Science Fiction Prototyping

 Preface

    I took a class this fall semester titled “Wildlife & Society.” Through research papers we explored different parts of the world and looked at human-wildlife conflict. We looked at the debates around wolf reintroduction in parts the U.S., impacts of agriculture/fuel collection on Pandas in China, the impact of bushmeat in different parts of the world, and much more. One of the big takeaways from this class was that often times marginalized or poverty-stricken people end up bearing the brunt of conservation policies and that there can be unintended feedbacks in terms of how people view wildlife as a result.

    Our final project of the class was to write a science fiction short story based around the idea put forth by ecologist E.O. Wilson that half of the earth should be set aside for the protection of biodiversity. Some big questions around Wilson’s idea are: What does “Half-Earth” look like? Who does it affect? How is it enforced? Our short stories were aimed at addressing these questions.

    In preparation for writing, we learned more about this idea of science fiction prototyping. In short, the goal of science fiction prototyping is to sort of free the mind of the traditional science methodology and to inspire new thoughts about what our future might look like, what kinds of technologies/ideas could be used, and what kinds of problems may be faced. I will admit, it sounded a little silly to me at first, but this type of scenario development has been used in military practice and has seen use in corporations as a way to anticipate the future.

    I ended up going a different direction with my story and to be honest, I didn’t love the way it turned out, but I was encouraged to post it on here. Below is my short story: The Co-op. At the end is an Epilogue to that was used as a reflection for the assignment. It aims to explain why I put some of the elements into the story and reflects on whether there is a likelihood of my story becoming a reality.


The Co-op



Peter


Peter Naylen was taking a sip of his coffee when the notification came across his intercom; the voice surprised him, causing him to choke on his beverage.


“Your restoration is starting one week from today. Your income will be reduced and if you resist you will be arrested.”


Shit. Peter thought to himself; that’s happening already?


Peter had moved out to his place in 2070 after he retired at 55 from ArthroMeal. With most agricultural land being converted to developments and since there was so much, everyone was getting several acres each to stick their homes on. Fortunately, this farmland conversion did not result in food scarcity because of the turn to fungus and insect based food . This meant that less land and water was needed to sustain the human population, and it also curbed the amount of carbon being added to the atmosphere. Old city buildings were turned into warehouses which kept stories of wet vats of fungus and smelly cricket beds. While this was beneficial in that it freed up millions of square kilometers of land from agriculture, the land was traded from one monoculture to another: turf grass. In addition to the grass, most of the people brought their invasive ornamentals that didn’t exist in the seas of corn and soybeans before. Now, the remaining stream corridors and natural areas that were previously bound by agriculture, were being invaded by plants that were quickly replacing the native flora and reducing native fauna. Despite the continued downward spiral of the environment, people wanted out of the city even though they had flocked there in droves in the previous decades; this meant that much to the chagrin of environmentalists, little land was spared for habitat protection. In the decade following, the “Half-Earth Movement” began to penetrate the political sphere. Previously, politicians ran on ideas of engineering new technologies to slow climate change and reduce the impact that humans were having on the organisms we share our earth with. But now, it was realized that we couldn’t wait for the new technologies to save us; action had to be taken now.

It’d been 10 years since President Gomez decided that the best way to combat the impending ecological crisis was to seize all private property that wasn’t either occupied by a building or agriculture. The President felt that this was the best way for the United States to do their part in setting aside half of the Earth for preservation. He didn’t want to move people out of areas of the country and make them off-limits. That wasn’t going well in other countries that were trying to meet their goals of the Half Earth Summit. The fighting that ensued in those places did worse things for their biodiversity than if the government had done nothing at all

Depending on where you lived, your lawn could be converted into a variety of prairies, forests, or wetlands. In Peter’s neck of the woods, it wasn’t woods, it was prairie. Tall grass prairie, the kind you get lost in once August hits because the Big Bluestem was just that: big.

For many people, long gone were the days of GrassKeepers (known colloquially as Greepers), the tractor sized, self propelled lawn machines that kept your lawn at the perfect length of 2.5 inches, sprayed insecticide on every blade of grass, and attacked any subterranean mammals with a spike that it deployed upon sensing the vibrations below. The problem was when the government demanded that the Greepers be retrofitted to manage prairies they had torches installed on them and while they were good at setting the fires, they weren’t always good at controlling them. Every year there was news about someone’s home getting obliterated in the cleansing fires. Really it seemed the government didn’t care. They would set them up in an apartment in the nearest city and let the charred remains of the house get engulfed by its surroundings.

Peter didn’t love the idea. He liked his short, green grass, he liked how the stripes stretched out to the horizon after the Greepers were done cutting it, he loved that when there was a blemish he could have the Greeper out in minutes to address it. What he especially didn’t care for was how the government was going about this. When the President made the announcement in 2080 that all non agricultural land would be converted by 2085, he gave two options: voluntarily convert within 5 years or have it be forcibly converted. No one knew exactly what the latter option meant, but in the coming months the President’s plan became clearer for what was going to happen if you did or did not comply. 

If you volunteered your property and agreed to do all of the maintenance yourself they would increase your basic income and cease all inspections. If you banded with your community to make changes the community as a whole would get increased funding and they would reduce funding from police departments and redirect it towards community improvements. If you didn’t volunteer your property, the drones would fly by every.single.day to monitor the progress of the conversion and to ensure homeowners were now complying. There would also be a reduction in your basic income as the result of not volunteering your land. Any resistance would land you in jail. To enforce these policies, the President created the Department of Half-Earth Protection, or D.H.E.P.

Peter tapped a button on his watch, causing a low whirring sound in the walls as the side of his house now in the sun lowered the solar panel shades over the windows, while the shaded windows lifted theirs. He gazed out of the unobstructed windows scratching the greying stubble on his cheek. His yard wasn’t going to be his anymore, should I do something about it? He wondered. He doubted that many of the other countries in the Half Earth Summit were even doing their part, that all of the document signing they had broadcasted was probably just for show. Why should I have to give up my property when someone in Germany probably isn’t! And the basic income! He closed his eyes and shook his head. How was that even going to continue working?

His blooming Callery Pears caught his dull green eyes. He had picked them out from a catalog a few years back. A modified Greeper had dug a hole as 15 drones carried them in and plopped them into the holes. He loved their bright, white flowers, but damn did they smell awful, so he preferred to look at them from inside when they were in bloom.

Peter continued gazing at the trees, What should I do?



Marlene


Marlene Farley was already awake when her alarm started going off at 6 a.m. She reached one of her slender hands out to shut it off while the other hand pulled the comforter off. She ran her fingers through her short, black hair, forgetting that she had just chopped it off the night before.

Marlene was 30 when the President announced that he would be restoring vast swaths of barren lawn back into biodiverse, carbon sinks. She was very happy with this decision and in fact was already ahead of the game, having converted her two acres of green wasteland into the tall grass prairie that her cookie cutter subdivision was built upon. Having heard that doing such a simple task could make her yard home to native insects, birds, and reptiles. She had completed her transformation back in 2075. Most Americans have their property covered by turf grass they don’t even use and in terms of fighting climate change, prairies had been underestimated in their ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Her home was on what was previously an outlier of the prairie peninsula that had extended into Michigan, but had largely been plowed under for agriculture and development.

Her friends and neighbors scoffed at it at first, but just a few years after the transition, they were always in awe of the parade of colors her yard provided from June through October. With the plants came all sorts of neat organisms and what followed those were the kids. Kids loved looking for snakes under logs that she had placed as wildlife refugia throughout the prairie. The array of contact lens cameras that had come out the previous year made it much easier for kids to get pictures of whatever they found and send off to population biologists that sat behind computers at the University, modeling the ebb and flow of species, never seeing the organisms themselves. 

When the executive order came down in 2080 Marlene convinced her development that they needed to take advantage of the incentives offered. The community could be free to do what they wanted if they complied and Marlene had already restored her own yard. She was confident she could lead the community to  do the same, so Prairie View Co-op was born.

Now Marlene was 35 and 5 years into their neighborhood’s transition. Frankly, the restoration was easy. Because her neighbors all had Greepers, ripping up the lawns was easy, but it all had to be done in slow steps due to the low supply of seeds/plants relative to the new demand. But she was no longer doing restorations, her new job was more like sales and, like restoration work, she was good at it. Today Marlene was heading out to expand Prairie View Co-op, there was a development that had yet to restore their lawns and they were scheduled to be restored by D.H.E.P. Greepers next week. If Marlene could convince a few of the people to join the Co-op they could do good for the land, and increase everyone’s financial wealth.


Bennet


Bennet Thompson got out of jail yesterday, he did three years for resisting when the Greepers came to rip up his manicured lawn. The government didn’t take kindly to having several Greepers blown up. 

Bennet didn’t care one bit for his country’s abandonment of property rights in favor of unkempt weeds. He had owned a fleet of Greepers that did sod installation and once the ag land got turned into housing developments all he saw was green. He bought a new home with his earnings and had 5 acres of fresh turf rolled out, not because there wasn’t turf there already, but he thought his company’s was better. So when the executive order came down it spelled the end for him and the company. No new turf was being put in and businesses operating as turf managers had to cease operation. This was done to prod people to convert their lawns themselves if they didn’t have a means to maintain their own yard. Bennet watched his livelihood disappear almost overnight.

When he arrived back at his home it was almost unrecognizable. He couldn’t see half the stone facade of his house, everything was six feet tall and messy. Walking from the driveway to the front door, he kept getting hit in the face with plants he couldn’t wait to mow down.

First thing he did when he got home was head to his basement to check on his best kept secret. Although his basement door was fingerprint protected, he knew the government was able to bypass that when he was sent away. Fortunately, he knew the dimwits that would search his house wouldn’t really look too hard for any signs of weapons or other illegal substances; if it wasn’t behind a closed door or in a drawer then it probably wasn’t there. But Bennet had been scheming for some time on this. He walked over to a spicket that was protruding out of the wall near his water heater, put a bucket under it and turned the tight handle counterclockwise until a clear liquid came out of it. Perfect, Bennet thought to himself. 

When the turf industry went belly-up, most companies had excess herbicide they had to part with. The government was forcing them to turn it over to be used exclusively for the exploding restoration sector. But Bennet didn’t much like that idea, so he took it upon himself to adjust some of his pesticide stock forms. After that he excavated a large hole next to his house, dropped in a plastic tank and dumped all the poison he could into it. He backfilled the hole, put his favorite turf down (St. Augustine Grass, of course) and it was like nothing ever happened. He had drilled a hole into the tank and his wall, put a spicket on the side on it so that he could take from it what he needed when he needed. Soon, he was going to be needing all of it; he just needed to get his hands on a couple of Greepers.



The Confluence


Marlene stepped out of the Pod in front of the residence of Peter Naylen’s; she turned to take a look at herself in the Pod’s tinted windows, and to make sure her handgun wasn’t visible on her ankle. After a previous experience with an anti-HalfEarther she took proper precautions. She looked around and saw what seemed to be an endless expanse of green. Despite the fact that no companies were maintaining lawns anymore, people who had their own Greepers still took care of them. Even though she had been on dozens of visits like this, she never got used to the disorienting view. The monochromatic yards were dizzying and she felt so exposed, she was used to being enclosed by the grasses and forbs that kissed the clouds. She never considered herself agoraphobic, but was beginning to think she may be.

Marlene walked up the path to the house, passing through an allee of Callery Pears with the most off putting of smells; a “horticultural atrocity” is what Marlene’s parents always referred to them as. She placed her thumb on the pad next to the door and Peter’s watch buzzed. He looked at his wrist to see a license photo of Marlene Farley with a short summary of who she was. He hit the auto reply on his phone that said “One sec” which was instantaneously broadcast to the small screen Marlene had moments ago placed her thumb on.


Peter eventually came to the door, just in his boxers and a t-shirt.

“Yes?” He curtly said to Marlene without saying hello.

“Hi! Mr. Naylen is it? I was hoping to —“

“Peter. Peter is fine.”

“Oh okay, well then, Peter, my name is Marlene Farley from the Prairie View Co-op. I  received a notification that your property is up for seizure and restoration, is that correct?”

“Uh restored? You mean converted? Yes, that’s what I’ve been told.”

“We like to say restored at the Co-op, much of this land was previously tall grass prairie.”

“Uhmm okay...so what does, uh, you said Peary View? Peary View, do?”

“Prairie View Co-op. Do you mind if I come inside and we discuss this?”

“Well, sure, lemme put some pants on then.”


They walked inside and sat at the dining room table. Marlene began to pull papers and photographs out of her folder that she had been holding.


“I’m wondering why it is that you haven’t already restored your lawn, Mr. Nay—, I mean Peter? When the Prairie View Co-op decided to take it upon themselves to restore our lawns, it has done nothing but good for our community. We’ve been able to increase everyone’s base incomes, we’ve reduced pesticide inputs, increased Grasshopper Sparrow nesting sites and much more. What has been done has been good. Children are outside again and not just for pictures; we have children that are actually contributing to science and showing the government that we are a success and don’t need to be monitored.”

“Frankly Ms. Farley, I don’t care about that stuff. And I have always been against the basic income. Voted against that back in ‘63 as I’m confident it will bankrupt the country in time. I don’t want strangers near my house either.”

“Well you don’t have to take the money, if you become a member of the Co-op you could just give it all to the Co-op. And I’m not sure if you are aware, but if you opt to let the government handle your restoration there will be strangers around constantly. They’re suspicious of the folks who don’t voluntarily contribute to the Half-Earth goal. Drones will be by almost daily and D.H.E.P. Agents will be by monthly knocking on your door to make sure you aren’t up to something. Were you aware of that?”

A scowl came across Peter’s face. He did not like the idea of that one bit.

“So not only are they taking my pristine landscape, but they’re going to harass me about it as well?”


Marlene, held back her reaction when he called his lawn “pristine.”


“It doesn’t have to be all bad, if you just sign a few of these documents, you opt to handover the restoration to Prairie View Co-op. You’ll get a share of the income increase, or you can defer that if you’d prefer, and you won’t be bothered. We can even keep trails through your yard at a minimum, but we will need to make some so it will be easier to make biological assessments in the future.”


Peter sat in silence, staring off. He really thought this country had gone downhill. When did we decide to let the government tell us what to do? And for them to be attacking the most American thing about America: the lawn. He took pride in the way his lawn looked, although he really didn’t do any of the actual work, his Greepers did. Didn’t anyone mourn the loss of the culture that was the lawn?


“Peter? Do you have any plans for the day?”

“Uhm no I don’t have anything planned, but I don’t really like to leave the house these days.”

“I’ve got a Pod all day. Come with me and I’ll show you why Prairie View Co-op is special.”


The ride was brief and silent. Despite Marlene trying to make small talk, Peter had little to no interest in it. Since he didn’t leave his house much, his eyes were glued to the window. They weren’t in the Pod 15 minutes before the scenery changed. The immaculate, emerald lawns gave way to a matrix of yellows, greens, browns, and golds. Peter’s eyes had to adjust as he wasn’t able to follow the mow lines as far, now his view was stunted by taller plants.

The Pod pulled over and they stepped out. Peter looked around and could see houses that appeared to be cut off just at the tops of their first floor windows. Marlene directed his attention to the other side of the street where a semi-Pod was parked and the tailgate of the trailer was down. A crowd was gathered some distance away from it. A loud metallic thunder began to emerge from the inside the trailer and it grew louder. A mass of brown stormed down the ramp and was guided into the prairie by large barricades.


“I knew they would be arriving today, I thought you might like to see them.” Marlene stated as Peter looked in awe. He had seen Bison before behind fences at a farm when he was younger, but this was no farm and there were no fences. “We had been notified that the Co-op had reached an appropriate size for an unbroken prairie that we could let them roam free. We’ve been aiming for this for a few years now and are excited to have them. We tried using Greepers to selectively mow in an attempt to replicate grazing, but it really isn’t the same. If the herd gets big enough the long term plan will be to use them as a food source, lessening our reliance on the “bug burgers” that come out of the city.”

“They are going to be able to just run around the houses?? Couldn’t they hurt someone??” Peter asked in disbelief.

“Oh yes, one ton could level you so quickly. But they all have GPS transmitters that are programmed to send a notification directly to anyone who may be in their vicinity so you have time to leave the area.”


Peter was fascinated, he watched in awe as the Bison ran through the prairie and just kept going.


“C’mon,” Marlene said to Peter as she ducked into the Pod, motioning for him to join here,  “I have something else to show you.”


The Pod cruised down the road, for several minutes before stopping again. Marlene led the way out of the Pod and guided Peter up a set of stairs to a viewing platform. Out in the distance was a cluster of Bur Oaks with an array of shrubs underneath that faded into the surrounding prairie. Both of the Oaks had some kind of cage all around either of them.


“Here, look through these,” Marlene said to Peter as she handed him a pair of binoculars that she kept in her bag for moments like these.


Peter scanned the shrubs, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking for but thought he’d know when he saw it. He focused on the Raspberries, they were fruiting right now and looked delicious even at that distance. Then he realized he wasn’t the only one who thought that they looked tasty. A small group of chicken sized birds was picking the plump fruits right from their prickly stems. But Peter didn’t know what they were.


“Greater prairie-chickens,” Marlene stated, “they were extirpated from the state yeaaaaars ago. We were able to work with a group out in Nebraska to try and reintroduce them to the state. They’ve been here two years and seem to be doing well. Now look at the other cage.”


Peter did as he was instructed and scanned over to the other tree where there were some birds perched in the tree while others were pecking away at the ground.


“Have you ever heard of the Passenger Pigeon?” Marlene asked.


Passenger Pigeon, Passenger Pigeon. It sounded familiar to Peter, something from when he was a kid in school maybe…


“I’ve heard the name before, but what’s the big deal about some pigeons?”

“The last Passenger Pigeon ever recorded alive was a captive bird that died in 1914.”

“So a flock has been hiding out here and no one ever saw them?”

“No, a group of scientists brought them back from extinction and we decided we wanted to trial a release here.”

“Brought them back from extinction?? But how?”

“That is way over both of our heads, Peter.”

They walked back down the steps of the platform and over to the Pod.

“I wanted you to see what you could be a part of, Peter. Good things are happening here, our people are happy, and we are doing our part for Half-Earth.”

“You really don’t get bothered by D.H.E.P. Agents?”

“Never. They know we are doing the best work out there right now.”


Peter looked past Marlene, he could see a few roofs contrasting against the blue, cloudless sky. Then they both turned, hearing something mechanical crossing the road. It was a Greeper, actually it was several Greepers.


“I thought you said you didn’t use those anymore?” Peter asked, confused.

“We don’t…” Marlene responded, pulling out her phone. She had gotten rid of the Greeper App months ago when the Co-op retired their fleet. So she called up Cheri, who used to manage the fleet, to see what was happening.

“Yea, Cheri, we’ve got a troop of Greepers in Q9 that just crossed the street, heading towards Q10. I thought D.H.E.P. came and got ours weeks ago?”

“They did! We shouldn’t have any Greepers on the grounds  at all.”


Marlene and Peter walked towards the spot where they crossed the road and looked into the prairie. There were 10 Greepers in total and they had fanned out after crossing the street, creating a wide swath of trampled prairie behind them. Marlene looked down at the crushed plants and noticed they had a sheen to them. She knelt down and took a whiff. There was a faint odor that reminded her of their early restoration work. That was the smell of adjuvants in herbicide. The Greepers were spraying herbicide all over the Q10 section of prairie. Marlene and Peter looked back across the road and saw that Q9 had mostly been sprayed already.


The Junction Zone


Bennet had heard about Prairie View Co-op while he was in jail. A fellow inmate that was there for similar reasons as Bennet had lived in the community before they relabeled themselves as a Co-op. Charlie was his name and like Bennet he hated that the government was giving its people an ultimatum and worse, that his community would bend to them. Charlie refused to join them, but ultimately lost his property to the government. In response, he blew up a Greeper and shot down a patrol drone. He told Bennet about the Co-ops plan to trial Passenger Pigeons that had been brought back from extinction, stating that the people there thought themselves god-like. Charlie and Bennet had made a plan to incite an insurrection like they had heard about elsewhere. Charlie had weapons stored and Bennet had the poison. The plan would have to change however, as Charlie was an unruly inmate, forcing the prison to extend his stay for several more years. Bennet felt he could not wait that long for Charlie.

Bennet now stood in Charlie’s former garage, looking for the false wall that was described to him. Like Bennet, Charlie knew that in time he would be escorted from his home and that the D.H.E.P. agents would go through his home. Bennet soon found the small arsenal that Charlie had collected over the years and grabbed as much as he could. Unbeknownst to the rest of the Prairie View Co-op, Bennet had been in Q3 where the Bison had been released; he was headed back there.


“Cheri, are you there?” Marlene asked.

“Here, Marlene, what should we do?”

“Queue the drones, Cheri.”

“The drones? Won’t that be too much heat? And with them so close to the aviary, don’t we risk stressing the Pigeons?” Cheri asked, not certain this was the best course of action.

“The Greepers are spraying herbicide all over the goddamn prairie, they can’t be stopped any other way. Who knows what will happen if we let them get too close to the aviary. We’ve got to stop them now and find who is controlling them.”

“Got it Marlene, they’ll be in the sky in 5 minutes.”

“I need to see them in 2.”

Soon another call came through to Marlene.

“Gunshots in Q3, Marlene.”

The Bison! Marlene yelled internally.

Marlene got Cheri back on the line.

“Send a scout drone over to Q3, give it the coordinates of the Bison.”

“Will do, Marlene.”


Peter was standing there, dumbfounded that he was seeing this event unfold. Acres of the prairies had just been destroyed. Would it come back? He found himself asking; suddenly he was concerned for the plants that he had just thought of as weeds before. And the Bison! What about them? 


“GET IN” Marlene was shouting at him from inside the Pod. Not the tone he had expected from her.


Peter complied and they started to speed over to where he had seen the mass of brown stampede from the trailer.


“Won’t the D.H.E.P. Be here soon? The Co-op has drones? Why? What is happening?” Peter peppered Marlene with questions.

“D.H.E.P. Won’t be here because we have deemed them unnecessary and they agreed. Doesn’t make sense for them to be here when they could be elsewhere. Besides, over time, we saved up enough money to get five drones. We haven’t had to use them yet.”

Peter was sensing nervousness in Marlene’s voice, a voice that had been calm and confident when she strode into his house that morning.

The Pod arrived at the road just as the drone was flying overhead. Marlene called Cheri.


“Give me the eyes, Cheri.”


Marlene’s phone went from displaying a video of Cheri to a live feed of the drone. Marlene could now see the trails from the Bison in the prairie, but then saw several mounds of fur laying flat on the ground. All dead. Peter and Marlene both realized silently. Then shots were heard close by, followed immediately by metallic “pings.” Marlene’s feed cut out as Peter and her looked up to see the drone spiralling towards the ground.

Another Pod then came bursting out of the prairie, cutting across the road in a direct line towards the fleet of Greepers that were destroying the prairie in Q10. Peter and Marlene had to dive out of the way otherwise they would have been killed. Although the Pods were programmed to stay on roads, there was a manual override that was designed for emergency situations. Marlene and Peter jumped into their Pod to do the same.


“Why isn’t anyone else in the Co-op doing anything?” Peter questioned angrily.

“Our emergency protocol is to go into lockdown. All residents are to return to their homes and only a handful of people are allowed to be out. We want the drones to handle things, not our people.”


Marlene pressed the accelerator button down on the steering wheel as far as it would go as they raced towards the other Pod. Cheri’s face came across her phone.


“Marlene, we got the Greepers before they got to the aviary, the drones are headed back to the hangar.” Cheri said proudly.

“No, bring them back out, we’re in pursuit of a Pod headed towards the aviary.”

“Can’t do it, they’re out of weaponry and need to be charged.”


Just as Cheri finished her sentence, Marlene whipped the wheel of the Pod to the right to avoid the craters that existed in the place where the Greepers had been the moment the drones rained fire onto them. But as a result of Marlene’s quick reaction, she didn’t notice the huge side of a Greeper that had survived the blast sticking out of the dirt. The Pod hit it and flipped into the crater that she had swerved to avoid. It came crashing down to the bottom, pushing in the whole left side of the vehicle, like a can that had been stepped on.

Peter woke up, head ringing, and looked for Marlene. She was still in the driver’s seat with blood running down from her ear, but she started to move. Peter moved towards her.


“Take this,” Marlene pushed the words out of her mouth as she pulled her gun from her waist band. “Please stop him.”


The gun was heavy in his bleeding hand. He forced the passenger door open, but before stepping out, grabbed Marlene’s bag and quickly put the paperwork in his pocket. He stepped out and crawled up and out of the crater. He started limping towards the path that the other Pod had gone down; he could see the top of the aviary in the distance.

As he got near, he could hear the bullets from the old rifle ricocheting off of the metal caging of the aviary. He must not be able to get in. Peter could see the Pigeons flying from one side of the cage to another, a few were dead on the ground.


“Stop right there!” Bennet said as he spotted Peter moving amongst the grasses; Peter froze.

“Now drop your gun,”

“Okay, okay, I’m putting it down,” Peter responded.

“The government has driven the country into the ground, but what has happened here is disgusting.”

“These people are happy and they are free from the government. They did this because they wanted to. It’s beautiful here.”

“I will destroy everything here and every place that I find that is like this.”

“You won’t make it far.”

“Every inch that gets destroyed is a wi—“


Bennet stopped mid sentence as his eyes caught a mass of people that had gathered; all with guns.


“You’ll be putting your weapon down now,” Marlene’s voice boomed from the group. She emerged from the center dirty and bloody.


Terror could be seen in Bennet’s eyes. Charlie had told him the Prairie View Co-op would be easy to destroy. The people may have drones, sure, but the individuals themselves, Charlie told him, were afraid of their own shadows. Something had changed.


“We are not letting this place or any place be destroyed. Now, put down your weapon.”


Bennet complied without hesitation. A couple of people moved to him and placed him in handcuffs, then ushered him through the crowd and towards the compound where they keep the drones. Peter moved to Marlene and they both walked towards the aviary.


“I thought everyone was supposed to be on lockdown? Peter questioned.

“I guess everyone cares too much about this place to see it destroyed,” Marlene responded.

“What will happen to him?” Peter asked as they watched Bennet being taken away.

“He will be held here overnight until a D.H.E.P. Carrier comes by with other dissenters tomorrow.”

“Looks like only a couple of Pigeons were killed.”

“Yea, but all the Bison are dead. And we have several acres of poisoned prairie. This will take some time to clean up and to reseed”

“Well, this will add some work, but the cut of the income that Prairie View gets should help,” Peter said, handing sheets of paper over to Marlene. Marlene flipped through the pages and saw that “Peter Naylen” was signed to the bottom of every sheet; Peter was now part of the Prairie View Co-op.

“I will get this sent over to D.H.E.P. Right away, Peter. Thank you so much.”

“Maybe let someone else do that, we both should probably get to the hospital.”


Over the next few months, Peter watched as his Callery Pears were cut down, his lawn was let to grow, burned, then seeded over and planted. Come spring, the view was going to be different than before, but he was thrilled to see what might call his new yard ‘home.’


Epilogue

In The Co-op, the character Peter finds himself at a crossroads of whether to do something about the gross heavy handedness of the government or to comply with what they are asking for. Although Peter complies, it’s not so much about being fearful of the government, it’s about creating a community that self-governs itself and creates a positive impact on the ecosystem.

When looking at my story for future considerations, I think the government should steer clear of private land-seizure and find alternate ideas to creating a Half-Earth. Incentivizing it, like what is done in my story, is one idea that should be explored, but that alone will not achieve Half-Earth. I also think that my story presents an idea that doesn’t necessarily place the burden of conservation on people who are already marginalized. Focusing on preserving only the biodiversity hotspots creates unjust issues for people in poverty. The story presents a pathway in which the middle and upper-classes are the people bearing the burden.


I think that there is potential for aspects of my story to happen in the real world. The Prairie View Co-op is more or less a rebranding of the traditional HOA. Rewilding via translocation happens now and DeExtinction is on the cusp of becoming a reality. Basic income is becoming a more popular idea in the mainstream and could benefit communities of low income. I could see it applying to the conservation sector as well since there are few jobs and they pay little relative to many other fields. Defunding the police, in order to fund other community improvements is something that has really been brought to the forefront this summer and I foresee that idea persisting. Alternative meats are becoming more popular in the mainstream, especially considering the environmental degradation caused by industrial agriculture. I didn’t include soy based products in my future because I think that people now have some negative connotations with soy products which may hinder their ability to completely replace meat products. Quorn brand alternative meats is a popular brand made out of fungus that people of all diets seem to enjoy. Insect based foods are popular in non-European based countries and could increase in popularity in places like the U.S. when it’s less obvious that it is insects that are being consumed.


The one aspect of the story that I do not think is likely is that the government would impose a forcible acquisition of private land. This would have too much push back from citizens and politicians, even in a scenario where ecological collapse may be imminent. The story explored the negative outcomes of this: we have resistance in the form of damage to government property, harming wildlife and people, and we have the continuation of the prison-industrial complex.


Overall, I have to say that I do not think I created that radical future that isn’t so far fetched. Aspects of this story are plausible and some ideas could be used towards creating a better world.

Comments

  1. This is an interesting story, Chad. It is making me think.

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