The First Seed

May 22, 2012. Quartier des spectacles, Montréal. A hundred days of strike.

A thick crowd packed the Place des arts, milling about, waiting for the manif to start. Not an inch of free space on the stairs in front of the slick architectural buildings, the long grass lane on its side, or the streets around. How many of us had gathered today? A hundred thousand? Media would say ten thousand tomorrow, but I knew better. We spread in every direction, tentacles of protesters reaching out to the city, growing bigger and longer as we neared the official departure time.

Up ahead, on the right side of the curving path, the dotted line went dark. A bit farther, a smeary mash of myco-luminescence, then the dots low to the ground resolved into regularity again. The mushrooms had been trampled.

“No! There is no such thing as a free lunch on Luna. You’re not squeezing an allowance out of me by looking pitiful, Veda!”

In financial dealings, my mom is a harsh mistress, but it was Friday, and I cherished plans to join my school friends that night at the soundclub. I had to try. 

She knew the Storm was coming; she just didn’t know when. Meli had to stretch to access the tap—straining against her lifelines, she wrapped her lean left arm around the ovoid bulk of the floatplant.

Teigh was unpacking when he heard the sound at the window. He looked up from the pressure crate, but he could see nothing outside that might have made a noise; only the landscape curving upward in the distance.

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Carlisle glanced out each window down Rig Seventeen’s main corridor, taking in the view of the Pacific while he walked.

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I. From Melagrib

The window washer ran the rag over the pane one last time before admiring his work. 

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Sadie rolled over and felt the warmth of the sun on her face.

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THE CAFE WAS DIM and smelled like rain and shoe polish. Danieli Kleig held her mother’s hand tightly as they tripped their way through the crowded arrangement of sofas and easy chairs. 

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Pull, release. Catch, pull, release-

The triangle of slate gray sail above the woman’s head snapped and billows as it responded to the rope playing out from her steady hands.