The draft of my novel is driving me nuts. So, I’ve been writing stories set in the novel’s world, imagining how people other than the characters in the novel might respond to the major events. These characters aren’t in the novel (at this point), but I want to think about how the catastrophes would affect people I haven’t been thinking about for a year and a half.
I thought I could create a little narrative podcast of the stories. This is rough and unedited, but I don’t feel like fixing it up right now, so here it is, my obnoxious breathing and all.
The Flood
I woke under water, as, it turns out, did nearly half of the city of Falson. I don’t know why I didn’t hear the water rising below me, nor do I know why I didn’t feel it until it began splashing into my nose. Our old house and my nose, flooded.
I jolted out of bed to see my little world destroyed. My belongings were unrecognizable amidst the water. Papers, clothes, leftover food, all swirling together in a morass of filth and history.
So I waded out of my home’s remnants and into Falson, which is when I knew I was not alone in my panic. Mr. Sullivan was standing on his stoop yelling instructions at his boys, who were quickly pulling boxes from their house and placing them on a long, portable folding table whose surface just only cleared the water line. The boys were not moving fast enough for Mr. Sullivan. They usually didn’t move fast enough for Mr. Sullivan.
One might think the urgency of the situation would be enough to compel Mr. Sullivan into action, not just shouting, but one might also not have lived next door to the Sullivans for their entire life. His bellicosity wasn’t surprising to me.
As for my house, it seemed a lost cause. I never liked it anyway, and I didn’t own much of value. I guess I don’t have the same kind of nostalgia for home as other people do. I guess that’s some kind of character defect. I should look into it. Besides, I have government insurance.
Kasha was in Casul for a few days, so household emergencies were up to me to address. This one was extreme. I’d let her know when I got my bearings.
Hell, she probably already knew. This kind of catastrophe would have been communicated immediately by the Consortium, the quasi-governmental organization that supposedly kept the peace between the cities. And if not, Kasha’s contacts probably knew about it already.
Most of my material possessions, at least the ones I care about, live in my office, which is up in the air, well above where the water was.
I assumed transit was down, so I’d have to make my way to the government highrises on foot, a daunting prospect given the flood.
My legs began to ache almost immediately, and I had to pause at the Northeast Falson Market Square, just 2 blocks from my wet home. An electronics shop I had never been inside had a stoop that was high enough to be wet, but not submerged. I sat there for a few minutes to catch my breath and rethink my strategy.
I tried to will a boat into existence, but I failed.
A Consortium vehicle came screaming down the street, drenching my already wet body in its wake and generally adding to the terror of my already terrorized and dazed neighbors, most of whom were outside now, seeking to make sense of the senseless.
So, vehicles were getting through the sludge after all. Or at least Consortium vehicles were. The terms of the treaties between Falson and Casul established the supposedly independent Consortium, while simultaneously giving it exclusive rights to certain technologies. This was meant to provide it, at least to a degree, with supremacy over either government. To maintain peace.
A Consortium gig would be appealing to most scientists, but I am a Falsonite through and through, so working as a government botanist feels more natural to me. Access to that vehicle would have been nice that morning, though.
I set back out toward the city center, trudging a little more slowly for the sake of my endurance.
The Falson Science tower was virtually empty when I finally arrived, belatedly realizing I was showing up to my workplace in saturated pajamas. The few others wandering about the lobby looked no better, and I supposed no one was judging the appropriateness of anyone else’s attire that particular day.
I wearily looked toward the stairwell, assuming the elevator was out, or at least not a wise choice to use amidst the water. Eight slow stories later, I arrived at my floor, dragging my numb legs toward my office. Mine is the largest suite on the floor, as it includes a lab space. As far as I can tell, my superior workspace is a mere HR fluke. It happened to be available when I was hired. I’m not the only botanist in the building, and I don’t carry a high rank, even after all that happened, but if my colleagues are bitter, they never let on.
I stripped off the soggy PJs and put on the spare work outfit that was hanging in the closet. I always keep one in the office for, I suppose, days like that day. I sat, exhausted, at my desk, still wet, my head suddenly pounding.
I knew I needed to contact Kasha, but I hesitated. Kasha is a diplomat, a liason between the Falson and Casul governments, meaning while she does not have the power of a Consortium negotiator, she does have access to information.
She had taken the heavily regulated, Consortium-sponsored, Falson-to-Casul hovertrain three days ago, and I wished she had taken the return trip two days ago. But she hadn’t. She was doing her job.
Given that, until that day, Falson seldom had even a sprinkle of rain—some kind of effect of the strange ridge of rock and soil surrounding the city—the flood was a truly bizarre meteorological anomaly. Kasha had access to scientists from both cities.
I felt a low hum of anxiety about what the combined knowledge of scientists would reveal regarding a natural environment in which such a bizarre event could occur. In the past year, my plants had been acting strangely. Things were growing at times and in ways I had not previously observed.
But I called Kasha when my brain’s thumping allowed it. I used the direct line from my office because it tended to be more reliable for reaching Casul than my personal communication wristband did.
She sounded tired. Her first words upon answering were “Are you okay?” So I knew she knew.
She hadn’t slept. She had been out for dinner in the bustling, gleaming metropolis of Casul, meeting up with a few counterparts from the Casul diplomatic service, when the reports started rolling in on their communication devices.
It wasn’t just the flood, though. Casul authorities had already been on high alert because of an increase in Zealot activity in the city. The Zealots are lunatic racists, celebrators of the Casul conquest of the land on which Falson now stands. They are hellbent on continuing the genocide of the indigenous people of the Falson Crater, even though none remain.
The Casul government has always done its best, at least I think its their best, to keep the Zealots isolated and relatively nonthreatening. They are not good for PR, and when they really get riled up, they can, indeed, cause damage. That doesn’t happen very often. But in the previous few days, they had torched a library and assulted several people in broad daylight.
A sudden, unpredicted storm in the Falson Crater had clearly spooked Kasha’s already spooked Casul counterparts, and what was meant to be a routine trade discussion was turning into a potential crisis management meeting.
The last words she said before hanging up were “stay in your lab until I get back.” No, “I love you” or “be careful.” Just, “stay in your lab.” She never mentioned the house.
I would stay in the lab. I am of little use outside of it. The lab is where I have competence and value.
I was tempted to check the news. I ended my news consumption when I saw the reporter interviewing Mr. Sullivan. Nothing to report, sir. Still an asshole. I shut it off and sat at my desk for a few minutes, willing the pounding in my head to calm. When it didn’t, I stood up and walked toward the short hallway to the lab.
The artificial lights of the lab are timed and calibrated according to what is growing. They were blaring brightly, a stark contrast to the gloom outside.
I stopped short, though, before opening the door. The pulsations in my head grew heavier and faster as I looked through the glass to see the purple flowers. So many purple flowers, which had not been there the previous afternoon. My research expertise is on the ancient flora of the Falson Crater, species that went virtually extinct after the destructive forces of the Casul Expansions into the crater, decades earlier.
The plants are generally considered to be as utterly eviscerated as the indigenous people, known as the Hadlers, who grew them. Some precious plants did survive, though, and my government position allows me access to the samples. I had been trying to replicate the ecological conditions that geologists and anthropologists believed existed before the Casul military dumped bombs into the crater, but I had been unsucessful for years.
And yet there they were. Bushes upon bushes had grown to three times the size they had been the day before. And they were blooming, a sight few living people had seen, including me, a supposed expert. Bright purple blooms on ancient, presumed dead plants. The bright purple that must have covered the Falson Crater before the bombings and burnings and the murder meted out by the Casul military. Beautiful purple blooms overtaking my little lab and the more conventional experiments I had begun.
Recovering from my shock, but not my headache, I scrambled to collect soil samples, pick a few emerging fruit, carefully storing them, protecting them like the precious gems they were.
I began to prepare my equipment for analysis, assembling microscopes and labeling samples, retrieving existing data for comparision, gathering slides, sterilizing scalpels and tweezers. I sent a quick message to my lab assistant Jerrold, perfunctorily asking how he was coping and more explicitly suggesting he should come to the lab if he could. We suddenly had something useful to do.
Jerrold didn’t respond right away, so I continued preparing the experiments, distracted by the beautiful, ancient, purple flowers that had overtaken the lab.
And then my wristband dinged, with a message from Kasha. It read simply: “Terrorist attack on the hovertrain. I can’t come home, Peter.”
I looked at the violet apple bush, which was growing perceptively in front of my eyes. I was incredibly lucky to have it. There were few in existence. If old textbooks were to be believed, it would become a full grown tree. I had never seen one before, so I had never been able to directly observe its growth. But I knew the lab wouldn’t be big enough for it.
“Terrorist attack on the hovertrain,” Kasha’s message read. She wouldn’t be home soon. I went back to my office chair, leaving the samples on the lab table.
I only sat there for a few minutes. I’m not so ineffectual as that. I sat for a few minutes, but then I got up and walked to the office window and looked down at the street. The water was receding already. It left incredible destruction, but it was receding. Rebuilding would be possible.
Kasha’s message read, “Terrorist attack on the hovertrain.” I looked toward my lab, where I could see the purple flowers. What a bizzare and beautiful development.
I wondered when, or if, Kasha would return to Falson.
“I can’t come home, Peter.”
The purple bushes were growing into trees, and the lab couldn’t hold them.
I messaged Kasha back. “What is going on?” And then returned to the lab.
I uprooted the violet apple bush. It was growing the fastest, so fast I could perceive the changes. Violet apples were sacred to the Hadlers. Most sources suggested that rapid growth was central to the Hadlers’ celebration of the the plant. I was seeing it with my own eyes and, clearly, violet apples didn’t belong inside.
I carried the plant down the eight flightst of stairs to the lobby and exited. The water had receded so quickly while I was inside that it only came up to my knees as I made my way home. My thighs were grateful for that, at least.
By the time I got back to Northeast Falson, the streets were mostly a muddy mess. The neighborhood was not back to normal, however. People are resilient, especially in my neighborhood with its history, but relilience requires time. Yards were full of people, some of whom were crying and hugging, while others sorted through their belongings on the sidewalk and on tables carried out of their homes.
Mr. Sullivan was still yelling, but most of my neighbors were calmly, dejectedly proceeding with their lives, whatever those lives might be now.
I didn’t want to go into my house yet. And, anyway, I had a bizarre, ever-expanding, ancient plant that could not be inside to take care of. I found a place in the front yard near the Sullivan side, and gently set the bush on its side. No one was paying attention to me or my violet apple plant, so I figured it would be safe while I ran behind the house to grab the shovel I leave by the garden.
It probably isn’t surprising that Kasha and I have a garden behind our home. Plants are kind of my thing. What might be surprising is that our garden is not well taken care of. At home, I never seem to have the energy. At work, I measure the chemical content of soil obsessively. At home, I can’t be bothered. I notoriously under-water our garden. Kasha isn’t a plant person, and besides, she travels so much she might not know what’s in the backyard, so she doesn’t take care of it either. But I keep the tools at the ready, just in case I have a flash of energy.
I took the shovel back to the front yard and dug a hole, and planted my mysterious plant where it belonged, in the soil of the Falson Crater.
When Casuls bombed Northeast, they murdered people as well as the natural order of things in the Crater. The endless expansion and xenophobia of the old Casul regime left this place forever altered. Animals, plants, and the Hadler people and culture were wiped away. The plants and animals never returned. Maybe now one could.
I know it was a foolish thing to do, planting this vestige of the past in a place that might not be able to sustain it. But maybe it had a chance. I wanted to give it a chance. I’d have to go back to the lab to do the same for all the other plants with their various hues of purple flowers. But for now, I’d see if this one could have its chance.
Kasha hadn’t responded to my message. My excitement about the plants had, for a time, masked my festering sense of dread. I messaged Jerrod to check on the lab, to save or remove any plants he could. We’d re-assess when the choas subsided.
And then I walked through the mud to the hovertrain depot. I needed Kasha to come home, to see the new tree, which would help block out Mr. Sullivan and his long suffering sons.
She had written “I can’t come home, Peter,” but I was watching a purple bush become a purple tree in soil that had been rendered toxic by instruments of war. Maybe that day was a day we shouldn’t use the word “can’t.”