This week, Futures is delighted to welcome back Beth Cato and her story The wind knows all. Regular readers will recall that Beth is the author of the Clockwork Dagger duology and the Blood of Earth trilogy, as well as having written a number of stories for Futures (you’ll find a full list at the foot of this post). You can find out more about her work at her website or by following her on Twitter. Here, she reveals what inspired her latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing: The wind knows all

I belong to Codex, a site for neo-pro writers that provides deep friendships, publishing industry news, and numerous writing contests throughout the year. The twice-a-year flash-fiction contests are among my very favourites.

The usual contest format involves five story prompts followed by a weekend of frenzied writing and revising to produce a work of flash fiction that I hope will not prove to be an embarrassment. Often, I end up combining several prompts to prod a story from my brain. That was the case with The wind knows all.

One of the prompts called on me to randomly shuffle through my phone’s music. That brought me to a song by one of my favourite bands, ‘Dust Bowl Dance’ by Mumford and Sons. Still, the song alone wasn’t enough to build a story. I studied the other prompts and fixated on one that asked, “How do you feed a ghost?”

My writer-brain, funny thing that it is, wondered: what if the dusty wind is filled with ghosts? Not just the ghosts of people, but the very spirit of a planet?

To make things even more challenging, I resolved to make the planet into the narrator, giving it insight into every other character and control over my protagonist, Maribel. Contest feedback pointed out that Maribel needed more agency. I agreed. I made the point-of-view even more complex by limiting the planet’s control over Maribel, establishing her as an independent teen girl amid horrible circumstances.

Codex’s contests are awesome because they push me to experiment, such as with prompts I’d never use otherwise (like the playlist on my phone) or with perspectives that would be downright daunting if I gave them too much thought (like the voice of an entire planet). Sometimes those experiments don’t work. In this case, it did, and I’m happy to see The wind knows all find a home with Nature’s Futures.

Read more Futures stories by Beth:

A picture is worth | The 133rd Live Podcast of the Gourmando Resistance | Powers of observation | Excerpts from the 100-day food diary of Angela Meyer | The human is late to feed the cat | Bread of life | Post-apocalyptic conversations with a sidewalk | Canopy of skulls

This week, Futures is pleased to welcome Timothy J. Gawne with his story Infringement. By day, Timothy is a neuroscientist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, but outside of the university, he is also author of the Old Guy cybertank novels. Here, he reveals what inspired his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Infringement

The idea for writing Infringement came up, as so many of my writing ideas do, when I was corresponding with my genius editor brother Jonathan.  He throws ideas at me, and usually I go “that’s stupid” or “not my style” but often when I sleep on them I realize that it can work if I just do X …

Somehow the idea of a galactic copyright police came up, and I thought, what if Earth itself was infringing and had to be destroyed?  Once I had that basic idea down, the story wrote itself.

It might seem harsh to rub out an entire world with billions of (alleged?) sentient beings to protect someone’s intellectual property, but don’t we do similar things now when we deny vital medicines to countless poor people to avoid hurting the profits of the people who count?  Why should a galactic/universal civilization be any better?

The idea of an advanced civilization that can build entire planets to order is hardly new — think Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — but why would we imagine that these planets would all be custom?  Look at how many of the manufactured items we have that are mass-produced.  Perhaps Earth would be considered a classic design, far more interesting than those boring planets where everything is a sunny beach littered with diamonds.  And even as people reading the same book or watching the same movie can take pleasure from sharing their experiences, surely owners of Earth might feel the same?

Science fiction can be written at several technological levels, ranging from grounded-in-current-physics (such as The Martian, by Andy Weir) to a level where the technology is so fantastically advanced that it becomes taken for granted in a way that becomes comical (The Hitchhiker’s Guide, but also Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley, or even the old 1960s TV series Lost in Space).  Here I obviously chose the latter.

Most people who own Honda Civic automobiles are happy with them the way they are, but there are always some who want to tinker.  It’s a lot easier than building an entirely new car from scratch and, in addition, people can compare notes to see who can get the most out of a stock design.  Perhaps the same thing would happen with Earth?  Hmm, a story about a customized Earth competition, and all these hopped-up Earths come together to see who can take the grand prize of coolest Earth.  I know, someone from the reference standard Earth will be there as well, to give perspective to all the ways that Earth could have gone, if deliberately evolved by intelligences with different styles and tastes.  Let me call my brother …

In You will remember this, Justen Russell introduces Futures to a novel alien race with a very different perspective on life from our own. A microbiologist by day, Justen has very kindly taken some time out from the lab to explain the origins of his latest tale, and the choices he made when writing it. As ever, it is best to read the story first.

Writing You will remember this

In an earlier draft of You will remember this there was a poster on the wall behind the narrator. On it a single, colourful image depicted our Solar System in all four dimensions, from the Big Bang to the heat death of the Universe. That poster, like Patrick Xu, added a little background to the world of the story, but the section it was described in did not fit nicely into the final version.

I have wanted to write this story since the I first encountered the theory of a biological arrow to time. The theory states that the Universe and everything that will happen is already determined. That we — living, conscious entities within that Universe — experience the past, present and future as a quirk of our biology and entropy. Because we form our memories by organizing molecules in our brain, at any point in time we can only remember events that occurred before those molecules were organized, i.e. we can remember the past but not the future, but both exist.

That poster with an image of the Solar System from the start of time to the end was mentioned in passing. The narrator said: “Personally, I just like the colours.” That is probably why it did not survive to the final draft. It was an artefact that was more meaningful because it was taken for granted. Pop-culture is full of scientific images, images that changed our perception of the world, images that took thousands of person-hours to create: the periodic table, Earth from space, the double helix of DNA. These images are placed on posters, screen-savers and corporate logos. They become so commonplace that they have meaning outside of the technical details they contain. The image of the Solar System in four dimensions was the same. Everyone in the story grew up knowing the Universe is determined, but not really understanding what that means. To most, the poster would have been just a pretty picture that represented an abstract idea, even though it contained in it everything that had happened, and everything that would happen. Not with enough resolution that one could see what they would be doing at 11:45 next Tuesday, but it would be understood that such precision is possible. I think the purpose of this story is to wonder what it would be like to grow up knowing such a profound truth without understanding it personally; children do not meet aliens.

It would be unsettling to talk to an alien for the first time. I know I would struggle to pass the test. My first attempt would be similar to the narrator’s, I would try to do the opposite of what was said. Afterwards, I would need to try again. The second time I would probably do exactly what was said and hope to somehow ‘trick fate’. I already know how disappointed I would be, on the third attempt, when after planning to stand there silently and ignore whatever was said I hear a prediction that I am going to do exactly that. It would take me many attempts, but I think I would eventually understand. I am afraid, however, of what truly understanding means. It would be so easy to conclude that consciousness is an illusion, that predetermination is incompatible with choice.

A large part of this story is to contend the opposite. Consciousness is making choices, even if those choices have already been made, even if those choice will always be made; they are still meaningful. If one chooses to wait before crossing the road, or chooses to run for political office, or chooses to compensate for the wind when landing on Titan’s Mayda Insula, they make that choice with the information available at the time. To always make the same choice in the same situation, with the same circumstances, and the same memories does not make one an automaton. It does not mean that one is simply a pawn to fate or swept along in the current of predetermination. It means those actions were, are, and will continue to be a part of the determined shape of the Universe. It means those choices, in their own small way, mattered.