• Home
  • Essays
  • Fiction & Poetry
  • Comics & Art
  • Shrapnel
  • About
Blunderbuss Magazine
Fiction

Three Stories of a Future to Come

By Adam Flynn @threadbare ·

“We worked, and loved, and charted ourselves, wrenching legibility and dignity from the system one Google Maps update at a time.”

I.
The Zweibel clan were known for their mastery of state, city, and borough rental law, and had, over time, staked out an intricate, convoluted set of claims to a series of rent-stabilized apartments across the Upper West Side. Management companies threw up halfhearted challenges once per generation, hoping for decay in ferocity, but eventually resigned to limiting their spread. Within this decentralized Zomia, the younger sons set about building an invisible monastery, a place where those with a world to win could hide, grow, learn and heal. I was not born there, but within those walls I became who I am.

II.
No one ever said the refugee camp was going to end up becoming a new suburb, especially not the elected officials overseeing it. But the designers knew that a camp without economic vitality, without self-organized governance, without sensitivity to place and climate, was as likely to be swallowed by the seas as the lands the migrants came from. And so they planned secret cities; we worked, and loved, and charted ourselves, wrenching legibility and dignity from the system one Google Maps update at a time.

III.
The city seems to newcomers dense with life, a bustling, brawling hothouse that smells of aquaponics and mycelium leather. My daily commute takes me past water buffalo and streetcars to the institute, where, amidst gothic towers and bamboo forests, I project-manage the greatest minds in the world. The aliens finally got back to us last year; they liked what our grandmothers had to say but they had questions we’re struggling with. If I take the stairs more, I might be alive for the next response.
*

Photo courtesy Tyne & Wear Archives

www.simplesharebuttons.comSHARE THIS POST
FacebookTwittertumblrEmail
Share Tweet

Adam Flynn

Adam Flynn is a freelance strategist and writer based in Oakland, CA. He can usually be found investigating the intersections of the antiquarian and futuristic, or trying to make solarpunk "a thing."

You Might Also Like

  • Fiction

    In the Opposites’ World

  • Fiction

    The History of Bodies

  • Fiction

    Shots in the Dark

Subscribe

Blunderbuss is going print! Subscriptions are available via our Patreon page:

patreon-button.png

Donate

Donate to Blunderbuss and help support up-and-coming writers & artists.

Keep up with Blunderbuss

Follow @BlunderbussMag
Follow on Tumblr
Follow on rss

Latest

  • In the Opposites’ World

  • The History of Bodies

  • Shots in the Dark

  • Rascal House Blues, Pt. IV

  • After Homecoming

Like us on Facebook

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @BlunderbussMag
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Submissions

ABOUT

We are Blunderbuss Magazine, a web magazine of arts, culture, and politics, an ordnance of fire and improvisation. What ties together these essays, stories, poems, photographs, comics, and other bits of aesthetic shrapnel is a common attitude of visceral humanism. We aim for earnest noise. We want to splash in the mud of lived experience, to battle for a radical empathy, and to provide a megaphone to howling assertions of human subjectivity.

MASTHEAD

  • Editor-in-Chief – Travis American
  • Managing – Niral Shah
  • Fiction – Sara Nović
  • Art Director – Yvonne Martinez
  • Poetry – Sam Ross
  • Art – Terence Trouillot
  • Comics – Ellis Rosen
  • Senior – Alex Howe
  • At Large – Kevin T.S. Tang
  • Pictures – Lauren E. Wool
  • Contributing – Meredith Fraser
  • Web – Hayley Thornton-Kennedy

Subscribe & Support

Blunderbuss has made the jump to print! Subscriptions are available via our Patreon page:

patreon-button.png



Donate to Blunderbuss and help support up-and-coming writers & artists:

SEARCH

© 2014 Blunderbuss Magazine. All rights reserved.