One Read 2024: “Migrations” by Charlotte McConaghyAs part of this year’s One Read program, we invited you to take inspiration from Charlotte McConaghy’s “Migrations,” by telling a tale of climate fiction in 250 words or less. Climate fiction explores climate change and its impact on Earth and on society, and is generally speculative in nature.
Thank you to everyone who entered and shared your works of flash fiction.
Our two winners are Xander Kennedy and Kim Wade. Honorable mentions go to Philip Shearrer and Josh Ray.
We are excited to share these stories with you!
A Book and A Promise, Xander Kennedy
As Trin cracked open the book, the reading time her reward for a long and successful day of work, the photograph fell from inside the front cover. She picked it up and felt the warmth radiating down through the decades. It was a beautiful but simple shot, showing her grandfather relaxing in a hammock, a book propped on his chest, a radiant sunset visible through the trees in the background.
This image had always been her inspiration—she’d even hand drawn a hammock to be the company’s logo. Her goal was so simple; to return the world to a point in which someone could kick their feet up with a novel, but do so outside. It had been eighteen years since it had been safe to venture outdoors without all the necessary breathing and radiation protection. Eighteen years. A whole generation had reached adulthood not knowing what a breeze felt like in the shade of a sycamore.
The science part of her work had always been fairly straightforward. The politics part? Not so much. More often than not she was convinced it was an impossible task, that the world was too far gone. But, well…
Trin held up the photo. Even though he wasn’t looking at the camera, she could see the corner of his mouth turned up as though he knew his young granddaughter was there. She tucked it back into its place, settled herself into the hammock, breathed in the fresh autumn air, and began to read.
Persimmons, Kim Wade
She abandoned the heat of kitchen, kettle, and sweaty grownups salting and canning, and secreted herself to the quiet of the persimmon grove. There she ate orange-pink pulp, spat out seeds and wondered if seed and spit and dirt would make a new tree. She imagined the tree, or was it her body now; saw it merging into the tangled constellation of branches and roots of older, bigger trees.
You’ve patterning in you, her mother said, finding her there, still, at twilight, drowsing in the grass and leaf litter, the calyxes of persimmons arranged in whorls about her body like earthbound stars.
And so she was welcomed to sit alongside the Archivist at the edge of the Council Circle the day the Pattern Speakers arrived. It was November; harvesting done. Her own hub’s Speaker had consented to apprentice her but had only just returned from journeying. It was rumored the Pattern Speakers were agitated.
She watched the first Speaker step into the Circle. She watched the Archivist tap the vidscreen. Each Speaker’s chronicle of change, seasons turning, turnings within turnings, was recorded and transmitted, accessible to hubs separated across oceans and generations. What had been lost during the Time of Counting was being observed anew, sensed, reassembled.
“I speak of Patterns,” the Speaker began. She closed her eyes. Listened. Heard tell of infinitesimal changes in pollen scent and seed shape. She sensed, in the swirl of words, a new pattern, the oldest pattern, an endless unfolding. Life begetting life.
The Cure, Philip Shearrer
Her coughing fit was shorter and more productive this time. The tech inspected Joyce’s tracheal implant. Dark specs freckled the clear sputum.
“That was a good one Joyce.” “More every time.”
Joyce contorted through a long inhale and closed her eyes.
Dr. Sanatrinka entered and pulled up a slide chair. “Good evening Mrs. Holmes.”
Joyce opened her eyes.
“Tony tells me we are making progress.”
The hiss of the evacuator betrayed a heavy sigh.
“We are going continue through the rest of tonight and then let you get some sleep.”
A tear caught the edge of Joyce’s head harness and crept down her chin line.
Dr. Sana turned to the tech. “What is the replication rate?”
The tech’s answer was drowned out by the patient’s coughing fit. Joyce settled with a broken moan.
Readings slid across the monitor. 23%. The Tech pointed to the red number. “It’s been like this for the last hour.”
Dr. Sana, frowned. “We should be below 5 by now…” She patted Joyce’s hand and left.
In the cool hallway, a cacophony of hacking patients echoed through the ward. Come dawn, there would be silence.
The grand experiment had failed. Funding would be cut. No insurer would take a risk on future nanite therapies. Her career was over.
It was the replication rates… No, it was before that. It was the atmospheric seeding of microplastics that had necessitated the therapies to begin with.
She stifled a cough and moved on to the next victim.
The Southernmost Tree, Josh Ray
We used to drive down every winter to the southernmost tree, the tree that marked the end of the habitable zone for trees. A very edgy tree. We’d drive, blasting our kids’ favorite music – Bowie, Queen, Toto – these little elementary hipsters singing with the windows down as we angled through Patagonia and in and out of colossal caves made by prehistoric ground sloths and armadillos, signs of evolutionary tenuousness. But the tree never changed until it did. It became the penultimate southern tree, and then the antepenultimate, etc. Every winter there were more trees cropping up in more southerly places. We had to travel farther to see the latest southernmost tree. We packed more clothes and bought more gas and peed on more sides of the roads. We wouldn’t turn around until we got there. It wasn’t a choice we had, but more like a compulsion, something that echoed the inexorable progress of industrialism. We just kept driving farther up the ever-elongating coast. We would have driven into the ocean if we had had to. The spray would’ve been less chilly than anticipated. One time we looked out over the water from the edge of a cliff. We saw the sloths emerging and coming back home.