Optopia Issue #2 by Optopia

OPTOPIA A SOLARPUNK ZINE

Issue 02 | Sept 2020

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Letter From the Editor

Apocalypse / Noor Amin

Tell It To the Bees / Meira Datiya

Photography / Fabrice B Poussin

The Town After the End of the World / Rifka Handelman

The Plurality of Anthropocenes / Chad Waples

Jewel Jackson

Heart of the Arctic / Rosie Albrecht

Dandelion Recipes / Meira Datiya

Kairos / Brecht Lanfossi

Andromeda / Noor Amin

Dreaming to the Tides of Time / Jonathan Beckham

Jewel Jackson

Jack Adebisi

This Is a Formal Apology / J. L.

City of Artificial Stars / Jenny Ham

Space / John Ingold

Atacalepsy / Brecht Lanfossi

Save the Bees / Rowan Draper

Fragmenting: A Sonnet in Infinitives / Yuan Changming

Jewel Jackson

Foraging in the Midwest / Meira Datiya

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR When I began this magazine in 2019, I had no way of knowing what the world would look like upon the release of Issue #2. How could I have predicted that in only a year, I’d be on my sixth month of quarantine, after having postponed my college graduation due to a worldwide pandemic that a large percentage of my country refuses to even acknowledge? How could I have known that I’d be seeing photos of the West Coast so red with smoke that they looked like they were taken on Mars? As an author of dystopian novels, I have to say that the plot of 2020 feels a little heavy handed. I mean, the rise of a new American dictatorship and murder hornets? Isn’t that kind of overkill? But here’s something else I hadn’t predicted: That in just a year, I’d go from creating this magazine by myself in my campus computer lab to having an entire staff of amazing, creative, passionate people making it with me. When I put out a call for staff members, I wasn’t sure if anyone would apply. I ended up getting applications from people of all ages, from all over the world. Optopia has become something bigger than me, and I couldn’t be more excited to see where we go from here. There have been a lot of setbacks to this second issue (see: previously mentioned pandemic, wildfires, etc.) but I have so much hope for the future. And that’s what solarpunk is all about, isn’t it? The era we’re living in may seem (almost comically) dystopian, but I haven’t given up hope. I won’t give up hope on our world until the very last human settlement in the post-nuclear wasteland is finally overtaken by mutated murder hornets. So for the rest of you who aren’t ready to give up either, please enjoy this collection of stories, thoughts, and ideas about the future. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re determined to get there.

- Rosie Albrecht

op•to•pi•a (noun): A place in between a utopia and a dystopia. Not a perfect world, but an achievable one—the best possible world we can create given the circumstances.

OPTOPIA STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Rosie Albrecht DEPUTY EDITORS: Jeremy Baker, Meira Datiya, Rifka Handelman, X379496 STAFF EDITORS: Jeremy Baker, Jewel Jackson, Clint Pereira, Krystal Washington, Stowell Waters, X379496 STAFF ARTISTS/WRITERS: Jack Adebisi, Meira Datiya, Jewel Jackson, David Ntephe, Al Wilson LAYOUT DIRECTOR: Rifka Handelman WEB DESIGNER: John Moriarty 3

NOOR AMIN / APOCALYPSE

TELL IT TO THE BEES / MEIRA DATIYA Poetry

Do you hear it?... Do you hear the beat of the drum? Do you smell it?... The smell of herbs wafting in the breeze? Herbs from another time... Another life. ... Do you see it?... In a trance... In a glimmer... The world that we lost... Do you want it back?... Are you ready?... You must go on a long journey... Slip through forgotten memory... Find the bees... Ask them to come back... Call them with a chant... Gather the seeds... Gather the plants... Tell them our plight... So they follow you back...

PHOTOGRAPHY

At Last

Home

Organs of the Wild 6

FABRICE B. POUSSIN Peace

To the End Always

Alone 7

THE TOWN AFTER THE END OF THE WORLD / RIFKA HANDELMAN Fiction Today The boots look to have once been black, but are now scuffed and faded and patched until they resemble a scruffy animal more than anything else. They crush the sickly grass as the woman walks across the plain. She resembles her boots in a way, a patched-together, worn look to the clothes that cover every inch of skin. Her too-heavy pack has the same look; more patches than original canvas, scarred from use and scorched from radiation fires, and the two masks clipped onto her pack are dusty. The sheath for her knife looks like it was made from an old leather jacket, the zipper flashing in the sun. The woman’s gas mask is cracked and taped together—she can feel the angry, deadly air scratching her lungs as she breathes. The only thing about the woman that looks new is the water bottle hanging at her hip, and despite the weight of the shiny metal, it is too light. She can feel the dryness in her throat and the way her blood moves sluggishly through her. The hollowed-out shell of a town the woman heads for is in almost worse shape than she is. Most of the houses are barely standing, and the ones that are have rotted roofs and smashed windows, their furniture moldy and destroyed by the animals that survived the end of the world. And yet, to the woman, it is a haven. She reaches what was once a house and moves between fragments of plaster and drywall that cling to their vertical positions. She stops. Sets down her pack. Detaches something from it—a crowbar, a lucky find in a ruined hardware store five years ago. She sticks the edge into the ground— no not into the ground, under a square of metal. With a huff, she pushes down and the trapdoor

pops open. She reshoulders her pack, but holds on to the crowbar as she descends the steps, closing the trapdoor behind her. She can almost feel her pupils dilate, her eyelids sweeping open behind the goggles on her gas mask, searching for any source of light, but she might as well have closed her eyes. Automatically, she reaches back and pulls the lantern off her pack. Her fingers easily find the button and the circle of darkness around the woman is banished by dull red light. Red light saves power—her lantern has been soaking up sun for days, but better safe than sorry. She holds the lantern to the wall, making a circuit of the room. She stumbles over something, sending the pieces of it clattering across the floor, but finds the switch panel on the wall. Click, click, the whir of an air filter, lights in the ceiling glimmering to life. She switches off her lantern. She gives the air purification system a moment, then takes off her mask, breathing the fresh air gratefully. The thing she tripped over is a child’s skeleton. Until now it had leaned against the wall, in ragged shorts and an only-somewhat ragged shirt. Synthetic fabric. In front of it are two more, larger skeletons, also in a mixture of rags and better-preserved clothes. Next to them, an empty cylindrical pill container. At least this family’s end was quick. They did not have to watch each other starve to death. Twenty years before today The woman was once a fifteen-year old girl, at school when the news broke. She didn’t know until she reached home. There was only the sound of the principal’s fearful voice, instructing the students that they were to be released early. They knew something was wrong, but the girl and her best friend walked home, chattering

and joking as if this was normal. The girl waved as her best friend went inside, then turned down the street to her own house. She never saw Hailey again. One hour to pack. Twelve in the car as the highways clogged. Six in the car on the side of the road, hidden in the brush, all lights off. Wet grass is dangerous in the car’s engine, her dad told her. Unspoken: more dangerous to be seen, to be attacked by a panicked mob. Three more hours of driving, and the girl’s phone is out of battery. She warns her group chat just before the screen goes dark—lies and says she will see them again. Three more hours of being alone with her thoughts. There are roads to the cabin, but the car sputters out so they walk. Two hours of walking. The girl’s feet hurt, and she is glad to see the cabin. She goes to her room and lies down on her mattress, not even bothering to put on sheets. Six months in the vacation cabin. In the pantry, her father counts cans of food. Her mother fills containers, sinks, the bathtub with water. The cabin is equipped with its own filter system, but also to the grid. Better get as much as they can before everything shuts off. They are glad they equipped solar panels, back when it was trendy instead of lifesaving. The girl has power in her phone, but her crush, her friends, her aunt in Colorado, none are responding. She cries at night for her cousins and grandparents, in New York and Washington. She muffles her sobs into her pillow, and so do her parents. Her parents tell her not to watch the footage of the bombs falling, but she does, the cameras not destroyed transmitting until they are eaten away by the radiation. The government sets up shelters, with gas masks and food. Her father comes back with three masks, returning bruised. They took the food, he says. Good thing you got the masks, her mother says. The news says this radiation is different; it will last centuries. The news tells them that people are having air purifiers and solar panels built into their basements and yards, but the cabin does not have a basement and they are too far away. Far from companies with solar panels and air purifying systems, but also from bombs. Bombs do fall in

other places. There are so many. The girl’s own country has no more bombs left to send but their enemies do. If we go down, you’re going down with us. The cell towers stop working and the girl gets tired of the music in her phone. She helps her parents plant beans, but they will not be enough. When they have one week of food left, her parents tell her to cover every bit of bare skin with clothing. Her pack is heavy but she knows her parents’ loads are heavier so she does not complain. They set out across the world. Several miles from the cabin, the air begins to have a haze. It would have reached us in a week, her mother says, muffled behind her gas mask. Two years after today The woman walks through the top floor of what was once a shopping mall. The walls are cements and these windows have survived, but it is better to be careful, so she keeps her mask on. Through the window, movement. She found the antique spyglass when she first got here, and has always thought it looks strange in her heavy glove. She trains it on the movement. Two children, hurrying across the grassy sea, the taller one clutching the littler one’s hand. Two men, behind them. They run slower—they trade a mask back and forth back every couple of steps. The smaller child turns its head to the adults, slowing, and the older one moves back and scoops it up to run, moving further from the two adults. The woman is transfixed, her eye glued to the spyglass. Then—one of the adults stumbles, falls. The woman sees the older child turn, for only a moment, then keep running toward the town, pulling the younger child along. The other adult is bending over the second one, shaking them and the spyglass falls to the ground and the woman is moving down the stairs, and out the door and running across the yellow grass, past the children, to the people—men, she can see now—crouched on the ground. The woman hauls the fallen man up, slinging his arm over her shoulders. Today The woman takes the arm and leg bones 9

of the two adults. Within her pack, there is a plastic bag, with other bones in it. Beside it, a bag of polished, clean bone tools—needles, fish hooks, flat scrapers. She does not touch the bones of the child. The basement is out of food, but they have gas masks and mask filters. She discards her old cracked mask, putting the filter into the new mask, and takes the family’s filters. They last five years, the good ones longer, and the woman has enough by now for several lifetimes, but she takes them anyway. She passes over board games in mouldering boxes, deflated rubber balls, dusty books, a box of chalk. The dead family’s cell phones are stacked neatly in a corner— she has no use for these. A bin with a CD player and CDs labeled “Music” she ignores. A stack of solar lanterns is a lucky find, and she places these carefully in her bag. The beds, one large, one small, are moldy, though she finds a blanket that she rolls up and stows away, discarding a more ragged one in exchange. She finds a metal filter-water-bottle bigger than her current one and switches it out for the one at her hip, drinking the last few drops. She stuffs the old one full of socks before putting it in her backpack—her pack can only hold so much. Last of all, she finds a sink and an incinerator toilet behind a screen in the corner next to chairs and a table. It’s strange to sit on a toilet like this—she rarely finds one that works. She stands and flushes. Automatically, she turns on the sink. The water is dark brown first, but in a moment it runs clear. The sound is deafening in the heavy stillness of the basement. She washes her hands, then fills her bottle, letting the water run into and over the filter. This is different from the hundreds of towns the woman has visited. Seventeen years before today They have not seen other survivors in months. The last group was friendly—they traded new pairs of socks and a knitting lesson for beef jerky and energy bars, then went on their way. They were a group of eight—two families and a couple. Safety in numbers, but numbers mean more mouths to feed. So the girl waves excitedly when they spot 10

another group cresting a rise as they head out of town. Her father places a warning hand out and crouches low, but it is too late—a shout rises up from the other group. Like swarming insects, they move toward the girl and her parents at a run. The girl is the first to see their guns. Run, she says, and does, but her parents are slower, and a crack rings out and her father screams and the girl nearly crumples at the sound. She turns and her father is standing stock-still, scarlet welling out from between where his fingers are clutched over his stomach. Dad, the girl says and steps toward him. Go, he says, and the girl’s mother takes her knife and cuts his pack from his shoulders, takes his mask from his face. The girl takes them up before her mother can. Run, her father says, and they run, back into the town. They are coming here, the girl says. She is awkwardly holding her father’s backpack to her chest and his mask is slung around her neck. Her mother is crying, the sounds leaking out from behind her mask. The girl is not. We need to leave, the girl says. She and her mother run. When they cannot run anymore, they walk. They can’t run forever either, the girl says. Her mother stops crying when they reach the outskirts of town and walk into the woods. North, the girl’s mother says. She helps her daughter sort the contents of her father’s pack, dividing them up. They leave what they cannot carry. The girl clips her father’s mask onto her backpack and wipes tears off her face. Two years after today The woman and the man carry the fallen man to what is left of the closest house. The woman ducks out from under his weight to lift the trapdoor, and the man on the fallen one’s other side grunts. The children hurry up to them, and they follow the woman and their parents into the basement. This one is the first one the woman found when she first came here, and she switches on the air purification system. The family remove their masks when she does. The children are both girls, the older one around eleven, the younger one perhaps five. The first man sets the second down on the floor and takes off his mask. “Thank you,” he says. The woman jumps.

She does not know when she has last heard a human voice. “My name is Jordan.” He takes off a glove and holds out a hand to her. She stares at it, and after a moment, he lets it fall. “This is Alicia”—he indicates the older one—“and Kimmy.” The woman is still silent. “This is my husband, Henry. He just breathed some bad air.” “Our filters are fucked,” says the older girl—Alicia. “You know not to use that word,” says a raspy voice. Henry is awake, breathing in the better air. He coughs. His family gathers around him. The woman opens her mouth. Takes a deep breath. Closes her mouth and opens it again. Tries to speak. Hums almost inaudibly, to herself, to check that her vocal cords are intact. She opens her mouth to introduce herself but produces no sound. She goes over to the shelf in the corner, the one left over from when the dead family lived here. She takes a piece of chalk and writes her name on the wall, the letters alien yet familiar. Her pack is sitting in the corner, and she finds three gas mask filters. She moves over to the family and holds them out. “Your name is Adrienne?” asks the older girl. The woman nods. Jordan takes the filters and attaches one to each mask. “Thank you,” he says again. The woman writes on the wall. I have extra masks. I am going to get one. She puts her own mask back on and slips out the trapdoor. Inside the basement, the small child, Kimmy looks up at Jordan. “Why can’t she talk?” “Yeah,” Alicia says. “That’s weird.” “Sometimes people who have been alone for a long time and don’t talk to anyone don’t talk.” “Why Papa?” says Kimmy. Jordan starts to give an answer then closes his mouth for a moment. “I don’t know, sweet pea. But she saved us, so she’s probably nice.” “Why doesn’t she have anyone to talk to?” Alicia butts in. “Doesn’t she have parents?” Fifteen years before today The girl cradles her mother’s head in her lap. The fever radiates off her skin and she whimpers whenever the girl shifts. The girl’s mother

occasionally spasms, and her tortured breaths are loud in the quiet of the apartment building. The girl pours water onto a torn piece of her shirt and lays it on her mother’s forehead. No, her mother groans through clenched teeth. The girl knows her mother is telling her to conserve water but her mother sighs at the cool touch. The girl turns her head so that her hot tears do not hit her mother’s burning skin. It was a good day. They had just found a camping supply store—mostly looted, of course— but they had new backpacks, ones for hiking, and a tent that rolled up tiny, and compact sleeping bags. There was no food, but the girl’s mother had gone into a house nearby and come out balancing cans. They had eaten the sweet can of pears then and there, and sucked up the juice when they were done. Then as they were walking toward the apartment building the girl had seen—brickwalled and with intact windows—her mother had tripped and cried out, fallen against a rotted wall. The girl had turned and helped her mother up, and when they were inside the building had examined her mother’s arm. The nail had ripped through her mother’s layers of clothing and cut the skin in a jagged gash. Bandages, the girl had said, and rummaged through her pack. As her daughter pulled back the layers of sleeves and wrappings and packed gauze onto her mother’s wound, the girl’s mother caught her breath and then sighed. I’m not up to date on my tetanus shot, she had said. The words sounded like something out of a long-gone world. The symptoms set in three days later and steadily worsened. The girl re-wets the cloth on her mother’s forehead. The spasms stop—this is good, the girl thinks. Her mother still struggles for breath. At some point during the night the girl’s head droops. When she wakes, her mother’s breath no longer rasps through her chest. She is determined not to leave her mother for the maggots. She goes back to the camping supply store and finds a shovel. Her hands blister even under her gloves, but she digs her mother a cold, shallow grave. The woman clips her mother’s mask onto her pack, takes what she can carry from her mother’s things, and sets off. 11

Today The woman is above the first basement, and she sees what she missed. There is a rain barrel, and a filter. She can see where the copper pipes go into the ground. Other towns have had rain barrels but no filters. This is the first thing that convinces her to stay. The second thing that convinces her to stay is the grow-room in the fifth basement she visits. The ones in between are nothing special—a few have skeletons and some even have food, but upon finding the air purification system and lights in the fifth basement the woman stops. This basement is larger than the others, and rows upon rows of shelves and bright lights stretch away from her. She inhales the smell and is violently taken back to the halls of her high school, a lifetime away. The plants are dead, but the smell of weed remains. She finds more weed seeds in a box, but underneath them are others. Potato seeds, corn, vegetables of all kinds. She finds the switch to the sprinkler system, which still works. There is a small refrigerator in the corner. The woman puts her face in her hands and sobs. Two years after today The woman brings back not only an extra mask, but food and bottled water, and extra dishes for the family. There are only three chairs, so they sit on the floor to eat. Henry accepts the extra mask with wide eyes and both he and Jordan thank her profusely. “What are those masks?” Kimmy points at the woman’s pack. The woman does not answer. “They’re probably special,” Alicia tells Kimmy after a moment of silence. The woman sets out the food—cold baked potatoes, canned beans, pickles. The children reach for it eagerly, but they stop at Jordan’s outstretched hand. “I don’t mean to be rude,” he says slowly. They’re safe to eat, the woman writes. I tested the soil where I grew them. She brushes the words away then writes again. I can show you. They need no more prompting. The children have to be reminded to use forks and knives—the woman forgot to bring napkins, but 12

Henry takes some clean cloths out of his pack. “How long have you been here?” Jordan asks in between bites. The two men are clearly trying to be polite, but the woman can see that they have been hungry for awhile. “I’d assume not long.” He nods at her pack and the woman realizes that it’s still full of most of her stuff. Two years, the woman writes. There is water and food here. She glances at the pack. I just like to be prepared. She brushes her words away and gestures to them, to Kimmy and Alicia both happily stuffing food into their mouths, and raises an eyebrow. “We were both studying at the University of Illinois. I had almost completed my teaching degree and Henry was in the botany master’s program. We had been on a road trip when the bombs hit Chicago. We got the news and just kept driving until the car ran out of gas. Both of our families were in Chicago.” Jordan closes his eyes for a moment. “We just drifted around, scrounging, I guess. We found Alicia when she was five. We found this decrepit farm—it was falling to pieces, and she was half-starved from living on crackers and peanut butter. Her parents—they must have just abandoned her there. We couldn’t leave her.” His voice catches. “She doesn’t talk about the years before then. She didn’t speak till we found Kimmy a year later. Her mom—Kimmy’s—was in labor when we found her. Kimmy was okay but her mom had complications. She asked us to take Kimmy with us. We found her I.D. in her pocket and named Kimmy after her mom. We’re lucky my teaching program had a mandatory infant care course.” He snorts. “I thought it was the dumbest thing while I was doing it.” He shrugs. “Then we just drifted around some more, and, well, here we are.” A pause. “What’s your story?” The woman takes a deep breath and adjusts her grip on the chalk. I was fifteen. My parents and I scavenged too. Other survivors shot my dad, and my mom got tetanus from a rusty nail. I just walked around finding what I could. I found this place. All the people here had nice basements. I think they were rich. The grow room, I can show you, it was for weed. The grin feels alien on her face but she tries it out anyway.

I found the library and survived on canned food until I read books on gardening. I grow enough to eat. You’re a botanist, right? You can critique my work. She brushes her words away after each sentence. Henry laughs as he reads the sentence. “I’d be happy to.” Your mask? Henry runs his hand over his face. “The dumbest thing, I swear. It was yesterday, and I tripped and fell on my face and it cracked. Pretty fuckin’ dumb, right?” “Dad!” says Alicia. “You said that’s a no-no word!” Kimmy leaps up and hops from foot to foot. “No-no word! Daddy said a no-no word!” Alicia starts chasing her around the room, shrieking “No-no word!” Jordan looks apologetic. “Sorry about them. You’d think that after that run they’d be tired.” Kimmy runs full tilt into Jordan, nearly knocking him over. She grabs his neck and buries her face in his shoulder. “I’mma sleep,” she says. “You’re welcome to stay.” The words fly out of the woman’s throat. Her voice is raspy from disuse and she puts a hand to her throat. Henry and Jordan both stare at her. “I—I mean it. You can help grow more food in the grow-room and there are plenty of basements to live in.” She’s babbling now. “Your kids need stability. We’ll still need to scavenge and stuff—but there’s probably towns around here and there’s tons of kid’s toys and whatnot. I—not that I can stop you. I’m just— inviting you.” She coughs. “Yeah.” Five years after today The engineer and the doctor are the next people to arrive. They come bouncing across the plain in an old pickup truck with worn-out suspension. Alicia, old enough to be on watch, calls through the intercom Jordan made. Something about it is reassuring to Adrienne—perhaps that, though Jordan had little knowledge of any kind of engineering, he read enough books from the town library to construct it out of scrap. Perhaps it’s a sign—that they can continue to survive. When Adrienne slowly approaches the pickup truck, hands held in front of her, there is a

moment of dizzying fear—that these people are not the friendly kind, that they will shoot her down the way they shot her father—and she remembers the gun that they found in one of the basements, and the way her hands would not unclench when she tried to pick it up. The old couple who step out of the truck do point a gun at her, but she stands firm with her empty hands out. The knife she carries is heavy at her hip but she knows she cannot draw it before they pull the trigger. The three are frozen for a moment—the old couple with the gun and the woman with her hands in front of her—and the weapon is lowered and Adrienne takes a step toward them. She invites them into her house. It is still the basement she found, but it has been cleaned out, and a wall divides her living space. There is a tiny kitchen-like area and the table and chairs from the previous owners are still there. A mint plant, potted in soil from the grow-room sits on a shelf under a light. Her pack, her parents’ gas masks are behind the wall, out of sight, but she can feel the still-full pack weighing on the back of her mind. The old couple are named Katherine and Benjamin. Benjamin is a doctor—“worked in the ER,” he tells Adrienne as she sets down cups of mint tea—and Katherine is an engineer, with dual PhDs in electrical and mechanical engineering. “Not that that means anything.” She laughs a little. “But I can fix the truck, and I made a decent water filtration system.” “And she made us an oil press,” says Benjamin. “That’s how the truck runs, on cooking oil.” They tell her a bit about how they survived, and Adrienne can sense moments where they hold back the darker parts, glancing at each other in a moment of shared remembrance. Adrienne tells them about how she found this place. Katherine cocks her head when Adrienne tells her about the intercom and the water filter, and Adrienne is happy to show her. They stay. Six years after today The next group is on foot. A haggard young woman, who likely does not remember a time before the bombs, with three young children who all call her “Miss Ava” and a silent boy with 13

headphones firmly over his ears. Later that year, four teenagers with guns. One of them, startled, lets off a shot that hits Adrienne in the shoulder, but she stands there with blood running down her arm until they come and talk to her. The boy who shot her is called Briar and he will not stop apologizing until Benjamin lets him assist in pulling out the bullet. Seven years after today A lone man with tired eyes who has packs of seeds stuffed into the bottom of his pack. They are all out of space in the grow-room and they work on sealing up the mall properly and purifying soil. Katherine works day and night, and Adrienne helps in any way she can. She often has to remind the old woman to sleep and eat, but soon the bottom floor of the mall is covered in a layer of clean soil. Eight years after today A family, a mother and father with two boys. A lone girl with angry eyes. Another doctor, who takes over the infirmary when Benjamin dies of a stroke. They still do not have a name for the town. Alicia is seventeen and has taken a great interest in chemistry. She takes a shine to a scarred boy who stumbles into their town one day. Ten years after today Katherine falls in love with another engineer, a woman with a Southern accent whose mask is on its last legs and who is coughing by the time Adrienne meets her on the outskirts of town. Together, they make plans for a dome over the town, a place where the children can run around and breathe clean air. Katherine has leukemia and dies in her sleep, the plans halfformed, but Louise, her wife, continues. Adrienne unpacks her old backpack. The food and supplies go into the community warehouse. Her parents’ gas masks she hangs quietly in the donation area, for anyone who might need them.

Fifteen years after today Adrienne gets to hammer the first nail into the first plank that will be the dome. There are enough people now that the plans are finished and they can begin to build the dome. They have given the town a name. First it was just their home, but then it took root, and the town is called Home. As she hands the hammer off to Alicia, who is elegantly managing the entire thing, Adrienne collapses, clutching her stomach. She has been lucky so far, but twenty years of walking through clouds of pollution and radiation will come back to take their toll. Twenty years after today Adrienne sits quietly in a rocking chair, breathing in clean air and looking up at the sky. The dome is finished, and the skylights send sunlight into mirrors hung specifically around the enormous space, transforming it into something light and airy. It is tall enough to grow trees in, but Adrienne will not live to see the oaks grow big and strong. The outside is plastered with solar panels. A group of children runs across the field, shrieking. All the children in the town of Home call her “Grandma Adri.” Two, Daisy and Sam, sit at her feet, begging for a story. Briar is at her elbow, offering her another dose of meds. The cancer has progressed now, and all they can do is manage the pain. She takes the pill with quiet thanks. Tomorrow, Kimmy will go before the elected Council and will ask their permission to set out and start a new town with her friends. They will debate—Henry is on the council and does not want to see his youngest daughter in danger— but will tell her yes. Tonight, Adrienne will die in her sleep. Now, she takes a deep breath. She will brighten the story for them—there is simply too much trauma and pain to tell it in full—but these children were born in the town of Home and love the adventurous stories of her life. “Before there was a town called Home, before there was radiation, before there were bombs, there was a world full of people.”

THE PLURALITY OF ANTHROPOCENES / CHAD WAPLES Artist’s Statement: The Plurality of Anthropocenes appropriates the optimism behind Bernard De Fontenelle’s frontispiece in his 1686 book, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, which offered a heliocentric model of the cosmos while theorizing a galaxy teeming with life. Yet even today, the great silence of the stars haunts us. We can detect the collision of two black holes that happened over a billion years ago, but we haven’t intercepted any intelligent signals of communication – forcing us to ask ourselves, are we alone - in the sense of developing a technologically advanced civilization? Astronomers today have mapped out over 4,000 exoplanets with the help of satellite instruments, and as astrophysicist Adam Frank asserts in his book, The Light of the Stars, “one out of every five stars hosts a world where life as we know it could form.” The answer to why we may not have heard from anyone may be because life itself breaches the safety net of its environmental

limitations through the dissemination of energy waste. For example, our Earth, at 4.54 billion years-old, took less than 800 million years to host the earliest forms of life. These early microorganisms evolved with molecular light receptors absorbing energy from the sun and converting that energy into sugar molecules. Around 2.5 billion years ago, these bacteria began using water as well as sunlight and CO2 to drive its chemistry, disseminating molecules of oxygen as a waste product in their activity. Over time, these cyanobacteria dumped so much oxygen in the atmosphere that just over a few hundred million years (the Great Oxidation Event) – the atmospheric oxygen increased by a factor of a million. This fundamentally changed the atmosphere and as result killed off the bulk of life at the time while opening the door for more complex organisms to evolve.

UNTITLED / JEWEL JACKSON

HEART OF THE ARCTIC / ROSIE ALBRECHT Artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Statement: Sedna, the goddess of the sea and mother of all marine animals in some Inuit mythology, is a vengeful and fearsome figure. She has many origin stories, but all of them involve her being thrown into the unforgiving sea and having her fingers severed, which then transform into seals and walruses as she sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Now, as the arctic waters that she calls home warm, her anger turns to sorrow, and she pulls her mourning children down with her into the depths.

DANDELION RECIPES / MEIRA DATIYA Recipe

Dandelion Tea 2 cups of Dandelion blossoms Water Sugar (to taste) Harvest Dandelion tops until you have at least 2 cups worth. Gently rinse and remove the stems and any green. You want to have just the yellow blossoms. Place them into a deep bowl and pour boiling water over top. Strain into a pitcher or tea pot. You can do this up to three times before the blossoms lose their strength. Discard the blossoms and add sugar to taste. Dandelion Syrup 2 cups Concentrated Dandelion Tea. 2 cups Sugar Pectin (optional) Prepare a concentrated dandelion tea. Don’t dilute it too much to preserve the flavour, about 2 cups. Add 2 cups of sugar and wait for it to thicken. *If it doesn’t thicken, you can add a few tablespoons of instant pectin. Follow the directions on the container for preparation. Once everything is mixed, pour into a jar and refrigerate.

Dandelion Jam: 2-4 cups of Dandelion Tea 4-5 cups of Sugar Pectin 2 tbsp Lemon Juice Prepare your dandelion tea and pour in a pot. Bring it to a boil and pour in the sugar and lemon juice. Follow the directions on the box of pectin for how much you may need to use. The lemon brings up the acidity so the jelly will set. Sautéed Wild Greens:

2-4 cups of Dandelion Blossoms 2 cups of Purple Dead Nettle Leaves 3 tbs Olive Oil Assorted Spices

Rinse your harvest well and remove the stems. Generally, the finished product will taste like sautéed kale due to the texture. However, you can alter the taste if that’s not for you by blending or grinding your herbs with a mortar and pestle. Add your herbs and oil to a pan and saute until dark green. Add your spices and salt. Once finished you can add it to your favorite Italian dish, pasta sauce, or even pizza sauce.

UNTITLED / JEWEL JACKSON

ANDROMEDA 20

NOOR AMIN 21

DREAMING TO THE TIDES OF TIME / JONATHAN BECKHAM Fiction

The sun breaks over the hillside. Light slowly fills the rocky valley with its soft kiss of life. The prior night was cold; the bitter winds sharp and howling. A steaming cup of coffee has me shuffling from the warm cocoon of my bed to shake off the chill, making sure to brew exactly one cup in my French press. Conserving water is necessary—supplies coming in and out of the valley take a week to secure and I have run out before. I look to check the time on my phone: 8:33. I place it back on its charging pad and notice: it hasn’t been charging. I flick the breaker off to the battery cells connected to the solar array on my way out the door to let the batteries recharge until noon. Today is a watering day. My schedule shifts depending on local weather patterns and the growth cycle of the crystal flowers. The flowers are sensitive to the arid desert climate in which they grow and need extra attention based on how they are adapting to the barren land. I examine the vast fields. The flowers roar with color and magic; each plant is carefully manicured to cultivate the desirable holotropic effects from the crystals of this strange herb. A few plants have been pushed over by the strong winds from the night before. I firmly place bamboo support sticks into the ground and delicately tie twine to the stalks. They will grow to new heights. I clip a few browned leaves that have naturally wilted through the plant’s vegetative cycle. The work feels honest and kind. After the plants are tended, I move towards the dosatron to balance the nutrients and chemical pH of the automatic watering system. 3 gallons of acid goes into a 50 gallon barrel of water to set the pH to a neutral 6.0, a prime condition for the flowers to thrive. I press one button and the generator ignites into the 21st century, powering the automatic pump connected to the pond, serving life giving water. The soil drinks with a voracious 22

thirst. Sourcing green springing growth and burly root bundled in the cool ground. Other than cooking modest meals, the rest of my time is engaged in the luxurious repose of dreaming. A mix of mindful meditation and the dazzling effects of the crystal flower. I walk to the high hill. It peaks to a beautiful view of the valley below. A dusty, bowlshaped pocket, with generously curvy hills rolling far in all directions. In the distance majestic blue mountains stand noble and rugged. The land is scarred and hot—fires raged a year before, scourging the pines and brush to ash. Only charred skeletal timbers remain, yet life persists sprouts of pale sage with ecstatic yellow flowers dot the hillsides and new shoots of emerald shrubs spiraling upwards to the sun, working diligently to repropagate the soil. Birds are chirping and small lizards scurry with fervor. Once atop the hill, I fill an abundant bowl of crystal flower into my wooden pipe and clear my soul. Flick, fire, smoke. Deep visions awake. I am no longer on earth. Thoughts of peace and joy dance nakedly. The future flourishes in lucid progression. A world of wonder and gifts unites. Eons of light transforming the miraculous excited mud ball of earth. Human consciousness entering a state of hypercultural exaltation. Life is enriching. Psychic presence of astonishing novelty is normal. Optimization is born into every component of society, with self-harmonizing and community as the keys. Nature is unbounded. Love is winning. Consciousness; liberated beyond imagination. Every being on earth has the clarity of fruitful lifetimes and opportunity to seek out their own infinite soul with health and wellness beholden all. Every moment is a rapture of originality. Then suddenly, in the wisp of an instant, I fold back down to earth. Lush embodiment surrounds me, the return from the far reaches of inner space is pleasant with a deep tingling of my mind’s eye.

I check my phone. Eleven minutes have passed. I open up an app for current news and am met with a mesh of ritual headlines. Disaster! Record profits. Debt bubbles. Glaciers melting. SEX. Poverty lingering. Billionaire bailouts. Police brutality. Systematic racism. Prison slavery. Garbage islands, SEX. Financial crashes. Political Corruption. Ecological collapse. XXX. Homeless increase. Millions protest. Forest burning. Shadow War. 1000 and 1 cute kittens. I pause. A moment feathers by. I gaze on the current state of the world. An undying darkness seems to poison every pocket of existence. Immense grief swelters within my heart. Is what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve seen in my dreams possible? Can my visions come true beyond thunderous cataclysms? I breath deeply and look out into the roaming vistas. It is another beautiful day in paradise. Grace and beauty herald throughout the land. I release my breath. Eden permeates within and without. Then, gently, sweetly, I hum a melody. I open myself to the sky to ponder: this is a gift, this respiring moment is more than enough. I relax into my experience and dream for my dream and every dream to come true, in stillness working to leave nothing undone until my time has passed. I smile and take another smoke of the crystal flower. I dream forth. Time passes. I wander back down to the valley. To my home. A slithery friend crosses my path, and warns me of their presence. Shika shika shika shika. A beautifully scaled rattle snake coils. I feel a reverence towards them, with a notable gratitude for my time here on this land. I peacefully stride a distance between us. As I return to my cabin, I hear my favorite

sound, that of the duck. I quack back and laugh. The lone duck who resides in the pond and feeds on locust in the fields waddles towards me. I feel happiness. Perhaps, it is due to my lack of company, but I feel I have a friend welcoming me to enjoy the levity of the day. For what remains of the daylight, I paint and write stories to unravel the mysteries of my crystal flower dream. The sun sets over the western ridge and I lay down on my cot and make myself comfortable. A smattering of painful memories arise. I remember losing my faith in my own foundations as a teenager and the years of grief that followed. I remember treating people unkindly and selfishly, losing trust, both other peoples and my own. I remember the first time I sat with a shaman and drank the secrets of plant medicines. I remember years of coming into myself and building character that serves livelihood and well-being. I remember the path that led me to take a leap of faith and move across the country to a shaky job. I remember the feeling of making my own way. Compromising less and less as I moved forward. Pain dissolves. Lightness radiates. Sleep drifts me to softer realms. The sun breaks over the hill side. The dream cascades into an earthen home and a warm hearth. Time passes in harmony. New faces emerge from the path. A village rises, home by home, nestled in the valleys. Starry-eyed dreamers crest high with shimmering rainbow souls, dreaming a dream forever onwardsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;across unknown oblivion and hardy challenge to a world lit by blooming brilliant minds and a keen resilience beget between heartfelt belief and a well-tended dream.

KAIROS / BRECHT LANFOSSI 24

UNTITLED / JACK ADEBISI

THIS IS A FORMAL APOLOGY / J. L. Poetry

PROLOGUE: MOTHER-EARTH, FOUND shrivelled up & stashed away in a battered shoebox, petrol moat around her cardboard castle. THIS IS A FORMAL APOLOGY TO THE GROUND WE STAND ON: for the shrapnel that has shredded her skin & the gas chamber weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve made out of her ribs. for celebrating as if it is our birthright. INTERLUDE: SALTWATER SWIMMING SESSIONS shoulder-deep, waist-deep, knee-deep, ankle-deep (our growth spurts have stopped but the water keeps going down down down.) THIS IS A RITUALISTIC PUBLIC DISPLAY OF PENANCE: someone throws cash down from up there somewhere & we use it to stem the blood flow. (someone yells. someone cries. someone prays.) EPILOGUE: MOTHER-EARTH, HERE STILL still, still (we shake the grime off the old canvas & try again.) we put her on life support & scour the algorithmic junkyard for answers, pray to a luminous metal god. (for all that we have learnt & lost, we know how to stagger on.)

the tree watches as polluted skies envelope the night & smoke clouds her lungs. the cacophony of machines whirs and gears turn, digging into her skull. electricity gushes through earth’s veins, metal a blemish on mother nature’s face. her heart pains for the laughter that would escape children as they named the constellations under her outstretched leaves, as pegasus galloped through distant galaxies and cassiopeia sat on her throne of stars with the shadow of andromeda trailing meteors behind. she recalls a time when the clouds spoon-fed her child rain instead of choking her with the earth’s toxins, when she could distinguish between dark and light, good and evil, yin and yang. when she could see where the sky met the ground and where the ground met the sky, and the man on the moon who would stroke his little dog, his face aglow. her soul is deep in the crevices of the moon, while her branches bask in the moonlight, reaching for the stars as they whisper goodbye. but skyscrapers bruise the skies and oil taints the oceans. she takes a contaminated breath in a city of artificial stars.

CITY OF ARTIFICIAL STARS / Poetry

JENNY HAM 27

SPACE / JOHN INGOLD Fiction

We moved in on a Sunday. The haze had lifted just enough so that, from the car, I could barely make out the shape of the house. It looked like a mirage, a glass box falling from the sky and landing amongst all this dying foliage. The house’s sharp lines and floor-to-ceiling windows looked dated, not like something you would purchase nowadays. An investment in the past, as Grant would say, almost too seriously. Like buying a record player, or a camera, or a book. “You’re not worried about the trees over the house, are you?” I asked. “Some look like they could fall at any minute.” I’d never owned a house before. The thought terrified me, all this space to be managed. I already missed our apartment in the city, and the gentle comfort of having all our possessions in one room. Grant looked over at me. “Don’t worry, okay? We’ll figure it out.” This had become a ritual of ours, a perverse magic trick. From my hat I conjured worry and fear, and as quickly as it came it vanished, disappeared by some sleight of hand on the part of Grant. But these things were not gone, only hidden. As Grant directed the car into the garage, I couldn’t help but feel angry with him. It was a misdirected anger that burned nonetheless, growing hotter with each passing second. I sat in silence as the garage door closed behind us, waiting for the automated response that signaled it was safe to get out of the car. Even when the sound did come— a robotic bird whistle that echoed through the empty garage— I did not get up from my seat. In this car, I was still from the city, and this house was not my house. Leaving the car and entering through the front door would confirm that what was around me was mine, and what was behind me was no longer mine. Like I had become two separate people, and opening that door would force some awful recombination. Granted scanned a paper-thin keycard against the handle of the door connecting the garage to 28

the house. He turned to look at me. “You coming?” ————— It unfolded like a dream. There was before, sitting on a blanket, enjoying the sun as it fell like patchwork on our skin. And then there was the sensation of falling asleep, of blinking into existence a dark grey cloud that blossomed on the horizon. Grant said something, but his words have since been smothered by that single image of birds in flight, their wings only capable of taking them so far. Some people screamed, I thought. A toddler began to cry, alone. And all the while there was Grant, tugging at the sleeve of my coat, urging me to run. “What is that?” I asked, but Grant could only shake his head. We tried to run but with each glance backwards we confirmed what we already knew. The cloud was growing. Eventually it would cover the sun and then what? The nearest building was the art museum. We could barely make out the glass wall that extended above the trees. It was too far away, but we ran anyway. Other people were running too, each one of them propelled forward by the column of haze that grew closer with each second. A woman had tripped on a loose piece of gravel, her skirt flung upwards to reveal the hot pink underwear she was wearing. This was the last thing I remembered before the cloud caught up with us, pulling a curtain over my eyes until there was nothing but grey and the sound of Grant whispering my name into the air. Later, there was this: I will sweep away man and beast, I swill sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth. It appeared on televisions and newspapers and the sides of buildings, everyone whispering those two sentences to themselves as if there was a hidden truth to be found between those words.

Eventually the logic of everything— of what had happened and who had caused it— unraveled until there was only the live-feed of three scared individuals, their heads bowed as they waited for the bullets to end their waiting. And we were waiting too, perched on the edge of our sofa as a man dressed in an ill-fitting black suit read aloud their crimes in a monotone voice. More than a million people dead or dying, countless others to be affected in a manner only revealed through time. Irreparable damage to the environment, a toxic grey haze the spread from the city until it clung to ever corner of the northeastern part of the country. “We did what we could,” said the woman in the middle. She was young. My age, maybe, and angry. The bullet entered the back of her skull and exited through her left eye. Her lips were still parted when it happened, and a part of me could hear the ghostly echo of those words: we did what we could, we did what we could, we did what we could… ————— The house was simple but efficient. I liked the rotary phone that hung on the kitchen wall. “It’s not real, of course,” the real estate agent had said. “But the architect had a penchant for those things.” Those things. Old things. There were other objects misplaced in time as well: a wood furnace in the living room, a typewriter in the study, even an analogue television set in the basement. None of these things worked, of course. “They’re just for show,” the agent added. It reminded me of an old theme-park ride I’d been to as a kid, a rotating stage show that featured dioramas of four different time periods ranging from the early 1900s all the way to a distant, LED-lit future. The futuristic diorama had been my favorite. I liked the robotic dog that sat in the corner, barking occasionally before doing a back-flip. I thought of this dog when the real estate agent showed us the garden in the basement. “For purifying the air,” she said as if it was a normal thing to say. But it was a normal thing to say, after all, and one of the main reasons we were forced to move in the first place. “It’s a new addition, just added last month. And for a good price.” She patted Grant on the shoulder which made me jealous, a response that immediately made me feel ridiculous. The garden was Grant’s favorite part of the house. He talked about it incessantly in the

weeks leading up to our decision to purchase. He even made a list of all the things we could grow in the garden: tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers, peaches…The list would continue on like this until I became fed up, suggesting instead that we use the garden to grow marijuana, the new super-powered strain that was rumored to induce an almost twenty-four hour high. Grant never found this joke funny, but neither did I. Both of us were trying to be honest with each other, trying to cope with what we had. When I first stepped into the garden all I saw was a dimly-lit room with dusty shelves lining either wall. Irrigation lines crossed the ceiling in what reminded me of a city’s traffic grid. This garden seemed just as empty to me as the animatronic dog that barked on an endless loop as spectator’s glided past. But Grant saw something else. It had been reflected in his eyes. As much as I tried, I could not understand exactly what it was that he saw in that garden, in this house. I could not understand if this uncertainty, this unknowable-ness of Grant made me feel angry or in love. “It’s beautiful,” he had said, the agent nodding in agreement. “Let’s see more of the house. Yes?” Her nails were painted bright red and ended in sharp points. When she waved her hand to usher us back up the stairs, I was reminded of a shark’s mouth snapping shut. The other rooms had a similar layer of dust, the type that only appears after many months of neglect. It had been almost a year since the last owners had moved out, threatened by a wildfire that started in the neighboring foothills. “It’s so strange,” said the agent. “The fire just barely missed the house, but the couple never returned. They just…” A snap of her fingers. “Vanished. Into thin air.” That type of thing happened more often these days, people disappearing without a trace. Grant seemed unbothered by this news, going so far as to wink at me when I turned to look at him with suspicion. Later, as we began the process of moving in, I became obsessed with finding their impressions amidst the various discarded objects. In the kitchen under the sink, I found a mason jar filled with cooking oil, the cap rusted with age, In the medicine cabinet, a single pill bottle sat on the highest shelf. I tried to read the faded ink but could only make out a few letters, nothing sub29

stantial enough to reveal a name or drug type. At the bottom of the bottle was one light pink pill shaped like a disc. I had never seen a pill like that before. A few days later, I discovered an old photograph in the back of a hallway closet. It was of a man and a woman, both of them dressed for what I imagined was a Halloween party. He wore a skin-tight silver suit decorated with tubes, buttons, and control panels, an ode to the type of cartoon robot that I used to see on television as a child. The woman, in a similar reenactment of the past, had her skin painted green, two antennas sprouting from a head of curly black hair. A robot and an alien. When I looked closer, I felt something like déjà vu tugging at the corners of my memory. The alien, underneath all that make-up, looked like the girl from the television, the one who was branded an eco-terrorist and shot on video for the entire world to see. I tried to remember what the real estate agent had said about the missing couple. Artists, maybe. A photographer and a writer, but I couldn’t remember which one was which. I didn’t think they looked like artists. I wondered if they looked like terrorists. When Grant and I crawled into bed at the end of the day, I tried to imagine what the next owner might think if they found a photograph of Grant and me. Would they notice the way Grant’s chestnut hair was cut to military precision? The shape of his jaw as it clenched in a tight-lipped smile? And there would be me, standing next to him, slightly shorter and with a posture that deferred to almost everything around me. Or at least that’s what I saw when I conjured up the two of us in my head. Perhaps this other person would see something else. Was I the robot or the alien? I couldn’t get this question out of my head, even as Grant turned to kiss me quickly on the lips. “Our first week in the house,” he whispered. “Our house. Weird, right?” All I could do was nod and turn over in bed. I decided not to tell him about the photograph. He would ask too many questions that I didn’t have the answers to. “Goodnight,” I said. ————— I am in the house alone, looking for Grant. I am calling his name into each room, but there is no answer. Only silence. It is only when I look out the kitchen window that I see where Grant has gone. 30

His tall silhouette is framed by an eerie combination of moonlight and haze, his body almost ephemeral in the mixture. It is like seeing a ghost. I try to knock on the window to get Grant’s attention, but it doesn’t work. His gaze is fixed on some point just above the roofline of the house. His face is hollow, lifeless. The poisoned air curls around his body, drawing shapes against his silhouette. Grant, I try to scream. Grant, get back in the house! You’ll die out there! Grant! When two silhouettes appear behind Grant, I stop trying to scream. A man and a woman step out of the haze and stand next to Grant. The woman is in the middle. All three of them begin to hold hands, reminding me of those paper doll chains I would make as a child. When they start to kneel on the grass I try to scream one last time. Grant looks up and around, but I am lost to him. They begin chanting something that I cannot hear. I am alone, trapped in this house. ————— Grant was in the shower when I woke up. I could hear the soft patter of water, see the steam curling underneath the doorway. I turned my body slightly so that I could look outside. The floor-to-ceiling windows to the right of the bed revealed a line of trees that seemed to float in the haze. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes. I had read that once, back in college. But this fog wasn’t yellow. It didn’t have a color, really. It was like a kaleidoscope, some viscous filter that descended from god knows where. Only we did know where it came from and that made it worse. I went to the kitchen to make coffee. As I transferred the contents of the pot into my mug, I had the uncanny sensation of being watched. This too could be a diorama, the coffee never reaching my lips as I bring the mug to my mouth in a facsimile of domestic life. Like a butterfly, I’ve been pinned to the wall, relegated to this cycle of motion that neither begins nor ends. ————— The museum was closed on the day it happened. It was a national holiday. By the time Grant and I reached the top of the stairs leading up to the entrance, the doors had been completely shattered, people standing dazed in the lobby as if they had been petrified. “We need to get away from the windows.” Continued on page 32

ATACALEPSY / BRECHT LANFOSSI 31

I don’t remember who said that, if it was me or Grant. But one of us said it, and the next thing I knew we were wandering the halls of the museum, desperate to get as far away from the outside as possible. We passed rooms with paintings and gowns and fountains with no water. Other people had worked their way deeper into the museum as well. They sat on benches or whispered amongst themselves, casting furtive glances at anyone who got too close. I discovered a body in a room full of Roman sculptures. He was lying face up, his hands around his neck. A white film painted the corners of his lips. A hundred marble eyes must have witnessed this man struggling to breath, clawing at his neck in a desperate attempt to take one last breath, one last chance at life. I had never seen a dead body before. “We should keep our distance,” Grant said, placing his arm on my shoulder. “What’s going on?” I whispered back. “I don’t know,” he said, applying light pressure to the small of my back, his way of telling me to go. We spent the rest of the day sitting against a stone wall, staring at a large stained glass window that depicted a brook running through a forest in the middle of Autumn. I liked the way the colors moved with the light. It reminded me of somewhere else. The museum was evacuated at midnight. It only took two days for the government to declare our neighborhood, a few miles west of the park, unsuitable for living. Already the hospitals were overcrowded with the dead and dying. “The city is under lockdown,” the officials said. “No one is allowed to leave their place of residence. It is not safe to breath the air outside.” They said other things too, about catching the people who did this and holding them responsible for their heinous act of terrorism. Grant and I didn’t talk much during this time. We had a lot of sex because it was something to do, and because it required very little except our collective desire to forget. But as the days passed by, it became harder to forget. We were running out of food. Dead bodies were being flung from upper-story windows to rot on the street. Talking heads appeared on our television. They were doing everything they could to assess the damage, to make sure the air was safe to breath. Even in the static reflection of the TV 32

I could make out the patterns of the haze that danced just beyond our window. The dream had begun to curdle, peeling away at itself until there was the two of us sitting side-by-side as we read the evacuation notice. The money came in an envelope slid under our door We both found this funny. It had been almost a year since receiving physical mail. A relocation fee, they called it. Wait for further instructions. That was the same day they shot those kids on national television. ————— The photo. I had forgotten about the photo. And the coffee was cold. How long had I been standing in the kitchen? I took my mug and went to the living room where I sat on the floor, perched against a cardboard box that had yet to be unpacked. I re-watched the execution on my phone. I thought she had looked angry, but I was wrong. It wasn’t anything that simple, but it was familiar. I saw it in the photograph of the alien, in the way Grant read the news. I saw it in myself. “What’re you watching?” Grant had always been quiet on his feet. “What? Oh, nothing. Just the news.” I clicked my phone off. “I read this morning that the air’s 75% cleaner than it was a month ago.” “Doesn’t look like it to me.” We both looked out at the haze that clung to the ground like a second skin. Grant shrugged. “They say it’s non-toxic. Just fallout or something.” “Nobody really knows. They just say those things to make people feel better.” I waited for Grant to respond, but he knew me too well. That he had cut himself on the sharp edges of my pessimism and said nothing made me feel tired of everything including myself. No, especially myself. “Do you like this house?” I asked. “I think I will. Eventually.” He looked so old in that moment, the way he scratched his right eyebrow while frowning in concentration. There were impressions that I had never seen before. This person who had become my entire life. “But you don’t, do you?” he added. “I’m trying my best.” ————— I found the second photograph behind a chunk of peeling wallpaper. It was of the couple, the alien and the robot, but this time they were

dressed normally, just two people posing for a snapshot. She was dressed in a navy-blue jumpsuit, her hair pulled out of her eyes with a grey bandana. Her eyes were focused on a point just beyond the shoulder of the photographer. It was her: the dead girl. The terrorist. The alien. Or at least I thought it was. I couldn’t be sure. I wondered if it mattered either way. This was our home now, not hers. But there was something else. We did what we could. Was it this woman who had done what she could? Cut out mankind from the face of the Earth. That’s what they had said, her small band of nihilists. Their collective fear that had spread until it became its own type of poison. And then it happened, their final act of transfiguration: poison to poison. I experienced something like a rupture. The memories in my head— picnics, screaming children, pink underwear, a room full of statues— no longer made sense. There was so much in this woman that I recognized, but— I remembered the pill bottle. Were those her pills? When she looked in the mirror to swallow those pills did she see an entire history in that reflection? Did she see the way the man’s eyes stared blankly at the ceiling of the museum as the saliva hardened on his lips? Did she see a child alone in the park, lungs filling up with death? I took the last pill. The baby pink one shaped like a disc. It felt like the right thing to do, and I hadn’t felt that way about anything in a long time. My own face hung in the mirror. I was getting old. It had been a long time since I had made a reckless decision like this, which made me feel even older. The skin under my eyes had turned purple with lack of sleep. My hair had become thin, wispy. When I smiled at my reflection, it was like a joke. An actor performing happiness. The world had cast its shadow upon my face and it was hard not to see that when I looked in the mirror, hard not to remember what this life had taken from me. It was at this moment that I heard Grant calling my name. I had never liked my name before Grant began to say it. There was a certain inflection that made it seem unique, like it belonged to only us. When he used my name in an argument or just in passing, it didn’t matter. There was always a tenderness that I could not find for myself. Grant was in the basement, dusting off the garden. “What do you think?” he asked, opening his arms as if to welcome a large audience. “Not

bad, huh?” I could feel a lightness growing at the base of my spine. The pill’s working, I thought. I had never felt this before. “It’s nice,” I replied. And I meant it, which surprised me. “Really nice.” The lightness was at the top of my spine now, working its way around my skull until it felt almost indescribable. Like being untethered, but from what I didn’t know. I thought about the alien and the robot and how they moved through this house like ghosts. And then there was Grant who was not a ghost or a statue or an animatronic but this person standing in a subterranean garden, a person who was just doing what he could. ————— I placed the two photographs and the empty pill bottle in the fake furnace in the living room. It had been a month since I had taken that final pill. Memories of that day come to me in fragments, tiny shards of recollection beamed into my consciousness from somewhere beyond. The way the house grew bigger and smaller as I walked through it, tracing my fingers against the walls until I felt something like comfort. The way the haze cast gauzy strips of moonlight against the bedroom wall. And everywhere I saw Grant, the way he smiled as he opened his eyes to invite me to this house he had created for us. We were etched against every surface, these people who did not belong but were here regardless. And we would continue to be here. When I closed the door to the furnace, I imagined a fire that would envelope the photos and bottle in heat until they were burned into nothing. Later that day, Grant called me down to the basement. He had been working on the garden all day, his hands black with dirt. “Come look,” he said, gesturing wildly. I saw nothing but a few troughs packed with soil. Tiny beads of dew clung to the surface of the dirt. I did not understand what I was looking at until I turned to Grant. I saw what he saw and smiled. We are doing what we can.

SAVE THE BEES / ROWAN DRAPER 34

FRAGMENTING: A SONNET IN INFINITIVES / YUAN CHANGMING

Poetry

To be a matter when thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no question Or not to be a question when nothing really matters To sing with a frog squatting straight On a lotus leaf in the Honghu Lake near Jingzhou To recollect all the pasts, and mix them Together like a glass of cocktail To build a nest of meaning Between two broken branches on

Yggdrasil

To strive for deity Longevity and Even happiness To come

on and off line every other while

To compress consciousness into a file, and upload it Onto a nanochip. To be daying, to die

UNTITLED

JEWEL JACKSON

UNTITLED / JEWEL JACKSON 37

FORAGING IN THE MIDWEST / MEIRA DATIYA How-To and Recipes

When I first started learning about foraging, I thought the only time that someone could go foraging was in autumn and a lot of the things I thought were edible I quickly learned would kill me. I live in the Midwest and last October I finally took a beginner’s course in foraging. I learned Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota) can be easily confused with Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum). But I also learned about Paw Paws, Sassafras, Wild Ginger, Black Walnuts, and Persimmons. I even harvested some and baked an amazing Persimmon tart that rivaled anything sold at the local grocery store. So, with the winter frost slowly starting to give way to spring and plants becoming available to forage I decided to look into it more and it turns out there a lot of edible plants you can harvest throughout the year depending on fruiting times, etc. Below you will find a shortlist of plants to forage, some tips on foraging, and a few recipes to inspire you in the coming year. Edible Plants for Beginning Foragers in the Midwest Dandelion | Purslane | Rose Hips Purple | Passionflower | Nettles Blackberries | Black Walnuts | Paw Paws | Persimmons Autumn Olive | Sassafras

The above plants are easy to identify and forage, however, if you want to dive deeper into foraging, I highly recommend taking at least a beginner course in foraging for your region. There are a lot of plants out there that like to interweave themselves with edible varieties or even appear to be edible like wild grapes. Even wild grapes have a poisonous impersonator. The best way to avoid getting something toxic is to know the plants you are foraging top to bottom.

Other things to be aware of when foraging:

ivy, mosquitos, ticks, mosquitos, snakes, etc. Make surewear you • PoisonPoison ivy, ticks, snakes, bears,bears, etc. Make sure you wear long have and bug aspray, and aif deterrent if necessary, long pants, havepants, bug spray, deterrent necessary, etc. etc. • Mushrooms are tricky even for experienced foragers! Do not to try Mushrooms are tricky even for experienced foragers! Dotrynot harvest these as a beginner. Even varieties that are not poisonous to harvest these as a beginner. Even varieties that are not poican cause digestive issues etc. sonous can cause digestive issues etc.

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• Dehydration & sunburn. Always prepare for theforweather, bringbring sunDehydration & sunburn. Always prepare the weather, screen, a jacket, and make sure you have plenty of water. sunscreen, a jacket, and make sure you have plenty of water.

roots or whole Unless youthe ownland, the land, can be • TakingTaking roots or whole plants.plants. Unless you own it canitbe illeillegal to harvest in conservation areas, state parks, etc. Know gal to harvest in conservation areas, state parks, etc. Know the laws where you harvest! wherethe youlaws harvest!

Lastly, don’t forget to enjoy your trip to the forest. If you are going out for the day, make sure you stick to trails you know and bring a friend. Some fun things to do on trails while looking for edible plants include trying to identify slime molds, birdwatching, photography, journaling, and sketching. After you’ve finished your foraging trip and get home, make sure to wash everything and remove any bugs. This is the best part of any ylno ehtrip t thgbecause uoht I ,gnnow igaroyou f tuoget ba to gndecided inrael dewhat trats tto srfimake I nehfrom W jellies foraging eht fo tol a dna nmutuand a nijams saw to gntarts igaroand f ogpies. dluoc enoemos taht emit eht ni evil I .em llik dluow denrael ylkciuq I elbide erew thguoht I sgniht .gnigarof ni esruoc s’rennigeb a koot yllanfi I rebotcO tsal dna tsewdiM Some recipes to get you started! desufnoc ylisae eb nac )atorac sucuaD( ecaL s’ennA neeuQ denrael I waP tuoba denrael osla I tuB .)mutalucam muinoC( kcolmeH nosioP htiw neve I .snommisreP dna ,stunlaW kcalB ,regniG dliW ,sarfassaS ,swaP delavir taht trat nomPaw misrePaw P gni&zaWalnut ma na dBread ekab dna emos detsevrah 1 cup pawpaw puree (seeds removed ylwols tsorf retniw eht htiw ,oS .erots yrecorg lacol etc.) eht ta dlos gnihtyna I egarof ot elb1/3 aliacups va gnshortening imoceb stnalp dna gnirps ot yaw evig ot gnitrats stnalp elbide2foeggs tol a ereht tuo snrut ti dna erom ti otni kool ot dediced .cte ,semit gnitiurf no gnidneped raey eht tuohguorht tsevrah nac uoy 1 3/4 cups flour ,gnigarof no spit emos ,egarof ot stnalp fo tsiltrohs a dnfi lliw uoy woleB .raey1 cup gnimofoccrushed eht ni uwalnuts oy eripsni ot sepicer wef a dna 2/3 cups sugar tsewdiM eht ni sregaroF gninnigeB rof stnalP elbidE 2 tsp baking powder or yeast start seltteN | rewoflnoissaP | elpruP spiH esoR | enalsruP | noilednaD snom1/4 mistsp rePbaking | swaPsoda waP | stunlaW kcalB | seirrebkcalB A pinch ofsa salt rfassaS | evilO nmutuA

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:gand nigapour rof ne hwbatter fo erainto wa an eb oiled ot sgbread niht repan htO and bake at Mix everything the 350 for 50 minutes to an hour. Use a toothpick or knife to check if it’s raew uoy erus ekaM done. .cte ,srCool aeb ,before sekansserving. ,sotiuqsom ,skcit ,yvi nosioP • .cte ,yrassecen fi tnerreted a dna ,yarps gub evah ,stnap gnol Autumn Olive Jam ot yrt ton oD !sregarof decneirepxe rof neve ykcirt era smoorhsuM • 8+ cups autumn olive berries suonosiop ton era taht seiteirav nevE .rennigeb a sa eseht tsevrah 3-4 cups Sugar .cte seussi evitsegid esuac nac Homemade pectin from apple skins or another source -nus gnir(store-bought b ,rehtaew ehetc.) t rof eraperp syawlA .nrubnus & noitardyheD • .retaw fo ytnelp evah uoy erus ekam dna ,tekcaj a ,neercs Boil the berries and mash them using either a potato masher or a spoon -elli eb nac ti ,dnal eht nand wo uaomesh y sselcolander. nU .stnalp elohw ro stoor gnikaT • juice. sSeparate wal eht wthe onKskins .cte ,and skraseeds p etatsfrom ,saerthe a no itavreAdd snocsugar ni tseand vrahpectin. ot lag Bring to a boil before canning.!tsevrah uoy erehw

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MEET THE STAFF Rosie Albrecht - Editor in Chief - Rosie is a writer and graphic designer who spends a lot of time thinking about monsters, science fiction, queer theory, magical girls, horror, humor, and how all of those things intersect. As a child, she was radicalized by watching WALL•E and environmentalist/anti-imperialist Ghibli movies, and now she dreams of one day defeating a physical manifestation of capitalism in hand-to-hand combat. You can find her at rosiealbrecht.tumblr.com and see her graphic design work at @rosiesthingfactory on Instagram. Jeremy Baker - Staff Editor - Jeremy teaches sociology at 5 colleges and has 2 kids. He is very busy, but his therapist says he is very good at being busy. Clint Pereira - Staff Editor - Clint is a fantasy writer who spends all of his time worldbuilding. He keeps chickens and parrots in his backyard, and he loves all his feather babies very much. Krystal Washington - Staff Editor - Krystal is a disabled, pagan, proofreader, copyeditor, childcare professional, and cat mom. She believes that respecting our ecosystem, nature-based spirituality, and caring for the next generation are all interconnected and sacred. X379496 - Staff Editor - X379496 is a graduate student and a labor organizer.

Jack Adebisi - Staff Artist - Jack is a mechanical engineer who secretly dreams of becoming an art therapist in a world where capitalism doesn’t cannibalize the earth. Until then, he spends most of his free time making characters and comics, taking long walks and procrastinating on his graduate studies assignments. He can be found on twitter (@bi_jackass) or through his art site, jackjonesnga. artstation.com. Meira Datiya - Staff Writer - Meira is a lunarpunk writer who loves food science, the environment, & the intersect between our lived experience and possible futures. You can find their blog at brontidejournal.com. Jewel Jackson/JJ - Staff Artist - Jewel is a Vietnamese American digital artist who spends her time drawing, reading, writing, hiking, and dreaming about being murdered and eaten by mermaids. She likes xenomorphs, cyberpunk media, and the environment. Her art can be found on her website: jeweljackson.com. Rifka Handelman - Layout Director - Rifka is an incorporeal, vaguely eldritch being that spends most of her time making InDesign layouts. She occasionally occupies a human form when she needs to help adults with their technology. John Moriarty - Web Design - John is a web developer who used to work with his hands in beautiful, rural places and is slowly working towards returning to that better life.

LETTER FROM THE STAFF The world looks pretty crazy right now. We started working on this issue pre-COVID19, and most of the work in it is also pre-quarantine. With the world—and especially the U.S., where most of us live—in a lot of social upheaval, it feels like environmental issues have either taken a backseat or have needed broader cultural assessment. We stand with Black Lives Matter. In a way, solarpunk is more relevant than ever now. The social inequalities exacerbated by 40

the pandemic have brought socialist ideas to the forefront of society. With all the fear and uncertainty hovering around us, it’s important to find hopeful space, whether you dream of solar-powered optopias or just find solace in nature. Making this zine has been a space like that for us. The future is scary. As one of seven billion it’s hard to feel like you can do anything on your own. And you can’t. A solarpunk, sustainable future can be ours, but we have to build it together.

STAFF QUESTION What solarpunk innovation/invention are you most excited about? Rosie Albrecht - Cities where nature and architecture are completely melded. Skyscrapers covered in vines, rooftop parks, vertical farms, buildings whose walls bloom in the spring! I can’t wait for a future where “urban” and “nature” are no longer mutually exclusive.

Jack Adebisi - I see Solarpunk as more of a return to

our original relationship with nature, only now we get adapt modern technology to the systems. We live in a symbiotic relationship with our environment and give back as we take. Improved farm practices, introduction of renewable energy services and animal care are the things I look forward to the most.

Meira Datiya - Gardens, urban food forests, and a

stronger sense of community. The way cities are built now, they focus on individualism and disconnection. I would love to see how much stronger our communities become when we build and grow with each other in mind.

Jeremy E. Baker - People get really upset about ge-

netic engineering, but I think its potential is staggering. We could cure/treat cancer, light our homes with bioluminescence, or even grow DNA to extract the carbon we would need to build space elevators. The reason we fear genetic engineering (and other technologies) is capitalism. We are rightfully afraid of the greed of insurance companies and biotech firms that may copyright our individual anomalies and find yet another way to charge us. If we could undo the fetters of capitalism, we could propel mankind to new heights with genetic engineering.

Clint Pereira - I love seeing skyscrapers designed

with plants in mind, like green flesh growing on bones. Plants in urban environments not only look boss as hell, but they help regulate the temperature and clean the air. For me, escaping the city was never going to be the answer. But if returning to nature isn’t an option, I’d at least like to transform our cityscape into something truly alive.

Krystal Washington - I’m most excited about the

spiritual implications of all solarpunk inventions and the move towards sustainability. I think part of why many people around the world are so stressed and disconnected is due to humans becoming increasingly far removed from nature rather than incorporating it into our lives and infrastructure. I am hoping it will help our mental health as well. Humans and nature are not separate. Humans are a part of nature.

X379496 - In creating sustainable lives, Solarpunk

implies changing the way we make stuff. That suggests innovation in social relationships. Getting rid of cheap, disposable products aka commodities means innovating alternatives to capitalism, outgrowing systems of domination and control - over the earth, over animals, and over each other. It’s that DIY punk aesthetic turning to DIO, “do it ourselves” that fascinates me.

Rifka Handelman - I like the possibilities for space

exploration. Solar panels already allow crafts like the International Space Station to stay in orbit, and more stuff that can self-sustain means more opportunities for long-distance travel (though gravity is still an issue!). I also hope solarpunk changes our attitude toward the planets we will hopefully visit one day—their ecosystems deserve dignity and respect.

John Moriarty - I’m excited by the solarpunk promise

of using technology to actually improve our lives rather than just making us better consumers. I think a lot about automated farming robots that allow growers to earn a decent living without working themselves to death, or that allow more people to grow their own food without dedicating all their time to it. Technology serves us well when it lets us spend more time connecting with loved ones over meals and less time staring at screens.

SUBMIT TO US! Optopia is always open to submissions of all kinds of writing and art. Written pieces should be submitted as Word or PDF files, and images should be sent as high-quality JPGs, PNGs, or PDFs. Send your submissions to submissions@optopiazine.org or visit optopiazine.org/submissions for full information on submissions.

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Unsplash Photographers in this issue: niklas_hamann @hamann (pg. 5) Ave Calvar @shotbyrain (pg. 37) Deborah Diem @debidiemski (pg. 17) PaweĹ&#x201A; CzerwiĹ&#x201E;ski @pawel_czerwinski (pg. 35) Markus Winkler @markuswinkler (pg. 18) Scott Web @scottweb (pg. 36) Michael Busch @migelon (pg. 22) Rural Explorer @ruralexplorer (pg. 38) Tom Hill @tomchill (pg. 27) Tomasz Sroka @srook (pg. 40) Markus Spiske @markusspiske (pg. 31) Cherry Laithang @laicho (pg. 42) Adrien Olichon @adrienolichon (pg. 34) Blake Cheek @blakecheekk (back cover)

Optopia Issue #2

Articles inside

Apocalypse / Noor Amin

Atacalepsy / Brecht Lanfossi

Foraging in the Midwest / Meira Datiya

Space / John Ingold

The Plurality of Anthropocenes / Chad Waples

Dandelion Recipes / Meira Datiya

This Is a Formal Apology / J. L

City of Artificial Stars / Jenny Ham

Heart of the Arctic / Rosie Albrecht

The Town After the End of the World / Rifka Handelman

Dreaming to the Tides of Time / Jonathan Beckham

Letter From the Editor

Tell It To the Bees / Meira Datiya