Episode Three: Breads
Rolling brownouts are now common every summer. Scav crews just move faster and adapt quicker to the “innovative tactics” of each newly-appointed energy czar.
This piece of micro-fiction was my first publication, part of Blood Tree Literature, issue 11, published on July 1, 2022, available here. As part of the editorial process, the first and last paragraphs of my original submission were removed. As part of the publication agreement, I’m now able to post this story in its entirety.
At the time of publication, I went back and forth on which version told a stronger story. Back then, I think I had a larger imaginarium surrounding the world the published version of the story, and could see the potentially expansive world beyond those five paragraphs. I had one friend that found a bit of contextual help from the micro-bookends.
That world has been lost, in some ways, to the erosion of time and an annoying lack of worldbuilding notes or other drafts to this story. Yet, I find enjoyment in experience and exposure after the fact to different story forms and the possibilities that constraints create. I now find more joy in the shorter published form. The editor at Blood Tree said these edits formed a “more complete...standalone piece” without background that isn’t necessary to the delivery of a vision of an alternate reality. And, though I wrote all this in one quick swoop of a single draft (with only word choice changes afterward), I read a more solid grounding and surety of thought in the published paragraphs, with the first and last showing an extraneous lack.
Here is the longer piece, but again, the published version on Blood Tree Literature is available here.
Rolling brownouts are now common every summer. Scav crews just move faster and adapt quicker to the “innovative tactics” of each newly-appointed energy czar.
When the power goes out in the evening, lights blink off and A/C fans whir to a halt. Astral practitioners know—love—to sit mudrasana and await stretching into the liminal chasm a dusky humid wind-down provides.
In a parallel universe of only one known difference, people say “Ooowee! My cats are purring!” when their knees hurt, instead of the better-known allegory of the barking dog and its sore paws.
It is rumor only—never confirmed—that the sole consequence of this difference is that, in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, when John Candy says “I’m tellin’ you, my cats are purring today”, it is Steve Martin who has the mustache.
Naturally suspicious and conspiratorial folks that hover around astral and lucid circles feed off the vast reeling possibilities the mustache belies. Like, it begs the question: do dogs even bark in this other universe?
But soon enough the power surges back up, and the TV resumes your episode of the Bake Off. The window to the other side shutters its blinds once again as the Metropolitan Faraday Dome gets back to its ignoble work. Honestly, we’re all just so sick of these “fifth dimension thunderstorms,” the open-secret euphemism the DOE uses to explain away their perennial sweltering ineptitude.
But, imagine what we’d know if the projecting and scavenging communities banded together...