Solarpunk Collective

An excerpt from today's writing. Last night, the guard returned to my cell. In fact, there were three of them. All masked and dressed in those rotting, moldy robes. One replaced the great clam shell, one searched my room and the other placed a stack of papers on my desk. Two of them left, and one remained. It indicated that I should sit, and then it stood behind me, clicking and chattering. I looked at the papers. It was my writing. But it wasn’t what I had written. The great clam shell spoke in its flat, empty voice. “There is confusion in your narrative.” The carved ivory device was translating the clicks and clacks of the guard. The breathy, percussive sounds that issued from beneath the mask were speech of a kind I had never heard before. But such details barely registered at the time. I just sat at the desk and stared at the story, feeling the walls pressing tighter around me. Never had I been so aware of the suffocating reality of my imprisonment. My text had been conver...

-From a children’s fairy tale book in a Solarpunk library 2062 Once upon a time there was a great dragon. It lived in a mountain cave and slept all day on a vast hoard of gold. At night it flew out and gorged itself on a goats and cattle. Sometimes it ate villagers or burned towns. Eventually, the dwarves who lived in the valley grew tired of being terrorized by the dragon, so they assembled an army and marched on its cave. They defeated the dragon and imprisoned it, but no mortal can slay the great primordial beast. The victorious dwarves soon fell to arguing about what to do with the dragon’s hoard. Such a great treasure was difficult to divide. Every dwarf had fought in the battle and many had died, but some fought harder than others, and without the help of the sword smiths and armorers, there could have been no victory. Guards were set while the dwarves decided what to do with it. The sly dragon lay on its pile of gold, grinning at the tiny dwarves who thought they h...

I got the call on my beeper just after lunch. Not much of a lunch, just an old unlabeled tin that turned out to be beans and vegan sausages, cooked on our solar stove on the roof of the squat. Downstairs I waited in line to use the community deck, anxiously tapping my foot and looking at the old patched LCD of the beeper, waiting to see if a second call would signal that the run had been cancelled. It hadn’t. When I finally got to sit down at the ancient computer and check my mail, the coded message was clear. I had barely enough time to put together a team and run the five blocks to the target. There was Otter, our physical pen expert. A tall, lanky dark-skinned bloke, he got his name from his unusually extensive body hair. That and the fact that he was the only one of us who could swim. Jewel considered herself to be a ‘leet hacker and at least had a discerning eye. She usually acted as appraiser for our runs, helping us decide what was worth taking and what should be left ...

ONE Contrary to popular imagination, velomobiles are not silent. Rushing air whistled over the enclosed cockpit. Autumn leaves crunched under the tires and Cassiopeia’s own breathing echoed in the cramped space of the vehicle as she labored over the pedals. Trees rushed by either side as she drove deeper and deeper in to the Great Midland Forest. Cassie hit a downhill stretch and took a breather. She watched the speedometer slowly tick up to 60kph. If she turned on the power assist now and added her own effort to the pedals, it was possible to get it up to a hundred. But it was terrifying to travel so fast in such a fragile shell, so she just sat back and enjoyed the short rest the slope afforded her. Eventually the road turned in to a narrow, grassy track, and then to a barely traveled, weed choked path. The last kilometer to the outpost she had to use the power assist and raise the suspension. As the little composite shelled vehicle trundled over the mounds of weedy grass, ...