Hello friends,
Many, many moons ago, I joined a website not too dissimilar to Substack, called Wattpad. Back then, Wattpad was an online community where writers shared their writing and read other works for free; where popular writers rose to the top and even got discovered by publishing houses. It was a site vastly geared towards young people and popular fiction (including fanfics), but there was a little corner where older writers like myself congregated and supported each other, publishing more “literary” works and poetry.
I first heard of Wattpad via Margaret Atwood. She championed the site as a place that encouraged literacy, and she even went as far as to publish some of her work there and lend her name to writing contests. [See this article from 2012 in The Guardian.]
One of Atwood’s sponsoured writing contests, Dear 2114, took place on Wattpad in 2015 and asked participants to write a story based on one of the following prompts:
Dear 2114: write a story about the advice you would give the world in 2114?
This is 2114: write a story about what the world will be like when the Future Library is opened in 2114?
Pandora's Room: write what you imagine are in the stories of the Future Library that will be first read in 2114?
It was a competition that celebrated Atwood’s inclusion in Katie Paterson's artwork Future Library:
One thousand trees have been planted in Nordmarka, a forest just outside Osla, which will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in one hundred years' time. Between now and then, one writer every year will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unpublished, until the year 2114. Tending the forest and ensuring its preservation for the one hundred year duration of the artwork finds a conceptual counterpoint in the invitation extended to each writer: to conceive and produce a work in the hope of finding a receptive reader in an unknown future.
A year earlier, in 2014, I was reaching the end of Atwood’s dystopic trilogy “MaddAddam” and decided to tweet1 her:
Her reply excited my inner fanboy and stayed with me until the “Dear 2114” competition came along.
So, disregarding completely the competition’s prompts, though still retaining the number “2114”, I decided to write a fanfic tale set in her MaddAddam world and submit it.
I did some research online beforehand to see if others had written any MaddAddam fanfiction but found nothing. So, for all intents and purposes, the story below is probably the world’s first ever MaddAddam fanfic! :-)
Although the characters are my creation, the world they live in belongs to Atwood. Any mistakes are my own; I share the story here without any desire to monetise from it, just purely as a memory of a fun exercise and connection with one of my favourite authors. If you know the MaddAddam books, I hope this tale will spark a conversation between you and I; if you’ve never read them, I hope it will encourage you to seek them out. The first novel is Oryx and Crake, followed by The Year of the Flood, and finally MaddAddam. [Buy the trilogy.]
1.
The teenager carried the man for many blocks, past broken displays and sidewalks covered with Hott-TottsTogs, past burnt down Hundred-Dollar stores and peeling posters of succulent ChickieNobs. The feral pigs — the pigoons — called to each other, circled them, cutting them off from escaping the pleeblands.
The pair was left with no choice but to enter a rundown hotel and find their way to the top floor. In the first room unspoiled by human remains, the teenager lowered the man onto a bed and barricaded the door.
'What year are we in?' the man asked with a whimper. The bandages wrapped around his eyes were stained red, like a child’s idea of where two eyes should be on a face. His skin was hot to the touch. The teenager doubted the faucets in the bathroom would give him the water they needed.
'2114,' the teenager said because that’s what he had seen on the hotel room’s door.
The teenager scanned the pleebland’s skyline, a hand lifted against the sinking sun. Shocking pink butterflies played against the sunset, flying over the deserted buildings. Wings so large and translucent, when they moved it was as if time had slowed down. He tried to calculate how long it would take them to reach the woods beyond the shacks, and how they would deal with the liobams and wolvogs they were sure to encounter there. Perhaps even Painballers.
The man on the bed fell into a troubled sleep and then, an hour later, suddenly woke with a start: 'what is it? What can you see?'
'It’s evening now,' the teenager said reassuringly. He’d stood by the window the whole time, keeping an eye out for any signs of life in the pleebland — other than the pigoons. 'A strange scene is taking place across the way from us, on a building not too far. A group of people have gathered on the building's roof. Other survivors.'
‘What are they doing?’ the man on the bed asked. He shivered slightly though he was tucked under the bed's HighHugFiber duvet.
The teenager looked at the empty roofs, the knocked-over lounge chairs and flowerpots, the swampy paddle pools. It was like the stage set for a reality show, except no participants would walk in and play.
'They have flowers in their hair… they are setting a long table, with candles inside glass jars and white plates. Now, one by one, they have begun to form a circle. They are holding hands and singing…'
The only sound the teenager could actually hear were pigoons squealing down one of the alleys. The pleeblands were otherwise silent.
'I wish I could hear the song,' the man said.
'They are now breaking their circle for a young couple to join them,' the teenager continued, surprised at how the lying came easy. 'Oh, wait — they’ve lit a bonfire at the centre of their circle!'
The man tried to push himself up on the bed. The teenager went to him and gently pressed him down.
‘Tell me what they’re doing now,’ he asked, holding the teenager’s wrist.
'The couple have jumped over the fire and embraced each other. The group are now cheering and clapping. It's the end of the ceremony — whatever it was. The couple have placed garlands on each other’s heads, and they are now sitting down to eat.'
The teenager regretted mentioning food as soon as it was out of his mouth. They’d promised each other they wouldn’t mention food, ever. They now lived with constant stomach cramps, down to the last packs of powder soups the teenager carried for them in a backpack.
He lay down beside the man for warmth once the sun had finally set. The man whispered: ‘don’t you want to join them?’
The teenager looked at him but said nothing. The hard lines around the man’s mouth soon relaxed and he was once again asleep. The teenager resisted sleep, replaying in his mind the story of the wedding on the roof, one of his mother’s favourite tales. Those were the people, his mother always told him, who would survive the Waterless Flood.
That’s what they call it, she’d say. The Waterless Flood, the end of times.
2.
The teenager’s mother made a living selling HelthWyzer vitamin pills in the pleeblands, and it was during one of those business trips that she came across the God’s Gardeners and their strange theory of the Waterless Flood.
‘Who cares what those nutters think?’ he would say whenever she brought up the topic, his body sunk in the settee, his eyes stuck on their SmarTeeVee.
‘They are so convincing, honey,’ she’d reply. It fascinated her how the God’s Gardeners lived without any HelthWyzer products, surviving from their own home-grown vegetables and herbs. ‘They are preparing themselves for something big.’
From that day onward she’d begun to store away packets of powder soup. ‘We don’t know the future, honey,’ she’d tell him when he complained there was no more space in the pantry.
She didn’t approve of the amount of time he spent in front of the SmarTeeVee or his obsession with reality shows, particularly Painball.
‘Why don’t you give HelthWyzer High another chance?’ she would beg. ‘Meet some people your own age? You spend so much time at home. What are you going to do when I’m not here anymore?’
He’d tune her out, eyes never losing what happened on Painball. Like most teenagers, his favourite Painballer was Orion, the blue-eyed killer with angelic blond hair. He was the great Painball champion that was sponsored by BlyssPluss pills and brought in the highest ratings. His trademark was the silent stalking through the dark forest at the centre of the Painball Arena and the three eerie whistles before a competitor was struck down. He was particularly impressive afterwards, when he walked down the Champions’ Hall in his grey suit, body pumped with i-hormones. A liobam in human form, ready to kill at the flick of a finger.
‘In the old days,’ she’d say, ‘you only had to vote them out. You picked up the phone and that was it. None of this spilling of blood business.’
Though she hated Painball, she sat with him for hours sometimes, just for the company. He knew her mind was elsewhere, probably at work. Thinking of how she could continue to be of use to her employers. Any wrong step was a one-way step into the pleeblands. When these thoughts troubled her, she’d silently pat his leg and brew them a Happicuppa.
‘It’s been days since I’ve watched my soaps,’ she’d then complain. ‘I need to find out what happened in Moon Scribbler. In the last episode, she was about to discover who was sending her the love letters from the space station.’
‘Use your laptop mother! All the episodes are online.’
The last day they saw each other was an ordinary day like any other. She’d swallowed a blue BlyssPluss pill with her morning Happicuppa, kissed his forehead goodbye and gone downstairs to wait for the pink AnooYoo Spa van. She had been looking forward to a day of relaxation at the Spa. She didn’t look back to see him standing by the living room window.
He later found a note on the kitchen counter: “SecretBurger defrosting if you want a snack. Will bring something for dinner.”
3.
He spent a month isolated in the apartment, watching civilization break down on the SmarTeeVee as if it were a big budget production. When the SmarTeeVee went blank, he killed his hours peaking from behind the curtains until it was obvious there was nobody left to look at.
His first excursion out of the apartment was to the AnooYoo Spa. He needed to know what had happened to his mother.
The compound had turned into the setting of one of the many videogames he had played on SmarTeeVee, except he didn’t have a weapon to protect himself. A burnt-out jeep and an incinerated solar car marked the entrance to the AnooYoo Spa. Inside, he spotted her scarf hanging from the window of a crashed pink mini-van with the AnooYoo logo. Same kissy lips, same winky eye. The pigoons had been inside the van and left very little behind that was recognisable.
Still, he hoped his mother had survived: there were signs that someone had been living in the Spa until recently though they were no longer there.
The God’s Gardeners dream of building a community in the woods, his mother had told him once. She could be with them right now, he thought. Though he didn’t want to, he knew there was no other option but to cross the pleeblands, go into the woods and reach the seashore.
He found Orion by accident in a pleebland teeny club, curled up in one of the back rooms used for the arrival of new children. The teenager didn’t recognise Orion at first — he only saw someone who needed help, two gaping holes where eyes used to peer out at the world. Wounds that indicated a job half-done, as if persons unknown had meant to continue their work but had been interrupted.
Orion had been without food for a week, his only sustenance a water leak that ran down the wall, which he licked whenever he woke up. It was only after the teenager had bandaged Orion’s face and fed him a small bowl of powder soup that he noticed the round, bright yellow circle tattooed on the base of his left thumb, the mark of a Golden Team Painball player. The man in his care was a skeletal creature, so unlike the god that always shone on the SmarTeeVee.
The next day, the teenager spent his hours inspecting the teeny club. Old scents still hung in the air; they caught him by surprise when he lifted a towel or opened a cupboard in search of food. Decadent, musky perfumes that hinted at the sordid businesses once conducted in the club.
It was during one of these inspections that the teenager came across a photo on the wall of a small blond boy. The tiny, serious face reminded him of an online forum argument he’d once had with a Painball fan who claimed that all male orphans either ended up in teeny clubs or in the Arenas.
‘We can’t stay here forever,’ Orion told him one day as the teenager cleaned his eyes’ sockets and applied a new bandage. They were nearly out of powder soup packs and the taps had run dry. ‘If we can get past the pigoons and reach the seashore, we can find those people you mentioned. The God’s Gardeners.’
4.
In the morning, the teenager ate from the last powder soup pack and then wrapped Orion with the bed’s sheets and HighHugFiber duvet. Back outside in the hotel’s hallway, he stacked as many chairs as possible in front of Room 2114’s door. No pigoon or liobam would be able to break into Orion’s mausoleum.
Freed from the burden of carrying Orion, he moved fairly quickly out of the pleeblands — as far into the woods as he could stand before deciding he was safe to stop and rest.
He took off his clothes and slipped them into his backpack. He then buried them by a spruce tree. ‘Don’t leave any trace,’ he remembered Orion once say. ‘Cover yourself with mud. Walk through the forest as if you are one with it. Listen to the trees, the signs of any life in it. Imagine you are in the Painball Arena.’
And so he did, remembering the many times he’d seen Orion do the same on the SmarTeeVee. He rubbed the wet earth all over himself and tried his utmost to relax into the soggy seabed of golden, brown leaves under his feet.
He moved north as Orion had instructed him. The Painballers that were with me also want to find these God’s Gardeners. Watch out for them.
He moved without stopping. As the afternoon was coming to an end, he heard what sounded like a bird’s call. It came from high above, a small shadow perched on one of the branches. He continued to walk, slowly this time, sick with hunger and aware once again of his own nakedness and how vulnerable he was to whichever creature roamed the woods. Underneath his eyes, the mud grew wet.
The pine trees and birches sang a low murmur, their own strange song, unlike anything ever shown on SmarTeeVee. The breeze picked up; the leaves shook all around him. The bird called again. One, two chirps. He waited for the third one but it never came.
In the sky, the clouds broke free from the day, ushering in the night. The stars shone their scattered light.
Don’t bother seaching for me on the Dead Blue Bird’s site. I left soon after You-Know-Who took over. I’m also no longer on Wattpad.