Do We still have time? — A cli-fi Speculative fiction
We all have seen many cli- fi movies and read many interesting jaw dropping accounts of what future would be like in face of drastic climate changes. Stories have immense power to move your imagination to another world, and I believe that everything a human has imagines at some point, it has come to be true. Be it a tragedy in the future or an alternative future. Speculative fictions are fictional stories, which help us tread to speculations about an existing notion, which might be out there since decades changing forms with the changing times, but we fail to sometimes see what’s wrong with it. I have tried to imagine a near future some 30 decades away, in which the overuse of pesticides brings a havoc and challenges the survival of everyday lives.
Introduction
Decades ago, In the land of karmas, nature had a representative for each of its elements. Mr. Hills represented the hills, Mr. Water leaded the water bodies, Mr. Forest represented the forests and there were several such environmental representatives and together they formed a clan named “ENVANGELS” Then there were the demons who haunted the nation, they represented the environmental consequences. Mr flood, Mr. Deforestation, Ms landslides, Ms Pesticides (clan- ENVEMONs) were posing many challenges for humans to execute their day today activities. A by-product of human activities, thoughtless decisions and development boom disturbing the harmony of nature, their existence was encouraged by a section of people who were the “Policy makers”. These policy makers used to let the demons manifest their reign over masses as they had promised to spare the policy makers of their destruction plans. There was always a clash between the ENVEMONs and the ENVANGELs. The ENVEMONs would go on inflicting damage to all nature elements- the soil by affecting its fertility, making seas more polluted and poisonous for the marine life to sustain, the air too toxic to breathe. The ENVANGELs were having feuds with the consequences leaders since a few years now, as they were most affected and were no more answerable to people inhabiting the land. But such was the status of the people too, as even they were not answerable enough while supporting the political parties to promote illusionistic and destructive development. But there were few who were bent upon bringing new rays of hope of a better and healthier future. A farmer named Rahul lived in a village which was very near to the coasts. He used to earn his bread through paddy and coffee cultivation.
Chapter 1
In 2000, Onset of monsoon saw heavy dark clouds surfacing the skies accompanied by winds strong enough to even uproot trees and carry with it gravel loaded dust. Rahul was returning home from fields, when gushing dusty wind slapped his face. As he looked up to the skies, he could make out that heavy rainfall was evident. All birds and animals were panicking and left their usual places and started running absurdly towards a shelter. They were apprehensive of the calamity which could strike the land anytime then. Everyone hurried to a safe place next to them. It rained continually for a week and this caused the water from dams to cross the max. storage limit of the reservoir. The water overflowed from the reservoir and flooded the land, destroying all crops, shacks and homes on the land. The grave damage was widespread across city and village both. A few lost their life too, leaving behind their families to moan over the loss of their loved one as well as their compromised future. The land which once had everything to support livelihood of men was now just a few shackled blocks of houses, floating remains of crops in muddy damp water. In village, farmers gathered to brood and share their sorrows with each other. The incidence ignited a feeling of frustration and anger in different sections of society group as they perceived the flood as an intention of an ENVEMON. Rahul, a farmer who was formerly an agricultural engineer, asked his fellow farmer friends to hold a meeting with FARM SAVIOR, the non-profit organisation which aided farmers through different technological innovations.
Chapter 2
The FARM SAVIOR activists told the farmers that they would put in their best to come up with a technology which will help them predict any calamity and prepare for the crops accordingly. But this would not improve the possibility of calamities occurring, which would be a major challenge for the technology, even if they come up with it. ENVIMONs appeared at the discussion ground with a sudden upheaval causing the grounds to feel the thundering. They said in a loud tone which echoed across the whole village “The ones for whom you are producing the crops are the ones responsible for our existence.”
Saying this, they disappeared into infinity and left it to the farmers and FARM SAVIOR activists to decode their words. FARM SAVIOR soon realized that as long as the people continue with their prodigious act, coming up with a new technology would be pointless, as unpredictability of environmental changes would pose new uncontrollable challenges.
The ENVANGELS after watching this, planned to communicate to the people, about the dearth of food they are going to soon face and pointed out their activities responsible for disturbance of flora and fauna. So they loomed in front of the individuals in public places at different times. They had the ability to multiply in numbers and appear at different places at the same time. They conveyed the message clearly to all individuals: “You pay for what you do! Karma finally bestows upon you! No food! No Life!”. All people got threatened hearing this, as they all knew that they were offending environmental representatives by ignoring their message to obey their existence, but it dawned on them only then that they have to pay for it. They all came together as a community and held a meeting with farmers which was led by FARM SAVIOUR. The activists elaborated well that how the policies in place which demand people to pay taxes for construction of roads, flyovers and building new architectural marvels. They highlighted that this development is at the expense of putting the harmony with nature at stake and ideally they should harmonize with the providers of life on earth- Environmental representatives. This was food for thought for the citizens and pondering upon it was certainly the need of the hour.
Chapter 3
But that is all they did, and perhaps could only do. People as a community started to form groups to re-think about their way of living, which had gone unchecked since decades now. They stood together to elect a community leader who would make a guiding document to help the people to adopt alternate lifestyle. They carefully articulated the feasibility of different ideas through everything they have read so-far and had surfed on internet. Environmentalist and fiction writers worked together tried to exhaust their imaginations to bring up different versions of living, and architects then designed new architectural marvels by utilising best of their skills. at here on the basis of the best action plan to gain favour of environmental representatives. It seemed as if it was a competition they wanted to win to gain mercy of ENVANGLEs. This time they just had time to imagine and make plots, perhaps not work on it.
Engineers and technologists joined hands with environmentalists and invested best minds to foster knowledge to come up with alternatives. Rahul came up with models of vertical garden they can implement and plantscapers.
Rahul was an agricultural engineer and opted for farming as a living to change the fate of farmers, and he thought of agricultural solutions by growing crops in a way that would require much little land space than what is needed in traditional farming. He suggested the practice of vertical farming — Plants capers (utilising Verti crop system) — A Building that Provides Food for its Occupants, which could be a great solution for urban farming. These vertical greenhouses or plants capers could be directly integrated in buildings with the functionality of hydroponic farming. Effective farming solution- vertical greenhouse, which doesn’t require any artificial light and was capable of producing 10 times more food and requires 10 times less water.
Facilitated by such amazing ideas from the farmers, it was now the public’s turn to contribute their part. This was so done by an attempt in managing their electricity generation mode and effective power distribution resources. The tech they came up with was called smart grids and Plug-in electronic vehicles. The Smart Grid will have the infrastructure needed to enable the efficient use of this new generation of PEVs. They now needed techniques to conserve rain-water so that in drought like conditions, they did not fall short of water. They hence opted to rain water harvesting and water harvesting from air. For this they planned to come up with beautiful hour glass shaped structures, which could now harvest water from thin air, days when it won’t rain.
PEVs can drastically reduce our dependence on oil, and they emit no air pollutants when running in all-electric modes. They were integrated with solar panels to provide alternative to conventional ways of electricity generation. This was coupled with concentrated solar power technology which could come handy during rainy days, when it is difficult to harness solar power from the solar panels.
The economic status of the country couldn’t support the actualization of these ideas and hence these ideas remained in pipeline for quite long, and the people somehow were surviving with their fate which could be anytime challenged in the future by the ENVIMONS.
Chapter 4
It is 2040. Manish has just finished going through the magazine, which has an article published in a newspaper in 2000 about the calamity that happened back then, and had shook people off the ground.
He says to his wife: “I don’t know if things would have been as mentioned in the magazine, would we still be facing the climatic changes as they are now. It was all well laid out, people were lazy enough to implement things.”
To this his wife replies, “I sometimes wonder, do we still have time to reverse the damage. Will the environmental representatives bestow this mercy on us?”
After the discussion, his wife asks him to get some veggies from backyard for preparing lunch. When Rahul goes to backyard to get some veggies stored in a bin, he sees fenugreek leaves covered with 2 inches long insects. He had never seen such insects before this. They look like the insects, on whom he used to spray insecticides. As he goes near to shove them off the vegetable, they run away and hide behind a few sacks. He sprays insecticide behind the sack, and goes inside to inform his wife, expecting them to have died after the spray. Next day his wife went to the backyard to pick those sacks and yelled with a shock to see the backyard filled with thousands of insects.
Panicked by what she saw, she calls Rahul “How come there are so many insects in our backyard, I just cleaned the backyard 3 days ago.”
He couldn’t believe what he saw and realizes that the insects he thought had dead last night were not just a few, they were thousands in number. What he actually couldn’t understand was from where the rest of the insects appeared, lest they all were hiding away in some bin. All their stored commodities in backyard had become filthy with insect shit and remains.
Rahul’s wife said to him “You must have not sprayed enough insecticide on insects to kill them. You should consider buying a bigger bottle this time.”
But the insects were a lot in number, and one bottle of insecticides was not enough to kill them. He goes to the market to buy a stronger and bigger bottle of insecticide which was more effective to kill thousands of them and tells his wife to lock the backyard door so as to contain the insects in backyard. On returning home, he sprayed the insecticide extensively in whole backyard on all insects which were spread all over the backyard.
The next day had in store for him some very annoying and sickening event. As Rahul went to the backyard to check the status of the insects, he saw something very unpalatable, in fact frightening to some extent. The insects had doubled and now the commodities in backyard were hardly visible, as for they were covered with insects all over. It is then that Rahul suspects if the insects were multiplying and are not hiding away in backyard.
Rahul thought “ I guess I should collect an insect and take it to FARM SAVIOR lab for a thorough inspection of the insect activity. That will maybe solve the mystery.”
He narrates the incidence to FARM SAVIOR in detail. FARM SAVIOR carries certain tests on the insects and also keeps the insect under observation to study the insect activity on exposure to the insecticides used by Rahul. Meanwhile, an FARM SAVIOR official visits Rahul’s place and performs several attempts to kill the insects. But even after trying different types of chemicals, nothing worked. His home now had become an experimenting lab for FARM-SAVIOR. For a few days, many officials from FARM SAVIOR had gathered at his place, performing many ways to kill the insects, but they were instead multiplying in number uncontrollably. Soon after mapping patterns of their experiments and after thorough analysis of what chemicals helped the insects multiply, they concluded that the insects had developed a resistance to a large variety of chemicals present in insecticides and pesticides. Apart from developing resistance for the chemicals, the insects instead multiply because of those chemicals in insecticides which were proven to serve as catalyst for insect multiplication. They finally decide to burn off the insects after failed attempts to kill them with chemicals. The insects couldn’t survive high temperatures of fire and finally died. But the whole event posed a big challenge on the agriculture scientists and community, as their best knowledge wasn’t even sufficient to kill the insects.
Chapter 5
A few farms which were on some high lands were less damaged because of the floods as the current force of the flood water was a bit low in the high lands. There was an unexplained presence of insects in another farmer’s crops. The farmer being aware of the ineffectiveness of the insecticides and catalytic effect insect multiplication, tried to trap the insects in a can and submit it to FARM SAVIOUR. While doing so, an insect slid hastily on the farmer’s hand. As he tried to shove off the insect, it bit him leaving behind a painful swollen insect bite on his hand.
Farmer gasped in pain” I should rush to a nearby hospital to get a medical aid , the bite is painful enough for me to carry on with my work.”
But even before he could reach the hospital, the farmer suffered from a cardiac arrest and collapsed to ground. A huge crowd gathered around the farmer. The news spread across the village like a fire. As his family is mourning on his death, some forensic officials from FARM-SAVIOR come to the spot and notice the insect bite, they want to be sure of the insect responsible for his death. So they inform the villagers of the suspected cause and request to take away his body for post-mortem. The family friends of the farmers manage to convince the farmer’s family to let them take away the body. They said “Let them take away his body, at least you will know the reason of his death.”
Chapter 6
After scrutinizing the context in detail, it was found that it is the same insect which was found in Rahul’s backyard and it mainly feeds on human blood for survival, and its bites are poisonous enough to kill a human in couple of minutes. The climatic conditions are responsible for fast breeding of the insects, and the scientists have no count of where all the insects have spread and multiplied, if they have multiplied only in villages or in town too. The insects also have the ability to climb walls and get into least expected places.
On inspecting the issue further, it is found that the insects multiply very fast due to heavy moisture in air and high temperature the place has. The insects have genetically mutated to adapt to extreme environmental conditions, and the rate of multiplication is much faster than the rate at which it could be controlled. This mutation has also caused the insects to become poisonous and withstand all chemical combinations known to man till now.
Many cases were reported in the urban areas too, and the scientists were apprehensive of the population of insects soon becoming 5 times the population of humans and science yet didn’t know of a way of controlling the insect population. The insects didn’t spare the policy makers too, as they were not specific of whom they fed on for food. The mal-intentions of ENVEMONs now very well came on the surface. The end of mankind that too because of a simple tech which was used to control insects, whose use wasn’t well thought of was now posing a threat to mankind, challenging the existence of mankind. The models made by architects and engineers lying there for months, waiting to be approved were now dusted and covered by cobwebs. Maybe the approver this time were not humans.
I have also tried to express the story in a series of story board frames:



