PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox
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It was too hot to go for a picnic, so we escaped. I’d promised my granddaughters we’d go on a picnic, just the three of us. But the highs have been over a hundred degrees F for nearly a month now and even at noon, it was too oppressive.
I thought about the past, but there was too big a chance of running into someone or changing something. I found a future where things had cooled off again. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would once there were hardly any people around.
Nice and cool and peaceful.
It’s Wednesday and once again time to participate in Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ 19 July 2024 edition of Friday Fictioneers.
The idea is to use the image at the top as the prompt for crafting a poem or short story no more than 100 words long. My word count is exactly 100.
I drew a blank at first. Tried looking up the location of the rock garden, but that didn’t inspire anything. I decided to continue last week’s theme of grandchildren and time travel. No, I don’t believe that human beings are going extinct any time soon. We’ve proven to be too adaptive. However, some of the current theories and ideas lend themselves to the sinister and the dystopian, so I went with that.
To read other stories based on the prompt, visit inlinkz.
In the latest episode of Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure called “The Fourth Empire,” Tom and the rest of the Polaris crew are taken captive by Dr. Ana Braun who is not only a traitor, but the daughter of the fascist scientist Friedrich Hoffman. Worse, they are about to be confronted by the Fourth Empire’s dictator August Donitz and the secret of his alien power. Will they be able to escape the interstellar space station or be helpless prisoners as they watch a relentless military force launch their invasion of Earth?
This is episode 14 in my 16-part space opera adventure. I see that to keep reading, you need to buy “tokens” from Amazon, but they’re 99 cents for a hundred, so that’s not too bad. Remember, there are only a few left. Don’t miss the climax of Tom Corbett’s adventure in space.
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Yeah, I suspect it’s true that things will get a lot better once the humans stop messing things up. I’m intrigued by the fact that 100 is unbearable ‘even at noon’ – makes me wonder why he’d expect that to be better.
Great way of setting up the story without excess description I was right there with him.
Jen
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Thanks, Jen.
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You had me at the title! Lol.
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Thanks.
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I haven’t any serious critique of your writing, James. But somehow, it seemed to me a cheap shot to suggest that the absence of people was somehow an improvement for the environment, particularly its temperature. After all, there have been long periods inferred from the geological record when the temperature was high (or very low) from various causes such as volcanism or insolation when no people or very few existed at all. But I suppose it’s not currently popular to point out that global temperatures are produced by mechanisms entirely unrelated to human existence or activity… [:)]
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I was playing to the idea that people are making things worse. With only a hundred words to work with, I tend not to overanalyze things.
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Liked this story! You said a lot in 100 words!
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Thanks, Rosemary.
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Even picnics are lost because of the climate change.
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In this particular story, yes. Actually, I’ve just been experiencing an intolerably warm summer lately.
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We live in a very changing word, this summer proves it.
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I guess so, Dawn.
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Yes, indeed. The prompt took me back to the covid lockdowns where I guess everything was abandoned as show in the photo. I remember our local parks being closed and the play equipment taped off. I’m glad the people are back.
Best wishes,
Rowena
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I’m glad, too. Thanks, Rowena.
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This was a sweet story, James, and I liked it a lot. I liked the idea of a time traveling grandfather who travels with his granddaughters. We may be adaptive, but I’m not sure that’s armor against extinction. If we keep messing up the environment, who knows what changes we might create that we won’t be able to adapt to?
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I actually wrote a story once (it has fantastical elements but the parts about hotter planet with no natural ice was fairly “nuts and bolts”) about the end of all the ice and whether or not people could survive the heat and the increase in carbon dioxide. I found the answer in a query online (I lost the source) about whether time traveling humans could go back to a period in the past where the conditions were similar to identical (yes, they existed on multiple occasions). Turns out the answer is yes. The increased carbon dioxide would (for some reason) make insects really big and there would be other challenges, but people could live, find food, survive, and grow. I wrote my story based on popular public opinion, not what would probably happen. Thanks, Michael.
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James, I like where the image took you. We do seem to be the weakest link in the planet well-being chain.
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That much is true. Thanks.
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You’re welcome.
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Love the way he’s so blasé about the the time travelling. Imagine being able to flit back and forth like that. If we could do it, we might be in a better position to avoid the exact set of circumstances that are causing grief for your characters. Although, we’d still be human, so maybe not. Love this story.
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Thanks, Margaret. Grandpa’s had plenty of practice.
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This is a story goung places. I hope.
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Me too, Patrick. Thanks.
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I one could time travel, I would stop the production of plastic, but if I did would my Time Machine disappear, heck, time travel is so dangerous
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Very true. In a short story series by Larry Niven, his time traveler went back and prevented the invention of the internal combustion engine. He returned to his present and his air was unbreathable since humans had adapted to breathe a toxic atmosphere.
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It’s kind of chilling!
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Thanks, Brenda.
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