Earlier this month, Manawaker Studios released a podcast of an original flash fiction story I wrote called “Four Scenes from Proxima b.” The story, as Addison Smith noted, is an example of extreme worldbuilding.
Rather than following a single character through a single event, like most flash and short fiction does, it follows an entire planetary civilization (or at least, parts of it) through an apocalypse. I originally wrote the story to a prompt about philosophy in fiction, and the inciting incident is similar to Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem and L.X. Beckett’s Gamechanger: What would happen if we suddenly found out we weren’t alone in the universe?
After that, though, it’s really more about the decisions we make in times of crisis, and how we decide to move through the world.
If you’re into audio, I highly recommend listening to the excellent audio version over at Manawaker Studios, narrated by CB Droege. Otherwise, read on to explore…
Four Scenes from Proxima b
1. Intercept
Anxa is at the WorldMind, reporting on a meeting of the world’s most eminent women, men, and xan. It’s an important assignment, one she’s worked for since she was a broodling with big dreams.
A member from the Lem Anarchy speaks, xyr voice insistent: “…caused by nothing more nor less than inroads into sacred Lem space, Consolidator Kao!”
Kao, a commander from the steppes to the north, flares his nostrils in a show of contempt. “All we have done,” he says, “is installed a station for our peace-keepers.”
Anxa knows she should repeat this exchange, but she’s tired. Why can’t these self-important fools see that they’re doing more harm than good?
The mics cut out, and a xan in a white jacket ascends to a podium at the room’s center. “Stop this bickering,” xey say. “Our long-range detectors have picked up transmissions. They are from people — people just like us, half the galaxy away!”
The massive screens that line the room light up behind xem. They are strange, these ‘people’ — all flesh and hair, incisors and nails. They march across the screen in grainy black and white. They argue, they strike at one another. They kill.
The floor of the WorldMind erupts into chaos, members speaking out of turn, shouting to be heard over one another’s arguments.
Anxa snaps her fingers, getting the camera-xan’s attention. “Keep filming!” she mouths, then turns on what she thinks of as her ‘reporting voice,’ thick and gravely to mimic the xan poet-singers centuries before, expertly calibrated to catch the attention.
“This is t’Ly Anxa on the floor of the WorldMind,” she says, “where we’ve just received a warning from beyond the stars.”
2. Ruin
Kel hobbles through the haze that hangs over the once-proud city of Hab, xyr hands clenched tight on the shopping trolley xey took from a store, years ago at the start of the troubles.
The wheels squeak, but the trolley still serves its purpose: to hold food xey have scrounged to give nourishment for xyr broodlings. Survival for xyr family. Hope for xyr future.
A staccato burst of gunfire sounds from several streets ahead, and Kel quivers, fighting the temptation to clench xyr earflaps tight. Noise means a fight, yes, and danger, but is also a warning, and without that xey are dead. Xey turn down a side alley, speed xyr steps.
“No! Please, I’m begging you!”
The shout comes from same direction as the gunfire. It’s far enough away that the speaker can’t mean xem, but the despair in that voice makes Kel’s stomachs twist.
“You can’t — You — “
The speaker breaks into sobs, and Kel presses xyr eyes closed until xey see stars. Xyr broodmother would be ashamed if xey abandoned someone. Xyr own family’s future just as bleak.
Xey push the trolley behind a loose wall panel, settle xyr stomachs with three deep breaths, and break into a run.
3. Superposition
Somebody has lit the library on fire.
Flames leap from hexagonal holding cube to hexagonal holding cube with all the hunger of the triple suns, turning centuries of learning into ash and melted plasteel.
Panli saves what she can: treatises on chemistry. Physics proceedings. Vids of famous plays, children’s rhymes, countless stills of art from a score of dead and dying civilizations. She is too drained to cry, and focuses her energies on keeping the books secured as she staggers down the stairs with a commandeered book cart.
At the bottom of the staircase, the cart tips sideways, dumping precious knowledge across the floor in a clattering that rings loud against the dim roar of flames. Panli retrieves some, fingers shaking. She should have brought a satchel, a strap to tie them down.
She doesn’t see the attacker before he slams one foot into her shoulder, shoving her the rest of the way to the floor. He has a gun, and his face has been painted in a grotesque mockery of alien features.
His eyes have nothing in them of compassion, nothing of a possible future. “Unbeliever,” he whispers. “Heretic.”
“Please,” she says. “All I want is to save the things I love. To give others hope.”
The man raises his gun, and Panli scarcely dares to breathe, lest she knock the future free from its precipice — to ruin or hope? to life or death? to freedom or captivity?
“Please.“
At last the man bows his head, and when he looks up there is something like shame in his eyes. “Go,” he snarls, lowering his gun. “Go, before they kill us both.”
Panli holds her treasures close, and she does not look back. Not even when the screaming starts.
4. Contemplation
The seekers’ fast is built upon an outcropping at a canyon’s edge, its walls clinging to the jagged rock at an angle as though at any moment might tumble downward. It is mid-morning, and the largest sun’s heat has not yet cleared the mist from the canyon, so that it appears an abyss, endless and unchanging.
In the garden at the centre of the fast, three seekers sit in quiet conversation.
“But Locutor,” one says. “Why did Panli not encourage the man to come with her? They could have saved more knowledge between them. Helped more people.”
The locutor shrugs. “It was a long time ago,” xe says. “And without her choice, the fast may never have been founded. The light and knowledge we carry may have been lost for good.”
The first speaker harrumphs. “If it were me,” she mutters…
The locutor smiles. Xe remembers being new to seekerdom xemself. What it felt like to be certain the answers were there for the taking, rather than endless mirages in the mist that wreathe the walls of the fast. “We can never know the truth of others’ actions,” xe says, not unkindly. “But, my children, that does not change what we can do: Think deeply. Act well. Guide each other as we watch the stars’ wheeling path — and our own.”