What They Left Behind was a 2019 entrant for a flash fiction competition at the University of the Sunshine Coast for Global Climate Change Week. To my best recollection the theme was on the consequences of climate change to which I chose to answer by speaking in a near worst-case scenario we stand to lose the ties to our culture and national identity. I chose to frame this flash fiction narrative as a log entry of the protagonist for their therapist, because it was entirely reliant on the narrator to provide insight to the world they live in and what headspace they are in. At 700 words plus or minus 10% I was not aiming to win rather learn from the challenge of writing this flash fiction narrative.

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Culture is an intrinsic part of us, our community, and our nation. You could argue it is the original influencer as its influence is widespread including what traditions and customs we observe, how we dress, what we eat, and how we speak and behave. It’s an integral part of how we identify ourselves as a person. Take it away and something important to us is lost to history. You can make someone the namesake of a Persian goddess, but it’s just words without the contextual backstory to make it mean what it did to the people who lived with that contextual backstory as part of their culture.

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In this narrative Anahita Bellerose is a young woman of Iranian-French descent who was born into the late 23rd century without arms or legs. Her culture is that everyone contributes to a singular purpose of terraforming Earth which meant she had undergone surgery after achieving full maturity to have her torso augmented by technology so she could have plug and play bionic limbs attached each morning and detached in the evening for daily maintenance. Normal to her is everyone living underground in vast hermetically sealed complexes where housing is variations on a standard layout of one main room combining living, kitchen, and dining areas, one room for sleeping in, and a small bathroom; all homes are small to conserve space. No one leaves their home without donning formfitting environment suits which once sealed perform the function of making sure your body is cool enough to thermoregulate normally and provide breathable air. What amounts to accommodating disabilities is ensuring they can be productive members of society in whichever niche they fit, but if they cannot do so then they are euthanised; it comes down to the cost analysis of resource expenditure. Anahita herself requires a live-in nurse/carer/mechanic and accordingly is given housing which includes a workshop for the maintenance of her limbs.

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In the context of the narrative her Earth is a hot ball of sun-baked desolation where her job is developing new genetic variants of trees capable of thriving in the changed environment of Earth. Six days out of a week she joins a crowded morning march to a train station where her train is one of hundreds leaving their complex taking people to their workplaces in other structures. When she isn’t working alongside her colleagues in an underground laboratory or the arboretums, she’s on the surface in biosphere laboratories tending to different strains of trees collecting data on them and their impact on the replicated environmental and atmospheric conditions. Anahita’s quality of life and personal feelings for the inability to change anything is what led her to receiving psychotherapy to come to terms with it and move forward.

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Through the log entry framework, I introduced pieces of this background information building the image of someone who sees it all as the fault of her ancestors. She doesn’t understand what her friend Lee sees in looking out the windows of the train each day at the desolated wastes and occasional ruins; her mind only sees a reminder of what her ancestors brought upon themselves and dumped on the shoulders of their descendants to fix. Lee is part of a dying minority who identify to the past cultures, going so far as to name the nations her name connects her to, yet Anahita has such a complete disassociation to them she rejects the notion of belonging to them by the mere truth of where her name came from thereby rejecting this heritage. In her mind these people are strange to keep these cultures and identities alive. Sharing her thoughts in this log entry Anahita posits her own realisation why these people cling so tightly for the plain fact it’s the human mind doing what it must to protect itself. These people escape the harsh reality of their existence before they break by keeping the past alive; an elaborate distraction puppeteering an echo of what’s been and gone, which has had fewer and fewer perpetuating it as time goes by. A realisation which enables Anahita to understand her friend better.

 

“Per routine Antonina, Snorri woke me so she could clean my sockets before plugging my limbs into my torso with a mild painkiller injection for the surrounding flesh.” – Opening sentence.

 

“You and I discussed how I should appreciate what I’ve been given to maintain independence, well… I felt it this morning. It didn’t bother me that breakfast was oats and dried fruit for the twelfth time, or that Snorri’s workshop seemed larger than my living space. … most days I despise the multirole layout that compacts our living, kitchen and dining …” – Anahita’s frustrations with her quality of life.

 

“Morning mail came for Snorri and me, bringing her news that the bracing armaments and impact absorption frame for my legs are still in the requisition queue. I’ll be deaf by the time they arrive with the way Snorri keeps lecturing me for excessive falling.” – Anahita’s inner child yells louder than her common sense does when it comes to getting down from the lower branches of small to medium sized trees.

 

“… rush in the corridor to the maglev station was a packed crowd … the aesthetics of recessed gardens in the walls made the insane shuffle out of the habitat district tolerable.” – Balancing the hell of crowds at peak times with some pleasant decoration always struck me as Band-Aid solution logic.

 

“Your advice to tell him that I want to spend the first three minutes of the ride out reading news on the clear screen HUD of my helmet worked.

He said he didn’t get why I would want to read bland facts of the cumulative progress we’re making in reversing the environmental damage, but he said that if it had been a bother for me for so long before I sought your help, then it must be important for me. I told him I don’t get why he likes looking out the window on a dry UVC bombarded waste occasionally studded with ruins.” – Anahita on her morning commute with Lee.

 

“He’s pointed out in the past my name reflects my connection to them just as his name connects him to China. Persian… Iranian? I’m not too sure, but I remember him saying my last name is French… but what the hell is my name’s heritage supposed to mean to me? The compound we live in was named Promissory; I’m of Promissory!” – Anahita stance on her identity.

 

“… a solution … which forces us … 102 scattered subterranean compounds … to revitalise Earth’s anoxic acidic ocean, whilst combating an almost Lovecraftian UV ray CO2 Ozone bundled nightmare …” – Threads of the situation of Earth circa 2299.

 

“It’s weird trying to wrap my mind around how someone could cling to the people who acted without care for consequences.

 

In the past the why of their attachment confused me … I had the chance while tending the lab compound’s arboretums to thoughtfully realise it’s what keeps them sane.

 

There’s no freedom to choose how we live our lives, only work towards fixing the mistakes of our ancestors. Some fanatically enjoy theatrical performances from the highly educated preservers our ancestors’ cultures’. Some would prefer reading dry reports of fauna population management.

 

Our ancestors’ mistakes are our problem that we learn to live with… somehow, someway.” – Excerpts threading Anahita’s train of thought on coping mechanisms.