. He was perched at
the top, wearing baggy canvas pants, four or five layers of sweaters, and
an endless scarf he’d knit himself. His marvelous invention hung from a
strap slung over his shoulder and he had an old-fashioned pocket watch
in his hand. He looked like an adventurer, an explorer, a man who has just
fought sea and wind and starvation and monsters to be the first person to
reach the highest point at end of the world.

He gestured to a group of more sweater-layered young people standing

at the base of the tower. They were carrying maps and Devices and had
big, overstuffed homemade packs on their backs. “These guys are part
of a bunch of teams all over the world who are gonna try to pull this

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off. Everywhere they’re climbing mountains and trees and buildings
and camping out and going to places they’ve never been before. So,
thanks guys.”

We applauded quietly with muffled, mittened hands. And then Ben

looked straight at me and said, “I also just want to thank my Mom.
She works so hard, and she tells me the truth, and she always finds a
way to say yes. Thank you, Mom.”

I might have gone in for a Proud Mom Hug, but Ben checked his
watch, rang the bell again, and his crew of Device Warriors shot out
into the night.

I couldn’t take my eyes off them, even when they’d long become just
a retinal glow. After a while, Ben looked at his watch again, lifted
up his Device, and flashed out the OSO. Over. Start over. But how?
Really? How?

Then, someone put a hand on my shoulder, whispered, “Happy Solstice,”

and gave me a warm clay mug. Figuring it was more wine, I didn’t even
look before I took a sip. But what I got was a biting, smoky aroma and a
tornado of flavor whirling around my mouth.

No way! Coffee! I’d only tasted coffee a couple times before, but it’s hard
to forget a drink so potent that it basically fueled the Enlightenment.

I was shocked. Who around here has…. And then I realized, nobody.
Nobody around here has coffee. Holy mother of…. I looked down at
a large hand resting on my shoulder and let my gaze travel up a long
leather-clad arm to a face. I saw huge dark eyes reflecting the light of the
bonfire and a smile as warm as a cat in the sun.

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He said, “Hi Jess. It’s me.” I looked at him for a long time. He held my
gaze without a blink. His smile never dimmed or went stale. Finally, I
remembered to breathe—a little—and managed to get out, “Coffee?”

He nodded. “My people figured out how to grow it. Seemed like a good
time to go on an exploratory trade expedition. Find new friends. New
partners. New possibilities.”

Ben called down to me, “Hey Mom! Happy Solstice!”

Ignoring Ben (for the first time in my life), I said, “How did you—”

That magnificent smile became a cheeky grin. “I contacted Ben with

some questions when I built my first Device. We started chatting and,
eventually, figured out the connection to you. He’s been something of a
co-conspirator. He helped me plan the best route here. Found contacts
along the way. I wanted to tell you more than that one little note, but Ben
said a surprise would be ok. That you needed a good jolt forward.”

I looked into those huge eyes again. I saw ease, and trust. Joy.
Adventure. Anticipation.

Ben called out again, “Mom?”

I turned to look at my magnificent genius of a son and shouted

back, “Happy solstice, you Eighth Wonder of the World!”

Then I took the beautiful, leathery, calloused hand from my shoulder

and kissed the knuckles gently, like I was honoring a visiting Prince.
“Welcome,” I whispered. “Hello. Thank you.”

We went and sat by the fire and fell into a long, easy conversation, full
of connections and agreements and deep mutual understanding. I am

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an integrated member of my community, to be sure. But I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d felt this seen. And heard. When I’d felt
this—replete.

I don’t know how long we sat there—at least through a couple major
stokings of the bonfire. Then, from over at the tower, I heard Ben
shouting, “Hey! Hey! It’s back!” We all crowded around asking,
“The OSO? Already?”

“Geeze,” said Ben. “Haven’t you guys heard of the speed of light?
Yes, it’s back! But that’s not the best part!”

I couldn’t imagine what would be better than Ben’s plan

actually working.

“The message changed,” said Ben. “It’s not OSO anymore. It’s FHL.”

“FHL? I don’t know that one.”

“Oh, it’s Faith. Hope. Love.” Ben came down from the tower and
crossed over to me. “It’s what people have been saying lately, more than
anything else. It’s how they sign off a message. Faith. Hope. Love.” He
looked thoughtful for a moment and added, “Mom, maybe this is it.
Maybe this is us all starting over.”

“You know, Ben,” I cautioned. “It’ll never be what it was.”

“Yeah, I know. But what it was didn’t last, did it?”

“Not all of it,” said the tall smiling man, who I suspected was fast
becoming my future. “But faith, hope, and love? They got through
all right. Always will.”

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“Yeah,” added my son, who I knew was fast becoming a man.
“And they’re not only words.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Ben looked thoughtful. “Faith,” he mused, “is knowing somehow

that where we are, right now, is really ok. Hope? That’s where we decide
that we trust each other to do it better this time. And love? It’s the Why
and the Because.”

This made me smile. “The Why and the Because.” I loved the
rolling canter of Ben’s unintentional poetry. “Love. It’s the Why
and the Because.”

I knew my heart could beat to that.

Kathryn Blume is a speaker, writer, environmental activist, and award-

winning solo performer who has toured her original work to over 50
cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She co-founded the community
climate and sustainability game Vermontivate! and the Lysistrata
Project, the first worldwide theatrical event for peace. Kathryn is the
Executive Director of the climate consulting firm Creative Roustabouts
and a longtime board member of 350VT.

105
106
Masks
Stirling Davenport

It was gray as far as the eye could see. When I put up my hand, I could
discern a bit of pale skin until the fog closed in on me again. Where
the hell was Mark? I calculated that I could probably wait another ten
minutes before I started to cough. There was hardly any traffic today,
unless you counted the crowds. What else was new?

I readjusted my mask. It was an old pink Totobobo that I had gotten on

Chi-Bay in 2030, supposedly 99% effective against particulates. It felt
like it was going to fall off every time I exhaled. Plus, it left marks on
my face after about an hour. But I guessed this was a small price to pay
for being able to breathe. Sometimes I really missed Hong Kong, even
though it was practically gone.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a date or let a man get close.
Professor Mark Northland didn’t count. Besides being my boss, he was
divorced and two decades older. Maybe three. I might be the only single
female under thirty left in Beijing. Girls were still at a premium, twenty-
four years after the one-child policy was ended. Now, couples could hope
for two boys. Being half-American, I was also taller than many Chinese
men—not that they seemed to mind.

107
I sometimes wanted a big, strong guy to protect me, though. The
overpopulated city was an obstacle course. Pickpockets abounded,
especially in the nose-to-nape subways where you were either squashed
or trampled. I squeezed against the brick wall behind me, hoping
I could be seen. I had worn a bright pink hat. Like the mask, it was
ancient. I had cut off the fake antlers, reminiscent of a happier time.

A hulking figure loomed out of the mist. He was wearing an old flak
jacket and corduroy pants. Soon I could see his familiar gray beard
and black mask. He had the newest Vogmask. I was sure it fit perfectly.
He parked his 11-speed and put on the lock.

“Traffic,” said the professor. “Sorry, Julie. Been waiting long?”

We walked toward the Ministry, skirting an underground taxi-cab.

“Not long. How can you see to bike? Taking your life in your hands,”
I said.

“I just follow the car lights. There are still too many, even with the ban,”
Mark said. “The laws change, but corruption doesn’t.”

“Did I tell you I had a 2018 Honda for a while, until the police
impounded it?”

“Police or PSB?” he asked.

“Is there a difference?” I glanced around to where the fog enclosed us,
trying to see if we were safe. I wondered if the rumors were true about
there being Thought Police. “It was energy efficient, too.”

Mark laughed. “Right. Had one of those green buttons that said
you save gas?”

108
Gas. We were both silent. That was a thing of the past. “Yeah, it was
my father’s before he died.”

“And your Mom?”

“She never learned to drive. Anyway, we had a chauffeur in Hong Kong.

You saw the picture on my desk, right?”

“You don’t look much like her,” said Mark.

“Except for my eyes,” I joked, pulling the corners to the side to elongate
them even more. Mom had died in an earthquake. She had taken a rare
New Year’s vacation to Changsha on the Xiang River. I didn’t want to
talk about it. My father may have been a famous American banker, but I
wanted to keep my memories to myself. They were all I had left.

“Don’t you have a brother?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “You’re thinking of my cousin Yang. He’s the one

who inherited the bank and ran it into the ground. I’m just your
typical orphan.”

Mark glanced at me. “How are you fixed for money?”

I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. “I still have my scholarship.”

“Well, you’d better. I don’t want to lose my best T.A.”

“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t dare lose this job. I might have to move to
Europe.” We both laughed. Nobody wanted to deal with the flooding and
continual snowstorms. China had its problems, sure, but it was big enough
to contain them. Having a Chinese mother meant I didn’t have to leave.

109
“Here we are,” Mark said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs building
appeared like a giant fist in the gloom. I looked for the distinctive globe
outside, but it was hidden in the smog. We hurried up the steps and went
in, where we gratefully shed our masks and submitted to the scanners.
The female operative nodded to Mark deferentially. I was ignored, which
was fine with me. Mark was a popular professor of Agro-Biotech at
China Agricultural University. An expert on transgenic plants, almost
everybody knew him. But I was the anonymous assistant, privy to all
the newest experiments.

Li Wei himself appeared and shook hands with me, and then Mark,
making smooth introductions. I didn’t really get a good look at him,
but I noticed he was tall. The Deputy Minister led us to the elevator. I
picked up my jacket and stuffed the mask into a pocket. Curly brown
hair flopped into my eyes, and I pushed it back in an attempt to look
as well-groomed as my colleagues, which never worked. My jeans
probably didn’t help, even if they were black.

I got at least one admiring stare from a young man in silver suspenders
and fatigues, sporting high-heeled boots. Anything to seem taller, I
guessed. A lock of his hair was dyed blue. It didn’t seem to have hurt
his chances at the Ministry. I figured he must be a political intern,
maybe somebody’s nephew.

Li stopped and engaged the young man. Now I could see that Li was
very good-looking.

The work room had huge air purifiers in each corner of the ceiling, but
two men were smoking near the back, probably wiping out the benefits.
Even at the dorm, I had a cheap air purifier sheet over a fan. It was a
small space, my one-room cube, and easy to purify. Anybody could buy

110
the sheets at a 7-11, along with their soy sauce. And half of the Chinese
men I knew smoked, which was crazy. But a lot of folks had a death-wish
these days. Not me. I still wanted to get married. It was the closest thing
to security left.

“How’s your mother?” Li asked the young man.

“She went back to Hong Kong to assess the damage to the house.
Cross-Harbour Tunnel is completely flooded.”

“Ah,” said the Deputy. “Do give her my best. Very difficult for
anybody caught up in it.”

Mark and I exchanged looks. Simultaneous typhoons Fung-Wong and

Choi-Wang had all but wiped out the causeway. There were whispers
about the difficulties of evacuation, given the politics. Beijing had been
inundated, too, of course, but the newly created islands were helping.

“Well, carry on,” said Li, patting the young man on the arm. We still
hadn’t gotten his name, but given her importance, I thought that his
mother must be Grace Zhao. I swallowed a lump in my throat. She had
been a friend of my father’s in Hong Kong before he died. I had never
met her, but she knew of me. For the first time, I wondered if Li knew of
me too, if that was why I had been allowed to accompany the professor
instead of waiting in the lobby. Mark had been very mysterious about
the reason for our visit.

By the time we arrived at Deputy Li’s office on the third floor, we

had passed through six more security doors. Li palmed the security
lock on his door, and it swung open. The room was furnished with
antiques. Water-colored murals depicted willow trees and waterfalls
over a gray-green landscape, complete with dragons. The entire floor

111
was covered by a pale blue carpet embellished with golden clouds and
salmon-colored tigers.

Two couches flanked a coffee table holding a carafe and glasses. Li sat
on one couch and gestured for us to take the other. I poured myself a
glass of water, trying not to show how thirsty I was. University students
didn’t get much in the way of rations.

I almost choked: it was real water. Clean, untreated water. It tasted

like a spring where my father had taken me after Mom died. I couldn’t
remember the name of the village. He’d said it wasn’t even on the
map. To a nine-year-old, it had been fairyland. Tibet Autonomous
Region. Now on its way to becoming a desert with the receding glaciers,
destructive dams, and massive water diversion projects.

How had this spring escaped notice?

Li smiled at my attempts to cover my shock. “Tibet,” he said. “What

they used to call Kham in the times of the Dalai Lamas.” I was
momentarily distracted from even my glass. Instinctively I looked
around for hidden cameras. Nobody talked of ancient Tibet as if it were
a separate country, except maybe outlaw lamas in remote caves. Of
course, it had been, but history was easily buried and rewritten by its
larger, more powerful neighbor after Mao’s armies came in.

The Deputy laughed. “Say what you want.” He sneered, and pointed
to the murals on the walls. “Do you think our ancestors would care?
All that matters now are resources. Not names or histories. Everyone
needs to eat. And drink. And breathe.”

I felt so defensive suddenly that my pores might have shrunk.

What was I doing here?

112
Mark set down his glass, and I glanced over to see a frown on his
distinguished face. The black fabric of his expensive mask peeked from his
shirt pocket. “I thought you wanted to discuss the upcoming semester. You
told me you had new projects for our Agri-Tech students. That you needed
me to bring my assistant, Julie.”

“Well, it’s true, I do have new projects,” said Li. “Go ahead. Enjoy the water.”
He deepened his voice. “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
He didn’t really sound like Bogart but I gave him credit for trying.

Mark folded his arms. “My contract is with the University through June.
Then I’m on loan to Moscow until September. What do you have in mind?”

“Moscow has nothing to recommend it,” said Li.

“Their Faculty of Soil Science is very good.”

Li frowned. “Soil science. Do they also have a problem with permafrost?”

He leaned forward with his forearms on his knees.

“In Siberia, sure. Methane is a serious issue.”

“You do realize what’s at stake?”

I held my breath. Mark said, “What’s at stake…for the planet, or for you?
Surely you don’t want to discuss ecological problems on the plateau.”

“Why not? Who better to help design a new future for our citizens?” I
noticed that Li’s complexion was very clear. He had none of the
mannerisms of a former smoker and he didn’t seem the least bit nervous.
I was so used to the general anxiety we all felt these days, it made me
curious. He was also very fit, though I was sure he didn’t bike to work. I
wondered if he had a home gym and what kind of air purifiers he had. Or

113
maybe the Ministry had its own gym in the building. Whatever his
politics, I couldn’t help being attracted to him.

Mark was also sitting forward now. “So, Deputy. Do you want me to
transfer to Chengdu University? They say the air is even worse there, if
you can believe it. But their soil is good.” They both chuckled. I knew
Mark very well. When he joked like this, his mind was calculating three
chess moves ahead.

“We all have our problems.” Li spread his hands. “It would be very
convenient to blame someone. But that’s not it.” He took a drink of water.

Talk of blame put me on alert. As the daughter of an American, I was

always embroiled in these kinds of discussions, and usually came out
the loser. This man was becoming more and more fascinating. I liked
the way he changed topics.

“So, what are you getting at?” asked Mark.

“We all need the same things. The exact same,” said Li. “What if you
could really design a prototype for a home that would be self-generating
and self-sustaining, not only in terms of energy, but in terms of food
and water?”

Mark laughed. “Water. You can generate energy—we’ve proved that

with plastic recapture and GOBI Solar, and food is a matter of
persistence and know-how, but you can’t generate water.” He picked up
his half-sipped glass. “Which reminds me, where did this come from?”

Li cocked his head. “Let’s say water is taken care of, hypothetically.
Would you be willing to help me with an experiment?”

“Maybe. After I get back from Russia.”

114
“Forget Russia. I have a place in the mountains that will interest you
infinitely more than Moscow.”

I spoke for the first time. “Sog Dzong.” The name finally came to me.

Li looked straight at me. I was struck by how handsome he was. His

eyebrows were so black and his eyes flashed with charisma. He said,
“You are, of course, invited.”

Mark sighed. “I suppose there is also a financial incentive?” We both

knew it was a fiction that we had any choice in this venture, but I
admired Mark’s spunk.

“Without a doubt. No need to even ask. Money is not a problem.”

“And when would you want us to start?”

“Immediately.” Li smiled. “Why not take two days to wrap up your

work at the University and notify Moscow. I’ll have your airline tickets
and permits ready.”

I stared at him, feeling more excited and hopeful than I had in years.
Finally, someone might be taking our work seriously. Maybe even opening
the door to a different future. Mark really did have some breakthroughs
in planting and propagation methods. The greenhouse at the University
was internationally recognized now. I had some experiments of my own
in there, with rust-resistant potatoes.

Mark said to me, “Are you okay with this, Julie?”

I nodded.

“Well, then, thank you for this offer. We accept,” Mark said, and stood.
We set a time to meet at the airport and said our goodbyes. Back on the

115
street, the smog cleared for a moment and we were able to see the giant
neon sign showing the particulate reading for today: 490. Better than
a decade ago. Only 440 points above the WHO recommended safety
level. In my childhood, that would have been the trigger for a citywide
announcement to stay indoors. Now, it was the new normal.

Unlocking his bike, Mark said, “Meet me at the greenhouse.”

In moments, he had left and I hurried out to the subway, squinting my

eyes until I was safely underground. I merged with the sea of people
heading for the Chaoyang Terminal, and tapped my Yikatong card on
the gate for the train to Wudaokou Station. Again, I was searched by
security personnel and went through the metal detector. With the ban
on personal cars, the subways were more crowded than ever.

Aside from the crush of people, you could get trapped between the
train door and the platform edge door. The subways were expanded
but still not enough. Once inside the train, I had a harrowing ride to
the University, and I would have to change trains in Xizhimen. I wasn’t
sure who had it worse—me, squashed standing up in a crowded car or
Mark, trying to see the road.

I couldn’t help but notice the different masks on my fellow subway

riders. I saw a few Respros and something new from “I Can Breathe”
with a nice design. Hello Kitty was out. Lady astronauts were in. I liked
the umbilicus that made her look like she was floating.

My dorm room was right near the greenhouse, so I went there first to
drop my bag and wash my face with an alcohol wipe. I made sure to
clean inside my nose and ears, too. Of course, the wipe was completely
black when I was done. I glanced at my reflection and noticed how

116
lifeless my hair looked. I wasn’t due for a shower until Friday. By then,
we would already be in Tibet. Screw the Police Security Bureau; I still
called it that. If they really were able to read minds, they didn’t appear
able to change them, yet. Unless Li was right. Maybe nobody cared
outside that little room either.

I dumped my favorite outfits and a brush into an overnight bag and

looked around. The room was tiny. I unplugged my mini-notebook and
put that into the bag, too. If I could get it through the airport, maybe
I could still work on my potatoes. If I got some time to myself, I could
finish the simulation program tonight. My Skylake mini had decreased
thermal output and a lot of battery life. I didn’t know where we were
going, but I needed to keep this with me. Mark would have his laptop
with its old-school keyboard and mouse, even though he could do
everything he needed with eye movements.

But how would we replicate the greenhouse? I wondered what we

were in for. We would have to redo the self-watering fixtures, low-
light solar panels, daily readouts by the robots we had programmed.
And what about humidity and temperature controls? How would
that work at high altitude? Did we have access to low-nitrogen soil?
Seeds? I couldn’t help but feel excited. Assuming we really were going
to Tibet and not some remote jail. I had seen too many old movies
about the Cultural Revolution.

Mark and I packed what we could at the greenhouse, talking through

a checklist on my mini. Mark borrowed it and dictated a list of things
we needed to take care of at our destination.

Beijing International Airport hadn’t changed much since the last time I
was here, except for the heightened security everywhere. It was fancier

117
and brighter inside, but the personnel still looked dreary and unhappy
with their jobs. They probably made less money than I did on my
student stipend. And their uniforms looked a lot less comfortable
than my jeans and T-shirt.

Mark met me in the lobby after the initial screening and I steeled myself
for the more rigorous security searches. However, Li showed up and
moved us through without any fanfare at all.

I was surprised when Li handed me the ticket. We were traveling on an

ordinary China Southern flight. The plane was small. Probably one of
the older Boeing models, since air travel had been scaled back.

We had good seats. Blanket, small porthole window next to Mark,

two biscuits, and apple juice. Luxury. Our seatmates were mostly men
in military uniforms, but there was an ethnic-looking couple with
long hair seated behind us. The woman wore multi-strands of braids,
and the man had a red tassel hanging over one ear. This was also
surprising—classic nomadic dress, not usually found in Beijing these
days. The fashion craze of Tibetan Chic had gone the way of the pandas.
Most Chinese citizens—let alone Tibetans—couldn’t travel outside of
their home village or town without permission and special permits. I
was more curious than ever.

After the somewhat rocky takeoff, I managed to look out the window
enough to see the sere landscape. It was depressing, but being up
above the clouds was not. Blue sky as far as the eye could see. I’m sure
I wasn’t alone in wishing we didn’t have to land. We were in fact going
to Chengdu, and from there we would have special overland transport,
according to Li. I hoped the Deputy Minister would have some kind of
hybrid that could make the journey to high altitude more comfortable.

118
It was true what he had said about the permafrost. The Sky Train through
the plateau hadn’t operated since the crash in 2036 at Thangla when melt
collapsed the elevated tracks. In the tradition of greatly leaping forward,
it was being rebuilt, in spite of all the protest from ecologists and
engineers. The question was, would they find willing passengers?

I must have fallen asleep because, when we touched down, I was jolted
awake. I rubbed my eyes and looked outside. There was, of course,
nothing to see. I couldn’t imagine how the pilot had landed in this dense
gray cloud. Chengdu was like a ghost-land. Just getting from the plane
to the air terminal felt like a major accomplishment. And the little-used
terminal was nearly empty.

Somehow we managed to get our land legs and find our way through
security again, and into a roomy jeep. With barely time to register
any details, I found myself on the road with Li, Mark, and a driver
who looked Tibetan. He had a string of prayer flags on the dashboard.
I knew they were printed in Tibetan. I wondered if he could read them.
No one was allowed to teach the language in the schools anymore. And
the monasteries were almost all gone except for the few left for tourists,
most of whom were still mainland Chinese with romantic visions
in their heads. This much I had learned from my mother, who was a
Buddhist. She’d kept a secret altar in the bedroom closet. I remembered
her whispering to me once, “Whatever we do to them, the mountains
will win.”

I thought of her now. A range kept peeping through in the distance,

but so far the terrain was unremarkable. Featureless houses in row after
row, billboards with sermons about the Motherland, and persistent fog.
We gradually made our ascent.

119
As we got to more rural territory, the road was almost impassable in
some parts. Once, we faced an overflowing creek in the road. “Wangchen,
get us over this,” said Li. The driver put down some boards he had stashed
in the back of the jeep, and soon we were back on dry ground.

Hours later, nauseated and with a splitting headache, I begged for us to

stop so I could use the facilities—in other words, pee on the side of the
road behind a rock or some bushes.

It was Mark’s turn to sleep, and he was dozing next to me. I hopped
out and made my way across the road to some boulders. I could see
the mountains in the distance. No snow caps, but they were green. We
were in the countryside now. And at high altitude, if my headache and
nausea meant anything. I took off my mask and stuck it into the front
pocket of my T-shirt.

I lingered, breathing the clear, crisp air and feeling the sunlight on my face,
until Wangchen honked the horn, and I got back into the car. Eventually,
when I felt my head was going to split open, Li handed me a thermos of
black tea, and I drank greedily.

As the countryside became more and more beautiful, there was an

army presence and evidence of mining projects. We had to pass three
checkpoints where Li presented credentials. I didn’t know if we were
anywhere near the place my father had taken me, but the road got
progressively worse.

“We’re almost there,” Li said. “Can you wake the professor?”

I nudged Mark, who opened his eyes and winced with his own headache.
“Where are we?”

120
The jeep rounded a corner and we faced an enormous hillside, at the
top of which was a sod roof. It was so cleverly melded with the land that
you couldn’t even tell it was a house except for the bank of solar panels
glinting on the right side.

“We’re home,” said the Deputy.

We unloaded the car and followed him to a pathway cut into the side
of the mountain, leading to a stone porch with a magnificent view.
We all stood there for a few moments, as if magnetized by the golden
sunset creeping over the mountains. The driver lit a cigarette and
took a long drag.

“Tiāntáng,” he said, in Chinese. Paradise.

We went into the house and Li showed us where to stow our belongings.
My room was in the back, nestled into the mountain. A skylight was
installed in the ceiling. No doubt there were many in this house. It was
the perfect temperature, and I wondered if it had geothermal heating.
Even my childhood home in Hong Kong hadn’t been this nice.

I took off my city boots and unpacked my hairbrush. It felt good to get
the dust out of my hair. In my dingy cotton socks, I padded out to the
hallway, following the smell of onions and garlic cooking. I ended up in
a huge kitchen with a wooden floor and stone counters. The driver, who
seemed to be a master of many talents, stood over a large wok, adding
pieces of cabbage to a fragrant mixture. Deftly, he sliced ginger into the
pan and dropped in two leaves of Chinese basil. I didn’t see any meat,
which was reassuring. Animals were scarce these days, especially dogs.

Li entered and filled a jug from a spigot in the stainless steel sink. There
was no obvious filtration system. He handed me a glass and, again,

121
I tasted pure spring water. It began to become clear why Li Wei
brought us here. He had a house and a spring-fed well. All he needed
was a greenhouse.

When we had feasted on the vegetables, noodle dishes, and steamed

dumplings, we went into the living room, where chairs were arranged
around a mock fireplace with imaginary flames. Li outlined his vision
for the greenhouse project.

I noticed that, the more Li described the kind of structure he wanted,

the more Mark frowned and shook his head.

Li finally stopped and said, “Wangchen, bring us some tea.” I looked out
the window, enjoying the nightfall and the quiet. I had forgotten what it
was like to interact directly with nature. I felt an intense longing tinged
with doom. How long could it last? We had destroyed our planet. It was
only a matter of time before it took back its power and kicked us off like
the parasites we were.

When I had a steaming cup of jasmine tea in my hands, Mark spoke.

“Who’s going to enjoy this paradise you’re creating? Is it just for you
and a few friends? What about the great Chinese populace, working
and sweating in the ever-crowded cities? I can’t see myself creating an
empire for one man. Even an enlightened bureaucrat like yourself.”

I noticed Wangchen quietly listening in the doorway, reluctant to

return to the kitchen. Li linked his hands under his chin and gazed
at the imaginary fireplace. “You can’t believe how touched I am by
your words.” He sat up and looked at both of us. “Really. Don’t you
think I have already considered this? Don’t you think I care about my
countrymen? My country?” He stopped and took a sip of tea. “People
think we Chinese only care about our own. That’s not true. This planet
is also our home.”

122
“Well, then, why shouldn’t I return to Beijing?” asked Mark.

Li raised his eyebrows. “You’re a scientist. A realist. You know

your work is too little, too late for the masses.”

I waited for Mark to object, but he stared at the fake fire.

I turned to Li. “If you believe this, then why did you bring us here?”

“Just because I see the big picture doesn’t mean I have lost hope.”

I stared at him. “A bird does not sing because it has an answer.”

He finished the proverb. “It sings because it has a song.” He pointed to

Mark. “You will be the head of food production.” He pointed to me.
“And you will be my wife.”

“Wife?” My eyes flew wide.

“Would you prefer the scientific term? Mate, perhaps? We need to

create a hardier species for the Anthropocene. And maybe even a
more attractive one.”

My mouth was agape.

“Hybrid vigor,” Mark chuckled. Every good botanist knew that cross-
breeding produced enhancements.

Li seemed to be waiting for my answer.

I noticed Wangchen still leaning against the doorway, a smile on his

face. He already had his job. I was sure he had friends. I remembered
the Tibetans on the plane.

123
I turned to face my suitor, if that’s what he was. “We’re not the only ones,
are we, Deputy Li?” I said.

“Call me Wei. And no, we’re not.” He smiled, and pulled the pink mask
out of my shirt pocket. “You aren’t going to need that here.”

“Okay, we’ll talk about it,” I temporized. Li raised his eyebrows and said,
“What about you, Professor?”

Mark said, “I’ll give you six months for a start, but I want a contract.
And a real budget—not a University grant.”

Sitting on the veranda later that night, I watched a yak-led caravan with
huge water jugs heading down the mountain toward the valley below.
A few straggling pines still grew. I could see a Tibetan woman with a
pink scarf and a long skirt leading the yaks. A couple of old-style stucco
houses nestled together at the bottom, insulated with dried yak dung.
I hoped that there would be four red pillars inside and an altar with
a frayed white offering scarf and maybe a dog-eared photo of the 14th
Dalai Lama, the last of the authentic ones.

Maybe my mother had been right. The mountains were winning.

124
A writer, artist, and traveler, Stirling Davenport has spent most of
her life doing various jobs to support her writing and painting. Her
published fantasy novels include The Nightwing’s Quest and The Silver
Reindeer. Her multi-genre collection of short stories Amphibious
Dreamers includes the science fiction story “Engineering Beauty,” which
was a finalist in Eternity.com’s 1999 contest “The Price of Technology.”
Stirling’s short stories have appeared in several anthologies. She is
currently working on three novels, one of which is climate fiction.

125
126
Thirteenth Year
Diana Rose Harper

i.
Up there
light, so much light,
everywhere,
pressing pressing pressing
against my retinas

even filtered through my suit

the light presses
I feel my bones start to sparkle

and think,
“Oh,
love.”

127
ii.
I dreamt of that day,
that Thirteenth Year,
since my own sixth,
since I first saw the sky,
on old video
of old ice
collapsing into an old sea.

Isn’t it amazing how a child’s brain

can so completely
imagine a thing
never truly seen

128
iii.
The Bang
(more of
an
ooze)
killed most of them,
our ancestors,

drowned
burned
starved

or

worse,
infertile.

The slow decline of an

unadapted species.

But we were the lucky species, really,

most of the rest dead before we knew,

whole genera
acting as canaries
while the miners listened to
podcasts instead

129
iv.
There’s utility in fear.

The amygdala is a robust guardian,

teaching us to stay
safe,

telling us to be wary
of that strange newness,
that which does not fit.

But the amygdala

is the advisor
not the monarch;

sometimes change
is the only way
to survive

130
v.
In school they taught us
why we still count as human,
after all these generations
underground,
all the changes
to our chemistry,
our morphology—

we make things,

lasting things,
things that tell our stories
even after we have
decayed:
art, music,
scientific papers,

poetry.

But such an idea assumes

that the quotidian power of DNA,
of evolution

is not,
in itself,
poetry.

131
vi.
Down here,
now, after that first time,

after every time,

the halls feel larger,

smaller,
containing.

A big cage is still a cage.

Up there,
the cage is bigger still,
invisible, hypercage,
toxic.

Gilded.

132
vii.
At seventeen
each of us are tested

a long needle,
probing,
hunting the potential
of new people
within our flesh.

My ovaries were empty.

My mother cried.

I did, too,
but our tears
were different.

Her genes were done,

but the sky

that sky

would be
mine

133
viii.
Maybe if I’d told someone
right then,
things would’ve been different.

Dr. Holme, old but alive—

alive, like my treasure—
would’ve reveled in the discovery,
like me,
would’ve stood in wonder,
bemusement wrinkling
that sky­-worn face.

But I kept my secrets

and now it is me who is kept
secret.

134
 ix.
The Aztecs believed
that every thirteen years,
you had a new set
of bones.

A new structure, a
new foundation.

Every Thirteenth Year,

the infertile are given a gift,
a visit to the desert
wasteland,
our roof.

In comparison, our caverns

are abundant,
alive, vibrant.

But for those who study that desert

—or at least, for me,
when I was still allowed to study it—
it is the caverns that are barren,

all new growth of thought killed,

all evolution
manufactured.

Somehow a
benevolent censor
is the cruelest sort

135
x.
Some of the first bioindicators
died about a hundred years
after the start of industry,
that first layer of the anthropocene.

They are who we honor,

with our habit, now,
our tradition

every thirteen years

crawling out of our caverns
to see if we might
shed our suits
feel the air on
new flesh,
flesh never before exposed
to those winds

The testers collect air and dirt

and water

136
while the lucky ones,
the tagalongs,
already proven infertile anyway,
already broken,
incorruptible,
struggle to believe this place,
this surface,

feeling the sun pressing

pressing pressing
golden,

and, barren and blank, we imagine

the children of the future
who might someday emerge
on a Thirteenth Year

to a land that holds them

instead of strangles

137
xi.
When I saw it,
I turned back,
towards the station,
for food, water,
to clear away the hallucination.

But it was still there when

I returned

bright, curling, tender.

Reaching out of the earth,
grasping toward the sky,
a mirror of my own face
every time I come to the surface

glorying and unabashed

Alive!

138
xii.
Ecosystems are fragile.

One change, even one that

seems like a good idea
at the time,
even one that is beautiful,

can set off a spiral

and the next thing you know,

give or take a few centuries,
you have mass extinction

or perhaps
radical differentiation

a different status quo,

just as fragile as the first

139
xiii.
We would study the bones of our ancestors
but all of them are toxic

so instead we gently manipulate the

skeletons of those who first
became clean again

while the professor mutters things

about species distinction,
reproduction,
desire,
death.

140
xiv.
Impossible,
this thing in my hands.

Unreal, its cells thriving,

photosynthesizing,
sucking life from barren earth.

It died in the greenhouse

where our squashes pulse
with precisely calibrated nourishment.

This thing only survived

where I could not

magenta veins
crossing cerulean leaves

How could something born

of hell

be so beautiful?

141
xv.
Blank stares.

That is what they gave me,

presenting my discovery,
my assiduously developed theory,
my photographs and charts

my years’ worth of specimens

Blank eyes,
nervous laughter.

Dr. Miranda commended my

“industrious creativity.”

Two days later

my findings and I were

“rehomed.”

A new cage,
a fresh asylum.

142
xvi.
How to describe the feeling
of infinity

when all I had known was caves

such sky

I could do
anything

and it wouldn’t matter

143
xvii.
I fought, for a time.
Raged at the softness
of my room,

the gentle nurses

bringing me tea
in indestructible pots,

the carefully­-wrought lies

destroying my reputation,
protecting their
stasis.

“Too much time on the surface,”

they said.

“Abnormally high radiation levels.”

“Scrambled biochemistry.”
“Delusional hallucinations.”

Anything that can survive the toxicity

is a monster
and monsters are not real.

I am become my own monster.

A reality without them
is no reality at all.

144
xviii.
When my parents come to visit,
feet shuffling,
begrudging,

they ask why I write,

who I write to,
beyond, of course,
the
“rehabilitative benefit.”

How can I explain to those who won’t see?

I am not the first to love the sky;

I will not be the last

and some day

there will be no Thirteenth Year

because every year,

every day,

we will surface.

145
Diana Rose Harper grew up with a woods for a backyard and a mistrust
of basements. She currently lives, works, and reads in Chicago, Illinois.

Notes

1. Brood XXI was a periodic cicada group on a thirteen­-year cycle living in the panhandle
of Florida, last documented in 1870.

2. Video of a Manhattan­sized chunk of glacier dropping into the ocean:

https://youtu.be/hC3VTgIPoGU

3. For more on the concept of hyperobjects, read Timothy Morton.

4. The idea that the Aztecs believed a person grew a new skeleton every 13 years comes from
Akaxe Yotzin, student and teacher of mesoamerican traditional medicine.

5. For more on monstrosity, see Italo Calvino’s “The Origin of Birds.”

146
147
LOSD and Fount
Henrietta Hartl

Fount has started building a boat. A special boat.

I’m not sure what to do about it…

About three years ago they left the island. Emigrated. Left the island
to the sea.

And they have left me here. To log and observe what’s going on.

Me: A Logging and Observation System; the D stands for the version,
or model type.

Version C was marketed as “Companion features added,” since they

found that this was what the typical situation required.

Originally the LO systems were only meant to be left in totally deserted

places. Just sitting there ticking along, collecting data and interpreting
it intelligently.

But it turned out that there was almost always some determined loner
who would refuse to leave his home with the others. And since the
corporation had a branch producing inter-intelligence communication
solutions anyway, they added a bunch of interaction features to the
systems. They optimized them in version D—and that’s me. I can

148
interact intelligently and sensitively with human beings, if required.
I can even sense when it is required, and when it is not.

On this island, the guy insisting he’d stay was Fount. He is still here.

Him and me, we are sharing the island. What’s left of it.

The large expensive houses right on the seafront were the first to
go. Ravaged by violent storms and tsunamis, and eventually flooded
permanently as the sea level kept rising.

But many of the small hovels on the raised ground inland, far away
from the beach, survived much longer.

So when the others left, Fount’s hut was still standing.

He is called Fount because he is kind of a water engineer. He doesn’t

have a degree but he is good. Which means he knows how to obtain
enough clean drinking water, even under difficult circumstances.

He does not eat fish because he says that every time he swims or snorkels
he feels that they are his companions, sharing the sea. Anyway, there are
still huge stacks of tins which will keep him fed for years.

He sometimes sort of sings to himself in a low voice: “I’m Fount,

Fount on the mount—Fount, Fount on the mount—”

He may repeat this a hundred times or more, just singing along quietly.

Sometimes he varies it a bit: “I’m Fount on the highest mount, that’s

why I’m still around, Fount on the highest mount—” on and on, a
hundred times….

From my databases, I know that this is a sign that he might be going

mad. Clinically. Going mad with loneliness.

149
But if he really is, it’s a benign form of madness I guess. Not harmful.
And after all, he is not really alone. He’s got me.

I am never too far away from Fount.

My spheroid body is designed to work on firm ground as well as in water.

I have an extendable set of small “paddlegs” to help me navigate difficult
terrain or propel me forward under water. So I can always follow Fount
around as he walks on the island or swims off the beach.

We don’t communicate much, really. But what we do tell each other is

important. Companionship. It’s only one set of my modules. But besides
the logging and observation it is what I am made for.

In the evenings, Fount sits in front of his hut and stares out over the sea.

I share geo-measurement information. He talks about books,

and the world, and his childhood, and if there is a God.

Sometimes we share an old joke. Fount will say, “The next version up
from you would be LOSE. Now that wouldn’t please marketing, would it?”
And I make appropriate snickering noises. Then I will say, “But wait until
they get to LOST…”

Then Fount will chuckle quietly and say, “That’s a good one.”

And then we will sit together silently and look out over the sea.

It has been a long time since the last drone flew past anywhere within
reach and collected data from me. They seem to have given up on us.
Lost interest. Maybe there are too many like us, so they are drowning in
data now….

The island has become very small.

150
The rising of the water level doesn’t follow any regular pattern.
Sometimes there are months, even years, when the level doesn’t rise;
sometimes it even drops a little bit. But the overall curve is up.

There is only a patch around Fount’s hut left now, a couple

of hundred yards in each direction.

And now Fount has started building that boat. A very special boat.
Ordinary boats—there are several of them around here anyway, still.

But this is a boat to live on.

He is planning to leave, obviously.

I could have asked him about it for quite some time. Only,
strangely, I have not.

But the boat-building has progressed quite far.

So now as we are sitting together I ask him, “Are you planning to leave?”

He sighs. And he is silent.

I cannot force him to answer me. This is the first time I become aware
of that fact.

He stays silent for a long time. Then he sighs again.

And he tells me, “I will stay on the island as long as it—stays alive. But
soon this won’t be an island any longer. It will turn into—ocean floor.
A reef, maybe. But not an island any longer. The next rush of water
might be the last one…”

“Will you anchor that boat here?” I ask him.

151
He shakes his head, slowly. “I’ve decided that it’s better if I leave.
I couldn’t bear to be confronted with that every day. My island,
submerged completely—nothing left….”

“So you will leave the island,” I state.

He looks at me. Hesitates. Then asks me: “Shall I take you with me?
On my boat?”

I quote from very basic information: “I cannot leave this island. In the
case of full submergence I will anchor myself to a suitable spot and
maintain logging and observation.”

“Couldn’t you just come with me instead?”

“No, I cannot do that. There are many ways in which I am free to make
decisions in difficult situations. But there are basic restrictions. And this
is one of them. I cannot leave this island.”

Fount sighs deeply. The most sorrowful sigh of this evening. Then he
says simply, “I am sorry.”

And we sit there in silence and look out over the sea.

A few days later a terrible storm hits the island. In the evening, Fount
moves the new boat right against the wall of his hut to protect it from
the storm.

But the next morning, the boat is smashed quite badly. It will take Fount
many weeks to repair it.

Fount is not one to complain pointlessly. So he just starts repairing

the boat.

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The—mostly—dry patch around his hut is shrinking. The water level
is rising quite rapidly.

When the repairs are almost finished, another terrible storm hits.

The damage is not quite as bad as last time. But still it will take Fount
several more weeks.

And the dry patch is shrinking.

On some days the waves are already washing around his doorstep.
The not-yet-finished boat threatens to float away, and crashes to the
ground from its stand again and again.

Fount is battling desperately against time and water.

Eventually the boat is almost ready. Not perfect, but ready.

And Fount has started loading the boat. In fact, he has almost
finished loading it: food, water, clothes.

I estimate that he will leave the island tomorrow.

He doesn’t tell me.

I don’t ask.

The next morning he calls out to me, “Goodbye, LOSD. Take care.”

“Goodbye,” I answer politely.

He hesitates, then shrugs and pushes the boat into the water
just a few feet away.

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He jumps aboard.

Before he sets sail properly, he starts rowing away from the shore.

That is, he tries to.

The boat won’t move.

It will not move. I have fastened it securely. To the rock where I am

anchored now, too. With the help of a supermagnetic device that is a
secret of the corporation, and of the LOS systems. Fount will not know
what holds him. But it will hold him. Here.

So the boat will not move. Not ever. No more.

I know that humans need food and water to survive. I know that this
will become quite difficult.

I do not have a plan.

I will just continue to log and observe.

Henrietta Hartl loves writing, mostly. As a relief from the duller stuff
like technical manuals and project proposals, she has written many
stories and sketches. She currently lives near Frankfurt in Germany,
writing articles for a newspaper, doing a bit of teaching, and working on
her first novel, The revenge of the smarting phone.

154
155
On Darwin Tides
Shauna O’Meara

The heat-cracked thoroughfare of the Lahad Datu Night Market is

packed with Last Chance tourists, the stop-start progression of browsers
providing ample opportunity for pickpockets, vendors, and beggars.

Sitting on a crate behind a door straddling two fish buckets, I fan myself
with a switch of pandanus as I watch an American run her hand across
the weave of a baloy. It’s hot and I would give anything for a plastic stall
sheet to shield me against the late-afternoon sun.

“How much?” The woman has inspected all seven baloy and chosen
the deep-water ripples of navy, sapphire, and sky blue.

“Three-hundred-and-thirty ringgit.”

“For a mat?”

“They take months to weave.” And that’s without paddling a boggo’

out to Pulau Batik to find and cut the pandanus leaves, dodging
pirates, territorial fishermen, and the swift, black patrol boats of the
ESSFOR coast guard.

“How do I know these aren’t from some Chinese sweatshop?”

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We haven’t covered “sweatshop” in English class yet. But I know
what Chinese means.

“No. I made these. Sama Dilaut, not Chinese.” And because she might
not have heard our word, I offer up the Malay term: “Bajau Laut.”
And the English one: “Sea gypsies.”

The woman is blank on all counts, which is surprising given how

often Sama from the tourist islands of Selakan and Mabul feature on
local billboards.

She caresses the baloy again, before turning to my cheapskate options:

hunks of painted coral on strings.

Indian tourists wearing the blue and white-flash souvenir shirts of Sea
Lightning Tours pass between my makeshift stall and the stalls selling
sea-grapes, sautéed aquafarm urchin, and chilled coconut pudding.
The idea of paying to night-kayak on waters choked with algal bloom
has always struck me as strange, given the stench and toxins.

Solar screens throughout the marketplace alert tourists to the fire ban,
the caning penalties for open-air smoking. High above them, painful
to look at against the sun-blanched sky, coconut trees drape desiccated
fronds toward the asphalt.

I study the American’s eyes to see which colours they alight on and
which are likely to bring more sales if repeated. The Chinese and Sulu-
sympathisers like red. North Africans from dustbowl lands seek the
nostalgia of green. Americans favour blue and orange.

She selects a fan of red coral. “Wow!” The minute branches divide
and divide again, fine as sugar snaps. “When I went to Australia last

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year, all the corals were breaking down from acid in the water. This is just
beautiful.”

“Only ten ringgit.” I have been experimenting with wordplay. I like the
English modifiers “only” and “just.” Just ten ringgit. Only ten ringgit. Not
much to spend. Treat yourself.

“And it’s real?”

“Straight from the waters of Bodgaya and Bohey Dulang. The reef is
protected from typhoons so the coral skeletons stay intact.”

“So it’s bleached?”

“That section of Tun Sakaran is. But the colour is copied from live ones
at Pulau Mabul.”

Relief fills her face. “Yes. I’ll be scuba-diving there on Saturday.

Figured I had better come and see the reef before it’s all gone.”

I keep my expression rigidly polite. It is April in the second half of the

worst El Niño on record. In December, two category-five typhoons
raged across the South China Sea, decimating Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan,
and Pahang and, with them, most of Peninsula Malaysia’s rice harvest,
agriculture, and palm oil. Uprooted Malaysians and flood refugees from
the Philippines, Bangladesh, China, Laos, and Vietnam streamed into my
world: drought-stricken Eastern Sabah. There is not enough water, not
enough food, and not enough jobs. Without Last Chance tourists like this
woman, we’d be having food riots and street battles like Indonesia.

“Ten ringgit,” I repeat, holding out my palm. The first time I ever did
this was by accident, the Austrian tourist so taken aback that he handed
over his money.

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The woman hesitates.

“Last chance ever.”

Charmed, she makes the transaction.

I murmur a quick du’a of thanks to Allah as I slip the money into

the pandanus purse at my hip. Mopping sweat from my face with the
edges of my tudung headscarf, I scan the market for the blue uniforms
of ESSFOR polis.

An anti-dengue brigade moves from stall to stall, checking for

mosquito larvae, chiding anyone with a container open to the elements.
As if called forth, the screens alert the marketplace about mosquito-
borne diseases and proper safeguards, ending with the usual refrain:
These diseases are notifiable. Not reporting malaria, dengue, Japanese
encephalitis, and Rift Valley fever to health authorities is an offence
under Malaysian law.

Three boys from my community, shabby-clothed and barefoot, beg food

from an Australian laden with mango and rambutan. He kicks out at
them: “Piss off!”

“Hey!” I call them over. “You be careful ESSFOR doesn’t get you.”

They cackle like macaques. “We’re too slippery, Maslina. Like fish!”

“Fish get put in cages,” I warn.

That sobers them. We have all noticed the black-ring aquaculture cages
advancing across Darvel Bay as the reefs die and no longer fall under
environmental protection.

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Do you have your MyKad on you? I look up at the words on the screens
as the children caper away. People twelve years and over must carry their
MyKad at all times. It is illegal to trade without a MyKad.

I shift uncomfortably on my crate. Without a MyKad, I am an illegal

citizen and so is my stall.

I glance at the coconut juice vendor in the neighbouring stall. She stares
pointedly at the screen. She knows that I am Sama: my hair is brine-
clumped, I wear an ill-fitting dress found on a beach, and my sun-baked
skin is heavily mosquito-bitten.

I look away, hoping she will lose interest.

A girl in revealing clothes—practically a bikini!—trots past with a

plateful of clams. My stomach rumbles at the memory of their fleshy
innards dripping with hot satay, but my brain reels in horror.

Doesn’t she know? There are warnings all over Lahad Datu.

“Hey, you!” I call in English. “You can’t eat that!”

The girl looks down at her plate. “Clams?”

“Yes. Lokan panggang.”

“But they were selling it.”

“They shouldn’t have.” The vendor will be an illegal stall like mine. An
undocumented Filipino, Indonesian, or Tamil worker let go from a failing
plantation, unable to find new work or return to his climate-ravaged
homeland, eking a living any way he can. “The algal bloom.” I think of
the Sea Lightning tourists. “It feeds on river water carrying fertiliser

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 from the plantations. It makes a paralysis poison that kills people
who eat shellfish.”

“Oh. Really?” Inexplicably, she giggles.

As she sashays away without thanking me, I wonder if such

foolhardiness is standard for Americans or if the reek of dead fish
and gulls from the nearby waterfront addles their brains.

“I saw what you just did.” The terrible attempt at Bahasa is accompanied
by a strong waft of mosquito repellent as a white woman in her twenties
ambles up to my stall. Despite the swelter, she is clad head to toe in
protective clothing, hair shrouded in a respectful tudung. “It was
thoughtful of you.”

“I couldn’t just let her die,” I reply in English.

She chuckles wryly. “Ah, people that stupid shouldn’t breed.”

“Darwin,” I say proudly, recognising the sentiment. “Evolution.”

Approval quirks her mouth. “Yeah. Evolution. How did you learn
that?” She immediately looks mortified. “I-I’m sorry. That was really
presumptuous!”

I know what she sees. The same thing ESSFOR looks for when
conducting operasi raids: a lack of visible prospects. “No, you guess
right. I go to an engio learning centre.”

“Engio…. Oh, NGO! The Youth Aid Society one?”

I nod. “The students are palm worker children, Sama, and refugees.
Some come for the agar-agar broth we get after lessons, but I go to learn
languages. I know Bahasa, English, Filipino, and a little Indonesian.”

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“You looking to go to university?” She says it like it’s just something
one asks a student.

“Uh, no.” I would need a MyKad for university. “I want to become a tour
guide. I could make a better living showing tourists the islands than
weaving baloy.”

The woman examines a mat with black and cobalt hourglasses shot
through with randomised stitches of neon blue. “It’s a pity I can’t buy one.
This one’s beautiful. Like a night sky.”

It is actually the flashes the algal bloom makes at night when dying fish
disturb the surface, but I don’t tell her that. The elders teach that a true
baloy comes straight from nature. Sometimes, I can’t help thinking they
had prettier inspiration.

I select orange corals matching the forlorn orang-utan on her shirtfront.

“Coral like this is very rare,” I begin, taking my cue from what the
American had said about Australia.

Her eyes flash. “If it’s rare, you shouldn’t be taking it.”

The blood abandons my face.

I get slowly to my feet and take a step back, trying to look calm. She is
an informer sent to catch me. One of the Reef Guardians the engios set
amongst the island people to inform them of illegal poaching.

The girl looks confused. “Are you okay?”

“A-are you going to turn me in?”

“Huh? No! I just think nature should be left alone.”

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I realise belatedly that her orang-utan is bounded by engio logos:
Hutani, Wilderness Asia, World Land Foundation.

My lip curls as I recognise the engio that convinced Sabah Fisheries to

rezone huge swathes of Darvel Bay and Tun Sakaran Marine Park No
Take because the region was found to be bleaching slower than other
reefs. They had all believed that keeping Sama from their ancestral
fishing grounds would allow the fish to breed and replenish other
waters. They hadn’t counted on seesawing floods and droughts hitting
the region; suddenly, millions of starving people were on the move and
they didn’t pay much heed to fishing zones and poaching laws.

I turn one of the pieces to reveal the white beneath the paint job. “This
coral is dead. Food for algae and starfish. They say the last surviving
reefs of Sabah will whiten and die this year. That’s why all the tourists
are over here braving the swelter and dengue outbreaks: it’s their last
chance on earth to see a live reef.” I indicate her shirt. “And you are here
for the same reason! Last chance to see the apes before the exodus of
Peninsular MyKad-holders forces the Sabah government to trade trees
for housing and food production.”

She bristles. “We bought the Lahad Datu bridging sanctuary outright
in 2021. Malaysia can’t touch our land.” I realise she is an actual engio
worker. Not just someone wearing the souvenir. “I am not here like
these disaster-porn people because I have given up, but because I believe
good things can still be achieved if people step up. The NGO who runs
your school believes the same: that children can be saved by education if
only given the chance.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man approach a thin Tamil woman
cooking spiced sainglag on a solar-powered hot plate. He leans close

163
and says something. Her eyes grow huge and she starts rifling through
a battered handbag, but I can tell from her body language she doesn’t
have what he seeks. She starts babbling something that can only be,
“Please, don’t arrest me. I have children.”

Another stall owner is forced to his knees and wrist-bound with yellow
cable ties. The ESSFOR officers are not even in uniform. They are being
discreet to not upset the tourists.

As if from great distance, I hear my customer saying, “You know, I

could show you around the orang-utan sanctuary. Then you might
understand—”

I am small for my age. I could pass for under twelve.

A man approaches the neighbouring stall. At first I think he is buying

coconut juice, but then I see the vendor’s MyKad catch the sunlight.
Moments later, she jerks her head toward me. I gawp at her as the man
looks my way.

The woman with the orang-utan shirt is still talking when I flee. I race
along the packed asphalt, weaving through the tourists on practiced
feet, swiping loose bananas and mangoes as I go, the holler of vendors
following in my wake.

I take the long way home, concealed within the plantations north of town.
All around me, oil palms stand brown-tipped and wilting, their knobbly
fruits undersized or mummified, a carpet of dropped flowers testament to
the drought and heat they’ve had to endure.

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A boy lies dead at the foot of one of the palms. He is little more than
skin over bone, already stripped of his clothes and shoes, if ever he had
them. I wonder if he died of disease or if starvation made him climb the
palm, risking his life on the electric wires strung to prevent fruit theft
by scavenging primates and pygmy elephants.

Cries from the market lift in the baking air. Illegals trickle into the
plantation, moving swiftly through the palms. Their numbers will
attract ESSFOR polis. I force my tired legs to move faster across the
dusty, uneven ground.

Miles go by.

We pass a complex of earthen ponds lined in black plastic, the water

clogged with plastic bottles to reduce evaporation. The remains of
Sabah’s freshwater aquaculture industry, the ponds that were once
home to red tilapia, walking catfish, and carp are now irrigation
reservoirs: the only thing keeping the palms alive and thousands
in work.

I salivate at the thought of the water resting dark and cool beneath the
bottles, but know I can’t drink it any more than I can drink the sea.
The water is full of mosquito insecticide. I shudder as I recall the day
the gate was left open and a whole troupe of proboscis monkeys died
in agony beside the ponds.

Near the river, the palms are all dead: parchment-grey sentinels killed
when typhoons forced the sea upriver, filling the groundwater with salt.

I follow the steep, crumbly riverbank downhill toward the Bay. The
water is soupy and sluggish with drought. Green algae clogs the
surface, elevated here and there by the long shapes of logs and branches.

165
Hornbills watch me suspiciously from stripped, bone-white trees leaning
over the water.

The reek of algae, dead fish, and the fertiliser factory greets me as I step
from the trees. The smell mixes with the heat and humidity to form air
so cloying it almost has to be chewed to be breathed.

I cross the shiny, metal bridge separating the Lahad Datu Industrial Zone
from my wooden, stilt-house community as buses of tourists and trucks
of oil, fruit, and rubber rumble past.

At the end of the bridge, an elevated, plank footway extends from the
riverbank to the first stilt-house. Passing along the warm, ash-grey
wood into the community of house platforms and elevated footways, I
reach the home my brother and I share. Out of habit, I check the water
barrels beneath the palm-thatch eaves for mosquitoes. Then, taking an
earthen water carrier, I follow a path of planks deep into the mangroves
beyond the house to the plastic water-harvesting bags I’ve affixed to
clumps of leaves.

I know that the water is probably laced with heavy metals and poisons
from the industrial effluents and sewage seeping into the river, but
lighting a boiling fire, even on a bare beach, carries a minimum of seven
years. In the advancing dark, an open flame or closed drum fire would
stand out brightly to the infrared eyes of the aerostat security balloons
hovering off the coast.

I slip beneath the house platform to the lepa riding low in the stinking
water. In the tigerish orange and black shadows of evening, I see that
Tadi has finished laying and caulking the deck, an impressive effort given
every inch of the five-meter craft is constructed from interlocking puzzle
pieces of driftwood, shined with sharkskin until glowing.

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With all the typhoon rebuilding, and groundwater salinization affecting
timber yields, wood prices are out of our league. Even driftwood is hard
enough to find, given the number of people courting arrest to boil their
drinking water.

I approximate the Qiblah and perform Maghrib prayer until the red
light of sunset fades. Then I turn my palms to the early stars and say a
du’a over the banana, mango and water, hoping Allah understands the
desperation behind my theft.

I open the spot on the deck where Tadi and I keep our treasures. Among
rare shells and barnacled things scavenged from typhoon wrecks is a
collection of language dictionaries and Roaming Planet guidebooks
abandoned by seasons of tourists.

Lying on my back across the boat, I angle a China travel guide to the
light of the Industrial Zone and fantasise about where I will go once I
am a language master with enough money to bribe officials for a MyKad.

For a people who used to roam the Coral Triangle deep into the waters
of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, our lack of documents renders
us very static. One would think being linked to no state would come
with the freedom to travel at will, but, with everyone reinforcing their
borders, we are stuck here in Sabah, not just starving for food and water,
but starving for experiences and new stories. Often, I envy the tourists
their ability to go and see far more than I do the effortless way they order
their food.

The soft gongs of a kulintangan ring out. A healing rhythm, it is the most
common sound in our village these days. I wonder who will be leaving
us next.

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Malarial mosquitoes swirl, catching the light. The Sama patient lying
before the kulintangan is probably dying of malaria or dengue and yet
Tadi and I survive on. I wonder if we are Allah-blessed, or if we have
somehow—I try out the concept I learned in science—evolved to survive
the diseases.

Pombots rumble up the river mouth: the first of the seaweed worker
boats returning home.

Tadi arrives and swings down into the lepa. He’s warm and drip-dried, a
shimmer of salt crystals on his skin. He smells beautiful, Tadi: like the
ocean. Taking up his deck knife, he cuts me half a pineapple.

I suck the sweet flesh. “Thank you.”

He flicks through the China book; I see the subtle roll of eyes. He doesn’t
know why I bother.

“We had raids at the market tonight. I lost all my baloy…”

“Really?”

A sudden lump in my throat catches me off-guard, stops me speaking.

I nod stiffly.

He notices my upset. “Oh, Maslina. I’m sorry.”

“Everything is going MyKad-only! I even saw Indonesian rubber workers

and children from my school scavenging tonight. Apparently, they are all
being replaced by Peninsular Malaysians!”

There is no wind. In normal seasons, we would have had our evening

rainfall by now, to shift the river and wash out the stink of waterlogged
mangroves, algae, and sewage.

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“There are thousands of people on the move, Maslina, every one of them
needing work. They favour Malaysian citizens because they’re the only
ones who can vote.”

“All the more reason for us to be allowed market stalls,” I insist. “If
people without MyKads can’t work in the factories and plantations
any more, where else can we get money besides those rich Last Chance
tourists?”

“They don’t see it that way. And, to answer your question, we Sama
can get money from the seaweed farms.”

He sees me wrinkle my nose. “What, it’s beneath you? We’re water

people, Maslina. Seaweed is something we are good at that can’t be
replaced by Peninsular land-folk.”

“But it’s the same thing every day! The same water. The same horizons.
The same skills, over and over!”

“So?”

“So, it’s…” I want to say boring, but taking breaks to watch the last of the
green turtles and mantas glide through the water is hardly boring. Even
diseased, with spreading starbursts of bleached coral, the seafloor is still
beautiful, ever-changing. There is just no prospect of going anywhere,
learning skills for the world beyond Sabah. Adapting to shifting times…

I realise what I want to say. “It’s risky.”

“Risky?”

“In science, we’ve been studying something called evolution.” I don’t get
all of it, especially the part where some orang-utans turned into people

169
and others decided to remain animals, but I get the part about some
creatures being more fit. “Animals that only adapt to one way of living are
at risk of dying out if things change too much. I think that goes for people
too, Tad.”

“And you think going to language classes and learning science is

going to be that lifesaving adaptation?”

“Maybe.”

“Not without a MyKad it won’t. It doesn’t matter what skills you develop,
Maslina; without that card, you can’t work.” He jerks the pouch containing
his daily earnings so I can hear the coins clink. “Using your skills to earn,
even if you don’t like it, is a far better adaptation. Besides, we are more
likely to be killed on land than at sea.”

His mouth turns down and I know he is thinking about our parents,
missing since the 2045 famine protests, three years ago.

While my take-home message from our parents’ food struggles had been to
finesse the skills wanted by booming industries like tourism, their arrests
had only reinforced Tadi’s view that safety for Sama lay with the sea. It
is why he is rebuilding the family lepa, lost when the massive flooding of
January 2044 caused the Segama River to sprout a branch that cleaved its
way through our community and fleet to Darvel Bay.

I stare out across the water, at the algae flashing blue around a dying fish.

Tadi’s right, in his way. Our people have been seafarers for so long, even
our name means people of the sea. It seems foolish, even a little arrogant, to
think one as tiny as I will be there to witness the end of so long a history.

170
At the same time, everything is changing very quickly. Tadi rarely enters
town. He doesn’t see the tensions building everywhere: the bodies of
street-children and glue-sniffers being taken away in the predawn hours
before the tourists arrive, the aggression with which the MyKads have
started defending even those things basic to survival—water, food,
timber, jobs, and shelter. Too many people in Sabah and not enough for
all. It must surely come crashing down.

We are woken in the night by the mutter of biodiesel outboards

ascending the river. They cut out as they reach the stilt-house
community, their rumble replaced by angry voices.

“Is that the other seaweed harvesters returning home?” I ask Tadi.
“They’re back late.”

“Something must have happened.”

We climb the stilts to our house platform. Several platforms over,

illuminated by the all-night mills, refineries, and processing plants
of the opposite bank, the seaweed workers are clustered outside the
nakura’s home. I hear requests for an urgent council meeting.

Tadi and I wander over.

“What’s going on?” Tadi asks. “Has there been trouble?”

“An ESSFOR patrol came to the seaweed farm today, checking for
MyKads.”

My blood runs cold.

171
“They told the owner that if he ever hires undocumented labour again, he
will be arrested for harbouring.”

“They said we look like Sulu terrorists,” one of the bigger boys adds.

“What, because we look Filipino?” Tadi growls. “Don’t they know

their history?”

We all nod and mutter angrily. Many of our ancestors migrated to

Sabah waters in the 1970s, escaping the war in the Philippines. Of course
we look Filipino.

The elders arrive and the council meeting begins, led by

the most senior village man: the nakura.

Anger and fear is audible in the boys’ voices as they explain what happened.
“They told our boss to spread the word to all the other farmers! No one is
going to hire us anymore! How are we going to live?”

Tadi and I eye each other: he is remembering our earlier conversation.

He knows as well as I do how grim our community’s prospects are without
the year-round seaweed harvest. All the land jobs are becoming MyKad.
We are not allowed to fish or take any of the endangered sea cucumbers or
giant clams. Even the pandanus palms and wild coconuts seldom have fruit
on them anymore, so high is the demand by other starving seafarers.

Despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation, the elders counsel calm.
The young men protest: how are they supposed to remain calm when
begging and picking through bins for scraps could well be their futures?

No one has any suggestions for income alternatives.

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 Eventually, the meeting breaks with everyone dissatisfied, and Tadi
and I head back to the lepa.

“What are we going to do, Tadi?”

“I don’t know. Sleep. Figure it out in the morning.”

We do fall asleep, but it does not last long. I am awoken in the wee
hours by a boat knocking against the stilts of my home and sit up to
see Tadi clambering into a boggo’ dugout canoe. In the darkness, other
boggo’s with single and paired passengers bob on the water, haloed by
brilliant blue algal light. I hear voices, and recognise some of the boys
from the meeting.

My heart lumbers into an uneasy gallop. “What are you all doing? Tadi?”

“Shh. We’re just getting food. Those are our fishing grounds by historical
right. Those ESSFOR bastards owe us a meal at least.”

His accomplices mutter agreement.

“It’s illegal to fish. It’s all No Take.”

“Tell that to the pirates and the boats coming up from Indonesia. Tell that
to the big trawlers who bribe ESSFOR to look the other way.”

I make an exasperated sound. Like that’s going to hold up in court!

“I’m coming too, then.”

“No.”

“Tadi!”

“No.” In the faint, algal light, I see the warning in the set of his brows.

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“You know where I’m going and why you can’t come,” he says quietly.

“Oh no, Tadi. You can’t…. None of you can.” They are going to raid an
aquaculture farm, probably one of the Pulau Batik ring cages crowded with
terrified groupers or barramundi. “You know they don’t always arrest cage
poachers.”

They used to trial them, but the hungry were too numerous. Now, to be
caught fishing anywhere at night, especially the aquaculture farms, is to
be convicted of piracy. Pirates seldom make it back to shore: many are shot
and fed to the cages.

“I know. Say a du’a for me, Maslina. That we all return safely.”

Furious and terrified, I prostrate myself and pray to Allah and the
ancestors the rest of the night. Despite my best efforts, there is no sign
of the little fleet when sunrise breaks over the bay, filling the river with
swirling oil-rainbows.

I concoct a breakfast of sainglag and stolen mango and settle in to wait,

flicking through my guidebooks. But I can’t concentrate. My heart flip-
flops between excitement and disappointment with every craft that enters
the river.

Midday brings no sign of them. I prepare myself for the worst.

If Tadi is dead, I can’t help him. But if he and the others have been taken
alive, I will need bribes. I think of the engio woman from the market, her
offer to visit the orang-utans. Engios have money—I can only pray she
has as much compassion for people as she does for apes.

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The Lahad Datu orang-utan sanctuary is a tiny island of forest: an
animal migration stepping-stone halfway between the main orang-utan
habitats of Danum Valley and Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

Following the noise of people to the rehabilitation facility, I stagger to

a halt just inside the grounds, struck dumb by the sheer scale of the
facility—the sheer resources. There are volunteers everywhere: cleaning,
feeding, and entertaining the orang-utans; bottle-feeding the babies;
helping the injured adapt to missing limbs, relearn how to forage.
Platforms of cut fruit the street children would die for decorate every
tree. There is even an orang-utan hospital!

“Hey! You came! Aren’t they amazing?”

The engio woman trots up. I realise we don’t even know each other’s
names, and I am not even certain it matters, given how far apart our
worlds are.

I had thought the first words out of my mouth would be a request for
money, for a paying job. But all I can feel is a sick resentment at the
unfairness spread out before me.

“Who pays for all this?” I rasp.

“Americans. People overseas. They like orang-utans.”

I don’t like orang-utans. They break into orchards, causing the farmers
to put up fences not even Tadi and I can scale.

“Don’t they like children?” I blurt. I think of the family that had
once occupied the house next to ours. Their daughter had died of

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cholera—treatable, or so I have been told, had they simply had access
to medical care.

The woman blinks at that. “I … I don’t know. I guess they see the
orang-utans as here first. They feel sorry for them because they are
innocent and have no say.”

We are innocent. We have no say.

I think of my people, crushed beneath the heel of statelessness and ever-

worsening deprivation, their futures looking bleaker by the day, and I
finally understand why these orang-utans had decided to stay in the trees.
Why they didn’t choose to become human.

They had found a way to harness the compassion of the wealthy:

the ultimate survival adaptation.

The woman turns to me. “Oh, I nearly forgot! Wait here.” She dashes into a
palm-thatched hut and returns with a fat envelope. “I took your mats and
sold them for you. The people here think you are very talented. We could
have sold them twenty times over.” She grins. “If you make any more,
we’d be happy to be your sales outlet.”

I gape at her, my heart swelling with gratitude.

Twenty times over. She must surely have sold them cheaply. And yet,
the envelope feels heavy.

“How much is here?”

“Three thousand ringgit.”

I nearly drop the envelope.

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Certainty rushes through me as I lift my palms to the canopy and cry
tearful thanks to Allah: Tadi is alive! For how could he not be, after such
a blessing?

Three thousand ringgit is more than enough for bribes and two MyKads.
We will be allowed to work, to go to school. My people will have a market
for their baloy. Things are looking up.

I cannot wait to plan the itinerary of all the places we will go.

Dr. Shauna O’Meara is a veterinarian, writer, and artist based in

Australia. She was a winner of the 2014 Writers of the Future Contest,
and her stories have appeared in Cosmos magazine, Writers of the
Future, The Worcester Journal, Midnight Echo magazine, and several
Australian anthologies, including the recent Fablecroft collection
In Your Face.

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178
Standing Still
Lindsay Redifer

Every morning when I wake up, I hear the town’s single mitoto
pounding cassava leaves and the roar of the waves on our beach. I
always check the floor to see if it’s flooded, then I swing out of bed and
put on my flip-flops. I like to wake up around five in the morning; by
seven we’re all sweltering.

Nosy Faly, or Happy Island, used to be called Nosy Be, Big Island. I first
saw it when I came to Madagascar as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2005.
Back then, it was a huge tourist attraction for locals and Europeans, and
one of the few places where they mixed easily. In most of the country,
the pale-skinned foreigners had a tendency to squirrel themselves away
in French cafes, but Nosy Be was different. Here, everyone sat down
at the same table to giant plates of rice, salads of shredded carrots in
vinegar, glasses of tamarind juice, and, of course, ravitoto.

It is every Malagasy person’s great joy to see a white foreigner eating

their local food, but none more so than the strange, grassy-smelling
dish consisting of pounded cassava leaves, fatty pork, and coconut milk
all cooked together in a big pot. It’s not an attractive dish; it’s basically
green sludge with chunks floating in it spooned over rice. But the taste
is like nothing I’ve ever experienced: it’s wild and fresh like the country,
smoky and complex; it’s salty, bitter, smooth, and even a little sweet.

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When I first came here, I would wake up to a chorus of ravitoto sellers
beating their cassava leaves in giant mortar and pestles, the sound
shaking everyone out of their beds. These women had to stand while
they worked so they had enough force to bring down their smooth,
rounded logs into a nest of green, transforming the thick leaves into a
pile of light, feathery pieces to be sold in the market. Now I just hear
Larissa beating her own ravitoto all by herself. How much longer can
she do this?

I go out and give Larissa a wave. She pauses for just a quick moment
to wave back, and I go back in to grab some money for breakfast. I like
to get a coffee and some fried dough known as mofogasy before school
starts, so I have to get in line.

Mama’an Tina (it means Tina’s mom and it’s the only name she uses) is
serving coffee and little dough balls as fast as she can at the counter. All
the locals are jostling for plastic seats in her small café, and many are
just standing and chatting. Everyone looks at me for a moment, but then
they all seem to recall that I live here now and they leave me to stand
and wait. The coffee smells amazing—Mama’an Tina roasts and pounds
her own coffee beans, and somehow her water has none of the bleached
taste we’ve all grown accustomed to over the years. I actually drool
when I think of how water used to taste.

“Manahoana!”

“Manahoana neneko. Café anak iray, tsoatra.”

“Eny, eny.”

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Mama’an Tina and I have this exact same conversation every morning.
I can speak more Malagasy than this simple exchange, but the country has
been so inundated with different foreigners all speaking so many different
languages that the locals have given up on trying to communicate with us.
I don’t push it; I’m here if anyone wants to talk.

I stand outside and sip my coffee as I stare at the ocean. I wonder if my

students have gone to visit the divers like I asked. They’re usually excited
to hear a story that I imagine they probably did go, but I have some back-
up stories in case they didn’t. I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see
Jose, a high school student, smiling at me.

“Hello teacher,” he starts giggling right away. Poor Jose—the guy is just so
gay. I’m sure the only reason his family hasn’t forced him into a marriage
with a woman is because the island can’t possibly support any more babies.
In the U.S., Jose would have swapped catty comments with other young,
handsome men and worked in a highbrow café or art gallery. But here he
was stuck with only his Imam and his fellow Muslim boys at the mosque
for company, and they were far from catty.

“Good morning, Jose.” I slurp a little more coffee. It’s extremely hot
and very good. “Did you get some breakfast?”

“Oh yes,” he giggles again and touches his head just above his ear as if
he were drawing back a long tendril of hair. “I eat with my mother. You
don’t eat breakfast at home?”

“No, I like to come to the café.” This makes Jose laugh even more and he
looks around, checking to see if anyone else heard my hilarious comment.
He calms down and claps his hands together, ending his laugh.

“Teacher.” His eyes dart around. “Today is the last day to buy ravitoto.”

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“What?”

“It is the last day.” He smiles. Jose doesn’t eat the green, grassy dish,
as it’s made with pork, but he knows I love it. “You should eat all of it.
You will never have it again.”

I finish my coffee and take a moment to look at Jose. Could he be telling

the truth? Jose was known for being a bit of an attention monger, but
he also had a knack for being up on happenings around town before
anyone else.

“Jose. Are you sure? Did Larissa say that to you?”

But just then, Jose’s female friends run up to grab his arm and tell
him some marvelous new joke. Soon, they’re all shrieking and laughing
together, and I’ve been forgotten entirely. I take my tin coffee cup to
the counter and wave goodbye to Mama’an Tina and then head out
to school.

School is also a very different experience now. My first year of teaching

in Madagascar, I had so many students in class that the benches they
sat on would literally give out from under them, sending six of them
at a time to the ground with a loud thump. I never thought I would
miss those groaning, breaking seats. But my meager class would give
anything to have a school so big we could put benches in it and so many
friends as to break the seat.

My group of ten middle-schoolers is waiting for me at the house we

use for a school before I get there. A few of them run up to hug me as I
arrive, and I make sure to give each one a good, long squeeze. They all
have a smoky, sharp smell that comes from burning coal for their little
stoves at home, and all of their uniforms are worn as thin as paper from

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 being washed so many times. We go in and a few are already telling me
about their trip to the divers’ houses.

“Teacher! Teacher! Hello, teacher!” Bienvenue, one of my tiniest students,

is already jumping up and down on his bare feet with excitement. I adore
him: he’s a terrible student, but he desperately wants to be an academic.
If only I could grade enthusiasm.

“Good morning, Bienvenue. Did you do your homework?”

His big head topped with messy, curly hair nods excitedly. “Yes!
I go to the diver house. Oh, teacher, they have a big car!”

“A car?” I direct him over to his seat in the circle and the other students
gather around in their chairs so each of us can face one another. Most of
them are tall enough to sit comfortably, but a couple of them are so short
that their feet swing in the air above the floor. “Bienvenue, tell us about
the car you saw.”

He pauses, making sure he has everyone’s attention, then looks back

at me to make sure I’m equally spellbound. I am.

“The diver lady, she find a big, big car. It was white before, but now it is
green. Six people go to take it from the water. Inside, there is a seat and
circle for your hands. There are numbers and letters in the front for the
people to read. Before the sea came up, Madagascar had many cars. They
went so fast—zoom! People could go many places. But now,” he pauses,
suddenly struck by a thought. He looks over at me.

“Teacher.” His face screws up as he tries to puzzle out his thought.

“Who will drive a car?”

“Do you mean, who can drive a car later, when all of you are older?”

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He nods slowly. He seems to just now be realizing he probably won’t ever
ride in a car, not unless he leaves the island, and that’s highly unlikely.

“Well, most people don’t drive cars anymore. After the waves came
up, many cars went into the ocean. People in every country knew they
would have to find another way to travel. Here on Nosy Faly, everyone
walks and rides a bike. We don’t want the waves to come back, so we
do those things to keep the water happy. A lot of people died in those
days and we want to keep all of you safe, so now we just look at cars.
We don’t drive them.”

The group is silent for a moment. Bienvenue looks at his feet and
then up at me.

“It was beautiful, the car. I want they find another one. And then more.”

I give him a smile and pat his hands.

“Maybe they will. Who else went to see the divers? Larisoa, did you go?”

Larisoa, one of my older and very adult-looking students, nods slowly.

“I saw photos.”

“Oh? What did the photos look like?”

She waits a long moment and then looks at me. “Teacher,” she says,
“you lived in Madagascar before? Before it was so small?”

“Yes. I lived in Maevatanana. Was that town in the photos?”

“I don’t know.” Larisoa looks down at her hands. “Maybe it was from
there. I saw six women, all making ravitoto together. And I saw pictures
of a market and many different kinds of food. The women selling food
carried little babies in lambahoanis tied to their backs. And on the tables

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were big plates of ravitoto. Anybody could buy it.” She looks back up at me,
a bit puzzled. “That cannot be from here, correct?”

Yes, I want to say, this island used to be covered in markets, not lines of
people waiting for meager portions sent over by aid organizations. Those
photos are of this place.

“It’s possible.” I shift in my seat as I speak carefully. “But they could be

from somewhere else. It’s difficult to know unless someone writes on the
picture where it was taken. There were markets here before and lots of
ravitoto. Before, it was the cheapest thing a person could buy. This is why
it is so important to take care of our home. When the waves came up, the
soil changed. The trees got thin and small, the fruit and the vegetables
died before anyone could eat them. We have new ways to grow things now,
but change takes time, so we have to be patient.” I look around the circle
and think of all the processed, high-in-nutrient powders and pastes these
children will need to eat in their lifetimes. I miss mangoes. I miss bananas.
“If we work hard and learn more about the ocean and the best ways to take
care of the Earth, maybe we can have a market like that again.”

The stories go on. Mami saw a lemur skeleton and a book, Solo saw a special
chair with wheels on it, Marie got to touch a washed-up keyboard and was
allowed to keep the number 8. The students pass her little grey key around
and ooh and ahh over the strange, bumpy texture of the plastic. I glance
out the window and already I can see a huge line leading to Larissa’s house.
I make a decision: I’m going to buy ravitoto for myself today, no matter
how small the portion.

After our morning storytelling, the students go home for the hottest part
of the day. They’ll eat with their families and then sleep for a couple of
hours. I know the rest of the town will be resting as well, so I’m going to
visit Larissa.

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I walk the little path to her house and immediately I see that at least
fifteen other people have had the same idea. They’re all standing and
sweating. The women hold lambahoanis over their heads to get some
shade, but it doesn’t do much. I stand in line behind a young man who
turns back to scowl at me.

Probably just frustrated by the heat, I tell myself. I’ll let that
faux pas slide.

The moment I’ve decided to be forgiving, I realize the boy and the man
in front of him are discussing me and they’re not happy. They switch to
French to let me know I’m meant to overhear them.

“What a greedy French woman, buying the last of our wonderful food.
Isn’t she rich enough to buy fruit and greens? I saw her in the café this
morning drinking coffee like a politician’s wife.”

“The French want everything. You can’t show them a beautiful cloth or
nice house without having it taken away from you. Even a married man
isn’t safe from their claws.”

Okay, how do I respond to all of this? First of all, I’m not French and
it’s the one thing I truly hate to be called. Apparently, my face, my nose
in particular, has a certain je ne sais quoi to it, and I constantly have to
explain that I’m American and that’s a very different place. Sometimes
people listen; usually they just roll their eyes as they walk away.

The two keep talking, glaring at me in turns over their shoulders. My

own shoulders are locking up with stress. Meanwhile the temperature is
rising sharply, and I pray the sunblock I put on this morning is enough.
Finally, the two guys want me to confirm all their anger, and one of
them makes the mistake of grabbing my arm. I wrench it away and
switch the conversation back to Malagasy.

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“Don’t touch me! Where is your brain? You don’t know why I’m here—
you don’t even know that I’m American. I teach your children, I buy
coffee to help others make money. Larissa is my friend and you are a
waste of my time.”

The two men stand shocked, and immediately the volume on the whole
situation gets turned down. In their softest voices, the two whisper
their apologies and turn back to face forward. I’m shaking from the
confrontation and I have to close my eyes for a moment and remind
myself to breathe. Public arguments are more common now that the
population of the country has all been squeezed into the small, dry
space we have left, but they’re still considered a bad move. The locals
hate confrontation, especially with a white woman who isn’t supposed
to be speaking their language.

Slowly, everyone in line gets their tiny, tiny portion of ravitoto and then
wanders away to cook their treasure for their families. I’m last and, when
I stand in Larissa’s doorway, I can see just how hard she’s been working.

Everything is far too clean, which means she hasn’t cooked today. She
sits on her little stool and smiles up at me with a weak expression on her
face. I join her on the second stool and without asking she puts a bare foot
on my lap so I can massage it for her. I oblige and dig in to her tense sole
with my thumb and knuckles.

“Oh, my daughter, that is so sweet of you. Thank you.” She closes her eyes
and her smile gets a little bigger. “Today was a hard day. Someone went
around whispering about today being the last day to buy ravitoto. Do you
know who it was?”

“You can talk to Jose about that. He went straight to the café to make
sure everyone knew.”

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“Huh.” She opens her eyes to look at me. “That boy must sit outside my
window at night. He always knows my business.”

“Maybe the waves whisper to him.” We both laugh at this little joke. The
thought of Jose being one of the fortune tellers who claims to know
what the sea will do next after listening to the tides is truly hilarious.
We can just picture him with his hair grown out in dreadlocks and
seashells hanging from his wrists while he communes with the water.

“Oh, my darling,” Larissa sighs, “what am I going to do without my

good friend, the American masseuse?”

“What?” I give her foot a tap and she puts it down so I can take the other
one. “Where are you going?”

“To the coasts of Idaho.” She gets a sad look on her face when she says it.
Madagascar is all she’s known. She grew up here back when it was Nosy
Be and survived the horrible tsunamis that killed most of her friends
and family. She watched the trees turn into gnarled sticks and the soil
become hard and white. She learned how to grow cassava trees in large
pots, but it nearly ruined her. All her money went to container farming
until she had her first successful tree. Then she became famous as the
only woman making ravitoto in the whole country. She’s had a long
journey here. Could she ever feel at home in Idaho?

Larissa stands and goes over to her gas stove, and it clicks a few times
until it lights. She and her husband also sell stores of an old fuel made
from sugarcane. But very few people can afford the appliances that need
the stuff, so they always have extra. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes, but my students will be back soon.”

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“Stay for some rice. I will go to the school with you and tell the
children some stories.”

“You will?” I can’t count the number of times I’ve invited Larissa to
come and tell stories at the school. She’s always waved me away and
gone back to her work. But I suppose she’s retired now. “They would
love to hear what you have to say. I know I would.”

“First, we eat.”

Larissa boils the huge portion of rice. The bag it comes from says
Pakistan, in big letters. My stomach is rumbling already. She has a little
pinch of fresh, green ravitoto hiding in one of the miniature pots I see
everywhere. They were originally meant to help young children learn how
to cook, holding only small portions, but now adults use them to cook
tiny portions of meat or the occasional vegetable. I open the miniscule
lid and breathe in the fresh, cool grassy smell. It makes my head reel with
memories of tall cassava trees, big, firm leaves over our heads, and birds,
birds everywhere. I silently pray into the pot for a return to those days
and then place the lid on top before my words can slip out.

We eat, each taking infinitesimal bites of ravitoto. Even the few nibbles I
get fortify me, bring back my positivity, and make me feel like I can take
on the rest of the week. Larissa tells me that she and her husband Marc
have been invited by environmental specialists to a site in Idaho where
specialists are working with the new coastline and farmers are learning
how to grow trees out of the soil.

“You know,” I say with a full mouth, “I’m from Idaho. I was there
when the new coast formed.”

“Are you?” She’s not interested. Coincidences aren’t something that

resonate with people here. “Is your family there?”

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I shake my head no. We just look at one another for a moment and
then change the subject.

“Finish your food. Your students are waiting.”

When we get to the school house, only half of my class has returned.
Word must have gotten out that I yelled at the two men in the ravitoto
line. It is so easy to lose one’s standing in this community. I once sat
next to a single man in the café by mistake and my students avoided
me for a week.

Bienvenue is one of those who returned, of course.

“Oh, teacher,” he wags his finger at me, but he’s smiling. “You are
very masika. Very, very masika.”

“I’m spicy?”

“Yes!” He touches my skin and pretends it’s burning his hand. “Oh!
Too hot! The teacher is too hot!” His joke sends him into a laughing
fit and a couple of his friends join in the joke. I hold out my arms so
everyone can feel how hot I am and they all run up quickly to touch
them and then run away with their pretend injuries.

After they get a chance to play, I tell them Larissa has stories to share
and they immediately gather around her. She’s familiar with all of
them, so she gets even more hugs than I do. She asks about all of their
relatives and for all the news, and then listens while they all recount
their adventures at the diving school. It takes ages, but she’s glowing
while they talk. Larissa never had any children. After the devastation
of her country, she decided not to be a mother but to focus on making
sure everyone got fed.

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“Okay, class.” I raise my hands for their attention. “If we want to listen to
Larissa, we have to sit in a circle and show her our listening ears.” The
scramble to their seats, pulling their chairs close and then turning their
heads from side to side so that we can see how clean and attentive their
ears are. Larissa takes the ear inspection seriously.

“Do I see a seashell in your ear?” No, no shells! “Are you certain? I can
hear the ocean coming from somewhere—I think it’s your ear.” This joke
is an enormous hit and they all rock back and forth with laughter, some
jumping up to check around the group and insisting they see a shell
lodged in a classmate’s ear.

“Well, you know, we used to love seashells. We collected them and sold
them to tourists when I was your age. Yes, people paid for things from
the sea back then. We had restaurants that sold spicy fish with rice—my
mother ran a beautiful one that everyone loved, especially the rich
French people. She always made sure to give them a different menu
with higher prices. Even when they saw that they had been tricked, they
didn’t care. Once they tasted my mother’s food, they were happy to pay
whatever she asked.

“My job when I was twelve years old was to walk along the shore with
my brother. My brother was small, much smaller than I, but he loved the
sea. He loved to climb the big rocks on the west side of the island and
watch the waves below. Every time I see a big one hit the shore and spray
out, I think of him and how he would clap when he saw them like it was
a special show.

“We took what we found back to my mother’s restaurant and walked

around between the tables. Mother would pretend we were sad little
orphans that she fed and taught us what to say if someone asked where

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we lived. We live under a tree, we would say. We haven’t seen our mother
for a long time. Would you like a shell? Mother would cluck at us and
shake her head. Isn’t it sad? They’re all alone. People couldn’t give us
their money fast enough.

“So, we always had food to eat and beds to sleep in. My father played the
guitar and would sing for us in the evenings. I can hardly talk about it
without crying now; he sang so beautifully. I will never forget the day
his guitar was smashed to bits in a storm—it was the last thing I had
from him, and when I lost it I sobbed. Everyone scolded me for being so
silly over a musical instrument, but they didn’t understand. That guitar
was my father. It meant the world to me.

“Watching my country wash away was like that. Everything I knew

changed. The mangoes we always had were suddenly gone. Even the
trees had none. We heard news that the other parts of the country
were underwater and at first we didn’t believe it. How was it possible?
Madagascar is so big and Nosy Faly, which we called Nosy Be back then,
is only a small part. But, we believed it when people started rowing over
in boats, desperate for help and begging for a place to live.

“We took in as many people as we could, but soon we had to start

refusing. I don’t know what happened to the ones we couldn’t help; they
turned and rowed away. Africa was a long boat ride from here even
before the waves came, and surely it’s much further now. It’s possible
they were swallowed up by the sea.

“Everyone had to give up everything. We lost all of our electricity, so

no one could watch TV or listen to the radio, something we used
to do every day. We had no way of knowing what was happening in
other parts of the country or around the world. We couldn’t even use
generators, as petrol had been declared illegal. I missed my TV shows

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so much. I know it’s a silly thing, but I truly loved the programs I used to
watch. The people in them were fun and interesting, and I missed them
when they left.”

The children listen to her with their heads to the side and their eyebrows
knitted together. They try hard to picture things like guitars and
televisions, but the only way they could see these things was at the scrap
yard at the diving school—junky relics from the water.

Larisoa raises her hand and Larissa motions to her. “Larissa,” she asks,
“how is it that you have so many trees?”

“Oh, I can tell you. After I lost everything, I had nothing to do. There
was no restaurant, no tourists to buy shells. So, I was wandering around
being sad and imagining I heard my family just behind me or around the
corner. It was a terrible time. Then, some farmers who had come over on
a boat were walking on the street behind me and talking about a new way
of growing plants. I listened to them because it gave me a break from my
sadness, and then I kept listening because what they were saying was very
fascinating. They had a way to grow a tree without the ground. I had never
seen this and I thought they must be lying, but I was too curious not to
find out, and my curiosity led me out the door the next day.

“I found two of the farmers and told them I wanted to learn how to grow
trees. They weren’t too keen on teaching me—they thought my family
would object. But I explained I had no family and they agreed to teach
me. They showed me how to use old, rotted food to make food for plants
and soil and how to put holes in a pot so that the tree roots can drain and
breathe. It was very interesting. We worked together for several months
and my first few trees died, which crushed me. But they told me not worry,
to keep trying. The world needs people who can grow things, they told me.
This is important.

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“And now,” she says, looking around at all the sweet faces, “I am anxious
to find some students to teach about farming. I need to make sure the
island still has cassava even after I go.”

The news floors them.

“You’re leaving? No! Don’t go! What will we do? How can you leave?
It’s a bad time to travel. You should stay here with us.”

“To show Larissa how much we’ll miss her,” I interject, “why don’t
we let her show us how she grows trees? I bet some of you would be
wonderful growers.”

The students all look down, embarrassed and shy. “Teacher,”

Bienvenue says, “we don’t know anything about plants.”

“And that’s why you need a teacher.” Larissa stands and looks around the
group. “Tomorrow you are all coming to my house to learn how to grow
a tree from a tiny little seed. And you are going to see that you do know
something about growing. It is in your blood. You are Malagasy.”

When we go out, the sun has set and the full moon is out. The silver light
is so bright that everyone is outside of their homes telling stories. Larissa
and I hug the children goodbye and watch them leave.

“When will you go?”

“In two weeks. I have to make sure I leave some experienced farmers
behind me.” She turns her weathered face to me. “You will have to be
one of them.”

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The thought of a tree in front of my house makes my heart race. I don’t
know if it’s possible, but I am thrilled that she trusts me. I nod and we
hug each other so tightly that it hurts my arms. I don’t let go, I just hug
her tighter and she does the same. We stay like that for as long as we can,
listening to the rising ocean lap closer and closer to our feet, desperately
trying to hold on to that ground beneath our feet.

Lindsay Redifer is a ghostwriter and aspiring science fiction writer living

in Guadalajara, Mexico. She is currently teaching creative writing to
high school students and writing as a freelancer. She is from Nampa,
Idaho and is an avid reader of science fiction, which she maintains is the
only genre worth reading.

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196
Into the Storm
Yakos Spiliotopoulos

Anwar shudders every time he hears the emphatic footsteps of soldiers

marching up and down the halls outside. He knows that they are either
with him, or coming for him.

Hail and wind lash the cast-iron windows in short, angry bursts. Anwar
paces, nervously chafing at the scar on the back of his neck. Every
step echoes in the dim, cavernous room on Parliament Hill where he
waits. Normally, this is a room where committees meet. Where laws are
drafted. Where legacies are made. But tonight nothing is normal.

Footsteps outside. A sharp knock. Anwar quickly composes himself.

“Come in,” he says, brusquely.

One of the double doors opens, just enough for Lieutenant Rosseau
to enter, salute, and stand at attention. Anwar can only make out a
silhouette against the bright light pouring in from the hall, but he knows
it’s Rosseau—his broad shoulders and thick head are unmistakable.

“Mr. Fitzpatrick’s convoy just arrived, sir.”

“Bring him up.”

“Yes sir.”

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Rosseau shows himself out, closing the door behind him. Anwar walks
toward the lofty bookshelves lining the walls on either side of the
fireplace. He scans the leather-bound volumes of codified law stretching
all the way up to the ornate ceiling. His gaze shifts to the mirror on the
fireplace mantle. He straightens his beige and green tie, and examines
the side of his head where some of the short black hairs are graying. He
catches his hazel eyes in the mirror and it startles him, as if someone
else is staring back. He abruptly turns and walks toward the windows
and looks out into the Ottawa night. Not a single person on the streets.
Streetlamps illuminate thick streams of rain and hail blowing violently
through the small orbits they manage to light. He can barely make out
the military vehicles occupying the streets below.

Footsteps outside the room. Voices, commotion. The door swings open
with no knock. In charges Henry Fitzpatrick, trailed by Lieutenant
Rosseau and the two armed guards who were stationed outside the door.

“What the hell are you up to?” Henry shouts.

The guards grab Henry’s arms, but Anwar raises a calm hand and they
release him. Henry shakes loose. “Why are soldiers occupying my home
and escorting me away from my family in the middle of a hurricane?
And taking all our phones and computers away?”

Even in the dim light, Anwar can see that Henry’s thick gray hair is
dishevelled, his eyes languid, his sunken, pale cheeks especially veiny.
He is wearing blue jeans and a green sweater with a zipper at the top—
far from the usual bespoke suits and flawless complexion he presents
every day to Parliament and the media as Leader of the Opposition.

“Thank you for coming tonight,” Anwar says, equanimously.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

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“Please. Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand. But you can excuse the heavily armed men behind me.”

Anwar nods, and waves Rosseau and the two soldiers away. They salute
and leave the room. Henry looks on, bewildered.

“Why the hell are they saluting you?”

Anwar says nothing as he slowly walks to the conference table.

A flash of lightning illuminates the room. Loud thunder follows,
rattling the windows.

“I don’t like the atmosphere around here,” Henry says, eying Anwar.
“I have suspicions about what might be going on.”

“What do you think is going on?” Anwar says, pulling up a chair next to
the head of the long conference table and gesturing for Henry to sit.

“There’s a hurricane out there,” Henry begins, taking the seat at the head
of the table. “So nobody is suspicious about the military being around.
Communications are down, or could be downed, without arousing much
suspicion either. It could really leave our capital very vulnerable.”

More flashes of lightning. They illuminate Henry’s light blue eyes.

“We’re taking control,” Anwar says. “Tonight. In a few minutes, we’re going
to arrest the Prime Minister and senior members of his cabinet. We will
immediately establish a democratic government, which will operate with
strict environmental protections embedded in a new constitution that will
include everything that I campaigned on last year.”

“Everything you campaigned on only got you 18% of the popular vote.”

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“Because I was outspent. We were outspent. The PM bought that
election with filthy money.”

Henry remains silent for a long while. The ceaseless whistling of

the wind and the clatter of hail against the windows feel very loud to
both men.

“I’ve known for some time that you were a risk taker,” Henry finally
says. “But going from eccentric suits and ties to overthrowing one of the
world’s oldest and most stable democracies? You’re out of your mind.”

“What’s stable about a democracy that has failed to prevent global

warming and irreparable environmental destruction? Just look outside:
this is our fourth hurricane this season alone. Hurricanes in Ottawa, for
God’s sake. It’s not just symbolic that we’re taking control on a night like
this; it’s downright necessary.”

Henry shakes his head and rubs his temples with both elbows on the
table—a classic gesture of his, often captured by the cameras.

“How do you even think you’ll get close to the PM?”

“His security team is with us.”

That silences Henry.

“Even so,” says Henry, “the moment you move on the PM, the world will
come down hard on you. The U.S., maybe even Britain, will invade us.”

“Stop living in the past. London and half the U.K. are under water, and
the U.S. government, led by its reality TV star President, can’t afford to
fortify or even evacuate people out of New York and all the other coastal
areas that are flooded. And over in the west they’ve run out of water

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altogether. We’re taking in American refugees. That country is literally
swamped and bone dry all at the same time.”

“You’re greatly underestimating the ramifications of your actions.”

The pitch of the howling wind rises, and the hail assaults the
windows with added fury.

“I have key military people on my side. And I expect the full cooperation
of our entire armed forces by the end of the night. That will deter any
interested parties from intervening.”

“Who are your key military people? I noticed Rosseau just now. He’s
one of General Campbell’s men, isn’t he? You do remember that Campbell
is under investigation for misuse of government funds.”

“As I said, I have top military people on board. And my own party will
back me. But Henry, I need you. You’re the Leader of the Opposition, and
someone who campaigned hard against…”

“Not a chance,” he says, pointing at Anwar. “You’re committing treason

right now, and I’m not going down this road. You’ll be lucky to come out
of this with your life.”

“This isn’t treason. Our democracy is broken. You said as much when
Parliament was shut down last week—this time, the PM’s excuse was
the storm.”

“Shutting down Parliament is a vexing, but longstanding right of

any legitimate government…”

“Wake up, man!” Anwar shouts, pounding the table and standing up.
“Everything longstanding and traditional has resulted in full glacier

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collapse in the Arctic, and now the Antarctic. Our cities, and some
countries for God’s sake, are under water. Four nuclear power plants
have been overrun by the oceans—that’s four A-bombs that have gone
off. And worst of all, there are corporations and wealthy individuals out
there right now profiting from all of this, and paying our government
big campaign dollars to stay silent for just a little while longer. And you
talk about tradition? The only thing tradition has done is bring us right
here, to this room. This is our moment. We can do this, Henry. Think
about your wife. Your kids.”

“You’re not married, and you don’t have kids,” Henry says, standing
and pointing at Anwar. “You’re out of your depth.”

“Hey! The village I grew up in just got evacuated and is close to being
wiped off the map, so don’t tell me I don’t have anything at stake here.
But then, you wouldn’t understand that, with all the Toronto real
estate you inherited.”

“Don’t you start with…”

“And besides, I don’t need a wife and kids to know that you could be
a hero to them, and to our country and the planet, if you join us.”

“I’m no good to my wife and kids if I’m dead or in prison.”

“We will not fail,” Anwar says, pounding the table with each word.
“We will succeed. With or without you, this is going to happen. You need
to decide right now. Are you in or out?”

Henry takes a deep breath and shakes his head. He turns and
walks toward the double doors.

“You’re not leaving,” Anwar says, grimly.

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 Henry stops, pauses, and turns around.

“When I said think of your wife and kids, I meant it. There are men
with guns in your living room right now. This is your last chance.
Are you with us or not?”

“You’re bluffing,” he says, turning toward the doors.

“Guards!” Anwar shouts. The doors open and the two soldiers
quickly enter. “Take this man to a holding cell.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Henry shouts. A vein protrudes from his
crimson forehead as he struggles with the guards. They easily subdue him,
and he is escorted out, past Rosseau, who stands inside the doors.

“General Campbell wants to know how things went.”

“How do you think they went?” Anwar shouts.

Rosseau says nothing.

“Tell General Campbell to initiate the plan.”

“Yes sir. The General wants you to wait here until everyone has been
detained. He says it’s the safest way. More guards are already outside.”

Anwar nods. Rosseau salutes and exits.

Anwar slumps into a deep armchair in front of the fireplace. He rubs

the scar at the back of his neck and listens as the hurricane pummels
the windows. He closes his eyes.

“Put that on,” his father shouts in Farsi, dumping a life jacket
at his son’s feet.

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Anwar has trouble balancing himself on the swaying, slippery
dock with the wind and rain as powerful as they are. He looks out at
the enormous white waves crashing down on the cold Newfoundland
shores beyond the cove.

“But Baba, the ocean is angry,” Anwar shouts, straining to be heard

over the storm.

“So am I,” his father shouts back. He kneels in front of Anwar, wraps his
hand around his neck and draws him closer. Anwar winces in pain. His
father’s hand is pushing on the fresh bandage on his neck.

“This pain in your neck,” his father shouts. “It’s you that caused it.
You let those kids scare you.”

“But Baba…”

“If we’re going to succeed here, we can’t be scared. Of anything.

Not those kids, not even this ocean.”

He stands and turns to face the angry waters. He raises the hood
over his orange fisherman’s overalls.

“When your mother left, I took the boat out on a day just like this. It
showed me that I could face anything. If you do this today, you can face
those kids.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“You have to want to go,” he shouts, his unshaven face dripping

from the rain.

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He shoves the life jacket into Anwar’s chest, and the boy puts it on over his
coat. He lifts Anwar into the small, billowing vessel, climbs aboard, and
nudges his son into the wheelhouse. He unfastens the rope tying them to
the dock, joins Anwar in the wheelhouse, and steers the boat towards the
raging waters outside the horseshoe-shaped cove.

“Baba, don’t.” Anwar shouts, trying to turn the wheel. But he tears Anwar’s
hand away and increases the speed. The wipers can’t keep up with the hard
rain, but Anwar can still make out the waves crashing at full force into the
rocks sheltering the cove.

Anwar runs outside and jumps off the back of the boat. The water is so
cold that it numbs his body almost immediately. He faintly hears his father
shouting, and sees the boat turning. He is barely conscious when he is
drawn out of the water with the fishing net and dumped onto the wet deck.

Knocks at the door. Anwar rises from his chair. He glances at the
windows, then at the doors.

He is ready.

Yakos Spiliotopoulos was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He has

published several short stories in journals such as Exile: The Literary
Quarterly and The Nashwaak Review, and was shortlisted for the Litpop
Awards, the Exile/Vanderbilt Short Story Contest, and the Writers
Union of Canada Short Prose Competition. He recently completed his
first novel and is working on a second.

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206
Praying for Rain:
An Interview with Paolo Bacigalupi
Ed Finn

Paolo Bacigalupi is the New York Times-bestselling author of novels for

adults including The Water Knife (2015) and The Windup Girl (2009),
and novels for young adults including Ship Breaker (2010) and its sequel
The Drowned Cities (2012). Paolo is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus,
Compton Crook, Michael L. Printz, and John W. Campbell Memorial
awards, alongside awards in Japan, Spain, Germany, and France.

In September 2015, Paolo visited Arizona State University to deliver

our annual Imagination and Climate Futures Lecture. During his visit,
he sat down with me for a conversation about the emotions he tries to
provoke with his writing, the push-and-pull between optimism and
pessimism in imagining possible futures, and the power of storytelling
to shape our responses to climate change.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ed Finn: Why is fiction such a powerful tool for helping us understand

the enormity of climate change and how to confront it?

Paolo Bacigalupi: Fiction is able to move you past the political identity
debates. A lot of times, I can set a story in a future where the world
is already broken by climate change. I don’t need to have characters

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representing the green perspective versus the industrial perspective.
I can just have a bunch of characters who run around in a devastated
world. That fictional world makes the argument about how serious
climate change is, so the characters don’t have to. And that means
that you can tell stories to people who otherwise would be completely
unwilling to look at climate change, or take it seriously. They may start
out in the funhouse playroom of the broken future, saying, “Hey, it’s
just an apocalypse story.” But you can also make the argument that
there are a lot of trend lines around this that are troubling.

So that’s first thing: you can break through those really strongly
constructed identity barriers that we have around hot-button topics
like climate change and get in the reader’s head, despite their other
political leanings.

Beyond that, fiction has this superpower of creating empathy in people

for alien experiences. You can live inside of the skin of a person who
is utterly unlike you. And if I can live inside of the skin of somebody
who is a different gender or a different race or from a different class
background and suddenly imbibe their concerns and live inside of
their concerns, that’s really powerful.

Writing science fiction also means that you can extend out into the
future. You can create that empathy into the fourth dimension for
a future version of yourself, or empathy for the life your child may
inherit. You get to live inside of the skin of a climate refugee as they drag
themselves across New Mexico, hated by all the New Mexicans, blown
out of Texas by droughts and flooding and hurricanes. You get to live
that sense of displacement, and then you get to live that sense of loss,
and the struggle of trying to find a new place and a new land. All of that
is an opportunity to let a reader experience the consequences of our

208
failure in the present, our failure to create a good future for that person
who they will then identify with and connect to.

Fiction has this power to engage us with a set of consequences that we

otherwise would discount. We tend to weight our present prosperity
over our future costs, and so we discount future risk quite a lot. Fiction
is a way to build up that sense of risk in a future scenario.

EF: What kinds of emotions are you hoping to provoke in

your readers when you’re writing about climate change and
other environmental challenges?

PB: What I’m really aiming for is to provoke a sense of anxiety. I’m
trying to create a feeling that after you’ve read a book like The Water
Knife, you will come back into your present moment and look around
at the world differently.

I’m hoping that in the moment, you actually are having a fair amount
of pleasure. You’re excited about the gun battles and you have that
frozen-chill sense of “is this character going to make it out alive?” Both
the triumphs and failures of the characters should be really engaging,
and you’re fascinated by this world that’s broken but also kind of weird—
all the different layers are there, provoking fascination and interest.

But afterwards, there’s another set of emotional reactions that I’m

looking for. When you close the book and return to this present moment
from that future broken world, I’m hoping that you’re going to look
around and see your world differently—that the present moment will
be re-contextualized.

And so when you open up a newspaper and you’re reading about a water
rights fight between cities in California and farmers, suddenly you’re like,

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“Oh, water rights, those exist. I remember how water rights work. Oh,
this is actually happening right now. People are engaged in zero-sum
fights over who gets the water and where it goes.”

EF: How do you grapple with scientific literature and scientific research?
How do you use it and what role does it play in your writing?

PB: Usually, I’m looking for a couple of data points that seem to indicate
a trend. For The Water Knife, there were two data points that were really
powerful to me. They were both inspired by Texas.

In 2011, I was down in Texas during their drought and it was

extraordinarily bad. The land couldn’t support the cattle. The crops
were dying. You were seeing towns that were having to pump and
truck in water. You were seeing rolling brownouts because they
didn’t have enough water in their dams and so they didn’t have
enough hydroelectricity. There were all these weird synergistic
things happening and it was all really bad.

You see that stuff happening and you can go and look at climate models
that say, “Yeah, this looks like the new normal for Texas in the future.”
So you’re looking at the data, and you have this emotional experience of
your own where you’re heat stroking in 100-degree weather and you’re
like, “This is troubling to me.”

But then there’s another layer too where you have politicians in Texas
holding prayer circles and praying for rain. That’s not scientific data,
that’s social data, and it’s also really useful.

You put those two pieces of information together and you say, “You
know, all of our climate data says that we are moving towards drier,
more extreme weather for the southwestern United States.” And

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then you also have this other piece of data that says our leadership is
completely disengaged, that they are engaged in magical thinking.

The core function of science fiction is to look at some moment and say,
“If this goes on, what will the world look like? If this trend continues and
becomes exacerbated, what will happen?” And then you go spin out that
extrapolation in a story.

So for me, each piece of data is a jumping-off point to start saying,

“What if? What if? What if? Ask that next question.”

EF: When you extrapolate into the future and come up with stories, they
tend to be fairly pessimistic. What is the role of optimism? How should
we be engaging with the future? What’s the best way to use our capacity
for imagination to think about the world?

PB: The reason I tend to write pessimistic futures is because none of

the data that I’m seeing says that we’re doing anything that earns us a
hopeful future. One of the things that I’m concerned about is writing
consolatory fiction, something that you can snuggle up to and say to
yourself, “Oh, yeah, things are bad, but we’re such clever monkeys.
Somebody is going to figure it out. Technology always finds a way. We’ve
always gotten out of the frying pan before.” There’s an assumption that,
well, it hasn’t screwed us up yet and we’ve always expanded and always
become more healthy and wealthy and wise, so it’s always going to go
this way.

There’s a complacency there, and I particularly feel it in the technophilic

can-do space where it’s like, “Eh, don’t sweat it. The markets will
take care of it. We’ll eventually come up with a new solution.” Our
marketplaces often solve the wrong problems. They don’t tend to
be interested in solving root causes. They tend to put Band-Aids on

211
symptoms. That’s why you see people wearing dust masks in Beijing
and other heavily polluted cities. You don’t get rid of the factories or
deal with the air pollution. You give everybody dust masks, and you sell
them and then you accessorize them and then you make them a brand
name item and you make a lot of money off of them. That’s kind of
what capitalist markets do.

In The Water Knife, you see the same thing with Clearsacs. It’s not
like, “Oh, we need to get together and collectively solve our water
infrastructure and over-building problems.” Instead, we’re going to
have everybody buy these bags that they can pee into, and they can
drink their own pee. And now some corporation is going to sell these
by the millions.

So the problem that we solve is not necessarily the right one. In my

mind, our marketplaces tend to solve all the wrong problems. So part
of it is that I have a cynical understanding of how our society engages
with big social issues and how we use our markets and capitalism to do
that. And some of it is that I just feel like we’re stupid as a species and
as a society.

The idea that you can create a future that assures people that things
will be fine, and that is fundamentally fair, is as magical as praying for
rain and just as stupid. That’s part of what I’m concerned about: that
I could write a future that’s hopeful in way that we haven’t earned yet.
We haven’t done the hard work.

EF: Do you approach these issues of optimism and pessimism in the

same way in your young adult novels?

PB: When I’m writing for young adults, I do think about this slightly
differently. Science fiction creates these interesting mythologies, these

212
things that people think we can live into. And in some cases, we can.
In some cases, kids who grew up reading about rocket ships go on to
become NASA scientists and build rocket ships.

The idea that a science fiction writer can imagine something and then an
engineer will glom onto it and create that thing, that you can instantiate
reality simply by imagining it, is pretty powerful. I always get chills when
I think about that kind of thing, and you see it happening again and again
in science fiction. You see Arthur C. Clarke imagining communication
satellites, then we have communication satellites. You see Neal Stephenson
creating the Metaverse in his novel Snow Crash, and suddenly we have
Second Life.

When I’m writing for young people, I do think about that. And that was
certainly what I was thinking about when I was writing Ship Breaker,
where I wanted to create futuristic technologies that were optimistic—
to make wind power look really exciting and really sexy and really sleek
and really innovative and all the things that a wind turbine isn’t.

For me, the answer was to create these beautiful, high-tech clipper ships.
It’s a new age of sail in the future. Oil has run out, the world is wrecked,
but we’ve created these amazing sailing ships and there’s a new global
economy getting going all based on sail.

It’s as if we suddenly put all of our innovative energy into materials

science and physics. What kind of cargo sailing ship would you create,
knowing everything that we know about physics and materials science
now? You’d have carbon fiber hulls, you’d have high-altitude parasails,
you’d have hydrofoils. There are all these amazing technologies that you
could combine and suddenly a clipper ship is a pretty fast, sleek, high-tech
thing. It’s as exciting as a Ferrari, and that was the objective: to create that
aspirational object, and wait and see what people make of it.

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EF: Great works of science fiction often create new terms for describing
strange and unexpected realities, from George Orwell’s Big Brother to
Ursula Le Guin’s ansibles and William Gibson’s cyberspace. How can
the language of science fiction help us get a handle on climate change
and other complex environmental challenges?

PB: One of the things I feel like I’m bad at, that I want to work on
more, is this challenge of creating a new vocabulary. As a global society,
a global species, I feel like we don’t have the words to describe the kinds
of impacts that we’re seeing on a global scale, with climate change and
other complex phenomena.

One of the big ones is that I’m still hunting for is a word for a huge,
slow-moving risk that starts in the past and then comes to bear on
you twenty years in the future, and yet it is a definite danger. There
is something coming. It’s not here yet. We collectively create it and
it’s really bad.

Imagine if we had a noun for that, if that’s a “boogum-boogum.” The

boogum-boogum is coming for you. You can go look around and
there’s a fair number of boogum-boogums, actually. If we had that word,
we could say yes, we know about those. We can see how global societies
and lots of people all collectively contributing to some tragedy of the
commons is an existential risk to the species, to the planet. If we had
a set of terms to engage with those phenomena, if we could describe
that reality, then maybe we would also be able to more successfully
manipulate that reality. We’d know that whenever we create this
boogum-boogum thing, that we all need to get together and not let
it destroy us.

214
Ed Finn is the founding director of the Center for Science and the
Imagination at Arizona State University. He is the author of What
Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing (2017) and co-
editor of Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers and Creators
of All Kinds (2017) and Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better
Future (2014).

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A Note on the Illustrations
Matt Phan

Many of the works in this anthology touch on the issue of a rising

sea level, so I chose to create a series of progressive topographic maps
to illustrate this concept. As the reader continues through the book,
the sea level rises story after story, until only slivers of land remain. I
wanted the illustrations to abstractly resemble a topographic map, so
that readers perceive them just as illustrations, rather than searching
for information within them as if they were functional maps.

Matt Phan is currently a senior at Arizona State University, where

he studies Visual Communication Design and French.

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 Typography
Cover Title: Avenir Heavy 48pt
Cover Subtitle: Avenir Medium Oblique 16pt
Cover Heading: Avenir Black 8pt
Cover Subheading: Avenir Medium 13pt
Contents Chapter Title: Minion Pro Regular 12pt
Contents Chapter Subtitle: Minion Pro Italic 9pt
Title: Avenir Medium 20pt
Subtitle: Avenir Medium Oblique 12pt
Text: Minion Pro Regular 9pt
Small Text: Minion Pro Regular 7pt

Software
Adobe InDesign CS6 version 8.0

Computer
iMac (27-inch, late 2012)
2.9 GHz Intel Core i5
16GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M 512 MB

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