Now for one thing a bit totally different to distract you this Thanksgiving. io9 has run brief fiction earlier than, from our collaborations with Lightspeed Magazine to excerpts from novels huge and small. But right here’s “Post-Nihilism,” an authentic story of affection and hope in a near-future world ravaged by local weather catastrophe, from Gizmodo’s personal Blake Montgomery. Enjoy! – James Whitbrook, Deputy Editor
Professor Francis Jude arrived from Oregon on the Golden Fields Tower flustered, winded, alone. His practice had been delayed. He ran to the category he was purported to be educating.
Late, he stood in a semicircular lecture corridor earlier than three dozen college students. He was overdressed in a tie and tight blazer of radiant orange. His college students wore impartial tones: loose-fitting jumpsuits of beige, brown, blue, and grey, checkered with extensive pockets. His lengthy arms, although thick and powerful, appeared gaunt and gangly as they prolonged too far out of his orange and blue sleeves. Sweat ran down his angular face. His gold glasses fogged beneath his untrimmed brown hair.
He shuffled by his papers at his desk. Out of breath, he mentioned, “I apologize for my tardiness. Welcome to Historical Philosophy. As I’m sure you read in the course description, our class will delve into philosophical movements while also studying contemporaneous events and societal shifts.
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“We will begin by discussing Post-Nihilism, one of the least-known intellectual undercurrents of the century leading up to 2200, but, I would argue, one of the most essential and most closely tied to history.
“The first examples of what scholars would later call Post-Nihilism were memoirs documenting the authors’ own individual experiences, an uncommon beginning for a philosophical movement. These authors had been actively and intently suicidal as they observed the deteriorating state of the natural world, but they all emerged alive from their severe battles with depression and went on to chronicle their experiences. As Benedict Dymphna wrote—”
A pupil within the entrance row raised her hand.
“Yes?” requested professor Jude.
“I’m sorry professor, but I think we’re out of time. I have to get to my next lecture.”
“Ah, of course. We will pick up on the same topic when class reconvenes.”
The classroom emptied, and professor Francis Jude sat, breathless and alone.
Francis screwed up the braveness to eat dinner on the tower cafeteria, which was open to all each night time. He had not but stocked his fridge, and although town within the wind turbine provided a number of eating places, he thought his probabilities of assembly new mates higher at an extended desk. He signed up for pasta and sat among the many different residents. He had forgotten to vary into the olive-green jumpsuit issued to him and nonetheless sported his fluorescent outfit.
The gargantuan white wind windmill hovering above the flaxen Oakland hills contained a whole neighborhood: residences, colleges, eating places, a hospital, grocery shops, pharmacies, retailers, nightclubs, libraries, a metropolis corridor, municipal businesses, utilities, recreation facilities, companies, a college, and extra. At its base, parks and farms, the one locales of life that now required sprawling horizontal actual property, occupied a restricted circle. Its huge blades thrummed previous home windows in any respect hours. The city in a tube drew its energy from the extensive circuits of the windmill, which cranked three monumental mills in its cranium.
Dozens of mammoth city-cum-turbines like Golden Fields Tower pocked the panorama, and every rested inside its personal 25-mile radius, permitting a large and undeveloped inexperienced divide to stretch between. The framework arose from a inflexible lattice of legal guidelines dictating metropolis construction. Rails linked them just like the roots of aspens. The home windows of a practice automotive would supply passing views of the parched and charred hulls of previous metropolises.
Though the dinner seating order was assigned—every factor and every individual within the compact metropolis had their precise locations and appointed occasions—the chair throughout from Francis remained empty because the desk stuffed.
“It’s Maximilian. He’s often neither here nor there,” mentioned the younger girl sitting subsequent to Francis by a mouthful of noodles. The brown profusion of curlicues on her head bounced as she chewed and spoke, not dissimilar from the pasta on her plate. She wore a tan jumpsuit. Francis caught the aroma of the astringent sauce by his hooked nostril. She continued, “If you don’t tell the quartermasters where you’re eating, they sign you up for the cafeteria by default. Maxi never goes to restaurants, but he doesn’t often show up here either.”
“I’ve seen him stumbling around the hallways coming back from the turbine,” mentioned a person in a close-by chair. He wore jumpsuit the darkish brown of tree bark. In a hissing whisper, he mentioned, “It’s Magentol.”
“Really?” mentioned the lady.
“Magentol?” requested Francis.
“The turbine lubricant that makes you hallucinate like you’re in a soft dream. Makes you loopy and talkative. Makes your body feel like it’s calm and glowing. Best you’ve ever felt. Addictive as anything. Surely people used it in your tower. It’s everywhere,” the person replied.
“Ah. In my old home we simply called it Grease,” mentioned Francis. “And its devotees ‘Grease monkeys.’”
The man mentioned, “We call them that, too, but be careful. Those words will get you into a fight. It’s more like a slur here.”
“I’ve never seen it in person. I heard it does horrible things to you,” whispered the lady.
“That is true,” mentioned Francis. “My tower was evacuated due to a rapidly spreading pathogen, but those who had already been infected were forced to stay. The quarantined residents often turned to Grease. Their hands and feet calcified, not unlike sclerosis. It was very sad and painful for those who had to remain and those who had to leave them behind.”
“What happened to them?” requested the lady.
“They’re still there. Most succumbed to the mania of Grease overdoses and killed themselves,” mentioned Francis. “The despair at their circumstances drove them further into their addictions.”
Francis returned to his house to seek out that the plumbing under his rest room sink, unsupervised and rambunctious, had boiled over in his absence. Though the water had receded, a skinny brown residue remained. He discarded his educating garments in favor of a sleeveless shirt and tried to wash it away with the skinny bandana he had introduced with him. The anemic cloth failed him, and he grew annoyed once more with how little the authorities had allowed him to deliver with him from his house. His house had solely a mattress and one chair. With a sigh and an exclamation of disgust audible two items over, he left for the communal cleansing provide closet.
Within the big storeroom, Maximilian Kolbe slumped towards a darkish wall in a ragged posture. His head swayed to a wild, invisible tango as he drank from a hefty, conspicuous flask. His shaggy blonde hair glinted even in gloom. The telltale liquid merriment sheened his smiling lips a reddish purple.
Francis heard Maximilian’s gulps as he entered. The saccharine scent of Magentol stuffed his nostril—cleaning soap and rotting fruit. “Hello? Is someone in here?” he requested. He flipped the sunshine swap and introduced down jarring fluorescent beams.
“Piss off. And turn that off,” mentioned Maximilian.
Francis didn’t know the place the provides he wanted have been shelved. He flicked the swap down in hopes of currying favor.
“Where would I find disinfectant and sponges?” he requested.
“I’m a repairman in work hours, but I’m off now. I’m not a janitor at any time”—right here Maximilian slurred—“Good luck finding a cleaning closet librarian.”
“Why are you in here?” requested Francis.
“Because not many people come in here. When they do, they’re in and out. No one comes to a cleaning closet for a leisurely stay, so no one bothers me,” mentioned Maximilian.
“Your apartment is private, too,” answered Francis.
“That’s true, but somehow it feels more sad to drink there alone than do it in here, and the clubs are closed. I’m older than you, I think, and I remember when I could drink in my own damn yard, whether I was alone or with my friends,” Maximilian mentioned.
“Were you the empty seat at dinner yesterday?” Francis requested.
“Good guess, glasses.”
“My name is Francis Jude.”
“I don’t care,” Maximilian mentioned as he took a deep draught. Bright liquid dribbled by his thick beard and splattered on his chest. The drink gleamed like neon blood. “This stuff kills my appetite. One good thing about it. You may be younger than I am, but I’ve still got the body I had a decade ago.”
At Maximilian’s comment, Francis seen the unzipped crag within the different man’s jumpsuit, black within the mild of the dim alcove, that opened to the underwear at his waist. The wiry muscle tissue have been certainly there. Francis stirred.
He requested, “What is it you’re drinking?”
“Come on, you know. I’m sure people chugged the turbine cleaning fluid in your old tower, too. Want any?” requested Maximilian.
“You call it Magentol here, I hear? Why do you take it?” Francis sat on a creaking crate. He didn’t assume he would ever study the place the provides have been, although as his eyes adjusted, he loved Maximilian increasingly. He might make out the power of the repairman’s jawline and neck, the veins that led into the bushy chest.
“I’ve got an endless supply of it as a turbine repairman. And because we’ll destroy the whole world someday, just like we almost did before. We’ll finish the job. I’ll be done with it then. Or maybe I’ll be done with life. But while I’m here on earth, I like to hear music, to dance… ‘To and fro in the seven chambers, there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams, and these, the dreams, writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as an echo to their steps…’”
“Poe. ‘The Masque of the Red Death,’” mentioned Francis.
“Right on the money there, Dr. Brains. That’s the best description of what this red-pink mess feels like. Nothing beyond me and the party. What I see is different every time, something like another line from that story: ‘There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.’ It’s a ball for one.”
“Do you dance yourself?” requested Francis.
“I am dancing, can’t you see?” replied Maximilian.
“You are sitting.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” mentioned Maximilian. “Right now I’m two-stepping down the line with quite a few handsome cowboys.”
“That does sound lovely,” mentioned Francis.
“You might be the first person to say so. Everyone else tries to scurry away when they see what I’m sipping,” mentioned Maximilian. “You sure you don’t want some?”
“No, thank you. But I do love dancing,” mentioned Francis. “I have been looking forward to your tower’s party on Saturday. We did not have them in my tower for fear of spreading infections.”
“Yours was the bad one in Oregon?” requested Maximilian.
“Yes. I left before it was declared a pandemic,” Francis mentioned. “Now it is locked down. It grows less and less likely anyone will ever leave or be permitted to return.”
“I’m sorry,” mentioned Maximilian. “That’s a damn shame.”
“Thank you. It has been very difficult leaving my family and my old university behind,” mentioned Francis.
“Will you dance with me?” requested Maximilian. “I like how your arms look in that shirt. You seem quite strong.”
“What?”
“I asked if you’d do a dance with me.”
Francis had anticipated to ogle Maximilian from afar. The prospect of touching flustered him. He mentioned, “I, uh, I don’t, uh…”
“Oh, fine, never mind, professor. The sponges you need are on the second shelf up to the left.”
“I did not mean to offend, I simply, uh, I…” Francis grabbed on the disinfectant and scrubbers. Several tumbled down round his embarrassed head. He flushed within the darkness as he scooped them up.
“Thank you for helping me, Mr…?”
“Maxi. Maximilian Mary Kolbe.” The slouching man drank deeply. “Everybody seems to have some plumbing issues their first days, and I’ve cleaned up more of that poop-hued scum I’m sure you’ve got than I care to remember. See you around.”
Francis, nonetheless blushing, returned to his house.
Professor Jude continued his first lecture in his second class. A dozen college students in a semicircle scribbled notes.
“The dominant theme of Post-Nihilism is ecological devastation. The immolation of the natural world we see all around us poisoned the writers against themselves, as they saw no hope for humanity and therefore no hope for themselves as individuals. The movement’s most famous practitioner, Benedict Dymphna, coined the phrase ‘The Unworlding’ to describe both his own deteriorating mental state and the fraying of the natural world. The term is the title of his best-known work. Dymphna found himself suffering inner crises that reflected the destruction of the earth around him, mental breakdowns induced more by the events of the world than the ontological frictions of consciousness, though he was not so circumspect at the time. One of his most famous vignettes described him going for the same morning walk every day but returning home covered in more and more ash than the day before. The darkness of the burning world quite literally weighed on him and clouded his sight.
“The writers explained their post-depression emotional and mental state as a synthesis. Theirs was a newfound enthusiasm for life that recognized their previous despondency. Each rejected the label of ‘optimist’ with vehemence and disdain. One writer, assuming the name of the poet Mary Oliver as an homage, described her emotions as ‘tempered, blackened happiness,’ ‘singed sincerity,’ and ‘burnt joy.’ Many began to see the phenomenological world in similar terms. Another, Teresa José, was more blunt, calling her approach ‘mutant pragmatism.’ Dymphna popularized bodily metaphors among major voices in the movement. The most common comparisons in his work are to scar tissue or to broken bones healing. My favorites, though, are his descriptions of eyes: ‘Sight and the sky are blinding after cataracts. How brilliant, how blue, how beautiful.’
“Academics soon noticed the themes of the memoirs and codified them in literary analysis papers, which gave rise to strident critiques of the philosophy the writers expressed. The new worldview had struck a nerve.
“Post-Nihilism was itself a reaction to other ideas, the antithesis to a preexisting thesis. The memoirists and then the literary theorists found ethics rooted in despair to be cold comfort in the face of worldwide environmental catastrophe. The ideas of Existentialism and Absurdism, for example, proved useless when faced with a literal, global crisis of existence rather than one rising from within the self. As Dymphna defiantly wrote, ‘There will be no meaning in our world only if there is no survival.’ He was at once bleak and bold.”
Francis arrived early on the all-tower occasion too early. He dressed within the formal style of his tower—loudly patterned jacket and tie—however as extra residents filtered in, he realized that they wore cleaned variations of the identical muted, informal garments they donned on daily basis.
He approached Maximilian, who wore his similar soiled black work jumpsuit, matte however for the shiny stains left by turbine restore.
“May I lead you in a dance?” the professor requested.
“Hey there, glasses. So you’ve got dancing feet now?” requested Maximilian.
“You seem less indisposed,” mentioned Francis. He hoped the joke didn’t poke too exhausting. He questioned if the tower’s gossiping residents would stare as they joined arms and commenced the steps of the dance.
“And you seem less embarrassed,” replied the smirking repairman.
“Both can be true,” mentioned Francis.
“Fair enough. I’ll give you one dance, but I’m leading,” mentioned Maximilian.
Francis smelled chemical sweetness on the opposite man’s breath. “Are you high?”
Maximilian didn’t reply.
“Why do you take it?” requested Francis.
“I told you, I like to dance,” Maximilian replied.
“But we have music here,” mentioned Francis. “And won’t you lose your legs?”
“Do you know how ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ ends, professor?”
Goosebumps pricked the again of Francis’ neck. “The guests of the prince die of the plague.”
“Yeah, they do,” mentioned Maximilian.
“The allusion hits somewhat close to home, so to speak,” mentioned Francis.
“What? Oh, my god. I’m so sorry, professor. That’s not where I meant to go.” Maximilian missed a step. Their left ft bumped one another.
Francis sighed. “Then what did you mean?”
“The ebony clock is the only thing left standing, towering over all the dancers and ticking the time away as everyone falls,” mentioned Maximilian.
“And?”
“And that’s what’s going to happen to us. The windmill will loom over us, white as death. I’m a fair bit older than you, I see in the light. I used to reside in a proper city. These towers may be a big shift from how we lived before, but they don’t really do anything. They’re just a bandage on gangrene. We’re the same destructive, sicko species as when we nearly ended the earth. So might as well have a magenta drink while you can, right?”
Francis kissed him. The professor didn’t wish to reply the cost. Maximilian reciprocated the love.
Two weeks later, professor Jude mentioned, “Good afternoon, students. We will be continuing our discussion of Post-Nihilism today.”
“The writers we have covered are tied to a specific generation of Americans, one that lived in both the country as it was before The Unworlding, largely uncaring and indifferent to the natural world’s status, even as our environment descended into chaos, and as it is today, far more concerned with the global harmony of humanity and the earth. The most prominent and visible example, of course, is the reimagining of our cities inside massive windmills.”
Maximilian swaggered into the classroom by the door behind Francis. His heavy boots hit the ground with declarative thuds as he sauntered to the again row.
“Students, this is, uh, this is my boyfriend, Maximilian Kolbe. I did not expect him here today. Welcome.”
Francis’ college students lit up on the prospect of their professor’s private life interfering with their class. Their glee made Francis nervous. Maximilian took no discover, gave a languid wave.
Francis continued, “You see the societal shift in attitude most evidently in the way our cities are now structured. In California and the western United States, for instance, we live in densely populated wind turbines for three primary reasons: to minimize any use of fossil fuels, to maximize the use of scarce water resources, and to mitigate fire danger. We originally implemented interstices of 25 miles between each tower so as to allow for recovery from the huge rashes of fires that plagued our region. Over time, however, we discovered that the ecological recuperation that the spacing permitted benefited human beings as well as the earth as water and air became cleaner. The integration of cities into cohesive units, though a bumpy migration, engendered a more egalitarian understanding and led to more comprehensive care for citizens overall. Though sensitivity towards the planet’s climate may prevail among your young cohort and even among much of mine, I would advise you not to take it for granted, as it came at a great cost.”
“Ha!” Maximilian barked amusing within the again row. “Kids, let me pose a question to you.”
“Mr. Kolbe, please, I am not finished with the—”
“Do any of you believe this junk? That we’ve moved past what happened to the world into a sunnier future where everyone won’t kill themselves?” he requested.
The college students, a frozen Greek refrain, didn’t reply.
“Anybody want some Magentol? It’ll make you imagine the world isn’t ending. You’ll feel better, I promise,” Maximilian requested his rapt, speechless viewers. He pulled a flask from a pocket and guzzled. He leered on the college students, and his tooth glowed pink.
Francis flamed purple. He stood stiff behind his desk. He mentioned, “Students, we will finish this lecture in next week’s class. Do not forget the reading assignment.”
“No, stay! I want to hear whether you believe humanity has any kind of future. I certainly don’t,” mentioned Maximilian.
The college students didn’t transfer.
Francis swept the papers from his desk in a loud gesture that turned the heads of all the class.
“Leave, now!” he shouted, trembling.
They shuffled forth. Some left their books of their muffled hurry. Maximilian stared at Francis and felt ashamed.
“Why did you come to my class? And why did you do it high?” requested Francis. His query echoed by the lecture corridor.
Maximilian didn’t reply. He regarded down.
“Answer my question,” mentioned Francis.
Maximilian didn’t meet his boyfriend’s gaze.
“This is where I work. I cannot have you disrupting my class with drunken rants, embarrassing me, and offering my students Magentol.”
Maximilian, so gregarious a second earlier than, mentioned nothing as he watched the ground.
“Answer me, you stupid Grease monkey!” Francis yelled. “Or are you good for nothing but turning screws and drinking? Did that slime make you mute?”
Maximilian regarded up in awe and ache. Francis noticed, for the primary time, disgust and harm overtake his boyfriend. Maximilian’s face fell once more, this time right into a wounded glare as his shoulders rose in a gesture of safety. Where earlier than there had been a everlasting and assertive thrust of the chin, there was now solely downtrodden, aching rage. He stood and walked to the exit.
“Maxi, wait!”
The repairman didn’t. He slammed the door of the classroom.
Francis returned to his house anticipating a tirade from the opposite man. Only a observe met him.
“Don’t call, and don’t ever call me a Grease monkey again.”
Francis discovered Maximilian sitting alone on the scene of the occasion, now an empty room, swilling and slumping, leaning back and forth on high of an empty folding desk.
Maximilian didn’t flip to Francis when the latter got here in. He stared out a window on the stars.
“I can’t believe in that Post-Nihilism stuff, Francis. This world’s just as bad and messed up and doomed as it was before,” he mentioned.
“You have survived greater disasters than I, Maxi. Do you see no power or appeal in returning to hope?” Francis requested
“You wouldn’t understand. What you think of as a new day I see as the slow ending of my life and the world. You don’t know what it was like moving from a city to whatever this tower is.”
“I left many people I loved behind as well,” mentioned Francis.
“You know I used to be married to one of the writers from your class?” requested Maximilian. “I read your syllabus one night while you were asleep. Benedict Dymphna. My Benny. He’s the one who read ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ to me. I never would’ve picked it on my own, but sometimes, if I glug enough of this muck, I hear him saying, ‘All is still, and all is silent, save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand.’”
“I did not know that,” mentioned Francis.
“I thought everyone had forgotten about him except me,” mentioned Maximilian. He took one other drink. “I haven’t seen a copy of his book in years. One that wasn’t mine, anyway. I kept them all. They’re in a sealed box. I can’t bear to open it, but I can’t bear to throw it out.”
Francis mentioned, “His work is very much alive. He is the first Post-Nihilist I talk about because his descriptions of his project and the aims of his writing capture the movement so well.”
Maximilian mentioned, “Do you know what happened to him after he stopped writing? After he put down all those killer lines about hope in that book you teach?”
Francis, silent, put his arm round Maximilian.
“He couldn’t stand how much the world was changing. He was so depressed, then he wasn’t, then he was again,” Maximilian mentioned. “He wouldn’t move into a tower with me, wouldn’t give up our life together in Oakland even as it fell apart around us. Finally, he was forced to. Our old apartment building burned down, so he came to my little cubby in the turbine. I was already working there. He saw that I was happy, and then we both were for a while. That’s when he wrote ‘The Unworlding,’ that little intermission between his despairs. I like to think I was his inspiration. He’s the one who gave me the nickname Maxi. I called him Benny.
“We would drink Magentol together. He’s how I got into it, but he would always drink more of it than I would. We didn’t know how bad it was for you then. It made his moods worse, and he would rant and rage around the tower. It was embarrassing, and now I’m just like him. He grew to hate it. He would quit and relapse, quit and relapse, always so depressed and angry with himself. I tried to make him stop drinking… Then one day I came home and he was gone.” Maximilian grew quiet.
Francis knew what got here subsequent. He answered the silence: “He drank so much he threw himself from the tower.”
Maximilian started to weep. “I’m sorry I ruined your class. I really made an ass of myself,” he mentioned. “I don’t want to drink this stuff, but I can’t stop. I don’t want to lose my hands. I don’t want to lose my legs. But I can’t stop. I’ve been so lonely without Benny.”
His sobbing intensified, and he buried his face in Francis’ shoulder.
“I am sorry for what I said to you after class, Maxi. It was cruel,” mentioned Francis.
“Do you tell your students what happened to him? To Benny?” Maximilian requested into Francis’ shirt.
“I do not,” mentioned the professor.
Maximilian drew again. “Why not? How can you keep that from them?”
“Dymphna meant to impart hope at the time he wrote ‘The Unworlding,’ no matter what he may have felt or chosen to do afterward. You know that. Life is very long. Hope is vital, but likewise is it fragile. We must learn the story before we learn why the story may not be the whole truth. If my students are to understand the almighty impulse that powers Post-Nihilism—and I want them to, I desperately do—Benedict’s work must stand as a beacon. He wrote about a willingness to endure even the end of the world. His books remain an inspiration, even if his life does not.”
“‘We must hope to live.’ He would say that to me a lot. I didn’t believe it most days. Sometimes I did, and those days were better than the others,” mentioned Maximilian.
“Exactly,” mentioned Francis.
“I’m glad you know him,” mentioned Maximilian. “You’re not too jaded to dance, and you read, and you’ve got some hope. Benny would’ve liked you.”
“Will you dance with me, Maxi? And stay here with me?” requested Francis. He stood to plug in a speaker.
Maximilian put down his bottle and rested his head on Francis’ shoulder. The two stepped collectively slowly. Francis led. Maximilian sighed with aid.
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