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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>the harbingers</title>

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<body>
<section id='top'>
<header id="title-block-header">
<h1 class="title"><span>the</span> harbingers</h1>
<div class='epigraph'>
  creeping down your back<br>
  crawling in your dreams<br>
  what if things<br>
  are really what they seem?
</div>
<div class="author">bhikkhu sujato</div>
</header>
</section>
<section id='space'>
  <p>When the world falls apart, does anything stay in place? What if the survivors were those who have already lost everything? This is a story about life at the end of the world in Parramatta. It is a fairy tale of apocalypse, a cli-fi novel of despair and enlightenment for the reasonably hopeless.</p>
  <p><cite>The Harbingers</cite> is a novel by Bhikkhu Sujato.</p>
  <p><a href='https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/monthly.html'>At the time of publication, global atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa station was 420.85 ppm.</a></p>
  <ul>
<li><a class='call-to-action' href='https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/bhikkhu-sujato/the-harbingers/paperback/product-j785yy.html?page=1&pageSize=4'>Buy a paperback on demand from Lulu.com. They’ll print it and post it. Read it like books were meant to be read!</a></li>
<li><a class='call-to-action' href='files/harbingers.epub'>Download a free EPUB, suitable for most ereaders.</a></li>
<li><a class='call-to-action' href='files/harbingers.pdf'>Grab the PDF: this is what the book is made from.</a></li>
<li><a class='call-to-action' href='https://github.com/sujato/harbingers'>Check out the source code on Github and do literally anything you want with it. Except use it for AI. No seriously, do not use this for AI.</a></li>
<li>Or just scroll down and read it below.<br><br><span style='color: #960100'>☙</span></li>
</ul>
</section>
<main>
<article>
<nav id="TOC" role="doc-toc">
    <h2>table of contents</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="#preface">preface</a></li>
<li><a href="#prologue">prologue</a></li>
<li><a href="#before-the-dissolution">before the dissolution</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#strike-squad-fiveattack">strike squad five—attack!</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-far-side-of-the-sky-1">the far side of the sky (1)</a></li>
<li><a href="#just-a-kid">just a kid</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-far-side-of-the-sky-2">the far side of the sky (2)</a></li>
<li><a href="#blame-it-on-the-sunshine">blame it on the sunshine</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-far-side-of-the-sky-3">the far side of the sky (3)</a></li>
<li><a href="#choices">choices</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-far-side-of-the-sky-4">the far side of the sky (4)</a></li>
<li><a href="#language">language</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-far-side-of-the-sky-5">the far side of the sky (5)</a></li>
<li><a href="#t-shirts">t-shirts</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-far-side-of-the-sky-6">the far side of the sky (6)</a></li>
<li><a href="#just-the-basic-facts">just the basic facts</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-far-side-of-the-sky-7">the far side of the sky (7)</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-town-hall">the town hall</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#after-the-dissolution">after the dissolution</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="#to-cast-a-light-in-hidden-places">to cast a light in hidden places</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-other-chris">the other chris</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-possession-of-a-uterus">the possession of a uterus</a></li>
<li><a href="#in-the-presence-of-ghosts">in the presence of ghosts</a></li>
<li><a href="#unusually-rich-soil">unusually rich soil</a></li>
<li><a href="#an-efficient-solution">an efficient solution</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-dry-wanted-breaking">the dry wanted breaking</a></li>
<li><a href="#gods-and-monsters">gods and monsters</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-marshs-edge">the marsh’s edge</a></li>
<li><a href="#on-fire-they-descended">on fire they descended</a></li>
<li><a href="#norm">norm</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="#epilogue">epilogue</a></li>
<li><a href="#timeline">timeline</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>


<h1 id="preface">preface</h1>
<p>Do you ever get the feeling that the future sometimes slips into the present? Like, you look over there and see something that is not but may yet come to be? Perhaps the present simply gets tired and lets the mask slip. It’s probably nothing. Anyway, I wrote down a few of these fugitive glimpses and ended up with a book.</p>
<p>The story of the Buddha follows the outlines of the classical hero myth: going forth into the wilderness to overcome monsters (of the psychological and spiritual variety, of course) and win a great prize. Mendicants used to emulate this by wandering through the jungle from village to village. But now the forests are pretty much gone, and if they wander at all, it is along dusty bitumen highways.</p>
<p>The whole hero’s journey thing is super blokey. It was Marina Warner’s <em>From the Beast to the Blonde</em> that taught me how women told a different kind of story: how to vanquish the hairy monster in the bedroom. It seemed to me that stories like <em>Beauty and the Beast</em>, <em>Little Red Riding Hood</em>, and especially <em>Bluebeard</em> lay the template for the modern horror story, where the monster is inside the house and the aim is not to win a prize, but simply to get out alive.</p>
<p>Now the age of heroes is over. They killed the monsters and tamed the wilderness, domesticating the whole world. We thought this would make us safe. Turns out, the monsters were inside the house all along.</p>
<p>Climate change, AI, the creeping decay of democracy: most of us expend quite a bit of effort maintaining the polite fiction that this is all quite normal. Some call it denial, others coping. But I wonder: what kind of people might we become, were we to stop pretending?</p>
<hr>
<p><i>Content warning:</i> Members of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are advised that this work of fiction contains names of deceased First Nations peoples.</p>
<p>In this book, I represent several stories, events, and ideas as Aboriginal. I am not an Aboriginal person, and these are not my stories. They should not be taken as reliable or accurate representations of the lives and culture of First Nations peoples. I reflect on them to make sense of my story. If there is any fault in my representation, I ask forgiveness.</p>
<p>This story was largely written on the unceded land of the Burramattagal people. I pay respects to those people and their elders past, present, and emerging.</p>
<p>This is not a book for young children. It contains potentially distressing content such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>apocalypse</li>
<li>strong language</li>
<li>poetry</li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p>Many thanks are due to Bhikkhu Akaliko, with whom I tested the first drafts of many chapters; and to Alex Neville, Vanessa Sasson, and Bhikkhu Sumano, who gave valuable feedback on an earlier draft. And special thanks to all those who have supported my monastic life with generosity and kindness.</p>
<hr>
<p>The cover photo “Out of the Pyro” is by Paul McIver and is used with his kind permission. It was featured in the Head On Photo Festival, the Walkley Foundation digital photojournalism exhibition, “The summer Australia burned, 2019–2020”, and the Black Summer exhibition at the Magnet Galleries, Melbourne.</p>
<p>Here is the story behind the photo.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The first fire I photographed this season was in August 2019. There was snow in the background! As the season wore on the fires became more frequent until the pyro cumulonimbus event of New Year’s Eve generated by the Badja and Good Good fires around Numeralla. This fire would later claim the air tanker. Midday looked like midnight, but no one was celebrating. No one had ever seen anything like it before as day was turned to night and a sense of foreboding descended with the cloud of ash and smoke.</p>
<p>We drove for over fifteen kilometres into this event, with lightning striking around us intermittently, before losing our nerve and turning around to follow those fleeing back out. This image was taken as we exited the event. I went on to file occasionally for the Sunday Telegraph in Sydney in the weeks and months ahead. Exactly a month later an offshoot of this fire destroyed my home of 30 plus years. No one has seen such times before. If I could ask but one thing it would be, can we please start being kinder to our mother!”</p>
</blockquote>
<h1 id="prologue">prologue</h1>
<p>Between the mountains and the sea there lay a wide valley by a narrow river. There the salt water mixed with the fresh and eels born in distant seas came to lie down in the mangroves.</p>
<p>Many years ago, people made their home there. They became known as the Burramattagal people of the Dharug nation. They fished and foraged and fought and farted and made love beneath the stars, and they sang the story of their ancestors in the long years of their Dreaming. In the sky above there shone a golden emu egg to warm their days and light their path. Ever changing, ever adapting, they cultivated the region into a great garden, full of fruit and fish. They made paths that linked the peoples of the rivers and the inlets, down to the ocean and up to the mountains, on to the plains beyond, and even to the endless desert of the interior.</p>
<p>In time, they gained a friend: the dingo, a fierce hunter and a playful companion. Women suckled dingo pups, who in turn gave warmth and protection. But they always went back to their wild ways. When times were hard and dry, the dingo could always lead you to water.</p>
<p>They took their canoes out on the waters and lit fires on them. There were few sights more beautiful than the canoes out at night, their sparkling flames reflecting off the Sydney waters under the starry sky. By their homes on the shores, they cast their discarded shellfish in heaps. As the millennia went by, the heaps grew to be vast middens towering over their heads, a slow testimony to their long stewardship.</p>
<p>In their stories the land was a living thing, full of magic and love and monsters. The stories did not live in books, but in the shine of the stars and the tang of the wattle and the sly glance of the quoll. Each story was a thread that wove the past into the future. Their world sparkled with such threads, so that everywhere you looked was rich with meaning.</p>
<p>After a very long time, something happened that was not in any of the stories. Something that threatened the life of the people.</p>
<p>Strangers came to the shores in big boats. They had disturbingly white skin; a ridiculous arrangement, as it burned red in the sun and peeled off in sheets. Their skin was so useless, they had to wear another skin on top of it! Despite their fragility, the strangers invaded the land and remained. They made a camp in the cove they called Sydney. Upstream, a day’s walk from Sydney, they made a farming settlement on the river. Taking the language of the people, they named it Parramatta.</p>
<p>The invaders demonstrated no culture, no sense of place. They showed no respect to the people or their laws. They described the landscape as a truly beautiful park, filled with an endless variety of hill and dale, clothed in the most luxuriant herbage, rich in soil and wildlife, through which a person on a horse might easily gallop in any direction beneath the stately trees. They did not understand that this was no raw state of nature, but the outcome of millennia of gentle, careful management and cultivation. So they took what they wanted and peered at the people like specimens. There was a wariness between the people and the invaders; and soon enough, it turned bloody.</p>
<p>In the face of increasingly violent attacks, the people fought to protect their home. The warrior Pemulwuy marched into Parramatta at the head of a hundred strong men with spears. But the white men had guns. They killed many and wounded Pemulwuy, but he escaped. So the Governor issued an order that any Aboriginals in Parramatta be shot on sight. Spurred by a reward, men hunted Pemulwuy down and killed him. They cut off his head and sent it to England for science. Much later, they named a suburb after him.</p>
<p>It never really occurred to the invaders that they might have something to learn from the people who had lived there for thousands of years. To them, the Aboriginals were no more than brutes.</p>
<p>Instead of learning, they took it upon themselves to teach the First Peoples their language, the values and ways that they had brought with them from far distant lands. A Burramattagal girl named Boorong was one of their cleverest pupils. One night, Boorong came to the white folk full of agitation and terror, foretelling a great doom. She had seen a falling star and knew what it portended. No-one knew what to make of this distraught girl and her odd ravings. Laughing, they shooed her away. But some days later, a messenger arrived from the Sydney Cove settlement bearing a disturbing report. The flagship HMS <em>Sirius</em> had run aground at Slaughter Bay on Norfolk Island. There was no loss of life, but its wreckage deprived the starving colony of a vital supply ship. When they heard this report, they remembered what Boorong had said. No-one knew what to make of it.</p>
<p>That was not the only disaster to befall the invaders. For many years it was touch and go. For all their fancy duds and put-on graces, the white folk were a messy lot. They squabbled among themselves, traded in rum, and every other year they nearly starved. But soon enough they paved the paths and struck down the ancient middens, grinding them into lime for mortar. They cut the bones of the earth into squares and, piling them one on top of the other, made tall buildings, glued together with the paste of ancient shellfish.</p>
<p>It was hard work for many years, but the white people managed to chop down almost all the trees. They were nothing if not industrious. No matter how tall the trees were, how strong the roots and stubborn, they just wouldn’t give up. It was who they were—conquerors of nature.</p>
<p>Like the First Peoples—like all peoples in fact—the white folk were shaped in profound ways by their past; or more to the point, by the stories they told themselves about their past. What transfixed them more than anything else was the story of <em>dominion</em>. They were lords; the world was to be lorded over. Nature existed for them, its only purpose the service of their desires. To that end, they did not hesitate to strip, crush, and rend, reshaping the world until it took on a new form designed for their comfort and convenience.</p>
<p>The story of dominion was old. So old, they had forgotten where it came from. To them, it had always been there. It informed their culture and views so deeply, they could not understand that there might be other ways of knowing. But any story has a beginning, and the oldest story of dominion that we know of dates from nearly 5,000 years ago. It survived in fragments told and retold over thousands of years, carefully pieced together and deciphered by experts from broken clay tablets of Sumer and Babylon. It tells of the first hero, Gilgamesh.</p>
<p>Gilgamesh was a great king of the city of Uruk. To magnify his glory and ensure his eternal fame, he enlisted his friend Enkidu in a mad quest. He proposed to venture into the great cedar forest of Lebanon for wood to build his city. The hills of Lebanon, through which flowed the river Jordan, were covered in magnificent trees, strong enough to build for a thousand years.</p>
<p>But the forest was not defenseless. It was guarded by Humbaba, a fierce spirit with a broad flat nose, stripes painted on his face, big lips, and big teeth flashing out on dark skin.</p>
<p>Those set on plunder called him a monster, whose voice was the deluge, whose speech was fire, and whose breath was death. But not so the creatures of his own land. To them, he was the one who kept the paths clean and smooth, in whose honor the wood pigeons cooed and the turtle doves sweetly sang, while the mother monkeys chatted with their young beneath the fragrant ancient trees.</p>
<p>Gilgamesh assigned the duties of the city to stewards, then set out for Lebanon together with Enkidu. They journeyed in stages across seven mountain ranges. When they made camp in the evenings, Gilgamesh would invoke his gods, begging them to send him dreams to guide him. But his gods sent no auspicious signs, only portents of terror and desolation: mountains crumbling, storms crashing, wild bulls snorting, and a great bird breathing thunder and fire. Dismayed and fearful, he was soothed by Enkidu, who exhorted him to go on.</p>
<p>Finally they reached the forest, where they soon heard the mighty roar of Humbaba. Realizing that he could not best the giant in battle, Gilgamesh approached with a smile and the promise of gifts. He kissed the great being on the cheek. By the time Humbaba discerned his murderous intent, it was too late and he could only beg for mercy. He went so far as to offer Gilgamesh his service, to supply him with all the timber he needed. Gilgamesh hesitated; but, urged on by Enkidu, he sealed his glorious victory by sliding a sharp blade into Humbaba’s neck. He murdered the spirit of the forest and stole the wood for his own, and that is how he became a hero. Humbaba’s dying scream echoed through the forest, cursing Gilgamesh and Enkidu and all their works.</p>
<p>The story of Gilgamesh may have been forgotten, but its lesson was not. To find glory and everlasting fame, you must begin by murdering nature’s protectors—and don’t forget to do it with a smile.</p>
<p>With their ancient guardian gone, the cedar forests were open to all. The list of those who consumed the cedar reads like a litany of ancient empire: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Phoenicia, Israel, Persia, Rome, Arabia. Not even the decree of the emperor Hadrian could stop the plunder.</p>
<p>Much later, the Ottoman Turks found a new use for the famously tough and durable timber: laying railroads. Then the English finished off all but a few stands in that absurd barbarism that we call World War I. But by that time they had already found an excellent new source of timber on the far side of the world.</p>
<p>The English came to Australia to fulfill a mission, the mission of civilization. Like Gilgamesh, they invoked the protection of their God. They never questioned their task. They found a land covered with endless leagues of tall trees and they set to work. They cut down enough forest to cover France, Spain, and Germany combined.</p>
<p>The people of the land noticed an odd thing about the strangers. Some of them wore bright-colored clothes and lived in big buildings. They seemed to get all the good things. But they were not the ones doing the work; they just yelled and told people what to do. Other white folk, dressed in rags and bound in chains, spent all day breaking rocks or levelling ground, but for all their hard work they slept behind bars and ate grey sludge.</p>
<p>It seemed an unfair way to arrange things: the land and the sky were ample and abundant, why could not all share equally? But no: big men lived in big buildings while little people squatted in little hovels. They were only allowed in the big houses to clean or cook.</p>
<p>Bigger still than the houses of the big men were the houses of the law. The biggest of all was the house they built for an old white man called God. They called it St Johns after a man in their stories named John the Baptist. But the funny thing was, he himself would never have lived in such a place. The invaders idolized him, but in truth, he was nothing like them.</p>
<p>John was a brown-skinned man who lived about two thousand years ago in the land of Lebanon. It was a long time ago, but still thousands of years after Gilgamesh had opened that country up for felling the cedar. By John’s time, millennia of logging had decimated the vast tracts of lush forest, and the land had grown barren and desolate. It was to these deserts that John retreated in search of wisdom; to him, the desert was the state of nature. There he lived, much like the Burramattagal, on locusts and wild honey.</p>
<p>After many years, he came in from the wilderness to proclaim the redemption of sin. It was never exactly clear what sin he came to redeem; but perhaps that did not matter so very much, for must we not all be guilty of something? He took his people from the hot sands and blessed them in the cool waters of the river Jordan.</p>
<p>A man came to John and knelt before him, saying, “I have wandered for so long now on paths grievous and strange. I am lost, and cannot recall all I have done along the way. But I do know this: my crimes are many. I have hurt the ones I love and forsaken the path of righteousness. These hands were given so that I may serve, but with them I have dealt only death. My lips were given so that I may speak the truth, but my lies have led many down false paths. Take me to your river. Drown me in your sweet waters. In your arms, let the river wash my sins away, so that I may know what it is to rise once more, free at last from all my burdens.”</p>
<p>John took that man in his strong arms, sinner and criminal though he was, and blessed him in the river. The river cared not who entered its waters; it washed them all alike.</p>
<p>Like Boorong of the Burramattagal clan, John had the sight, or so it would seem. He told of one who would come, far greater than he, a savior and redeemer of his people. Perhaps it was this that the settlers of Parramatta were thinking of when they named their church St Johns. The white folk liked to imagine themselves as saviors of the First People. “Before we came they had nothing,” they said.</p>
<p>But one who entered that house of cold stone would find no savior there. There was only a pale dull man wrapped in dark cloth and solemn countenance, muttering incantations in a foreign tongue. They called him the “Flogging Parson” due to his penchant for flailing the flesh of young bodies into quivering jelly. He cast spells infusing plain bread with the living spirit of his god, then he devoured it. It was in this way that he broke the magic of the land that he disdained as primitive. He believed that his obscure rites and ancient tomes made him worthy to decree for all what was right and what was wrong. From his high pulpit, the Flogging Parson declared that the First People were the most degraded form of the human race.</p>
<p>Facing St Johns church they built the Town Hall, where big men got together and made rules for the little people to live by. Nearby were the courts, where they judged the little people by the rules they had made, and the prisons, where they locked them up. Plenty of the First People found themselves on the wrong side of these new laws and ended up inside a prison cell. In those cells, sitting still and gazing up at the little barred window, their dreaming grew dim and faded into shadows.</p>
<p>The white folk were full of disease. They infected the people with sicknesses that rotted their skin or stole their breath. Most of them died. When the white folk died, they were buried in the cemetery near St Johns, their lives marked in stone. But the Burramattagal were granted no such honor; fractured or dispersed, the story of the land was taken from them. Their only witness was silence.</p>
<p>Against all odds, the colony survived and grew. Sydney became famous for its beaches and its Opera House on the harbor, a shining city on the sea. Parramatta grew along with it, becoming Sydney’s biggest satellite. It was never exactly fashionable or particularly bustling, but it certainly had a Westfields. On a Friday evening, greasy white boys hooned around in lime Monaros blasting <em>Highway to Hell</em>, while women on their way home from the office sat uneasily at lonely bus stops.</p>
<p>Over the years, the fish-and-chip shops selling chiko rolls were replaced by streetside cafés selling quinoa salad and cappuccinos. Friday night’s entertainment was supplied by greasy brown boys pumping doof doof and chucking blockies in a WRX. Fancy shiny offices sprang up, their aspirational glass mirroring the <em>For Lease</em> sign next door.</p>
<p>The old Town Hall saw it all: the happy-clappers spruiking for converts, the leathery bogans with their mullets and DBs, the kids waving signs that protested, “There’s no planet B!”</p>
<p>But the white folk had no room in their new world for the people of the land. They were writing their own story of progress and success, of dominion, and in their story they were the heroes. They made sure that those who called themselves Burramattagal were killed or scattered, chased into the shadows. The old stories faded away, and with them the memory of what it was like before.</p>
<p>It’s tempting to see this as a sign, a harbinger if you will. But harbingers are tricky things. What does it mean that Boorong, the name of the girl who saw doom in a falling star, meant “star” in the language of the Burramattagal? Or that the ship whose doom she foresaw, the <em>Sirius</em>, was named for the brightest star in the sky?</p>
<p>The thing is, the events themselves don’t mean anything: they just happened. It is humans who feel the need to read meaning into patterns, to turn coincidence into synchronicity, to shape a narrative from a sequence of events. Perhaps it is because we feel the loss of the old stories that once traced meaning in the stars and the stones. Everywhere we look we see a universe indifferent to us, and so we grasp at ersatz mysteries, losing ourselves in the merest surface of words.</p>
<p>It’s only natural to want to belong, to find meaning. But here’s the problem. The death of a people is not like the falling of a star. It is a tragedy in itself, not a sign of a tragedy to come. It does not exist to give meaning to <em>our</em> lives. It has no meaning, no moral; it is the breaking of meaning, the breaking of morality. There is no morality that can account for the death of all things. Faced with the consequences of humanity’s deeds, what are we to do? March as warriors shaking sharp spears, or surrender to the quiet waters?</p>
<p>Our moralities lie broken and bleeding, whimpering echoes of the days of surety. Today, the river Jordan is choked and poisoned, a sickly trickle of sewage, agricultural runoff, and industrial filth. Not despite the fact that it flows through an ancient sacred land, but because of it. Once we went into it to wash away our sins, but our sins grew so great they killed the river. Now there is no place on this broad earth free from the stain of human sin.</p>
<p>Anyway, at the time, no-one hardly noticed. The dead could not speak, or if they could, their voices were drowned out by the clamour of the living. The dead were gone, and who would begrudge the living their chance at a good life? Were they meant to live out their days in sorrow for the sins of their ancestors? There would be plenty of time for sorrow. Meanwhile it was time to live, and live they did.</p>
<p>For a while, it was possible to imagine Parramatta as a place of vitality and renewal.</p>
<p>For a while, it was possible to imagine.</p>
<p>For a while.</p>
<h1 id="before-the-dissolution">before the dissolution</h1>
<h2 id="strike-squad-fiveattack">strike squad five—attack!</h2>
<p>“Strike Squad Five!” barked Sharon. “Attack! Attack!”</p>
<p>“Jesus, dial it back a notch,” said Mags. “Give it a minute.”</p>
<p>“Do you have any idea the kind of destruction that thing can wreak in a minute?” came the retort. “Strike Squad Five! Attack! Oh, never mind, too late, it’s gone.” She picked up her pet goanna and snuggled it, nuzzling it to her big sister’s disgust. “Who’s a widdle wazybones then? Too fat? Too full? Don’t wanna chase the mousy?”</p>
<p>“Ew gross, get a room,” laughed Mags.</p>
<p>“Scoff all you like,” said Sharon, “but I’m getting hotter action than you.”</p>
<p>“You’re not wrong,” sighed Mags. “But still, you’re crazy if you think that thing will catch one of the little bastards.”</p>
<p>Sharon laid back, her head on Mags’ legs as they sat in the grass. Strike Squad Five lolled uselessly nearby, his putative role as mousehunter neglected.</p>
<p>The sisters were joking around, but the mice were no joke. They were a plague, overrunning much of the farming land that stretched out west of Sydney. Two lazy teenagers and their even lazier pet goanna were proving as useless as all the other efforts to contain them. No matter what was done, still they came in their thousands from holes in the ground, from wheat silos, creeping up the walls, devouring and scampering and scraping.</p>
<p>These mice weren’t native to Australia, of course. They came on the ships. They were always around, but now they had got out of control. And just when things had turned for the good, too. For the last few years, farmers had really struggled with drought. Turns out, the dry wasn’t just bad for growing crops, it also killed off the birds and snakes who had been eating the mice. Now at last things were looking up with a wet, mild summer. Perfect for a bumper harvest, and also perfect breeding season for mice, with plenty of food in the fields and the silos, and few predators to keep them in check.</p>
<p>It was evening, the sun was setting, dogs were barking, and dinner was calling. They climbed up to the verandah and a couple of mice scampered off. Sharon didn’t even bother to put SS5 down to chase them. She just put him gently to bed in his little cage.</p>
<p>Dinner was heaping on the table as the family gathered. When little Donny ran in, Mags said, “Shut up, Donny!”</p>
<p>“What!” he protested, “I didn’t say anything!”</p>
<p>“And now you’ve gone and ruined it,” she teased. Sharon giggled, but she tousled her little brother’s head as he sat down.</p>
<p>They sat around the table, chatting and giggling. Mum was warm and giving, taking care of everyone, asking all the questions. Despite her best efforts, there was a mouse or two scurrying around her kitchen.</p>
<p>Dad was quiet as always, communicating mostly in grunts. Nothing wrong, just he was tired is all. It was hard enough to work a farm in the best of days, and this was not that, what with the financials and the heat. And now on top of everything else, he was spending an hour or more morning and evening laying water-traps and poison, and clearing away the stench of dead rodents. It wasn’t what he signed up for.</p>
<p>That night, Sharon found a dead mouse on her pillow. No big deal, just get rid of it like the rest. But it struck her, lying there; it was actually cute in a way. What kind of life did it have? It was so sad. The mouse didn’t know it was a symptom of a collapsing ecosphere. It just lived, same as anything else. But did it have a soul? Where did it go when it died? Or did it just end? Is that all there was?</p>
<p>She brushed it into a pan—mice could carry diseases—and held it up for a look. Its little body was still warm and soft. She wondered why it died; it looked skinny. When the food ran short, they began eating each other. She thought of what it had been through in its short life and tears welled in her eyes. It was no pest, just a creature trying to live. But she needed sleep, so she tossed it out the window. There’d be more come sunup.</p>
<p>Sleep came slowly. It was never really quiet anymore; there was always a rustling and a scampering. It would die away for a second, then there’d be a scrabble and a squeak. It was like living inside the world’s most horrifying ASMR video. And the smell! She couldn’t remember her home ever being free of the stench of mouse.</p>
<p>She slept, and in her sleep a dream came to her.</p>
<p>She lay all in black upon land that was a blue-black scar, oily and slick, ravaged and barren. Inside her there was an insensate longing; a yearning that had no object and no end. In the distance a sun was rising, all purple fringed with red. The sun had a face, and in that face a baleful eye slowly opened and leered down upon a world of death and smoke and pain. Tormented wires writhed like snakes. Concrete choked on its own dust. Sickly grey-green blobs of slime jabbered and spat. She came to a swelling river, but could not cross the bridge. Underneath, the current was too strong. Then she tried climbing the pylons. Surprisingly, she found that she was easily able to ride her bicycle over the steel cables. The far shore was lush with grass. Beyond there was a shining palace, bright with jewelled windows; but it was empty. In its forecourt there was a single tree, white and leafless, and upon its bough it bore a golden mango. She was happy there and lay down to rest in the grass. The prince, who had been with her all along, whispered in her ear, “Kiss me, my love, so that I may become a prince.”</p>
<p>She woke to the feel of little feet crawling on her lips. Oh God, yuck, she spat. It ran off. She leapt up, groggy and spitting, shuddering in disgust. After rinsing her mouth she got back in bed, but sleep was no longer an option. She sat in the dark, surrounded by tiny creatures who were guilty of nothing but wanting to live. She took SS5 from his cage and cuddled him; they always kept each other company.</p>
<p>Next morning, they had some time after breakfast, so the girls got Donny to come play cricket. There was a makeshift pitch out back, not far from the house.</p>
<p>“Howzat!” yelled Mags, as her ball flew ridiculously wide. Donny just shook his head in despair. “Alright, whatever, this time it’ll be different!” she said. But sadly it was not to be.</p>
<p>Sharon had put Strike Squad Five near the bush on the far side, away from the house. He seemed happy enough, getting a little morning sun. The kids played happily.</p>
<p>But was that something? A sound, maybe? Yes, a sound. “Hey, what’s up?” said Donny, as the two girls grew still and listened. It was deep like the ocean.</p>
<p>“What the hell is that?” said Sharon. “It’s getting louder.” They’d not heard anything like this before, and they had lived their whole lives on this property.</p>
<p>A mouse ran out of the bushes near SS5, who just looked at it. But it ran like the devil itself was after it. Then came another, then a group, then a wave of mice.</p>
<p>“Ahh no, this is getting …” said Mags.</p>
<p>“Hey, Strike Squad Five, c’mon,” called Sharon, stepping over to grab her pet. But the mice erupted. Over, under, and through the bush, they burst like a tsunami, the whole place suddenly boiling over with billions of the creatures. Sharon screamed as they swarmed over the goanna. Donny ran; Mags grabbed Sharon’s hand and they ran too, seeking the relative safety of the verandah. The three kids looked back in terror, seeing the yard overrun. Where Strike Squad Five was, there was just a roil of mice, devouring.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t the end of it—the mice were right behind them. The first wave was already climbing the steps, up the posts, making for the windows and doors. The kids were really panicking now, this was just too much, where could they hide? Just then, Dad appeared. On his back he had a flamethrower. All the farmers had them these days, and this was the reason why.</p>
<p>“Out of the way!” he yelled, and standing at the top of the steps, he let rip. The fire swept out across the yard. As it torched the little creatures they screeched in agony. Mice were fried in their thousands, reduced to a writhing mass of tormented critters, their fur ablaze, squealing and struggling to escape. Still they came, wave upon wave of living beings. Some got through, but most ended up charred meat, fur, and bone. The air filled with the unearthly shrieking of half-dead rodents, rising in a howl above the roar of the flame. As the whole yard filled with fire, the oncoming wave shied off, dividing itself into two streams, either side of the house, flowing like a flood from who-knows-where to who-goddamn-cares.</p>
<p>The kids stood there, shaking, as the mice passed. Dad stepped into the yard, sweeping the piled up bodies with fire, making sure they were all dead.</p>
<p>He kept going until the fuel ran out. The smell of petrol was everywhere, and underneath was a note of charred meat like a barbecue. The job was done, the mice were gone, the day was saved. Everyone was safe. Everyone was okay. It was fine. But when he looked up at his kids, there was horror in his eyes. He hated that they saw him like this. A family was for love and joy, not fire and burnt flesh. What the hell were they doing? What kind of world was this for a child?</p>
<p>“Go inside, kids,” he said. “I’ll clean up the yard.”</p>
<p>Still in shock, they fumbled for the door. But Sharon paused. She turned and said, “It’s okay, Dad. We’ll help. Guys, let’s get the fire-rakes.”</p>
<h2 id="the-far-side-of-the-sky-1">the far side of the sky (1)</h2>
<p>Hi dad,</p>
<p>How are you? I am good. This is the address you told me to use, I hope it gets to you!</p>
<p>School is good. Jason ate a snail.</p>
<p>When are you coming home? Sometimes I don’t sleep good. I miss your beard.</p>
<p>Arixys</p>
<hr>
<p>My dear Arixys,</p>
<p>Namaste! My dearest child, I pray that you are well. (“Well”, not “good”! If you say you are “good”, you mean that you are a morally upright person!)</p>
<p>Please don’t fret. I know it is strange to have me away like this, but I promise there is a good reason. All will be made clear in good time.</p>
<p>Does it sometimes feel like each day is a step in the wrong direction? Like the news is full of dire warnings and dreary portent? Like you try to stay positive, but the world is against you? Yes? Well, you are not alone, for I know exactly how that feels!</p>
<p>What if I were to tell you, my beloved Arixys, that here, at the end of all hope, it is joy unlooked-for that fills my heart? Would you believe me? It matters not, for soon you shall see for yourself. I have learned a great truth: we are safe. It turns out, our Leaders have had a plan all along. We can stop worrying; we’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Not the earth, though. It is tragic, but we can no longer deny the all-too-obvious truth: the planet is done for. But that should not distress us overly much, for what matters is us. Nature and animals are very nice, of course, but they are not invested with value in and of themselves. We are the ones who are conscious and awake, who contain the seeds of enlightenment, and who can take responsibility for our actions. Those actions, admittedly, include killing trillions of animals and wiping out millions of species, wreaking havoc and devastation at a scale that no other creature could rival. But it is we humans who have the unique capacity to reflect on our mistakes, to feel sorry for them, and to hope to do better in the future.</p>
<p>I cannot say too much. But let me venture this: be not afraid, for our fates rest safe in strong and capable hands.</p>
<p>Yours in hope,</p>
<p>Edgar</p>
<h2 id="just-a-kid">just a kid</h2>
<p>In a suburb thousands of miles away on the far side of the continent sat a teenage boy, bored out of his mind on a hot Saturday arvo. The grownups were having a barbie, but he was off in his own world.</p>
<p>It was such a small thing. Very common. Not the first and surely not the last. He looked closely, taking in each detail. An irregular shape. A firmness. A faint tackiness to the touch. A feeling of almost pain.</p>
<p>Somehow this thing was born out of a rupture, where what was supposed to be whole was sundered. Yet healing required no intervention. He could just forget about it and the wholeness would come into being.</p>
<p>“Were all things like this?” he pondered. Was wholeness the state of nature and we only observers? Or is this a characteristic of life only? Things generally seemed to go the other way. Crumbling was their nature. Didn’t matter if you were a brick or a spaceship, a piece of carpet or a mountain, your every second was falling apart.</p>
<p>But life though. It broke that rule. It got better. It organized itself. Is that what life is? Self-organizing structures, always moving from the simple to the complex, scoffing at entropy?</p>
<p>But that takes energy. It isn’t magic, there’s no special vital force. It’s about information, coding information in DNA, sets of instructions for unfolding complex organic unities from ternary codes. Energy has to be funnelled from chaos and shaped into form.</p>
<p>And here he was—whoa! He was the end result of all that and he was <em>thinking about it</em>! His mind curled back as he reached a point where there seemed no footing. How could he think about thinking about thinking? It seemed impossible. He tried for a while and gave up. He wondered. How is it? How is the world built this way? Is it so that we can never find the key? What would happen if we did? What would the key unlock? Would it be wonderful, or would the whole thing just unravel?</p>
<p>“Uggh, yuk!” interrupted his mother. “Chris! Stop picking at your scab!”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t,” he lied.</p>
<p>The grownups laughed. “Okay then, sure.”</p>
<p>He was ashamed to be doing something so childlike. Well, ashamed to be caught. And annoyed: his reverie was over. And vaguely contemptuous: there they were, drinking beer, laughing about sports. Shouldn’t grownups be better, wiser? Maybe they were, but they sure hid it. They seemed so stupid. Just going about their lives as if the world wasn’t ending.</p>
<p>He leaped up and went outside. Hopping on his bike, he spun down the street, jumping gutters and kerbs. Sweat poured off him, but he pumped the pedals even harder. He came out, as he knew he would, dodging through a secret alley into a wide open road. It was an abandoned construction project, supposed to be a new suburb. But the money ran out; no-one was buying. So there was nothing to stop him as he sped down the hill, faster and faster, the broad smooth road offering no check. There’d been a birdfall; he couldn’t dodge the little bodies: bumpity-splat they went under his wheels. The wind dried his sweat and the speed felt good. It whipped thought from his mind.</p>
<p>He was getting near the bottom. The unfinished road stopped abruptly in a tangle of barriers and parked machinery. Closer and closer, challenging himself every time. There it was, the line from last time, a skid on the brand-new tarmac. He kept going, crossed the line, then jammed the brakes as hard as he could. He skidded and careened at a barrier, almost missing, but then smashing into it at the last moment. He tumbled off the bike, took a few turns, and ended up lying face down, panting and laughing. Oh yeah, that was fun. And yep, there’ll be another scab tomorrow.</p>
<p>Picking himself up, he got back on his bike and kept going. More sedately this time, as he was near the bottom of the slope. Turning off the construction site, he picked his way along a narrow dirt path through a patch of bush. It led down to the water, his own secret place. A short turn from the crowds and concrete, here there was just nature.</p>
<p>From his pocket he pulled a pack of Twisties and ripped it open. Munching, he opened his notebook and sat for a while, then he wrote down his words.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>was there anyone who ever knew<br />
how the shags hung out their wings to dry?<br />
how the soft mud shelved so gradually<br />
beneath the perfect sky?</p>
<p>what was the secret that he sought<br />
in yellowed grass, in tepid brine<br />
or in that soggy salt-flat smell<br />
where jellyfish lay dying?</p>
<p>when skin is shed, what pink is left?<br />
what moisture is not soothing?<br />
had he a thought what this was worth,<br />
the summer he was losing?</p>
<p>he never lacked for warmth or love<br />
but did he really care for such?<br />
or was his heart already drifting<br />
out into the marsh?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The sun drew low over the roughs and the reeds. As he got up to leave, he noticed a little worm, turned up in the soft mud, wriggling its way back into the soil. He thought to help it, but then, it seemed to be doing fine all on its own. So he left it.</p>
<p>Carelessly, he chucked the empty Twisties packet. He was just a kid after all.</p>
<h2 id="the-far-side-of-the-sky-2">the far side of the sky (2)</h2>
<p>Dear dad,</p>
<p>Hi, I got your letter. I don’t really understand. I wish things would go back to normal. They closed school again. Jason died.</p>
<p>There are lots of fires and smoke. I’m scared.</p>
<p>Arixys</p>
<hr>
<p>Dear Arixys,</p>
<p>So sorry to hear about Jason. Did you have a funeral? Don’t worry, we’ll find you something even better than a puppy, I promise!</p>
<p>Don’t forget to meditate like I taught you. Breathe in, breathe out, focus on your breath. Concentrate! Don’t think about anything else. Those things can only affect you if you let them. You can be happy if you choose! Fear is a choice, my darling, don’t let it be yours.</p>
<p>I am fairly bursting! I have so much to tell you! Soon, I promise, I can say more. For now, let me just say this.</p>
<p>Look into the sky. Remember how I taught you to spot our neighbors, Mars and Venus, when it is night? About how, as beautiful as they look, Mars is cold and desolate, and Venus is a horrible place of acid and fire? You know how we talked about space, and travelling to the stars? About how science fiction is not the same as reality? How other worlds, the ones we know of, are harsh and unforgiving, and it is crazy to think about colonizing them when we have our own beautiful planet Earth? Now I want you to go outside. Go on! Look up, look to the sun. Not right at it, you’ll burn your eyes! It’s so bright, can we see past it? What might there be on the other side?</p>
<p>Remember how we would march, waving our signs and chanting, “There’s no Planet B”?</p>
<p>(What if we were wrong?)</p>
<p>In barely-contained excitement,</p>
<p>your loving father,</p>
<p>Edgar</p>
<h2 id="blame-it-on-the-sunshine">blame it on the sunshine</h2>
<p>Time went by and things fell apart. The boy called Chris who picked his scab grew up, travelled east, and went to med school to learn about life and healing, and forget about poetry and wonder. And in another suburb, not far away, another story unfolded of another life, with another man, who rather inconveniently was also called Chris. This Chris, it seems, was a bit upset.</p>
<p>“Get off-a my lawn!” he yelled, the sound jarring on the quiet suburban street. “You get off of it right now, y’hear?”</p>
<p>He was standing on the front lawn, watering it with a hose, as a woman stepped on to his property. He aimed the hose at the startled woman, who dodged the wet, mostly. But she didn’t get off the lawn. She came right back at him, business suit be damned, pushing him back a few paces.</p>
<p>“Whad’ya mean, ‘my’ lawn,” she demanded. “I think you mean, <em>our</em> lawn!”</p>
<p>“Oh yeah? And who put it down?” he rebutted convincingly. “Who weeds it? Who fertilizes it? Who is, even as we speak, watering it?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know, maybe the one whose job was so slack he had the time to mess around playing with hoses?”</p>
<p>They locked glares for a minute, then he broke down and confessed, “Yes, your honor. I concede the case. Your logic is irrefutable. I throw myself at your feet. Have mercy on me, your serene magnificence!”</p>
<p>“Not a judge,” she laughed. “But if I was, I’d find your shirtless ass guilty of being fine as hell, all shiny in the sunset like that.”</p>
<p>“Well Cynthia,’ he said, unembarrassed, “it’s kinda warm, I dunno if you noticed. You know, in your fancy-schmancy lawyer office.”</p>
<p>“And speaking of,” she replied, “aren’t we going to get fined? Didn’t the water restrictions tighten up again?”</p>
<p>“They did,” he said, “the tight bastards. But I’ve got ten minutes with the hose one evening a week, and by the grace of Bob Almighty, I’m bloody well going to use use it! My hose, my lawn, my water! A man is master of his own front yard! Until they take that away from me. They’re probably watching right now, scheming.”</p>
<p>“Now now, Chris,” she said. “You can’t blame it on the Council.”</p>
<p>“Oh really?” he said, perking up. He knew where this was going.</p>
<p>“They’re just people, doing their job. They’re not to blame.”</p>
<p>“Then who is to blame?” he grinned. “Who, dammit!”</p>
<p>“Well,” she said, laughing, and jumped to the left. “Don’t blame it on the sunshine!” When he turned the hose on her, she jumped back right. “Don’t blame it on the moonlight!” And the hose turned again, settling into its rhythm. “Don’t blame it on the good times!” And together they yelled, with more gusto than melody: “Blame it on the boogie!”</p>
<p>Holding each other, they began to twirl, the hose pointing up, shedding spirals of golden drops sparkling in the evening sun. “I just can’t, I just can’t, I just can’t control my feet!”</p>
<p>And the water filled the air and rained down over the young happy couple as they danced and kissed in their own personal summer shower, spinning like Shiva in an ecstasy of joy and love and life.</p>
<p>And the water fell on the brown lawn and drained into the parched soil. Each drop of water sank into the earth, its viscosity drawing it around the grains of sand. It absorbed into the hair roots and refreshed the worms and the little creatures, binding the dust, giving life to the complex ecosystem underfoot. Soon, though, the trickle of water was too feeble to proceed; it penetrated only a few centimeters. And with the heat, even in the evening, it evaporated almost as rapidly as it flowed.</p>
<p>They didn’t know it then. Or maybe they knew, they must’ve done, but they pushed it away. They were good people, kind and happy people, getting on with their lives. That’s all. They weren’t to blame.</p>
<p>But it didn’t matter. When it came, it came for everyone. It was coming for them whether they knew it or not. Who cares if they were guilty? As far as the apocalypse was concerned, we were all guilty. It was out for blood, and it didn’t care whose. It all smelled the same.</p>
<hr>
<p>That night she conceived. She carried the baby to term, but as her time drew near, things started getting out of hand. There were fires, worse than usual, and smoke filled the air. Floods hit hard, as summer storms came in, one after the other. Weird, dry storms, they whipped massive waves over the shores, yet their rainless winds only fed the flames. Protests, again, put down with violence, again. Meanwhile, yet another pandemic came down and the hospitals overflowed, again. It was hard to recruit staff. Who’d want a career with a death sentence?</p>
<p>So she was nervous when she went to hospital, and it didn’t help that that night, there was a containment breach. Shocked, she heard gunfire inside the hospital itself. This wasn’t America, what the hell were they doing with guns? With the nerves and the smoke, she had a panic attack with her contractions. The nurses were exhausted and distracted, the equipment unmaintained and faulty. They didn’t notice the bad readings until too late.</p>
<p>Chris kept on saying, “Don’t fret, they’ll be here soon. This is a good hospital.” Maybe it was once. But by the time a nurse checked the readout, she just looked scared and rushed to find a doctor. None came and they never saw the nurse again. Neither mother nor baby made it till dawn.</p>
<h2 id="the-far-side-of-the-sky-3">the far side of the sky (3)</h2>
<p>Dad,</p>
<p>Please come home! I am so scared! Janice went and I’m all alone. I don’t know what to do. There are noises outside the house. Drums in the streets. They are coming. I don’t know what to do. I miss Jason.</p>
<hr>
<p>Dear Arixys,</p>
<p>Be strong, it will all be clear soon. I am on my way. Stay safe. Don’t answer the door until you hear my voice.</p>
<p>yours,</p>
<p>Dad.</p>
<h2 id="choices">choices</h2>
<p>“Well, at least you get a choice, so fess up.”</p>
<p>“Oh my god, don’t!”</p>
<p>“But I want to.”</p>
<p>Sharon laughed. Her big sister wouldn’t let up.</p>
<p>“Who is it to be? Wayne or Cole? It’s on tomorrow, you can’t just wait forever. A girl has to make her mind up one day. Even you!”</p>
<p>“You know it doesn’t even work like that, right? I mean, just because I choose one of them doesn’t mean anything’s gonna happen.”</p>
<p>Mags just giggled and chomped another Jaffa. On the screen, the heroine leaped over an impossible chasm, landing in the middle of a group of dark-clad soldiers, who she promptly demolished. The sisters whooped, “Go, girl!” It was a silly adventure flick, but a fun diversion. The cinema was full, which, given the crappiness of the film, was probably a world first. But no-one was there for the story. It was hot outside and the kids were getting some relief in the aircon.</p>
<p>“Now, let’s break it down. Cole has history. He’s a jackass, everyone knows that. After what happened two summers ago? Please. And BTWs, not that cute.”</p>
<p>“As if I would be so shallow. Mum and dad like him.”</p>
<p>“Another point in Wayne’s favor.”</p>
<p>“He is cuter.”</p>
<p>“Right!”</p>
<p>“I mean, it’s a low bar.” They giggled some more. Some guy yelled at them from a few rows down, “Shard the fargub!” Another added charmingly, “Shaaz ya wooza!” A well-aimed Jaffa put a stop to that; but anyway, they settled in for a few minutes to watch the film. The heroine had been captured and bound in the villain’s lair. All was lost—or so it seemed. But wait! It was a ruse all along! She had manipulated them so as to be trapped and forgotten in the corner where she could listen in on their dark plots.</p>
<p>“But with Wayne, it’s just, I never know what he’s about,” said Sharon. “He’s like, ‘Hi, I’m Wayne Hope, I’m not like the other guys.’ But I don’t know if there’s a lot of <em>there</em> there, ya know?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, nah, it’s like, he’s all Mr. Virtue one day, but when anything gets real, does he come through? He just seems kinda … <em>blah</em>. Real ‘Nice Guy’ energy.”</p>
<p>“Like, I don’t want to make too big a deal of it. I mean, everyone does it. But it is my first time, so.”</p>
<p>“God, you innocent virgin,” laughed Mags, loud enough for a couple of rows to hear.</p>
<p>“Shut it, or I swear …”</p>
<p>“Yeah? You swear what, exactly?”</p>
<p>Sharon tipped the bag of Jaffas over Mags and they both collapsed in hysterics. Meanwhile, the heroine escaped from her bonds and wreaked bloody vengeance on her captors. But it was bittersweet, for her beloved had arrived in a doomed attempt to save her, only to be ambushed by the villain, who escaped leaving the beloved dying in his heroine’s arms. The poignancy of the moment was sadly lost on the two girls.</p>
<p>“Well,” said Mags when they had recovered, “you’re eighteen. It’s your choice.”</p>
<p>“Too bloody right it is.”</p>
<p>“And you’ll have to live with it.”</p>
<p>The sequel had been set up and the credits were rolling. They got up, rather reluctantly, and filed out to the foyer. They knew it wouldn’t be pleasant outside.</p>
<p>But things had gotten worse. Way worse. The fires were coming in fast. The sky was red and ashes blew horizontal. They looked out the window of the cinema, unsure what to do. The kids from the movie slowly gathered. As they watched, the mid-afternoon sun—that fierce unstoppable Australian sun—went dark and vanished altogether. The red turned to black. The ashes were now glowing embers, swirling in the gloom. Without warning there was a crack; something had exploded. The kids looked at each other nervously and the sisters held hands. Then another crack, and then, right in front of them, lightning smashed down on a telephone pole. They leapt back, suddenly terrified. There was a roar, like a sucking sound. It stopped for a second. Then of a sudden, fire surged above the buildings. Like a wall of liquid nightmares, all black and blazing, it ripped through the town, levelling buildings, tossing cars in the air, annihilating everything before it.</p>
<p>They watched in frozen horror, unbelieving. Then the window smashed and the fire came for them. Screaming they ran. Some of them made it back inside. Sharon was crying and shaking, clinging to her sister’s hand. Then she turned and saw: it wasn’t her sister. She’d grabbed some other girl’s hand in the rush.</p>
<p>“Mags,” she yelled. “Mags!” The doors to the cinema were shut, and no-one else was getting in. “Mags!” She pushed through the crowd, searching. She couldn’t find her.</p>
<p>The cinema was solid and somehow it survived. But when they emerged an hour or so later, the rest of the town was gone. There was nothing there, just smoking wreckage. Mags was gone, all the kids outside were gone. They never found the bodies; there’s not much left from a thousand degree firestorm.</p>
<p>After the roar and the chaos, a peace had settled over the place; the peace of nothing left to lose. The kids stepped out front of the cinema. The air was breathable, so long as they used their masks. And light was returning, still red, but enough to see.</p>
<p>It happened so fast. She knew it was going to be a hot day; when it cracks fifty, it’s never pleasant. It’s not like they hadn’t seen that before. When she left her house, though, she thought she’d spend a couple hours in the cool. She just wanted to have some fun. She never thought. The fire took everything: her house, her sister, her family, her friends, her town. Even the stupid mice. All in a few minutes of chaotic inferno.</p>
<p>One of the kids checked the news on their phone and put it on speaker for them. “This just in, a message from the office of the Prime Minister, Cole Evermore. Given the extreme conditions over much of Australia, the election scheduled for tomorrow is cancelled. The Government regrets that with the disbanding of emergency services, it is not in a position to provide aid for citizens affected by unpredictable weather patterns. The Prime Minister has expressed confidence that the situation will soon return to normal, and reiterated his position that the Government cannot be held accountable for unforeseen events. His hopes and prayers are with you in your difficult times. In the meantime, however, he is happy to report that he has reached an unprecedented bipartisan agreement with the leader of the opposition, Wayne Hope. Given the extraordinary conditions, both leaders have announced that it is in the best interests of the people that the Constitution is suspended. As of now, Australia is under martial law.”</p>
<p>“So I suppose I don’t get to choose after all,” said Sharon, to nobody in particular.</p>
<h2 id="the-far-side-of-the-sky-4">the far side of the sky (4)</h2>
<p>Edgar pounded on the door. “It’s me, Arixys, it’s me! Open up, let me in.”</p>
<p>Arixys woke with a jump; it was the middle of the night! They could hear the pounding and their father’s voice. It took them a minute to realize that they weren’t dreaming. They leapt up and ran downstairs; but just as they got to the door, they hesitated. They could see some other shapes through the glass, dark forms in the night. It wasn’t just dad. Anyway, they pulled back the big bolt in the door and opened it with a smile.</p>
<p>Edgar was there, in the white that he always wore. But the big men in black with him had a bag; they pulled it over their head and grabbed them tight.</p>
<p>“No, stop!” screamed Arixys. “Stop! Dad!”</p>
<p>“Hush child, don’t worry, it’ll be over in a minute.”</p>
<p>They hustled Arixys into a van, slammed the door and sped off. Edgar remained behind; he needed to finalize some things in their home.</p>
<p>Arixys was terrified, alone and bound in a car with strange silent men, abducted without warning with the aid of their father. Why had he done this? What was happening to them? They tried to breathe, but could only gasp under the hood. There were no answers, only fear, as the dark car vanished into the dark night.</p>
<h2 id="language">language</h2>
<p>“But sweetie, shouldn’t they come through the <em>front</em> door? They’re illegals, not refugees,” said Katy’s mum.</p>
<p>“Urrgh,” said Katy. The Tesla was whipping down the freeway, just eating up those miles. The terrain was broad and flat: scrub, light industry, waste. Her mother was driving her home from band practice.</p>
<p>It was something she’d been doing for a while now. A couple of years ago Spencer, her friend from next door, came running into her room, saying, “Check this out!”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“These guys, they’re looking for a bass player.”</p>
<p>“But I don’t play bass.”</p>
<p>“So what? They’ll love you, you’re amazing.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think that’s how it really works …”</p>
<p>“Anyway, the audition’s booked. As your agent, I made an executive call.”</p>
<p>“So … you’re my agent now?”</p>
<p>“For all they know.”</p>
<p>It was kinda intimidating; a professional band of seasoned rock musos. Outside the rehearsal studio Spencer noticed Katy’s nerves and took her hand, “Slay ’em babe. They’re only boys.” Katy squeezed her hand, took a deep breath, and went in.</p>
<p>The band was already hanging around, making some noise. Katy said, “I’m here from the ad? To audition?”</p>
<p>“No worries,” they said, “Great, we need a bass player. If you’ve got the chops.”</p>
<p>Katy grinned, “Sure, cool, get a cute chick on bass, right? Piss off, I’m playing lead.”</p>
<p>The guys smirked as she plugged in, while Spencer sat back in anticipation; she knew what was coming.</p>
<p>Katy said, “So, what shall I start with? Some classics? Bieber?”</p>
<p>They said, “Whatever, just show us what you got.”</p>
<p>Katy said, “Alright, well, I know <em>Smoke on the Water</em>, how ’bout that?”</p>
<p>The guys snickered, “Sure!! Blow us away.” It was a notoriously basic beginner’s riff.</p>
<p>Katy took her time fussing and getting the settings right, scratching out a couple of dodgy notes. “Here goes,” she said, “Wish me luck, guys!”</p>
<p>She started. But it was no plodding dinosaur riff: she launched right into AC/DC’s <em>Thunderstruck</em>. Her right fist punched the air as she hammered out the brutal, cascading arpeggios at lightning speed with her left hand. Spencer jumped up, laughing and head-banging with her friend, while the guys sat open-mouthed.</p>
<p>She stopped and said, “Oops, did I get the wrong song? Silly me!”</p>
<p>The guys said, “Holy crap, you’ve got the job. That was metal.”</p>
<p>She fluttered her eyes innocently and said, “You don’t need me to do the solo?”</p>
<p>So that was fun.</p>
<p>Anyway, today they had to cancel; no power. And here she was trapped in a car listening to her mum complain about asylum seekers. She had to say something. “You know mum, they say the brain operates in eleven dimensions.”</p>
<p>“Really, sweetie? Wow!”</p>
<p>“I know right!” said Katy. “And I hope that they’re right, because three dimensions are just not enough for me to roll my eyes in right now.”</p>
<p>“Well, I was only saying.”</p>
<p>“Seriously. These are human beings. Their homes have turned to shit …”</p>
<p>“Language!”</p>
<p>“Sorry! Their homes have turned to <em>fuck</em> because of us, like literally our lifestyle has destroyed everything they have, and you, a product of that privilege, think it’s okay to dehumanize them because the government decided to call them ‘illegals’? Like, the problem is <em>insufficiently precise use of moral language</em>? I just fucking can’t with this shit.”</p>
<p>Katy turned to the window, and took out her phone to scroll some vids. Cute … cringe … lol … oh god, not this conspiracy crap again. People were such idiots.</p>
<p>“I’m your mother, Katy. You will show a little respect.”</p>
<p>“Are you though?” mumbled Katy. And more loudly, “Then I’m your daughter. Shouldn’t you have left me a world I can live in?”</p>
<p>“Oh, teens, you’re always so dramatic!”</p>
<p>Katy couldn’t help herself. “<em>I’m</em> dramatic? See that fricking huge bushfire over there burning like the bowels of hell? Now that is a level of drama I can respect. You say you do everything for me. But did you ever think whether I want the things you have to give? I don’t. I don’t want a big house, a shiny car, I don’t care about degrees or careers. I don’t want none of this. Look around you, mum! That’s actual smoke. Is this normal now? None of those things matter—everything is burning! What I want is air to breathe, ground to walk on, water to drink. Can you give me those things, mum?”</p>
<p>“Things are changing. Young people really care about the environment. I guess we can’t have been <em>all</em> bad as parents!”</p>
<p>“And that’s supposed to make it <em>better</em>?” Katy was seething now. “You set the whole world literally on fire, throw your kids in it, then congratulate yourself when we try to put it out? Why in the name of everloving fuck should I listen to anything you say? Cunt.”</p>
<p>“<em>Katy!</em>”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, that was an abuse of language. Cunts give life, so.” That was super mean, and Katy knew it. She was adopted, obviously, and her mum, unable to have her own kids, had done her best to raise someone else’s.</p>
<p>Katy was a firestarter, no doubt. But that’s not all: she was a precocious student, a talented athlete, and in her down time, an enthusiastic advocate of equal-opportunity casual sex. But it was all getting too much. Something inside her was breaking.</p>
<p>It started when Spencer left. They’d grown up together. They shared everything. They played together, swapped clothes, laughed at boys. But one day, it was like there was a different person where her best friend used to be.</p>
<hr>
<p>You never got used to it. You couldn’t turn around without some other disaster, some new and weirdly unexpected sign that the planet was done with us. Birds fell out of the sky. Fishing boats hauled only jellyfish. The tundra exploded with huge burps of methane. People died in wet-bulb temperatures. Just the other week, it was so hot, a hundred thousand bats here in Sydney dropped dead right out of the trees. On the other side of the continent, Perth was in its dying days: there was nothing to drink, the wheat belt was dust, and the city was on the verge of collapse. Everywhere, people were struck with their own local version of what the media had taken to calling “escalating global chaos”.</p>
<p>Scared and desperate, hot and angry, people turned violent. Insurrections rocked cities the world over, while governments struggled to maintain even basic operations. The worse the riots got, the quicker the cities fell apart. Much of the world had never really known what it was like to have a functioning government, and the rest of the world was rapidly finding out.</p>
<p>People were fleeing their homes in the hundreds of millions. Maybe billions, who was counting? The ones on the coast headed inland, the ones inland headed to the coast. They’d do anything to get away, but everywhere they went was more of the same. In Australia, extreme heat made the outback unlivable. Even Aboriginal people used to desert living couldn’t escape the laws of physics. They were abandoning their lands and moving to cities, but the cities didn’t want them.</p>
<p>Then there were the asylum seekers. They boarded any creaky old vessel they could find and set out for anywhere they could. They came from the deltas of the Mekong, the Ganges, and the Irrawaddy; from the sunken islands of the Pacific; from fishless shores swept with storms; from drowning cities built too close to the sea—Bangkok, Jakarta, Yangon, Colombo, Singapore, Dhaka, Phnom Penh, Chennai, Manila, Kuala Lumpur.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, politicians whipped up a panic over “boat people”. “A nation needs borders!” they’d crow, basking in hate, as if a few desperate refugees were a dire threat to national security. People do so love a scapegoat.</p>
<p>But what to do when there are not thousands, but tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? There were plenty of nations around the globe that had already crumbled, abandoning even a semblance of central control and governance. At some point, the paranoid fantasies become reality.</p>
<p>At that point a nation faces a choice. What is more important: nationhood or humanity? Australians were not the kind of people who would slaughter unarmed innocents as a matter of state policy. At least, not without some hand-wringing first. Not everyone relished the idea of state-sponsored mass murder. But it proved easier to overlook once democracy had lapsed. Australia’s government abandoned any treaties that bound it to humane treatment of the desperate and needy. And its people steeled themselves to do what had to be done. Or more to the point: they steeled themselves to tell their children to do what had to be done.</p>
<p>The grown-ups in charge sent out their blue-eyed sons and daughters to face the oncoming tide; in chopper carriers and nuclear submarines; in patrol boats, frigates, and destroyers; in squadrons of F-35s supported by Reaper drones.</p>
<p>Which is why it shook Katy to the core when Spencer told her she was joining the Navy. “I feel like I should serve,” she said. It was her sixteenth birthday. It was hard to find recruits, so they had lowered the age limit.</p>
<p>“What the fuck, dude,” said Katy with her usual tact. “When did you go all dark side?”</p>
<p>“Someone’s got to keep us safe,” said Spencer. “Not everyone’s a pacifist like you.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, well, I remember a few less than peaceful moments. But you know, ‘I choose violence’ is just a meme, right?”</p>
<p>“It’s not about violence, it’s about security.”</p>
<p>“God, you sound just like one of them. You’re gonna like, ‘securely’ shoot them? They’ll be thrilled.”</p>
<p>“It won’t come to that. Show enough strength, they’ll turn back.”</p>
<p>“I seriously doubt that.”</p>
<p>“Okay genius,” said Spencer, “what’s your solution? What do we do, actually? Just let them come?”</p>
<p>“Sure, of course. No-one owns the planet. Our home is their home. Everyone needs somewhere to live.”</p>
<p>“So what, in your house? How many will you fit? You’ve got a couple of spare rooms. Heck, just sleep on the floor, give ’em your bed.”</p>
<p>Katy didn’t have an answer to that. “Look dude, just … stay safe, okay? You know you’re an idiot, and you’ll probably get yourself killed?”</p>
<p>Spencer laughed, “No-one’s getting killed, doofus. Don’t worry, someone’s got to do something, might as well be me.”</p>
<p>Bootcamp was brutal, but Spencer did pretty well. She took every bit of crap they dished out, and through it all kept a steady hand and a clear eye. They trained her on the M242 Bushmaster autocannon. It was a no-nonsense bit of kit, a powerful and satisfying weapon that was super fun to shoot. She liked the feel of it, the way you had to almost hug the weapon. It felt like part of you.</p>
<p>They started her out on a simulator that was as lifelike as possible. Over and over until it’s second nature. It’s them or us: breathe, aim, squeeze, fire. It’s your duty: breathe, aim, squeeze, fire. You are the nation’s protector: breathe, aim, squeeze, fire. Neutralize the enemy: breathe, aim, squeeze, fire.</p>
<p>But no simulation could ever match the real thing. The power, the force in it. When you squeezed the trigger, you felt all the kick, as the water erupted and the target shattered.</p>
<p>Her father was so proud of Spencer in her natty white uniform on the day of her graduation. It brought a tear to his eye to see his daughter marching smartly in rank at the naval academy. She was so young, yet she had accomplished so much!</p>
<p>Her first assignment was a “territorial integrity” mission on the destroyer HMAS <em>Sydney</em>. She kissed her father goodbye, gave Katy a hug, and set out across blue waters to face the incoming horde. As they drew near the boats, she grew nervous, and called to mind her training. Breathe, aim, squeeze, fire. What she had to do.</p>
<p>Over crackly tannoys, officers put on a polite but stern voice as they asked the people on the boats to turn around. They were professionals, and they stated their warning in language that was respectful, yet clear and unambiguous.</p>
<p>It was a day of dazzling sunshine. Spencer took a deep breath as she squinted into the sights on her Bushmaster, getting ready, all the while assuming they would turn back. She had no grudge against these people. But she did have her duty.</p>
<p>With the spectre of death snapping at their heels, the people in the boats had no incentive to stop. They sailed on into the teeth of the guns.</p>
<p>The officer issued another warning.</p>
<p>Spencer saw the boat clearly in her sights. The white sun was like an x-ray. She could see the planks, the crowd of dark-skinned people on board, the little children. She could see the white flags. And she could see that they weren’t turning back. They were crossing an invisible line in the ocean. And she felt herself standing outside herself, watching events unfold with a sort of disturbed detachment. Like she saw herself squeeze the trigger and she knew what it meant but it was all happening too slowly. It couldn’t be real. Reality wasn’t in slow motion. This was such a cliché. Every wave, every glitter off the sea, was etched with epic significance. The people’s emotions were too obvious, they were crying and huddling and waving white flags; it was all on the surface, where was the nuance? They seemed like actors badly playing terror. She remembered Katy, almost laughed inside at the memories of her life, or maybe it was never hers, it was all just pretend, like the people in the boat. Maybe she had been pretending her whole life. She knew she was losing her in that moment, her best friend, that moment as she was deciding, that moment right now, that moment she finally knew what kind of person she really was.</p>
<p>The officer called out, “Fire!”</p>
<p>She pulled the trigger. The boat in her sights disintegrated, erupting in a storm of splinters and white spray, just like her practice targets. It only took a few seconds.</p>
<p>She stopped, and could hear the sounds of other weapons targeting other boats. She scanned, found another, started firing. And again, and again.</p>
<p>Soon debris was floating past the massive steel bulk of their destroyer. She could see planks of wood, bits of superstructure, clothes, mangled bodies. There was a one guy, his arm off, but he was still alive, screaming and thrashing about in the shining sea.</p>
<p>All across the bright waters, a rain of hellfire was unleashed by sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends, colleagues, and lovers. Billions of dollars of military hardware finally found its true purpose: to annihilate leaky fishing boats full of people whose only crime was seeking a place to live.</p>
<p>The water was defiled with the blood of innocents and the desecrated corpses of skinny, brown-skinned children.</p>
<p>It was a policy success, they said. A demonstration of will. A testament to our investment in peace and security. But the boats kept coming. Soon they stopped asking before they fired. That’s the kind of people we became. That’s who we turned the children into. Hell, maybe that’s who we were all along.</p>
<p>When Spencer came home on leave, Katy went to see her. She went to take her hand, but Spencer pulled it away. They sat there with nothing to say.</p>
<p>All this, and everyone just kept on going as if nothing had changed. It was just the smiles got tighter, the knuckles whiter, and everyone was more determined than ever to pretend it was all going to be fine.</p>
<p>It wasn’t going to be fine. Fine was something old people said. Katy’s generation didn’t have the luxury of fine.</p>
<hr>
<p>Her mum slowed, turned off the freeway. They were headed over the crossing-bridge, on a winding highway past shops and suburbs.</p>
<p>“You know, Katy, a mom always thinks …”</p>
<p>“That their daughters will grow up nice and polite?”</p>
<p>“Well, yes. But that’s not … It’s just, it used to be so much simpler. Girls were girls …”</p>
<p>“Oh. <em>That</em>.”</p>
<p>“No, I mean, I understand that you’re a lesbian.”</p>
<p>“I’m bi mum. Thanks for knowing me.”</p>
<p>“I know, honey. I guess … I guess I thought that I’d be able to show you the world. That I had something for you. But you seem so … so distant.” She laughed, saying, “Oh but we’re a pair, aren’t we? I’ve become an old fogey, and you’re something new.” She paused, thoughtfully. “I just don’t know if it’s wise to throw out everything we had. It wasn’t all bad, back then.”</p>
<p>“I get it, mum, and I know: you love me, even though I say awful things. I know,” said Katy. “But mum, <em>we didn’t change it</em>. We’re just trying to live in it.”</p>
<p>“But that’s just it! We didn’t change it either! Or at least, we didn’t mean to. No-one knew. It just … happened.”</p>
<p>Musing, Katy said, “I wonder.”</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“What if it didn’t? Just happen. What if it was deliberate.”</p>
<p>“Who’d do it deliberately?”</p>
<p>“Well, maybe not consciously. I mean, does it matter? What if all the ‘unintended’ consequences were meant to happen?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know …”</p>
<p>Katy was on a roll now. “Okay, what about racism. Does it just happen that people of color get the short stick, in education, in health, in justice? No, it’s racism. Conscious or not, people want to hurt people with different-colored skin. So climate change comes along and surprise! The ones who suffer the most are poor, brown, and over there. Is it just coincidence? Does it just <em>happen</em> that the system works that way? Or was that the purpose of the system? Is that why it was built?”</p>
<p>“I guess … No, people want justice, it’s just hard to do.”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t seem that hard. Treat people decently.” Katy paused for a while, as the sweeping curves of the highway narrowed into suburban streets lined with old European trees. Her mum slowed down to take the corners gently; it was so up down and around, you’d easily get carsick if you didn’t watch out.</p>
<p>“Oh god,” Katy said. There was a sinking feeling in her gut. She’d just thought of something really horrible. She could almost feel the blood draining from her face.</p>
<p>“Katy, what? Are you okay?”</p>
<p>“What if that’s what’s happening in generations?”</p>
<p>“Sorry?”</p>
<p>“What if climate change is a punishment?”</p>
<p>“What? No!”</p>
<p>“Hear me out. Kids suck, right? I mean, look at me, look at how I talk to you. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to, but I do it anyway. Don’t you want to just, I dunno, give me a good strapping some times? Like they did in the old days?”</p>
<p>“No, sweetie. Well yes, you do test me. But I love you. You know that. I’d never hurt you.”</p>
<p>“I do know that,” said Katy. “But be honest: you totally would hurt me if it was a different time and place. If that was normal, you’d punish me for swearing at you. Isn’t that what you religious people took from the Bible? ‘Spare not the rod’? But now you’re not allowed; it’s not PC. What’s that parents used to say as they were abusing their children? ‘This hurts me more than it hurts you’? What if they were right? Where does it go? Where does the pain of the parents go? What if they just shove the pain underneath the love? What if love was part of the system? What if a mother’s love for her daughter was what made it all possible?”</p>
<p>“I don’t understand.”</p>
<p>“Why do you love me, mum?” said Katy. “I smoke pot, I’m an atheist, I go to protests, I date girls. I’ve inked my body to make it mine, not yours. I’m everything you hate. And I treat you like crap. When was the last time I cleaned my room?”</p>
<p>“A mother doesn’t need a reason.”</p>
<p>“And there it is. It’s irrational. It’s divine. It’s to be celebrated, not questioned. But what if there was a perfectly rational reason? What if mothers loved their kids <em>because</em> of all the terrible things we do?”</p>
<p>“Why on earth would love …”</p>
<p>“Well, evolution for starters. Gotta keep the species going, right? All the pain, the danger, the burden that kids put on their parents, it’s unbelievable. Jesus, what we put you through. We take twenty years of your life. The resentment, the loss: the love evolved to balance that, to stop it from getting out of hand. To stop you from hurting us too bad.”</p>
<p>“Oh, sweetie, I don’t know …”</p>
<p>“But there’s a contract. We become mini-yous. You pass on your values, your knowledge, your name, you continue in us. But we totally broke that deal. We could care less about your values, and your knowledge is useless. We’ve become all that you are not. We woke up. We’ve gone already, and you can’t even see our path.”</p>
<p>“No, Katy, no. That’s not …”</p>
<p>“So, climate collapse, huh? The olds make it happen, the kids suffer it. Our punishment. For being the brats that we are.”</p>
<p>“No, oh god, no, Katy!” her mum started crying. “No!”</p>
<p>“What is my life, mum?” said Katy. She was tearing up, too. “How did everything get so lost?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” sobbed her mum. “I don’t know.” They had arrived home, pulled up at the driveway. They didn’t wait for the car to stop before they pulled each other in, crying. They never did this. “I’m sorry, sweetie! I’m sorry I didn’t do more. I’m so sorry.” And they stayed that way as the sun set, hugging each other tight, crying on each other’s shoulders.</p>
<p>“I love you so much,” she said. And they didn’t even know who said it any more.</p>
<p>Their house was on a steep incline; the other side was a gully of wild bush. The bush turkeys used to come up to their front lawn, while over the road was a palm tree with a dozen bin chickens come home to roost. At that hour, the sun cast its last rays through the leaves, dappling the house in red gold. It was getting deeper red these days, as the sky was tinged with fire and darkened with smoke. But they could still hear the cicadas clacking and the frogs burping and the magpies tweeting. And from the ridge nearby a host of bats was waking, setting off in their evening swarm.</p>
<p>After a long while, they got out of the car. It was dark now. The lights in the house turned on and her mother looked up with hope. “We’re home. Let’s go in, I’ll make us some dinner.”</p>
<p>But Katy stood still. Everything dropped away. She wasn’t in a narrow green street outside a comfy home with her mum, coming home from band practice. She was just … nowhere. It wasn’t dark or light, she wasn’t in a time or a place. She was in-between.</p>
<p>She shook herself. Turning from her home and her mother, she said one word: “No.” It was the only word she had left. She started walking.</p>
<p>“Katy, where are you going?”</p>
<p>She kept walking.</p>
<p>“Katy! Katy, what’s up? Katy! <em>Katy!</em>”</p>
<p>Katy didn’t turn around. Her mother’s call winged out towards her, but faltered and fell along the way, like a starving bird winging a too-wide desert.</p>
<p>She never went home. And she never saw her mother again.</p>
<p>As Katy’s mum watched her vanish in the gloom, she rationalized it like she always did. “She just needs some time to herself. That was a lot, she has to process. She’ll end up at Spencer’s house, it’s not like that hasn’t happened before. She’s sixteen, she can look after herself.” Comforting words, words of hope. Words that made sense of a world that no longer made sense.</p>
<p>She went indoors, pushing aside the worry that gnawed inside her, and prepared dinner for two. She ate alone.</p>
<p>As the years passed, she diminished and faded to grey. She never got over the loss, but it would be a mistake to think that those final years were wasted. Before the end, she came to understand: it was she who had disappeared, while her daughter remained. She didn’t blame her daughter, or herself for that matter. Katy was an angel and she had helped her find her wings. What could she do but fly away?</p>
<p>She never told anyone what her daughter had said to her. She never found the words.</p>
<h2 id="the-far-side-of-the-sky-5">the far side of the sky (5)</h2>
<p>Dad,</p>
<p>How could you! What did you do! I am all alone in the big place. No-one will talk to me. I don’t know what is happening. Help me! Take me home!</p>
<hr>
<p>My dearest Arixys,</p>
<p>Hush, my child, be not afraid. I am sorry for how it unfolded, but we had to keep it all secret. You can trust the men, they will not hurt you. I will be with you soon, I promise. Just be patient a little while longer.</p>
<p>Arixys, you will not see your home again. Please be calm, let me explain what is happening. Breathe, remember? Breathe and be aware, you can always find your bliss within.</p>
<p>It is time, listen to me. I will tell you what is going on.</p>
<p>It was half a century ago, when the Americans and the Soviets started sending probes into space, that they made an incredible discovery. There is, in fact, a <em>second earth</em>!</p>
<p>When our solar system was formed, the scientists found, unimaginable forces spun apart in twin great spirals that solidified both as the planet we know as Earth, and as a second almost identical planet, exactly on the opposite side of the sun.</p>
<p>It was clear, even at the height of the Cold War, that this was something that transcended politics. Scientists the world over set to work to learn what they could about our mysterious twin. And what they found was beyond their wildest dreams.</p>
<p>Earth-2 is the same size as our Earth-1, occupying the same orbit around the sun. It has the same mix of land and oceans, and a varied but generally pleasant climate. And it is full of life! The land masses are vivid green, the oceans teeming with fish. The biology is carbon-based, almost identical with our own. Some speculate that an asteroid in the distant past seeded organic matter from one planet to the other. But the cause is secondary to the fact: Earth-2 is livable. It’s better than livable—it’s spectacular.</p>
<p>The first concern of our Leaders was to determine whether Earth-2 posed a threat. They scrutinized it for signs of intelligent life and found nothing. The highest form of life there is a species of rather adorable monkey-like creature.</p>
<p>Now, while the Leaders were learning all this, they were also learning about something else: anthropogenic global warming. By the early 1960s, the evidence was clearly pointing to the calamitous effects of our greed for fossil fuels. Politicians and scientists were moving towards a consensus that coal and oil must be rapidly phased out, and that we must transition to a fully renewable economy by the end of the 1970s.</p>
<p>But there was a concern. Some scientists were saying that we had passed certain tipping points and that the collapse of the environment was already locked in. We had cleared too many forests, burnt too much fuel, and scoured too much from the seas.</p>
<p>While this was uncertain, it raised a worrying problem. We could pour our effort into saving this world, and it might work—or it might not. We could introduce renewable energy and sustainable farming, and build energy-efficient houses. But there is just so much overhead. Too many cities are built for cars: how can they be made amenable for walking and public transport? How to reverse the long-standing trends of manufacturing, farming, transport, and a thousand other things, all built on the idea that we can just burn fossil fuels as much as we like? And how to do all this when every detail must be negotiated and agreed on by vested interests?</p>
<p>What if, some dared to wonder, we had the chance to move to a new home? Would it not be better to simply start again? Earth-2 appeared as a sign, a unique blessing. It would be a shame, folly really, to overlook such a chance. We have learned so much. Why not put it into practice and create a life truly worth living?</p>
<p>I must leave it there, for now. The story goes on, and the greater part is not yet revealed!</p>
<p>Stay strong, and rejoice, for our future is full of blessings!</p>
<p>Your devoted father,</p>
<p>Edgar</p>
<h2 id="t-shirts">t-shirts</h2>
<p>The order was not predetermined, but the start was always the same. He reached into the basket and pulled out a black t-shirt. On the front was a triangle, a prism, with a ray of white light and a rainbow. <em>The Dark Side of the Moon</em>, greatest album of all time. Then came the rest: <em>London Calling</em>, <em>Blonde on Blonde</em>, <em>Rumours</em>, <em>Sgt. Peppers</em>, <em>Born to Run</em>, <em>East</em>. One by one the icons of classic rock, damp, were carefully pinned to the line.</p>
<p>Chris stayed in place, moving the Hills Hoist around bit by bit. The yard was big enough, not huge by any means, but not one of those modern little boxes. The grass was brown, the house was fibro. For a gardener, his own garden was spartan.</p>
<p>He was pretty efficient. A couple of minutes later, they were all done and the hoist came around again. He unpinned the black t-shirt, bone dry already, and then the rest. One by one and the ritual was over. Some people still used clothes dryers, said it was more convenient. He was not one of those people. Not that he was a greenie or anything, he just didn’t see the point when the clothes dried faster than you could pin them up.</p>
<p>Taking the basket he went back inside where it was just as hot. Not too bad, you could put the fan on. To be honest, mostly he sat around shirtless; the whole t-shirt thing was pretty much formal wear at this point.</p>
<p>Settling at his desk, he fired up Youtube. His feed was always informative: “What they aren’t telling you about the plague!” “Climate change: hoax or coverup?” “How the elites invented the environment!” You know, that kind of stuff. He clicked play. At least it was some noise in his empty house.</p>
<p>He knew there had to be a reason he lost her. These things don’t just happen. He needed to understand. What was going on? What hidden currents stole his love away? He drifted into his thoughts. Like a deep river he could see her. She was swimming, swept with the current, waving happily, her slender arm back and forth, smiling like a naiad as she vanished in the mist.</p>
<p>He was daydreaming again, he had to get over it. Shaking his head, he came to a decision. He couldn’t just keep on like this, he had to do something. He shut off the clip. It was about how mind-controlled monkeys had stolen zombie anthrax, injected it into genetically-engineered mutant murder hornets, and traded them with aliens in exchange for actual real bananas. Which, to be honest, was a bridge too far even for him. Everyone knew bananas weren’t a thing any more. He stepped outside, flinching; you never really get used to the searing burn of the sun.</p>
<p>At the back of his yard was an old tin shed. He used it for his gardening stuff. It was full of tools and chemicals, but lately it was neglected. What was a gardener to do when all the gardens were dead? Still, he opened the door and looked it over, thinking, “It’s a start.”</p>
<p>“I’ll need an inventory,” he said to himself. “A list. What’s going to be useful, what is not. Steel buckets, yes, plastic buckets, no. Knives, spades, gloves, all yes. Herbicide, no. Pesticide … nah, it’ll be off in a few years anyway. Petrol, same. Nothing electric. Nothing with a motor. Kerosene lamp? How long does kerosene last? Okay, another list, things to check. Oil, yes. Rags, no, I’ll be able to get them. Oh yeah, and seeds. Lots of seeds.”</p>
<p>He worked until the sun went down, ignoring the streams of sweat, sorting out it all out: what is going to be useful when the world has ended? He was going to have to find a better place to keep it all, maybe a cave in the mountains. Somewhere with water. But at least it was something to do. At least it kept his hands and mind busy.</p>
<p>They took his love away, but damned if they were going to take his life.</p>
<h2 id="the-far-side-of-the-sky-6">the far side of the sky (6)</h2>
<p>Dear Arixys,</p>
<p>I haven’t heard from you in a while. I hope you’re okay! It’s taking longer than I thought, but I am nearly ready to join you. We will be together soon, I promise.</p>
<p>Let me continue the great story!</p>
<p>When all options had been carefully considered, the right course of action was clear. Our Leaders undertook humanity’s greatest task: a multi-decade project preparing a world worthy to become humanity’s new home. This finally explains why our politicians have seemed so unconcerned with climate catastrophe, so blasé that they allow our planet to careen frantically towards collapse. This is where all the missing trillions have gone, not to tax havens for the ultra-rich. I mean really, who could possibly be so evil as to syphon funds from the public purse when the fate of humanity is at stake? The rich may have their flaws, but that would be truly monstrous!</p>
<p>No, the great and the good have been secretly laboring behind the scenes, building a paradise. It turns out, all our Leaders wanted was for us to live and flourish on a new world.</p>
<p>And what a world it is! Let me explain how it all works.</p>
<p>From the beginning, it was determined that the planet itself would be zoned residential. The value of the environment, after all, lies in how it serves humanity. If we shift industry off-planet, we can truly maximize the utility of the ecosphere.</p>
<p>Mining is carried out in the asteroid belt, where a complex network of robotic workers extract practically limitless quantities of any mineral. Solar and nuclear energy powers refining and manufacturing. Waste and pollution are a non-issue, as they are simply expelled to the infinity of space. Finished goods are sent to the “Celestial Amazon”, a grand network of satellites that organizes distribution. Meanwhile, huge orbiting greenhouses grow abundant food of every variety. In this way the foods of Earth-1 can be enjoyed without contaminating the biosphere of Earth-2. Space elevators silently and swiftly convey goods to the surface. Solar-powered drones bring any kind of product right to your door, while garbage drones remove all waste harmlessly to space.</p>
<p>The smart part is, all these machines are self-replicating, self-repairing, and self-improving! When they break down, they fix themselves up, or another machine fixes them. When they need more energy or more materials, they mine what they need from the asteroids. They never rest, they don’t go on strike, and they never have a sick day—they are the perfect workers! Any spare time is devoted to designing and building better machines, all dedicated to the good of humanity. There is nothing but infinite growth and infinite productivity, forever!</p>
<p>Much work has gone into construction. Promising sites are selected by teams of geologists, ecologists, botanists, and other specialists, who carefully survey the planet to determine the most beautiful and pleasant places to live. Architects have designed living spaces that harmonize with nature. Great tree-houses wind around 300-meter high forest giants. Houses on stilts have glass floors for watching mysterious forest beasts prowl below. Floating cities move between continents, allowing the citizens to enjoy the endless delights of the various climates. There is even a local plant with a giant flower, several meters across, large enough that cozy living spaces have been provided within the golden petals.</p>
<p>All of this, of course, took an unprecedented investment of money and resources, and in the meanwhile Earth-1 has sadly languished. Scorched by fire, drowned by flood, stripped of her mineral wealth, she lies broken and bleeding, spasming in the throes of a terminal decline. This is, of course, regrettable. Nobody wants to leave their mother in such a state. But it was a necessary sacrifice, and when you see the wonders of Earth-2, I’m sure you’ll agree that it was worth it.</p>
<p>Okay, okay, I hear you! “When are we moving?” you cry! I cannot reveal the date, but rest assured, it will not be long.</p>
<p>Forgive me, I must finish here. I will be joining you very soon!</p>
<p>with love always,</p>
<p>Edgar</p>
<h2 id="just-the-basic-facts">just the basic facts</h2>
<p>“Mmm, pastries!”</p>
<p>“Ahh, may I say, yummsies!”</p>
<p>So it seemed the pastries were a hit, big surprise. It’d been a busy morning already: choose her outfit, do her hair, her makeup, an extra ten minutes to make it just so. Another ten minutes to double-check her presentation, then another ten to pick up the pastries on the way to work. Allow ten more for random incidents, and a final ten to negotiate the crowds in the square outside, always protesting something or other. Yesterday it was a ban on fossil fuels; today’s mob wants what … oh, their God-given right to keep driving gas-guzzling SUVs. Okay then.</p>
<p>Getting to work on time was a job of work.</p>
<p>Eager hands snatched up the pastries; they knew that if it was from Leslie, it was quality merch. Real hand-made pastries from a cute little shop nearby. They were gone in a flash. That made her happy.</p>
<p>“Well, I’m celebrating,” said Leslie. “Yesterday we finalized the loan, so today we own our very own home!”</p>
<p>“Congrats!”</p>
<p>“Awesome!”</p>
<p>“Huh, one day I’ll be as together as you, I swear!”</p>
<p>“Now we’ve got ya!” interjected her boss. “Ha ha!” There was an awkward pause. “Joke!”</p>
<p>“Sure,” said Leslie. “It’s just that … my boyfriend’s boss told him the same thing.”</p>
<p>“Well, ain’t that a thing?” enthused the boss. “Okay, so while we enjoy Leslie’s <em>delicious</em> pastries—mm hmm!—how about we also enjoy her powerpoint?”</p>
<p>“Right,” said Leslie. “Here goes … wait a min … oops there we are. Okay, so these are just preliminaries. But the figures show that over the last quarter we continued to experience significant growth in market share. That’s 18% over our closest competitors, and 6% overall market share.”</p>
<p>“Wow, okay!” said the boss. “A big round of applause for the team that made this happen!” And they clapped on cue.</p>
<p>“Ahh, yes, well,” said Leslie. “But other metrics paint a different picture. While the size of the market continues to expand as expected, medium-term projections show a levelling off, followed by, well, decline and collapse, obviously.”</p>
<p>“Best focus on the positive, right?” encouraged her boss. “I’ll take the good news upstairs, they’ll be so happy to hear it.”</p>
<p>“Umm, okay,” said Leslie. As a junior analyst, she focussed on assimilating the data and communicating it. She was great with details; policy wasn’t her job. She knew that her boss would leave out most of the facts that she had so painstakingly gathered, and as usual, would also omit to note that she had done all the work. Still, it wasn’t so bad; at least she had a job, a well-paying one at that.</p>
<p>Her firm, SmarticAIte, was a content farm. Their slogan was “Don’t educate, SmarticAIte!” They created text, images, graphics, and video for a wide range of media, including social, advertising, student essays, news reports, novels, scripts, academic and scientific articles, legislation, legal judgments, school curricula, medical research, engineering assessments, intelligence gathering, and so on.</p>
<p>Clients gave them a brief, with style, media, size, and, optionally, some basic facts, and SmarticAIte did the rest. They called it an “AI-enhanced targeted content creation model”.</p>
<p>What really happened was they fed the parameters through a neural net which created the artificially-generated content (AGC), then they gave the results to the clients. These days, no content provider could stay in business using human-generated content (HGC); you just couldn’t write things fast enough.</p>
<p>SmarticAIte specialized in what corporate called “dynamic client interaction scenarios”, where both sides of an adversarial system threw AGC at each other.</p>
<p>Competing news outlets, for example, bought different AGC reports on the same topics. Then they bought op-eds criticizing the takes of the other side. They were moving to an “pre-emptive interdependence” model where the attack pieces were created at the same time as the original report.</p>
<p>Academic work was no different. Professors skimmed the journals for some current topics and used that to seed their next article. Then some other professor would “write” a rebuttal. There were downsides to this, as progress in science and other intellectual fields had effectively halted. The AIs, by their nature, could only process what was past and rehash it for the present. Still, it didn’t seem to matter too much, as most academic HGC was never read anyway.</p>
<p>Government departments used AI to frame legislation. The different parties would run it through AIs again to create revised versions to argue about. Once it had passed into law, lawyers would litigate the legislation with contrarian takes supplied by SmarticAIte. This had proven so successful that SmarticAIte was now rolling out an end-to-end legal solution. A suspect would be charged by AI, their case submitted to an AI court, their defence supplied by another AI, and an AI judge would give the verdict. It was fast, efficient, cheap, and reasonably accurate.</p>
<p>They’d make an AGC curriculum for the education department in a few minutes, which would become required for all students in the nation. But of course, the students would cheat in their tests—it was hardly regarded as cheating any more, just “artificially-optimized learning outcomes”—and give AGC answers back, which were then marked by, you guessed it, another AI. Arguably, there was little point in teaching students to write essays when no-one was going to read them anyway.</p>
<p>SmarticAIte handled sensitive private information such as medical and psychological records under a special, expensive, “crypto-AI” process. That didn’t mean anything, actually, it was just bog-standard content processing. Occasionally the client would discover this and sue them. But it turns out that when you have AI lawyers on your side, it’s cheaper to just pay the legal costs.</p>
<p>AGC was used by medical and welfare providers to improve efficiency in delivery outcomes. Abandoning the complex, error-prone, and inefficient legacy approach of measuring outcomes in terms of health and well-being, they moved to a sentiment-based approach where success was measured purely in terms of client satisfaction. When a client attempted to register their dissatisfaction, they would engage with an AI, which would swiftly generate content explaining why the client was mistaken in believing that they were dissatisfied and showing that the provider’s failure to supply their basic services was in fact critical to the client’s current state of satisfaction. As a result of these advanced logic parameters, client dissatisfaction was at a record low.</p>
<p>Of course, in reality anyone could simply make their own AGC, as these models were trivial to run. But SmarticAIte was founded on the one abiding principle of techno-supremacist capitalism: the more it cost, the more it was worth. They were proud to be the world’s first tech company that employed no programmers at all. All their tech was created by, you guessed it, AI. The main thing the company actually did was to persuade their clients to pay for what they could have done themselves for free.</p>
<p>Still, it was an ethical company, so Leslie didn’t feel too bad about her job. They had an equal-opportunity hiring policy, and targeted zero emissions. Their massive server farms were located in pods on the sea floor off New Caledonia, where they had little environmental impact as they simply re-used trenches devastated by deep-sea mining. True, they pumped a few billion kilojoules of heat into the warming oceans, but what was that in the scheme of things? In times past, those waters were spawning grounds for the same eels who made their home in the Parramatta river. But the eels were gone, so what was the harm in heating up the dead waters?</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the offices were provided with saunas, exercise and meditation rooms, a variety of five-star cuisine options, even an in-house escort service for lonely employees. And if their product was just rehashed “content”, people didn’t mind all that much. The world’s intellectual activity had been reduced to recursive neural networks parroting each other. Yet somehow it didn’t seem like such a big deal in the scheme of things, what with everything else that was going on.</p>
<p>SmarticAIte sold all of this content from their shiny HQ in downtown Parramatta. They had taken over a fifty-five story tower, in a move praised by the local MP as marking “a vital step forward into a new age of betterment together”. His speech was, of course, written by SmarticAIte. Leslie worked with the staff on the fifty-forth floor, while the bosses were on the fifty-fifth. The rest of the building was kept deliberately empty; the long elevator ride made an impression on clients.</p>
<p>In a way, working for an AI company was one of the few reliable jobs left. Everyone else was at risk of being replaced by AI. But the AI companies knew how AI worked, and they’d never rely on it for themselves; it was strictly for the clients. She did the company reports the old-fashioned way: gathering facts, entering them, and writing up the results. She knew her value; her reports were good.</p>
<p>She focussed on getting the job done. One task, then the next. Don’t look too far ahead. Do what was in her power. She had a good job, a good life. It should be enough.</p>
<p>“Hey gorgeous!” said a voice behind her and she pretended to be surprised.</p>
<p>“Dan!” Of course, the cameras had ID’d him when he got in the elevator, and he had to pass security, but they had this little thing where they kept some spontaneity. He was old-school. “How’s it hanging, loser?”</p>
<p>“You know, missing my sweet girl,” he laughed.</p>
<p>“Since this morning?”</p>
<p>“You were gone so fast!”</p>
<p>“I know, another report.”</p>
<p>“And you’re busy now, I’m guessing.”</p>
<p>“It’s as if you know me,” said Leslie. Dan always popped by just to say hi and give her a kiss, he was really thoughtful. But today, she had a surprise for him. “Here babe, I got these, there’s still one for you! Hand made and everything.”</p>
<p>“Wow, that looks delicious, thanks.”</p>
<p>“And can I ask a favor? Would you pick up a box of tampons, my period came early?”</p>
<p>“Of course, babe. You want me to bring them here?”</p>
<p>“No, I’m good for now. Tonight’s fine.”</p>
<p>They kissed and he sauntered out, chomping on the éclair and leaving her with a smile.</p>
<p>At five, she cleared her desk and made her way to the elevator. She noticed one of her colleagues coughing, a sound that always triggered a certain level of anxiety.</p>
<p>“You okay?” she asked, with genuine concern.</p>
<p>“Sure, yeah, just a, you know, catch in the throat. It’s nothing.”</p>
<p>“Alright, well, stay good. See you tomorrow!”</p>
<p>“No worries!”</p>
<p>Another colleague sniffed, a little shiftily. Nothing’d get you fired quicker than a disease. Hoping things would be okay, she took the elevator down and drove home. In her bag was the one remaining pastry, a custard pie; this was for her.</p>
<p>Dan hadn’t got home. Concerned, she tried to ping him, but there was no response. A couple hours later, she got a notification from the hospital. They said he’d been admitted; he was in quarantine. Now she was scared. But they said it was just for observation. There were no visitors till tomorrow. So she ate the custard pie and watched some (AI-generated) comedy to lift her spirits. If she couldn’t sleep, well, there were always some pills.</p>
<p>The next day, still no news. But she couldn’t worry too much, she had another report to give before visiting the hospital. She rushed in to work, pushed through the protestors outside, and rode up to the top.</p>
<p>The office was empty. It was so weird. She did a double-take—was it a holiday? Nope. This never happened, people were always on time. Then the first notice came from a colleague: “cant make it sorry, coughing this morning.” Then another: “took a turn last night, I won’t be coming in.” And another and another.</p>
<p>Everyone, it seems, was out sick. Everyone except her; she must have been immune or something. Worried, she checked the feeds. They all spoke of a new plague, faster and deadlier than the others. It had apparently leaked from a local lab. It turns out it was a SmarticAIte subsidiary that was doing AI-based genetic experimentation, looking for a vaccine for the last plague. But this new one got into the food chain. Anyone handling food could transmit it. Several outlets in Parramatta had been identified as vectors.</p>
<p>With a cold chill, she realized, “It was the pastries. Oh my god! It was in the pastries!” She frantically began calling, trying to find her boyfriend, her friends, her boss. There was nothing. No-one was answering. Grabbing her things, she fled the empty office and headed for the hospital. But it was all on lockdown, armed guards outside. There were no visitors or voluntary admissions, just rendition at the front and trolleys hauling bags out the back.</p>
<p>She tried to explain that she was immune, that her boyfriend was inside. The guards wouldn’t listen. When she tried to push her way in, they smashed her face with a rifle-butt, kicked her down the stairs, and maced her for good measure.</p>
<p>Bleeding, she staggered away from the hospital and the guards, trying to find safety.</p>
<p>When she got to her car, it wouldn’t open.</p>
<p>“Face not recognized!” it said cheerily.</p>
<p>“Yeah, it just got mangled by a goon with a gun. Let me in, you artificial idiot.”</p>
<p>“Face not recognized!”</p>
<p>She tried wiping her face down, cleaning up, but it wouldn’t let her in. It was too much. She’d grab a ride home and try to figure things out. She pulled out her phone, “Ahh, get me a ride from here back home.”</p>
<p>The app’s AI responded, “Credit not accepted.”</p>
<p>“What?” she said. “Use my SmarticAIte card. It covers everything.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” the app responded, “SmarticAIte is no longer recognized.”</p>
<p>“The hell!” She hadn’t checked her phone in a minute, but there it was. Implicated in the latest plague, not even SmarticAIte’s artificial lawyers could protect them. The company was bankrupt and the founders had skipped the country as wanted men.</p>
<p>“It’s only 9:30,” spat Leslie as she started to walk home. “Great, what next?” It was an hour in the increasingly hot sun, with her bruises and sprains not making things any easier. Finally though, she made it home and felt a small measure of relief as she limped up to her front door, really hers since yesterday. A place of her own.</p>
<p>But the door wouldn’t unlock. Normally it’d do gait recognition when she came near. But she was tired and limping, maybe that was it. She tried to unlock the house screen with her face. That too didn’t work; which was not unusual for people like her. Iris recognition: nope, her eyes were red and puffy from the mace. She tried her finger on the screen, but it was too messed up with sweat and blood. No-one used PINs any more, IDs were all based on bodies. Which was fine until they broke the bodies. She was so frustrated, she tried a few more times without thinking.</p>
<p>Then came the dread message: “Too many access attempts detected. Break-in suspected. Legal analysis pending … pending … pending. Congratulations! We have reached a verdict in your case. You have been charged, tried, and convicted of attempted breaking and entering. Guilt probability: 97.76%. Sentence: five years in prison for crimes against private property. Judicial services proudly brought to you by AdjudicAIte, the smart court that’s fair and balanced. Your legal defence was proudly supplied by AttornicAIte, the smart lawyer in <em>your</em> corner. Please stay where you are. Law enforcement officers will shortly be with you to facilitate your transition to federal custody. This service proudly brought to you by SmarticAIte: smart solutions for stupid problems. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. And remember: as the world gets dumber, SmarticAIte just gets smarter!”</p>
<p>She stared at the screen. No, this wasn’t possible. The company didn’t even exist any more! How could it be putting her in jail? The programs must be just running on autopilot; there’s no-one to turn them off. Nothing left but the ghost AI in the machine. Then in the distance, the sirens. Oh crap.</p>
<p>Spinning, she fled her own home, dodging down the street and out of sight.</p>
<p>All her life, she had worked harder than everyone else, better than everyone else. She’d come from nothing, done all the right things. Doors had been slow to open and fast to shut. She had kept going and had built a life, a good life, for herself.</p>
<p>But she was no fool. She knew what mattered at the end of the day. She had been kind, giving, intelligent, dedicated, loyal, reliable. But what she did and who she was inside, that was meaningless. It was what she was on the outside that defined her in the eyes of others. And if she didn’t act fast, right now, she wouldn’t make it till nightfall. Not with the panic out there and the cops after her.</p>
<p>She ducked down an alleyway, behind some wheelie-bins. She knew what she had to do.</p>
<p>For starters, ditch her phone, they’d use it to track her. And her watch. Jewelry, it had ID chips in it. Shoes, jacket, piercings, same.</p>
<p>She kept on down the alley until she saw some bags of rubbish; a neighborhood like this, they were always tossing good stuff. Ripping open some bags, she found clothes. She stripped and started putting them on.</p>
<p>“Oh shit, my tampon,” she realized. That’d have “health” tracking in it, for sure. They never lose a chance to creep on a girl. “Great timing, moon goddess!” Squatting in an alley, pulling out her tampon: she really hoped no-one was watching. She threw it in the rubbish. “I guess I’ll just bleed like nature intended. Oh wait, no, they’ll track my blood. Terrific. They can probably smell it.” Rummaging, she found some used chux. “That’ll have to do.”</p>
<p>Next, she needed to scrub the makeup off; even that had nano-chips in it. All she had was dirt, so she grabbed a handful and rubbed it all over her face, scraping off all she could.</p>