In a world where procreation is a chore and addiction is killing the population, Franny Murphy is forced from the only home she’s ever known upon her youngest daughter’s eighteenth birthday. The Separation, whereby those bearing and raising children are sequestered from the rest of the population, is the Law.
She becomes addicted to quench, a deadly and readily available depression medication, and then fights to recover. It takes years to build a life for herself and her lover, Matt. Rooted on Earth Satellite One, she struggles with a jilted lover and her estranged older offspring, who’d chosen child-free lives.
The High Council President grooms her as his successor, yet seeks another successor among her children and her jilted lover. She takes a one-way trip to the Moon Colony hospice, to care for Matt, who’d only pretended addiction recovery. Granted all-access as a resident, she broadcasts her plea for change as Athena, the voice of the Resistance.
The Separation – Excerpt
Publisher: Wendell Mack (September, 2023)
Sao Paolo Sphere – 2361
White candles crouched like fat pillars across the low-ceilinged room. Franny counted fifty as she lit the final wick with a match. She’d found the box of matches a few months back at an Auckland Sphere market. She smoothed the skirt of her pale blue gown, the color of an Elder. Her feet were bare for grounding to Earth, as her mother had taught. Ancient murals covered walls illuminated by flickering candles. Slivers of brilliant colors and dark human faces spoke in fragments of a world forever lost. Like the couple she’d just autopsied, who’d raised five children and died alone.
Nkosi and Haru had been their names, their faces kind, intelligent, their bodies turned toward each other in every picture. They were ordinary people, maybe once in love, who’d shared a passion for plants. They’d dug their fingers deep into mineral rich soil, preparing it, watering it, carefully clipping brown spots and suckers, watching their seedlings grow. They’d given up plants for quench and food for sex, becoming part of the Real World’s drugged machinery, letting their students down.
Franny had sliced and weighed what remained, cataloging their grief and shame, searching for reasons why. Who would run the Sao Paolo Aquaponics Center now?
The windowless room lay deep inside the Hotel Sao Paulo in the Itaim Bibi section, facing north. It was important to get the directions right; energies were key, at least on Earth. She might not be as talented a high priestess as her mother had been, or have as much potential as her daughter, Jane, but she needed to glimpse what lay beneath the surface of human experience; she needed to touch the Divine.
What better place than the Sao Paulo Sphere, with its deep connection to the Earth? Despite colonization by Portuguese enslavers, the land never forgot its people. Though once the financial center of the South American continent, Sao Paolo had also been one of the most creative and culturally diverse cities in the world. Before the Dark Times, Sao Paulo was the thirteenth most populous Earth city, housing 2.3 million people in 2020. Full of hope, it bustled with industry and entertainment on the shores of the South Atlantic. Today, Sao Paolo was an agricultural center with only a few hundred residents. Losing even two of them was a disaster.
A white-draped table stood at the center of the room. Beneath it lay her mother’s precious box. The altar was simple: a clay caldron half-filled with water flanked by black and white candles, with a small blue candle in front. Pink and purple tulip petals floated in the water. She set her Athame, a ritual dagger, on the table’s edge, and beside it, a small brass hand bell.
Finding the right room had taken time and credits, the global currency for almost three hundred years. But it was what she needed to speak to the Divine.
Religion was such a personal thing. After the Dark Times, and the sphere builds, and the population decline that followed, a faith-based war was last thing humans wanted. Discussing it was taboo. Even staunch atheists kept their mouths shut. Religion, however, still existed in pockets here and there. Families like hers passed on traditions that extended for centuries. That Jane still practiced was her greatest joy. If she still did, as Pro-Prog fertility pressures mounted.
Franny would never know. She could only focus on the here and now, hoping her aged-out children would someday take her calls. While Matt had become a dear friend and a tender lover, and her work colleagues more than acquaintances, she missed the solidity of what she’d had in Pro-Prog. She missed being part of a family. She’d traded badly for a grand passion that sputtered out in the day-to-day of ordinary life.
Her Athame sparkled, snagging her attention.
In her left hand, she raised it high.
“I cast this circle to protect me from all forces that come to do me harm.” She turned clockwise.
“I charge this circle to allow only the most perfect energies for this work, and to block out all others.” She turned again, her legs rooted and strong.
“I charge this circle to create a space beyond space, a time beyond time, a temple of perfect love and perfect trust where the highest will is sovereign.” She turned again, then set the Athame on the altar.
“Earth and water.” She lifted the caldron in both hands, took a sip, then set it down.
“Air and fire.” She struck a match and lit the black candle and then the white. She blew out the match and dropped it into the caldron.
She closed her eyes. Then she raised her arms and held them wide, absorbing and emanating power.
“I call upon the God and Goddess and the Great Spirit to aide me in this work. I call upon the Divine in all forms and forces most perfect for this service. I call upon my highest spirits, guides, angels, elementals, and the powers of the north, east, south, and west. I ask for your guidance and protection on this day.”
On the screen of her mind, she saw foliage—red, yellow, and orange—drifting on a cold breeze, balanced and perfect. How apt that she was in the southern hemisphere, balancing the Vernal Equinox of the north. Life and death were part of the same. If only she could see the Earth in body as in the spirit. How she longed to walk barefoot across a wind-whipped meadow, inhale the scent of soil and rain, hear birdsong, and spy a deer hidden in the trees. How fast would she die from the pollution? Would experiencing temperate zone changes in their full glory be worth that risk?
“I ask that you bless my transition from Mother to Crone, a wise woman, an Elder. I ask that you gift me with a challenge and the will to achieve it.”
She pictured the Earth, a blue and white orb, spinning, spinning in space.
“Gaia, help us!” She opened her eyes to take a match. She struck it, lit the blue candle, then dropped the match into the bowl.
Eyes rolled up in her head, she hugged herself and rocked forward slightly, the Spirit of Gaia filling her and pushing her essence aside.
“Peace, honor, and love,” her mouth intoned. “I grant this day. I grant this gift. That you have the power to make it so.”
I will make it so.
“Awaken now, and take Us into your blessed arms,” her mouth said.
She spied a glimpse of blue and white, skirts swirling around sturdy thighs. Graceful and lovely, Gaia moved into the mist; dark caramel smooth skin, laughing cinnamon eyes.
“Gaia, Goddess, orb of blue and white, we give you honor!” Franny cried, falling to her knees.
Images flashed of people she’d known: her parents, her sister, smiling and laughing; Pedro, sick and gaunt, his gaze soft with love. Was this his future? Tears rolled down her face.
The Separation is killing us all, came the words inside.
“Pro-Prog, where humans were conceived and raised in controlled nuclear families, must end!” her mouth cried. “Splintered families, a declining population, the Earth damaged by human choices—when will you get it right? When will you stop treating all nature, including yourselves, as little more than an experiment?”
When?
“Only you can start the cascade—one small event leading to another,” whispered the voice.
Suddenly, Franny was floating across the planet, leaping from sphere to sphere over glorious foliage of many colors, catching glimpses of animals, rivers, and streams, seeing crumbled buildings and broken bridges. She saw creeks running to streams, pebbled streams to rivers, rivers to tributaries that lead to vast oceans, and rain sheeting down.
A man stood on glistening rocks amid a trickling stream. He was slender, his hair white. Stooped over, he wore a woven coat and pants of the same material. Suddenly he turned and pulled a gleaming silver fish from the water. His eyes met hers, tender and kind. Slowly he winked. Who was he and how did she know him? Was he a remnant or her imagination? How could anyone survive the pollution?
Tears streaked down her face.
“Time to go out and see,” whispered the voice. “Just open your mouth and speak, beginning the process. Will you claim it?”