And Lately, The Sun: Speculative Fictions for a Climate-Thrashed World

By Calyx Press

Bushland is burning. The Arctic is shedding ice. And around the world, people are imagining futures which function.

Gritty, graceful, commonsense or whimsical, these twenty tales probe at how we could build a working world using the resources available to us - the natural, the social, the political, and the technological.

Some of these stories invite readers to bask in the warmth of a bright tomorrow, from tree dwellings in India, to restoration projects in Milano, to rewilded suburbs in the East of Australia. Other stories burn with spirit in the face of adversity: smallholders in Botswana adjust to international treaties; gamers tackle reality using virtual tools. And there are shadows, too, in tech suburbs where you can buy eco-cigarettes, or on tree plantations where family members won't toe the line.

And Lately, The Sun features award-winning and emerging authors. Stories by Vrinda Baliga, Dabilo M. Mokobi, Eileen Haley, Illimani Ferreira, Holly Schofield, Sarena Ulibarri, Tais Teng, Derek Des Anges, Eric Del Carlo, Andrew Dana Hudson, Jay Springett, Lauri Kubuitsile, Kristen Schroeder, Adam Berman, Domnica Radulescu, Sofia Mariah, Philip Berry, Andrew Grell, Commando Jungendstil, Tales From The EV Studio, PSC Willis, and Jacob Ashton.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Calyx Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648975007

Calyx Press

[Calyx Create Group] is an international team of writers, science fiction enthusiasts, media types, and people who don’t want to see humanity crash and burn. We’re here to talk about how our future’s going to work.The group is registered in Australia as a non-profit association for the purpose of supporting, generating, and disseminating creative works on themes of science, technology and the future. Our pilot project is And Lately, The Sun, a short story anthology of climate fiction.Calyx acknowledges the traditional custodians of the places where members reside throughout Australia, as well as traditional people around the world. We recognise their continuing connection to land, sea, and waters, and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging.

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AndLatelyTheSun_cover_100pc.jpg

And Lately, The Sun

Copyright © 2020 Calyx Create Group

Our contributors assert their moral right to be known as the author of their individual work.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN 978-0-6489750-0-7

Cover design and layout by Narelle Robson-Petch, Third Arm Design Studio

Cover bee images by Marian Anbu at Pixabay

Published by Calyx Create Group

P.O. Box 317, Lutwyche, Qld, AUSTRALIA, 4030

email: [e-mail]

email: [e-mail]

https://latelythesun.com

Calyx acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands where members reside throughout Australia. We recognise their continuing connection to land, sea, and waters, and pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. The team also recognises indigenous people around the world.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Roots © 2020 Vrinda Baliga

Stubborn As Dirt © 2020 Holly Schofield

Equinox Copyright © 2020 Eileen Haley

Equatorial Ice © 2020 Illimani Ferreira

The Footprint © 2020 Dabilo M. Mokobi

Inviting Disaster © 2020 Sarena Ulibarri

Buitendyks where the night-gulls yodel © 2020 Tais Teng

Light From The Darkness © 2020 Derek Des Anges

Chasers © 2020 Eric Del Carlo

In The Storm, A Fire © 2020 Andrew Dana Hudson and Jay Springett

The Price of Principles © 2020 Lauri Kubuitsile

Fondelac © 2020 Kristen Schroeder

Egg Tooth © 2020 Adam Berman

The Egg Garden © 2020 Domnica Radulescu

The Forgetting © 2020 Sofia Mariah

The Continuity © 2020 Philip Berry

"2321: Road Trip © 2020 Andrew Grell

Under Pressure © 2020 Commando Jugendstil and Tales From The EV Studio

I Take Credit For Saving The World © 2020 PSC Willis

From The Rooftops © 2020 Jacob Ashton

Contents

Foreword

Notes on style

Roots by Vrinda Baliga

The Footprint by Holly Schofield

Equinox by Eileen Haley

Equatorial Ice by Illimani Ferreira

Stubborn as Dirt by Holly Schofield

Inviting Disaster by Sarena Ulibarri

Buitendyks where the night-gulls yodel by Tais Teng

Light From The Darkness by Derek Des Anges

Chasers by Eric Del Carlo

In the Storm, a Fire by Andrew Dana Hudson and Jay Springett

The Price of Principles by Lauri Kubuitsile

Fondelac by Kristen Schroeder

Egg Tooth by Adam Berman

The Egg Garden. An Old Tale For A New World. by Domnica Radulescu

The Forgetting by Sofia Mariah

The Continuity by Philip Berry

2321: ROAD TRIP by Andrew Grell

Under Pressure by Commando Jungendstil and Tales From The EV Studio

I Take Credit for Saving the World by PSC Willis

From the Rooftops by Jacob Ashton

About the Publisher

About the Authors

Foreword

I heard there’s a place called Octopolis, under the Australian sea. There, a group of octopuses has turned such items as beer bottles, fishing gear, and various shells liberated from their prey, into building materials for an underwater city. The resulting territory attracts an entourage of interrelated fish species; it’s a cultivated ecosystem, a deliberate enrichment, an engineered world. Learning of this struck a chord in me, though I couldn’t explain why.

I feel much the same way as I try to describe how these twenty stories resonate with each other. Our main concept seemed simple in the beginning—we asked to be shown functioning futures despite the climate crisis we’re faced with. It evoked the idea of a beehive, a predictable and organised structure built by individuals in concert, but the idea of function, it turns out, is a slippery sucker, and the more I try to put things into words, the more aware I become of the anthology’s contradictions, the way one tale swims against another; the fact we’ve invited the ordinary to sit alongside both the sublime and the disturbing; the extent to which the brief contorts itself in each story, in sometimes unexpected ways.

And yet, from a deep pool of excellent submissions, these tales have moved in together. The best way I can explain it seems to be to shed my focus on stories as things built by diligent workers, or (perhaps) cooked up by artisans and presented for our delighted consumption. Not that this is a framing without some use to it—just as a beehive has its wax as well as its honey, or a well-rounded meal has vitamins and proteins, so a set of stories might have varied ingredients—but this doesn’t quite capture my view. In any case, it’s time to talk less about the world in terms of things and more in terms of beings, participating in complex ecosystems together, checking and balancing each other but flourishing as a whole.

Let me say it like this then: these stories form an ecosystem together. There is symbiosis, heterogeneity, evolution, parasitosis, commensalism, apoptosis, transformation—the mechanisms of nature. It’s a delicate and subtle collaboration, occasionally sombre or monstrous, more often optimistic, but in any case constructive. Less the beehive we were aiming for, maybe, than an Octopus city, with shellfish, bottle caps, and tentacles forming a strange but vigorous whole.

—Calyx, November 2020

______________________________

Two good articles on Octopolis are: Smart Oceans, Alien Times by Bognor Konior, and Why octopuses are building small 'cities' off the coast of Australia, by Annalee Newitz.

Notes on style

We told writers we’d accept stories in a wide range of vernaculars. In keeping with this, we’ve chosen to respect established differences in spelling, punctuation, and other mannerisms of language, and to limit the use of italics to mark words as foreign.

Roots

By Vrinda Baliga

On the very day that Shiuli’s home pregnancy test showed two distinctive red lines, their home sprouted its first branch.

Ankur and Shiuli stood hand-in-hand at the window of their bedroom, in a bit of a daze, staring at the small protrusion that had appeared just above it. If they did not know what to make of this new addition to their home, the new addition to their family was even more overwhelming. But there they were, as real as they could get—the branch with a small sprinkling of compound leaves, and the fact of the tiny foetus growing in Shiuli’s womb.

Extracts from preeminent botanist Dr Juhi Banerji’s ‘Roots: A History of Tree Dwelling’:

Plants were the first world conquerors. They colonized the planet, undeterred by climatic or geographical challenges, their empire stretching from the Arctic tundra to the Saharan desert. Masters of adaptation, they were willing to change form, shape, size, behaviour, appearance, habits...anything, so long as they could continue with their expansion. Thus, they consolidated their dominion over land, water, and even air to an extent, their majestic crowns rising high into the troposphere.

As with any empire, there have been conflicts and there have been collaborations, but on the whole, Pax Botanica has been a benign rule that ushered great prosperity upon the planet. Right from the Devonian Period when they began their first proper campaign to carve out their rightful place on Earth, the vision and strategies of these green conquerors have spanned millennia, far beyond the limited understanding and lifespans of their vassals. And yet, they have always preferred to rule in discretion, keeping to the background and letting others take centre stage. Perhaps that is why they have often been so grossly underestimated.

For the longest time, and contrary to all available evidence, we humans did not even concede to them the status of fully living beings, no different from any others. Because they did not learn, communicate, love, nurture, show friendship and companionship, or emote in ways our limited perspectives could recognize, we harboured the misconception that they could not do any of these things, period. Individuals, species or genus—to us, they were mere resources, yet another bounty of Earth for our kind to exploit.

I have spent my lifetime studying trees. My interest is both scientific and philosophical. It is also deeply personal: my grandparents, sixty years ago, were among the first tree dwellers, and I have grown up literally in the lap of these majestic beings...

Ankur hated the idea of moving out of his home. He would one day credit this very move for putting him on a path that would intersect with Shiuli’s. But that would come much later. For now, he was just a teen, and which teen likes to be uprooted from his circle of friends to start life afresh in a new neighbourhood? Especially when it is clear that the move is not going to be a step up the ladder, but in fact several steps down.

The downward slide had started with his father losing his job at the company designing robotic arms for industrial units. No, he did not lose his job to the robots themselves (though that might have happened eventually). The company was shuttered when many of their clients shut down, unable to cope with the steep Green Tax.

Rahul and Mira Banerji had always tried to do their best by their son, even as the vicissitudes of life had taken a toll on their marriage. Now, however, with their savings stretching to only a couple of months’ rent, there seemed to be no way to fend off impending destitution, and their frustration and despair frequently found release in bitter quarrels and arguments. The very air in the house bristled with tension.

That was when the ad appeared in the newspaper.

Free housing for families willing to participate in an experimental housing project. Interested parties may contact Kalpavriksh Inc.

Kalpavriksh? Mira said, sceptically. Never heard of them. And what do they mean by ‘experimental’?

Well, they call themselves ‘Kalpavriksh’, so maybe we should go see which of our wishes they’ll fulfil, Rahul quipped, though even he could not hide his cynicism.

Huh, Mira muttered, if it’s free, it’s probably a rabbit hutch in the middle of nowhere.

Ironically, tree dwelling, which changed the face of human habitation in the span of a few short decades, traces its history to very humble beginnings at a small biotech start-up in Bengaluru, India. The start-up was small and agile, run by a team of diehard idealists who weren’t afraid to experiment even in the face of multiple failures. Kalpavriksh, they called themselves, after the wish-fulfilling tree of the Hindu faith.

Kalpavriksh was born in extremely challenging times. The Green Tax was spawning large-scale economic collapse and poverty, indirectly ruining the very people it was created to save. And yet, even its stringent fines and levies were unable to slow the spiralling global descent into environmental disaster. Bengaluru had long since shrugged off its title of ‘Garden City’ and was now, like most other cities, a concrete hellhole, choked with pollution. Whatever little greenery remained was fast losing ground to housing, infrastructure, transportation, industry. The city was a technology hub, but ironically, the very basics of survival—food, water, even air—were becoming too poisonous to sustain life. It was perhaps the greatest incongruity of those times that the grander our technological progress, the more our homes, our cities, our very civilization, seemed to be coming unmoored, to be losing the very roots that anchored them.

But what if...? What if this process of creating housing, infrastructure and industry could be repurposed? Repurposed to perform the role of the green cover it was displacing? What if concrete jungles could be made to function like living, breathing forests?

How many great ideas have begun with a series of what-ifs flung into the vacuum that science has not yet ventured into, how many answers prospected in the dark mines that success has not yet illuminated?

Suffice it to say that, in attempting to answer their particular set of what-ifs, Kalpavriksh managed to hack one of the most fundamental life processes on the planet: Photosynthesis.

The Banerjis signed up for a site visit expecting the worst, and they were not disappointed.

The site was a backwater, way out of town, with nothing to break the monotony of the bleak landscape except the ten squat blocks of apartments. The exteriors had not seen a speck of paint. Nor, as they soon discovered, had the interiors. The walls, the floor, the ceiling—everything was made of exposed green blocks of a weird, rough texture.

However, each 2BHK apartment was generously sized, and the interiors were well-ventilated and unusually cool and pleasant for the Bengaluru summer. The lights worked, and when Mira tried the taps, there was running water.

On the ride back to the city, Rahul and Mira were not the only ones riffling through the project brochures with mixed reactions.

What do they mean ‘inspired by trees’? Didn’t look anything like trees to me.

There are not even real trees in the place. Just barren land.

Was that municipal water in the taps? I didn’t see any pipes being laid out.

So, what do you think? Rahul asked Mira.

Mira sniffed. What do they mean we can’t paint the walls, can’t use chemical cleaners, can’t do this, can’t do that? If it’s our house, we should be able to do as we please with it!

But the fact remained that it was a fully equipped apartment, larger than any they could expect in the city. And it was free. So, despite their misgivings, their decision was already made for them.

Kalpavriksh’s pioneering breakthrough was an artificial cell-and-tissue system based on genetically engineered plant DNA. Their lightweight ‘bio-blocks’ could be used in place of bricks or cement blocks in the construction of ‘tree-homes’. The blocks worked together, mimicking plant physiological systems. The outer surfaces mimicked leaves, sucking carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere and releasing oxygen in return. The plumbing that ran through the tree-homes was modelled on specialized xylem pipes working on the principles of transpiration-induced negative pressure and capillary action, and bio-engineered phloem chutes carried off the by-products of photosynthesis to be converted to energy used in building maintenance and power generation. The cells operated within the gambit of a neurotransmitter network that interfaced with a self-learning AI system. The network controlled and monitored the entire structure—the flow of water and nutrients through the blocks, the energy produced, the consumption by each apartment and so on.

In effect, everything was in place. Except the finances.

Kalpavriksh was strapped for cash, and the logistics of converting their technology into a working proof-of-concept model were a challenge. For one, the only land they could afford was a desolate plot far out of town, which in itself would have put off potential residents. So, even though it meant the loss of an important revenue stream, and against all advice from potential investors, Kalpavriksh decided that the first ten blocks would not be sold, but instead be given to tenants at zero rental cost.

Yes, it is hard to believe now that the upscale neighbourhood in which the original Kalpavriksh Housing Society still stands proud today as the Kalpavriksh Heritage Society and Museum of Tree Dwelling was once so dire that people practically had to be lured in. But, given the difficult economic circumstances of that period, the gamble paid off, and how.

Kalpavriksh Housing Society reached 100% occupancy within six months of launch. There were only a handful of rules that residents had to adhere to (and the zero rental helped make these palatable)—that they refrain from using paints or chemical cleaning agents that could interfere with the bio-blocks’ photosynthesis, and that they make no alterations to the apartment layout that could affect the bio-block network. When the residents moved in, they completed the final link in the cycle—the biodegradable waste generated in the apartments was treated and pumped back into the system to provide the nutrients that kept it in optimal health. KHS was now a fully functional, self-sufficient system.

It was also a potent proof-of-concept that caught the attention of reporters, scientists, environmentalists, government agencies, builders, and consumers the world over.

It took only a few years in Kalpavriksh Housing Society to wean Ankur off city life for good. He still commuted to the city every day for college, but the city now appeared to him like a massive, churning black hole that seemed to warp the very fabric of space and time, compressing it into a tight, chaotic mass of frenetic activity. Taking the KHS shuttle back home in the evening, he had the distinct feeling of everything...expanding. Even the road that seemed narrow and choked within the city seemed to widen to generous proportions outside, and time reverted to its normal, leisurely pace.

Coming home to Apartment A4, on the fourth floor of Block A in KHS, he found his parents sharing a quiet cuppa. Rahul Banerji did not have to commute to the city anymore. He now had a job at the R&D unit Kalpavriksh had set up adjacent to KHS, and was often home early.

I still say it is a stupid move, giving all that hard work away just like that, Mira was saying. Now everybody and his uncle will want to build such apartments, and they will make all the money. Kalpavriksh will soon find itself fighting for crumbs at the high table.

Rahul smiled. These guys have a larger vision, Mira. They are not in it for the profit—

Humph! Just think what your stock options would have been worth in a few years, had they decided to patent.

Rahul clasped her hands across the table. Oh, but don’t you see, Mira! We are on the threshold of something big! Far bigger than you or me. One day, we’ll count ourselves lucky that we were a part of it, mark my words.

Oh, you’re as much of a sentimentalist as your bosses! But Mira said this in a teasing tone, her eyes warm with affection.

Just a few years ago, even a seemingly innocuous discussion like this would have soon led them down the road of an acrimonious quarrel, with countless other vexations, regrets, and grievances dredged up along the way. But the years since they had moved into Apartment A4 in KHS had been kind to the Banerjis. Perhaps it was just the security of having a stable roof over their heads, but the tension in the house had drastically reduced. Rahul and Mira were no longer snapping at each other over trivialities. Even the insomnia that had plagued Mira for years had vanished, and she looked far more relaxed and cheerful than she had at any other point in her life.

Ankur would have been happy at these changes in his parents. Had he been paying attention, that is.

Things might have turned out differently for tree dwelling but for a fortuitous turn of events.

It is true that with the runaway success of KHS, Kalpavriksh Inc. bucked the economic downturn and was being courted by angel investors and venture capitalists galore. Still, there was only so much one company could have done, only so far it could have gone, no matter how big it got. The real gamechanger for tree dwelling came when the founders of Kalpavriksh decided not to patent their pathbreaking technology, but to open-source it instead.

Within months, every major lab, biotech firm, and real estate developer was working with the technology, ironing out the rough edges, making tweaks and enhancements of their own, spreading the word and promoting the concept of tree dwelling. Over the next couple of decades, the popularity of tree dwelling grew exponentially, making it the fastest adopted innovation in the history of human civilization.

And so, out of the blue, Kingdom Plantae found itself an unlikely but powerful ally in the very species that, within the minuscule span of a few centuries, had come close to being its mortal enemy.

Ankur’s parents—and everyone else, for that matter—had for several months now been relegated to the periphery of his young mind, the centre stage being entirely captured by Shiuli, she with the mocha skin and radiant smile. She dominated all his waking thoughts, and most of his sleeping ones, too. Not knowing how else to proceed, he followed his usual strategy for incomprehensible situations—thorough research.

He followed her on social media. He knew she was doing her Master’s at the Indian Institute of Science. He knew the kind of music she liked—Hindi pop and ghazals. And that she was an avid reader, just like him! She volunteered at the KHS residents’ library, and she was always posting book reviews and lists of new arrivals on the KHS intranet. Ankur diligently read her posts and all the books she recommended, and he conducted erudite and interesting discussions with her about them (only in his imagination, though, since he hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to speak a single word to her in person).

Shiuli lived in the Apartment F4 in the opposite block. The windows of their rooms faced each other, separated only by the fifty meters or so between the two blocks, and when she stood at her window sometimes, combing her long hair, she seemed oh so near, and yet impossibly out of reach for the awkward introvert.

For a long time, it was believed that plants could not communicate. But they are, in fact, powerful communicators; it is only that the alphabets and words of their language are chemical in nature. Through chemical scents and signals, they can not only communicate with their own, but also exert subtle influences on the behaviour of the fauna around them.

There are almost no detailed studies from the initial days of tree-dwelling on what effects the tree-homes were having on their inhabitants. All the metrics recorded at the time were about water utilization, energy efficiency, volumes of oxygen produced and carbon-dioxide absorbed, and so on—mundane, practical data that reflect how we viewed tree-homes in those days. After all, the bio-blocks were designed with a specific purpose in mind—building.

But that’s not how life works, is it? Life is not a lab-made computer program that follows a specific set of instructions and spits out a predictable result. It is ever-changing, ever on the lookout for the next advantage, the next foothold up the evolutionary ladder.

Due to the lack of relevant data, we can’t tell when exactly the lab-made cells began to evolve. But it is clear the tree-homes, at some point, decided to ‘adopt’ their inhabitants and take on the responsibility of their wellbeing. There are numerous verbal and anecdotal accounts from the original residents that point us to the conclusion that, even in those early days, tree-homes seem to have ‘learned’ to sense stress, anger or tension in their occupants, and emit discreet chemicals in response, to induce a calming effect. Perhaps they had even begun to sense other emotions—joy, sorrow...love? Their natural instincts aided by AI systems, they adapted fast and within the first few years were already engineering subtle changes—behavioural, mental, even physical—in their occupants, for mutual benefit.

However, we began to comprehend the true extent of what was going on only much later.

It was a cool, pleasant evening and Kalpavriksh Housing Society was abuzz with activity. Ankur wound his way past the gaggle of shoppers in the grocery store, the ruckus of young children in the play area, the clutches of teenagers joking and laughing among themselves at the basketball court, the purposeful exercising of adults on the jogging track, and the sedate conversations of the elderly in the park, till he came upon Shiuli sitting alone in her usual quiet corner, a book in hand.

Nudged to courage by the mellifluous spring breeze, or perhaps by a surge of hormones, Ankur took a deep breath and walked up to her. She was engrossed in her reading and didn’t look up when he stopped in front of her. Flush with embarrassment, Ankur momentarily considered turning back, or pretending to walk on. But his approach had been pretty obvious, and it would probably look even sillier to retreat without a word.

Um... He cleared his throat.

She looked up and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

May I? he asked, pointing a nervous finger to the empty space beside her on the bench.

She smiled. Be my guest.

He sat down rigidly. Hello, he began, sticking his hand out stupidly, as though he were at a job interview. I’m—

I know who you are, Ankur Banerji, Shiuli said. You’re the guy who’s always at the window. She let that hang between them with a coy smile.

There were three levels of networks at Kalpavriksh Housing Society: the bio-block–AI interface network, the high-speed intranet that connected the apartments to each other and to the Kalpavriksh R&D Centre, and of course the larger Internet. It appears that at some point the bio-block–AI interface network managed to get progressive access to the other two.

Over time, the self-learning tree-home network was able to tap into residents’ intranet, electronic media and internet usage to discern, among other things, patterns of connectivity between the residents. For example, it could understand and make note of the fact that the resident of Apartment G3 frequently communicated with the resident of Apartment C8, and that they must therefore be friends, or that the residents of Apartment A10 and D5 were work colleagues. It has been argued that it might even have purposefully engineered connections, nudging residents of different blocks towards greater contact and friendship.

For these connections were valuable to the tree-homes, and they used them quite ingenuously.

It was a Saturday morning and Ankur had slept in. He had returned home late the previous night, riding high on the waves of new romance, and fallen into a deep sleep populated by happy dreams. He woke with a smile on his face and got out of bed, stretching.

Then he froze.

In one corner of his room, a russet coloured something had appeared out of nowhere.

Ma! he yelled.

Mira rushed in and gaped. Where did that come from!

Ankur prodded it cautiously with his tennis racquet. It’s stuck fast. Is it...growing...out of the floor?

Rahul entered the room. What’s the—oh! He took in the growth. So it’s shown up here too.

What do you mean here too? What is it? And what’s it doing in my room? Ankur demanded.

Protrusions like this have begun appearing in some of the apartments. The R&D folks at Kalpavriksh are looking into it. They don’t know what to make of them yet.

Ah! Mira said, with a look of dawning comprehension. Rekha Naik of the ladies’ club mentioned something growing in her living room last week. I didn’t pay much heed then, you know what she’s like. But it must have been one of these things. She looked at it uncertainly. What do we do with it?

Nothing, Rahul said. These things are completely benign and harmless, that much the R&D guys are certain of. But they don’t want them removed for now. Best to just leave it as it is.

Within a couple of days, the protrusion had grown to full-size. It was firm and sturdy on the outside, but soft and cushiony on the top surface, with an overhanging filament that emitted a soft bioluminescent glow from its bulb-like tip.

Mira cocked her head and studied it. Looks uncannily like a couch, doesn’t it? And equipped with a reading light, too.

It did, indeed. After a few months, when all the excitement over the new growths in the apartments had died down and people were no longer wary of them, the new ‘couch’ became Ankur’s favourite place to recline with a book, or to simply daydream about Shiuli.

And, on the day that Shiuli came over when his parents were out, with mischief and invitation in her eyes, it was on the couch that they made out for the first time.

The evolution of angiosperms has always been considered a gamechanger in the history of Kingdom Plantae. The ability to produce flowers was such a successful evolutionary step that angiosperms soon replaced conifers as the dominant trees on the planet. The Early Cretaceous Period saw a veritable explosion of diversification—a creative spurt during which angiosperms introduced to the planet an astounding variety of colour and beauty, a bounty of flowers of every shape, colour, and design imaginable. All this creative genius, of course, was geared towards one end, the same end that motivates every living species on the planet, the raison d’être of every living creature, I suppose, when it comes right down to it—to pass one’s genes on to the next generation, so one may leave their own tiny pinprick of a mark on the broad, infinite canvas of creation. In other words, reproduction.

The phenomenon of ‘furniture’ growing out of the floors of the tree-homes—known to us now simply as ‘flowering’— created quite a stir when it first manifested in Kalpavriksh Housing Society. The growths appeared in multiple tree-homes but seemed to favour those whose residents entertained a lot or had frequent interactions with other residents. It was almost as if their tree-homes sensed their need for extra furniture and obligingly produced sofas and bean bags and recliners!

One of the reasons the flowers were not initially

Reviews for And Lately, The Sun

[Lena Ariza · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My favorites were The Community, Roots, and Equatorial Ice. Go Solarpunk Go!