Water For My Seeds
My thrutopian cli-fi take on the future generational impact of the climate emergency we acknowledge today.
I’ve been helping to coax life from seeds planted in both my village’s community vegetable plot and my own garden – potatoes, lettuce, carrots, spring onion, sweet pepper, kale, spinach, cabbage and assorted herbs, plus rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries. Fingers crossed they all come to fruition and provide some excellent nutrition for neighbours, friends and local wildlife.
Back in February this year I entered a Writers Rebel flash fiction competition. Five simple prompts were provided - Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Power – to help participants to explore any aspect of the climate and ecological emergency. Writers were encouraged to address the “intersections of climate, social and racial justice” in their stories, including the “ongoing impacts of colonialism, wealth extraction and oppression”.
Writers Rebel aims to encourage writers to address the climate crisis and influence public opinion. By challenging the complacency of politicians and media, its supporters seek to foster a new narrative that sparks imagination and prompts action. For writers this means not only describing the dystopian forms which a crisis can take under a business-as-usual scenario, but also planting thrutopian seeds to foster hope. These seeds can show people viable alternatives, hopefully to be nurtured until they flower into action. Because all of us will need hope in the future.
“Thrutopia” is a concept that goes beyond the traditional notions of utopias and dystopias. It’s about envisioning and working towards a future that acknowledges the challenges of the climate crisis and seeks transformative change. A thrutopia focuses on the journey of getting from our current state to a more sustainable and equitable world, emphasizing immediate action and the importance of dreams and visions to guide us through difficult times. It’s a blend of pragmatic action and hopeful imagination to navigate and survive the climate crisis.
My thinking about the effects of climate change have been influenced to date by
, and . Also The Schumacher Institute and the many ‘Deep Adaptation’ thinkers and contributors who have helped tease out the complex issues within current systems thinking and its application to societal collapse. As someone with experience gained in 2007 of influenza pandemic planning (yes, it will happen again, even post-Covid), it’s been clear to me we are only ever two days from disaster. With our integrated supply-chain ecosystems, it only takes truck drivers to care more for their loved ones than what they’re transporting for societal breakdown to occur.The competition’s shortlist was finally released yesterday (a fortnight late, but better than never 😏) and, unfortunately, I didn’t make the grade this time – unless I’m the still unannounced finalist! Me being me, I levered all five of the given prompts into my 500 word entry, ‘Water for my Seeds’, which is reproduced below. See if you can spot where I’ve subtly referred to them. Good flash fiction should also retain a narrative shape, including an idea, a degree of conflict and at least a tentative resolution. Did I achieve this?
I’ve also subjectively ranked the shortlisted entries below, according to how thought-provoking and emotionally appealing I found them. What do you think of them?
Infertilities (Joseph Nicholson)
Elegy for a Yellowjacket (Tim Kiely)
- )
Coke Bottle – A Journey (Darren Wimhurst)
- x2 - well done!)
“Stories have an important part to play in changing the collective narrative that sees the climate emergency denied, minimised and greenwashed. Fiction has always played a role in shifting paradigms, and in exploring issues that can spark rage, hope and inspiration alike.”
— Writers Rebel
Since it was written, ‘Water for my Seeds’ has germinated inside my mind, sprouting into a side-project in a form quite different to any of my previous creations. I’m envisaging a new take on a 40-year-old story, involving contemporary intertwined journeys in the face of a mutual crisis. It will require skills I don’t have and so will require a collaborative effort. Stay tuned, folks.
To conclude this week’s newsletter, I hope, most of all, that the stories shown here plant a seed inside your own head, to inspire you to think, research, act – or even write – about the times that are to come.
Until next time…
Water For My Seeds
“Baba, Baba!” Amal shouted. Her father ran from their shack, sandals scuffing the desert grit, his face a walnut from sun and worry. To fail again would lead to more death. She pointed at the clear glass tube with a grubby finger. “Look, Baba.”
Her father peered at the fragile connection between his latest crude condenser and a battered metal flask. Within the tube, sunlight glinted from the first precious drop of liquid relinquished from the air. Joy replaced anxiety as he grabbed Amal by the waist to lift her skyward. Their excited cries brought her mother outside, who clapped her hands. Astride her father’s shoulders, Amal shouted, “Mother, mother, bring my seeds!” As she hurried back inside, their listless, gaunt neighbours watched from scraps of shade. There was no vaccination against dying hope.
With a rare smile, her mother emerged clutching a small clay pot, her headdress slipping in her haste. Impatient to be set down, Amal prised it from her hands as her father withdrew the tube from the flask. With childish conviction, three indents marked where her thumb had prodded seeds into a handful of parched soil. She’d scraped them from a corner of the abandoned food store. Above it, the missionaries’ tattered flag still signalled their irrelevance. ‘Gone to feed themselves’, her brother had said, his voice as bitter as their meals. Only roots now lay under the unyielding scrub surrounding their encampment. But now it didn’t matter who was more important. The sun and air had never cared and, beyond the distant ochre hills, the rising seas agreed. The gunfire from the port had fallen silent during last week’s prayers. ‘A fight for power, not our survival,’ her father had reminded them, his silence lasting until their waning solar lamp had signalled bedtime.
Her father’s hands steadied hers as she rested the tube on the pot’s lip, like the sacrament she’d seen placed on the foreigners’ tongues. His fingers were stained dark from the ore he’d loaded onto long-departed ships. Now only poisoned water and scarred earth remained. Her brother had said electric cars shouldn’t mean slavery. Amal had missed her chance to ask what he meant, as the sunrise had revealed a bed empty of him and his angry, restless fire. Every morning since, her mother looked towards the sea while her father continued to toil and curse.
They watched the drop crawl towards the tube’s opening, Amal’s tongue squirming in the corner of her mouth. The liquid pearl lingered before falling like a priceless tear to darken the potted soil. Amal imagined her seeds sighing like her father. “Alhamdulillah, zain,” he said, patting her head before returning to his workbench. Three other crude devices would soon join the first, to quench the thirst of plants and people.
Amal waited patiently for the next drop. And the next. She waved to a passing boy she knew. With shared grins they watched the third drop soak in.
“Now we can hope for life,” she said.