February 27, 2038 | By Lila Asher

February 27, 2038

written by Lila Asher

4th Place

On the eighth floor landing, Charlotte pauses to catch her breath. Despite the decentralized power grid, storms like today’s have a tendency to cause blackouts in her old apartment building, and she doesn’t want to risk getting caught in the elevator. Just four more flights, she tells herself, heading for the roof garden.

Charlotte spent the majority of last winter hauling supplies to build wind shelters and raised beds for her baby plants. She used every cent of the small community garden grant she had received though Michigan’s Neighborhood Fund. When the tiny green shoots had emerged last week, Charlotte had knocked on each door in the building personally. Sharing the news face-to-face was so rewarding that for a minute she’d stopped resenting China’s constant disruption of American internet.

At the top of the stairs, rain completely obscures the narrow window. It reminds Charlotte of going through a car wash, when she was small enough to need a car seat and luxuries like cars were still widespread. Maybe Mariah is right, and she shouldn’t go out in this weather, no matter how much anxiety she feels for the seedlings. Charlotte thinks of her girlfriend awaiting her return in their apartment below and feels a pang of guilt for leaving her alone. These storms always terrify Mariah, despite the city’s consistent Storm Protocol town halls and drills.

The door is hard to open against the wind, but Charlotte pushes through and heads to the garden. The bamboo wind shelter stands strong against the gusts, but inside, the soil in the beds is nearly soupy. There’s only so much that drainage can do against the buckets of water falling from the sky. Last summer she had missed fresh vegetables so much; the drought made the ones at the grocery store too expensive to be a frequent feature on her dinner table. Now the rain seems to be mocking her and her tiny seedlings.

Her peas look bedraggled, beaten down by the water, and her carrots and radishes are practically swimming. Just yesterday, Charlotte had been marveling at her sprouts, the early spring silver lining to Detroit’s warming weather. Now she watches them helplessly, their relative safety from frost doing little to protect them from drowning. She can’t really do anything to help them, she realizes, but after her long trek up the stairs it comforts her to be drenched in solidarity.

After watching the plants battle the storm for a long minute, Charlotte looks over the fence lining the roof’s edge. The streets are still and empty as pedestrians hide from the deluge. The electric trams have stopped running, probably due to flooding closer to the lakeshore. Most days, the trams shine with carbon-neutral promise, but the echoing consequences of past emissions bring them to an abrupt halt during each storm.

Shivering from the water in her rain boots, Charlotte forces her way back through the door and begins her clomp down the stairs. She’ll have to check again tomorrow to see if her seedlings made it through. She wishes she could call Mariah and reassure them both that she’ll be home soon, but her phone is barely more than a friendship bracelet without reliable internet. Charlotte knows it was right for the country to support Hong Kong’s independence, but China’s retaliation hit civilian telecommunications surprisingly hard — a constant reminder that American hegemony never recovered from the pandemic nearly 20 years ago.

The motion sensors controlling the lights in the stairwell preserve electricity, but Charlotte can’t look too far ahead without feeling like she’s descending into darkness. She’s relieved to reach the third floor and the door to her own apartment. Still dripping, she stands outside for a moment, listening to Mariah softly playing the guitar inside to comfort herself through the storm. As the thunder recedes into the distance, Charlotte slips into her apartment, home.

About the Author

Lila Asher is pursuing a master’s degree in urban planning. She aspires to be an urban planner who contributes to the movement for sustainable and equitable cities. A feminist scholar and activist, Lila writes about environmental issues and queer culture. You can find her at lilaasher.bitbucket.io.

Why Lila wrote this story:

“I wanted to capture the contradictions that we hold in this moment as we look towards the future. My dad read the piece as a bleak vision, while my best friend saw it as hopeful. Writing in the COVID-19 era, I wanted to highlight how horrible conditions can become normalized, while also imagining the potential for community and security to survive if we do take action to mitigate the impacts of climate change.”