My upcoming book, Until We Met Again, is a time travel love story set against the backdrop of a post-collapse society. I was knee-deep in learning about climate change when I wrote it, hoping to understand this thing we call the Anthropocene and what parameters we could be working with as time rolls on.
It wasn’t the most uplifting subject of study, but it did help with figuring out how to build a ‘post-collapse’ world, a society of people getting by while waiting for their time travel mission to succeed. This nerdy topic is utterly fascinating to me, since it combines the disciplines of innovation and maintenance to secure human survival and well-being – contrast this with today where, often to our own detriment, innovation tends to overshadow maintenance and care.
Anyway, I wanted to share some facets of my fictional futuristic universe, in case you find this topic interesting too 💜
Small camps that grow enough food to sustain their population
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, cities “cover only 2-3% of land, [but] account for 75% of natural resource consumption, up to 80% of energy consumption, 70% of greenhouse gas emissions, and 50% of waste production.” In light of this, a futuristic city didn’t feel quite right for a post-collapse society.
The place my protagonist calls home is instead a village-sized camp, one large enough to shelter the descendants of disaster survivors, and small enough to sustain itself on what it can gather and produce in the safer areas of surrounding terrain – most of which is underground, protected from any bad air and harsh weather that blows their way 🌬️
Unlike the beautiful long-ago deserts of the hinterlands, this one palliatively sustains what life remains on it, below it. Our small subterranean populations—dispersed, desperate and dwindling—barely eke out survival on this dying world. The wind comes from the west this evening, and the crackle of home is a soft, sparse patter. For now, the air is safe to breathe.
Contact parties: people sharing resources
Scattered across the country, these camps need a way to stay in touch and share resources. Though not completely technologically challenged, the survivor society considers it too expensive to stay constantly connected the way we are today.
The main technology for staying in touch over distance is good old-fashioned foot travel, bearing heartfelt messages along with extra supplies and manpower 👣
We first met at the bar on the other side of the refectory. You arrived with a contact party from one of the protein supply camps along the southwest coast. You brought a letter from my sister. You asked for me by name.
Oh yes, they travel back in time
My protagonist is gloomy about her life at camp. To the point where I’m almost sorry to subject you to her despondence, despite all the hope around her. But of course, I’m looking at this from a real-world point of view, where people like you and me can’t just go back in time to change stuff.
But she can. In this fictional world, where people weave furnishings from mushroom bark and human hair, volunteers willingly go back in time to make tiny changes, enacting big and hopefully positive impacts.
I’m not convinced we’d actually do something like this if we had the technology for it. We’d lose a lot by returning to the past too often. I imagine we’d get stuck, become culturally stunted, with future generations deprived of the chance to dream their own dreams.
Then again, maybe we’ve already lived out a disastrous future, and the present we’re experiencing now is a result of someone having gone back to save us from living the worst possible version of our lives.
Until We Met Again: A Time Travel Novelette by JL Peridot
A time traveller absconds to the past in search of her lost love.
One word: my name. A call from Origin through the neural lace grafted to my brain and nerves, connecting me to another place in another time. A reminder of what I’m here to do.
I clutch a bottle cap; its sharp metal edges ground me in the present. It’s funny, don’t you think, to consider this moment the present, as if the past and future I came from aren’t supposed to exist? If you were here, I’d ask. You’d smile and kiss my forehead and say you love my nonsense questions.
But you’re not here. They want me to forget you ever were.
💖 Preorders open until 27th October 💖
JL Peridot writes love letters to the future on devices from the past. Visit jlperidot.com for the full catalogue of her work or subscribe to Dot Club for a collection of her tiny stories.
