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Diya hated talking to rich people, but she was good at it. She was one herself, or had been, though that sense of isolated entitlement never quite leaves you, she feared. The lingering rich needed most to be made to feel that they were winning, in charge, going of their own free will, even as the sea overtook them. So, that’s what Diya offered them.
“This, my esteemed friends, is the kind of glory your money can buy.”
Diya stood at the prow, shouting to be heard over the wind and the waves and the low hum of the sail yacht’s electric control motor. Her audience sat on cushioned benches bolted to the deck of the boat. They drank mimosas and wore gold ‘VIP’ badges which glinted in the summer sun, an ego-stroking touch Diya was particularly fond of.
She waved at the octagonal structure looming ahead of them. It looked impressively industrial, in that very 20th century way. But was also draped with greenery, vertical crops hanging in sheets from four of the sides. Around the structure the open ocean was broken by smaller works—a farming flotilla of rafts and buoys, beneath which hung yet more crops: kelp, scallops, mussels, fish traps, and soil bags growing a dozen kinds of artisanal aquatic vegetables. It was one of the more impressive offshore agriculture projects in the region, providing significant fish protein to nearby Buenos Aires and helping reduce local acidification levels in the surrounding waters. But Diya wanted to keep her audience’s attention on the rig.
Andrew Dana Hudson ‘Our Shared Storm’.
Meet the author: Andrew Dana Hudson
Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, editor and futurist. His stories have appeared in Slate Future Tense, Lightspeed Magazine, Vice Terraform, MIT Technology Review, Grist, and more. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and longlisted for the BSFA. In 2016 his story Sunshine State won the first Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest, and in 2017 he was runner up in the Kaleidoscope Writing The Future Contest. His 2015 essay On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk has helped define and grow the “solarpunk” subgenre. He has a masters degree in sustainability from Arizona State University, where he is a fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination. His first book, Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures, was published April 2022 from Fordham University Press.
