In 2048 Tigre’ Nadu successfully lobbied the U.N. for admission. “If monarchies and dictatorships are recognised,” he argued, “why not these new financial dominions, which had the exact powers and responsibilities over their own populations.” He also underlined his petition by pointing out that companies like his had a far better humanitarian record than every single recognised nation.
The U.N. agreed, and overnight the world went insane. No longer were corporations fighting for a slice of the market or tax breaks, now real political power was in their reach. When they could not buy or bribe, corporate armies went to war in fiscal takeovers. Fast-food franchises made unholy alliances with soft-drink companies, who routed the car corporations which—now outnumbered—signed treaties with toy manufacturers capable of mass-producing lethal playthings.
Conglomerate wars erupted across the globe.
Soldiers with a white swish on a crimson background fought tooth-and-nail with fast-food clown armies. Battle cries of ‘Can’t Beat The Real Thing’ and ‘Oh what a feeling’ echoed across the globe. Financial and commercial laws were toughened, making industrial espionage a capital offence, and these executions were screened at prime time, to great reviews.
Humanity was destroying itself, and the traditional superpowers decided enough was enough. Seeing their authority eroded by these corporations, they decided to do something previously considered impossible. Former Cold War enemies became Commercial War allies, and those corpora-states that did not immediately sign treaties with this alliance found their products banned from their largest markets. Overnight corpora-states found their stock price crashing, investors flipping and banks closing lines of credit. Stronger, safer companies began takeover bids, wrestling control of these companies away. Other financial states also fell when their population/employees rebelled as jobs and benefits dried up under this financial strain.
The once heralded economic geniuses who’d led these corporations down this path began committing suicide rather than face an increasing number of lawsuits. Stockholders started witch-hunts, tearing apart their own corporations looking for someone to blame. It soon became everyone for themselves; the capitalist way.
All-out-war was only averted when the first message arrived from outer space. Humanity was not alone in the vast universe, and this news slowly pulled the planet back from Armageddon. The political and fiscal nation-states pulled together, and even backed the U.N. to fund humanitarian works. Every starving person soon had a hamburger to eat, an ice-cold soda to drink and sneakers to wear. This was all made possible because humanity now had something to bind them together, a common foe.
Humanity reached for the heavens, hungry for new technologies and a wider view. The aliens, who seemed so superior at first, were unprepared for the savage ape, and were easily swept aside. After decades of unremitting slaughter, the first human to land on the alien home-world was a U.N. astronaut in a Korean-built ship, using Japanese electronics, with Norwegian communications, wearing a battlesuit sponsored by a British sneaker company, and fed by an American fast-food franchise.
Fiercely, steadily and, most importantly, together, the human galactic franchise opened for business.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: PHIL Hore has written for newspapers and magazines across the globe, and has worked as an educator at the Smithsonian, the Field Museum and the Australian War Memorial. He writes history, science and science fiction, and often finds all three meeting each other on the page. His first novel ‘Brotherhood of the Dragon’ was released in 2019 and he has a number of books, including a sequel, coming out in 2020.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14906921.Phil_Hore
https://www.odysseybooks.com.au/titles/9781925652604/
Together we can fix it by Laurie Bell
“HOW IS IT YOU CAN STILL hope? Look around, Pa. It’s gone. There’s nothing left.” Emma swiped a trembling, soot-stained hand over her face and smelt charcoal and death on her skin. The screams of koalas still echoed in her ears, drowning out the calm of the moment—that silent, after-the-madness stillness, where the ringing in her ears drowned out even the thudding of her own heartbeat. She rested the precious bundle she carried on the ground and stretched her back. Everything hurt, but at least she was alive. They both were.
The old man’s wrinkles had been made deeper by the streaks of black running down his face. A mixture of tears and the spit of rain. Rain? Ha! Useless misty water from the sky, as if God herself was laughing at them, sending rain too light to extinguish the flames burning deep in the dead trees around them.
Her Pa shook his head. His shoulders were hunched, beaten down over long years of harsh reality. Of sun baking into his skin and earth dried to a crisp beneath his boots. How did a man go on after hearing his cattle gasp for one last breath before collapsing right in front of him?
“Look.” He was a man of simple words and a gruff, no nonsense attitude. He licked his parched lips and pointed to the sky. “How can you not have hope?”
Flashes of light brought her gaze to the location of the cavalry. It was a hell of a sight. Airship after airship, the gunmetal grey of human ships and the silent, salmon-tinted sleek fae ships, working together to target the flames with mighty bursts of water and ice.
“But what will they want?” Emma asked, pulling her dampened hair from her eyes. It clung to her skin like an octopus. She practically had to peel it away strand by strand. “What price will we pay?” She peered at the smoke rising from the blackened earth. What would she and her Pa do now? The farm was gone. The cars. Everything they owned.
“You can’t think that way, Em.” There was a gentleness in her Pa’s voice she’d never heard before. “I know we’ve been fighting since they arrived, but look, we’ve come together to save what’s left. They don’t want this. Neither do we. This destruction will end us all. It’s time. Has to be. Time to drop the weapons and hold the hoses. Don’t you see? It’s a chance, a new start.”
It was more words than she’d ever heard him utter. She stared at him in disbelief. This taciturn man who’d lost everything was smiling up into the darkening sky, tears rolling down his cheeks.
She shook her head. The land they stood on was what they’d spent years fighting over. Before the storms ignited everything, this patch of burnt land had once been their home. Pa’s daughter—Emma’s mother—lost her life in the fighting, but Emma’s Pa had never let hatred fill him. Not in the way it engulfed Emma. Seeing him now, knowing that when the reality of their loss hit him, he would need help through it, she could only marvel at his willingness to believe in the impossible. Then again, she’d seen it with her own eyes, hadn’t she? The truth. They had all come together last night, at the end of all things.
Emma and her Pa had been sure they were going to die. Surrounded by flames ten feet high, the wind had whirled ash and embers into the air, carrying death further and faster than she’d ever seen it move before. She’d stared death in the eye and prayed the end would be swift and painless. It was not to be.
THEN
“ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES,” Pa ordered when the wind took hold of the flames and sent bright orange embers like pollen from a dandelion over the farm. “Grab a bucket. Wet everything down that you can, and anything you see light up.” It was a hopeless cause. Too many embers, too much wind. The dry grass caught instantly. In seconds they’d had to pull back. “Head to Gerald’s,” he shouted.
She shook her head. “Not without you.”
They fought long and hard into the night to save their neighbour’s homestead. When they lost Gerald’s place, they moved on to Martha’s and at least saved the sheds—for all that meant. They’d lost the house. For hours they fought, moving from one lost cause to the next. They saved the Prescott’s place. No one was entirely sure how, but they did it and the flames had miraculously split down either side of the property. Wind change? Hand of God? Who knew? It gave them the energy to keep going.
And then the Wings arrived.
The
Wings. The enemy. The monsters who started the war. The Wings stepped from the shadows around Emma and her Pa with their bright wings flaring behind them like the angels they pretended to be, and for a moment time stood still.
Emma wanted to shout at them. Scream at them to get away. Three years ago, the Wings landed on Earth and claimed it for their own and the humans had said “No.” The fae needed a home, having lost theirs to a different war, but there was not enough room on Earth for them all. Three years of war, on top of the drought, and now, none of it would matter. The bushfires would kill them all. Emma stared at them, wondering if their presence heralded Armageddon. To her surprise, the Wings picked up the spare hoses and somehow—fae magic perhaps—despite the dry dam, the hoses shot water.
Why couldn’t they stop the flames if their magic was so strong?
Pa gave her a shove. “Grab the hose—take the left.” And she’d done as she was told.
Emma, her Pa, Prescott Snr, Martha and five of the Wings fought the flames together that night and somehow, they stopped it in its tracks. Pa called them the pink line. No ember got past them. Pa even pulled one of the Wings from the path of a tree that came crashing down that would have killed him. Emma and a young Wing held a hose together, his wings protecting her face, her jacket protecting his hands. Shoulder to shoulder, smudged skin to skin, they’d stood in the path of the same beast and won. The world had spun on its head and enemies had become friends in the smoke-filled shadows. Emma wished she’d had the chance to apologise for her nasty thoughts, to say thank you, but the Wing moved with the fire. At one point he had been beside her and then in next he was gone.
NOW
“DO YOU THINK THEY’LL be back?”
Emma didn’t think her Pa could hear her muttered question and was startled when he answered it. “Maybe. They don’t know how badly they were needed here. We wouldn’t have survived without their help. There’s gotta be a way to let ‘em know.”
She thought about that. Do we want to rebuild? After the fires were done and over, once the flames were out, would her Pa really want to stay? How could they live here when everything that made them who they were had gone to ash and scattered in the wind? She looked over the slumped frame of her Pa. They could leave it to the Wings. Perhaps it was time to move on. Problem was, she had no idea how to broach the subject with him. She’d have to think on it some more.
“We should get moving,” she said.
A loud roar signalled the return of the airships. They dove overhead and released great swathes of water and retardant. Maybe her Pa was right. Maybe it was time for a change.
“Come on then, old man. They’ll be wanting a feed when they land.” If they landed. Would the Wings join them at the shelters, or would they rightly fear their reception and avoid town? Could this be the end of the fighting? Perhaps it was like that story of the British and German soldiers stopping war on Christmas Eve to play football. A one-time deal.
Her Pa’s wrinkled and gnarled fingers gripped her hand tightly as he pushed to his feet. He wavered on the uneven, ash-covered ground.
“We lost it all. What will we feed ‘em? What do they even eat?” For a moment his eyes lost their hopeful light.
If the Wings landed, who would greet them? Emma resolved to be the one to stand there and hold out her hand. She would not turn them away. She smiled at her Pa. “We’ll find something,” she said, desperate to restore his glow. “We’re in this together.”
His faith had restored her own and she wouldn’t let him lose it now. She picked up the bundled ball of fur snuggled deep inside the blanket they’d found earlier, still trembling but no longer making those high-pitched screams. She let her Pa help her with the straps to the makeshift sling they’d created out of their long-sleeved shirts until it sat comfortably against her belly.
“Town?”
He pointed unerringly to the left. She didn’t doubt his knowledge of the land or his sense of direction.
“After you.”
Hope was a powerful thing. They’d come together, human and fae, to battle an unstoppable monster of flame and won. They would emerge blackened but renewed. The unthinkable had stopped a war. Together, if they tried, they could forge a lasting peace. It took one person holding the line to demand, “No more.” Emma would be that person. Eventually one would become two. After this madness, after all this horror that they’d survived, they had to make it happen. Working together would restore more than just homes and businesses. It would restore the future. They had to learn from this.
Where there was no other option, you had to have hope.
“Let’s go.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: LAURIE Bell is a once upon a time former teacher and is now an administrator full time. She is regularly featured in the Antipodean Science Fiction E-Magazine. (Both with her short stories and as a member of the narration team.) A lover of fantasy and science fiction of all kinds, she volunteers at her local theatre company and is often found in coffee shops or on trains, writing madly in one of her many notebooks. Oh, and she loves chocolate and coffee!
Laurie maintains an active blog of science fiction, fantasy, and flash fiction pieces.
Laurie Bell Website: www.solothefirst.wordpress.com
Check out her books, The Butterfly Stone and White Fire at:
https://solothefirst.wordpress.com/my-books/
The Experiment by Jo Davidson
DION STANDS IN FRONT of a wall of computer screens, tears running down his cheeks. He reaches out and pulls his wife closer, relishing in the comfort of her skin.
“Strange things, tears, I had forgotten how much grief and sadness hurt,” he says. “It is almost too much to bear.”
“I wonder how much longer this planet and humans can survive, there are disasters everywhere.”
He reluctantly pulls his arm away from her warm body and points to the monitors.
“Look at that! Massive floods on one side of the planet and fires on the other, deforestation, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes. And there are still people who believe that there is no climate change.”
“What people need is a good leader,” she says. “A leader to inspire hope and encourage everyone to start working together before it’s too late. Of all the people on these screens before us, who would you choose, Dion, to turn into a saviour/avatar to lead the human race and save the planet?”
He sits, his hand stroking downwards on the long hair of his dark beard, and looks at the hundreds of scenes screening from all over the world.
“How about him?” he says. “Donald Trumpet! He is certainly in the media world-wide, on every news channel and Twitter. Everyone knows who he is.”
“Oh Dion, you can’t be serious. If he was given the power of a saviour, he would turn it into a business and use it to bring the end even closer. And besides, look at that hairstyle, it just wouldn’t go with the halo.”
“I would rather her,” she says and points to a teenage Swedish girl. “That girl has the attention of the media, but has a vision much more in line with what we need.”
“Maybe,” he says, “but she isn’t exactly inspiring humankind is she? It is more that she is frightening them. It is a necessary and good thing, they certainly need to be frightened, but what we need more is a movement of inspiration and hope.”
“People worship movie stars and sports heroes,” she says.
“How about him, then.” Dion points to a pregnant man. “You could have a saviour born of immaculate conception to a MAN! That would really get the media attention!”
“Oh, Dion! That’s just a movie called Junior! I like the idea though, humans worship movie stars and sports heroes.”
They both stand in silence, the reflections from hundreds of scenes are tiny lights dancing across their wet eyes as they snuggle into each other.
“My dear Freja, it feels so good to be with you like this again,” he says. “It has been too long.”
He pulls her close and kisses her deeply on the lips,
then turns to get the glasses of wine that are behind him.
They clink glasses, looking deeply into each other’s eyes. “To the future of Earth,” they say in unison, then turn as one towards the screens again.
“There,” Dion says, pointing to a corner screen. “The Dalai Lama. Now he is someone inspirational. He has a lot of followers, and he encourages kindness and peace. Mmmm. Just nothing on the environmental side. What we need is a cross between him and that David Attenborough man. But they are both getting a bit old, aren’t they. We need someone young.”
“Yes,” she says. “The trouble with saviours/avatars is that they don’t become effective until they are old enough and, even then, their real effect doesn’t happen until hundreds of years after their death. Look at the last saviours: Jesus, Abraham, Buddha, and various avatars from Vishnu. Their messages have all been manipulated for human power and control. Buddha has become a household or garden ornament without meaning. I’m not convinced a saviour is what is needed.”
“Well, if we could put out all the fires, balance the weather, seed a few million trees and try to restore the climate, the human race would survive okay.”
“But that isn’t the point, is it?” she argues. “Surely they must see that they need to work together, use their humanity and consume less resources and power. I would have thought they would have worked that out by now. They are intelligent enough.”
“No, my dear Freja, it isn’t. It looks like you were right all along: ‘The Humans on Earth Experiment’ has failed. Given our true nature, of ‘spirit’, a physical element was never going to work. Once spirits have a body and a brain, they rely too much on their own thinking power to try to solve things and then their Egos get in the way. Naturally, greed, desire and all sorts of emotions that go with the physical sensations take them away from seeing who they really are! Humans may not work it out before the Earth is no longer habitable. They just want to satisfy their physical and emotional needs, and it is killing them. We should have sent down another saviour/avatar sooner, so they could be inspired to see how truly marvellous they are and work to save this fantastic planet they live on.” He shakes his head. “Humans!”
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