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description= creative writing on environmental justice;
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reckoning, reclamation, botany, of, the, mouth, original, mandate, burn, barrel, astrology, flash, fiction, call, gets, weird, omen, recollection, posts, pagination, sowing, kottravai, on, leafing, how, you, wait,
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Text of the page (random words):
he sketchbook there was the dorm at benicia on the next page a seagull with a crab in its beak a water bottle casting a long shadow in the afternoon sun the extended gun arm of a mech she flipped through page after page of drawings some swift bare lines some slow and carefully colored in she found the first of her own drawings a sailboat in the bay jacko had added a mermaid swimming in its wake the drawings ended three quarters of the way through the book jacko would never fill those pages but new images had started crowding the blank pages of benny s life she knew how she d sketch them the bots graeme s plastic hand the curvilinear forms of nasturtiums mom positioning furniture the memory of jacko s face benny could see them rayed out like the bots mosaics benny bit her lip pulled a pencil out of the case and began to draw author j l rifkin posted on july 3 2026 january 16 2026 categories fiction reckoning x leave a comment on reclamation categories art reckoning x botany of the mouth rowan tate author rowan tate posted on june 19 2026 june 19 2026 categories art reckoning x leave a comment on botany of the mouth categories fiction it was paradise original mandate robin s toy nestled in my hand purring with something akin to life the clear ball was filled with undulating blobs that changed color when they bumped into one another merging into new forms before splitting off in a graceful mitosis coming together falling apart together and apart over and over ahimsa told me it was inspired by a pre depletion era artifact joeann hart r obin s toy nestled in my hand purring with something akin to life the clear ball was filled with undulating blobs that changed color when they bumped into one another merging into new forms before splitting off in a graceful mitosis coming together falling apart together and apart over and over ahimsa told me it was inspired by a pre depletion era artifact based on brownian motion the random movement of particles in a fluid she said the artifact was called a lava lamp but it was neither lava nor lamp as robin reached up to grab it the sleeves of his baby blue tunic slid back to reveal his arms for a moment i was transfixed by his perfection and then he said want want such a human word it would kill us all in the end the humanx movement wanted the original mandate overturned and if your motto is save the planet eliminate humans there s not much incentive to spare lives beliefs taken to extremes always lead to genocide want what i asked robin want ball he said with a little jump you know what i m asking he let his arms swing back and forth as he considered my request want ball please please i whispered it was the ethics board crisis all over again only intensified with time ahimsa has always been a ladder to those in need so she d been elected zonal representative last week she was summoned to the convention to decide the fate of the original mandate which if overturned would mark the final fate of much of life certainly ours if they hate humans so much why don t they just wander off to the barrens and be done with it she muttered as she packed the trouble began a few years back when the ethics board recommended that talos our communal intelligence system stop adjusting the human genome for survival the board claimed we had repaired as much as was possible on the planet so now it was time to let nature take its course it was absurd nature s course would be brief and brutal not just for us but for all the species that depended on talos only a few single cell survivalists would be left to carry on as things were it was still touch and go for us multicellulars human population was probably no more than a hundred thousand in any livable zone where talos regulates oxygen and controls radiation worldwide we were maybe a few million talos kept a running count but i hadn t checked since the day robin was born and ahimsa and i joyfully watched it click up one the number did not always go up sometimes it went down and humanx wanted to turn it back to zero to do that they would have to overturn the original mandate which stated that talos be globally programmed to incorporate all living things including any extinct organisms that could be salvaged from the depletion back to a restored and balanced eco system human beings were living things for better or worse so the ethics board was disbanded to keep us that way i placed the ball in robin s open palms please and i said he scrunched his little face up in deep thought while i waited i noticed his color was already changing human skin was modified a greenish tint to protect us from emissions but the shade lightens with age he s getting older i m getting older what would become of us thank you he shouted the words fell behind him as he shot across the room his ball held against his body his tunic flapping like wings such a miracle in spite of the fragility of our dna talos had greatly increased the chances of human reproduction in this sub lethal environment ahimsa and i both had eggs but even if they were viable healthy sperm was a rare commodity so talos used genetic material from our bone marrow spliced with a few sequences from other species nine months later ahimsa pushed robin out into the world in this very hometree born with much of the protection he d need to survive but while ahimsa and i were busy raising him and doing our jobs rewilding robins here at the hatchery humanx was working to erase his future the disbanded board traveled the world courting followers with a single answer to all their problems urging them to elect anti mandate reps essentially voting against their lives humanx insisted there would be no bloodshed since humans would just fade away once talos stopped engineering our genome but they d obviously never seen slow bleed outs from radiation or heard of mercy killings i looked out the window and up at the sky no sign of ahimsa but the woods were lovely in the pink afternoon light i could see why humanx was confused so many places like this looked as if we d done our job restoring and rewilding but it was just that looks the ecosystem was still dependent on talos and would be for many more generations before it could function on its own humanx couldn t see the work ahead of us because they couldn t see the work behind they had no interest in history all the genetic manipulation we d gone through to survive had not made us any smarter so now ahimsa was off to save our future she d come a long way once a fledgling humanx herself she came to understand that restoring the planet meant maintaining humans even to the point of creating one more hence robin i didn t bring him into this world only to have him watch it die she said as she left yanking her snood over her smooth head she d been gone for seven days sequestered and silent so silent my heart raced beneath my ribs the chicks in the hatchery wouldn t need my attention for another hour so i wiped the worry off my face and went to play with robin in his room i got on the floor and we sat before his hologramite to draw flowers with our fingers and the tips of our noses a daisy he said and it looked just like one good job i said and ran my fingers through his fine black hair such a talented child i was coloring in a rose when i heard a hovercraft land in the yard with a thud robin and i looked at one another ah we shouted ahimsa he grabbed his ball and we ran to the window and saw her unload her bag and tap the hover away we tumbled down the ramp as she was removing her snood and we hugged she was sweaty filthy and ecstatic ecstatic was good robin grabbed her leg we miss you he shouted hug sandwich she picked him up and we joined together as one so tell me i said talking into her neck what happened let s get inside it s complicated i have to eat then i ll tell you everything ahimsa put robin down with a kiss on his head she looked different wilder thinner for sure her green tunic seemed too large as it slipped off a boney shoulder bennu our hand raised robin flew over us with a sharp chirp we liked to think it was his greeting but for all we knew it meant scat not that long ago there had been only a handful of his species left and now we raised and released hundreds a month along with dozens of other facilities in our zone talos reported that some of them are now reproducing successfully on their own we were getting there come inside i picked up ahimsa s bag when was the last time you ate i can t even remember she said we ran out of almost all supplies towards the end they couldn t bring in more i asked they could but they didn t the organizers were forcing us to a decision knowing we were afraid of calling a vote and i think they might ve been trying to give humanx a taste of what it s like to suffer from thirst and hunger hardball i said it was a rough week she took robin s hand and they skipped up the ramp ahead of me i was weak with relief bennu dive bombed my head again and i looked up funny there was a lot of hovercraft activity so something big must be going on nearby once i was inside i paused then locked the door ahimsa was in the living room with robin and i got her a glass of water then made her a pesce protein wrap with greens robin and i watched her eat so happy to have her back did we save the mandate i said she held her hand up as she swallowed there were hundreds of reps from all over the zone she said wiping her mouth but a lot were humanx i hadn t realized so many had gotten elected even here we signed in with our palms on a talos membrane and then we talked it out humanx and the rest of us back and forth we went around and around talking in circles most of the time it was so frustrating because most humanx weren t really listening and there were times they were so emphatic i thought we d lose some of our own other humanx circled outside the building the whole time yelling i thought they d set us on fire fire robin asked and ahimsa tightened her lips robin why don t you gather your new drawings for ah i said we could protect his skin from radiation but not from human reality sorry she said once he was out of the room tell me i said all of it she looked over at robin s bedroom waiting until the door swung closed behind him humanx went first making the case that humans were guilty of ecocide i nodded and shrugged if you followed any argument about damage to the planet it always came back to us but never all of us throughout history most humans worked with nature not taking more from it than could be regenerated then our numbers grew along with our wants it only took a few corporations with the help of the law to destroy it all and therefore humans should not be allowed to stay on and that automatons can be left to rewild non human life that s nuts i said talos manages the autos and we manage talos there was no talking logic to them they just kept playing on everyone s emotions like a drum one humanx whose zone used to be a parasitical oligarchy showed gruesome hologram images from early in the depletion era they were hard the peeling skin deaths the bone draining famines the wasting diseases that made death a friend the animal images were excruciating they were so innocent another humanx from an equatorial zone pointed out that all that suffering was caused by humans and that given half a chance we d do it again we couldn t be trusted to remember and we couldn t be made to believe that s an unknown i said without much conviction depletion education was mandatory and yet there were those who claimed it never happened that our world was always like this and then there were those who put all the blame on talos and claimed it had values that didn t align with ours that s nuts i said talos is just a tool a tool for our values we spent a lot of time explaining how talos was programmed but humanx didn t care they said the planet didn t want us here anymore and that was that we were quiet for a while just listening to robin play in the next room we re a rationalizing animal after all i said at last not a rational one the recordings should all be released by now ahimsa pulled down a hologramite and swiped the air with her finger look here this was their closing argument one particularly sad looking humanx took the floor he was as thin as a cricket just like ahimsa before she embraced humans as a useful entity gender signifying was largely optional these days but he wore the fitted tunic that many males preferred and had no snood wanting to expose the x tattoo on his bald head instead of hiding the tattoos as they used to they paraded them about now wanting everyone to know what they thought of humanity on one side of his head he had only half an ear from which a deep scar ran up and over his scalp i wondered what trauma he d been through humans got roughly the same genetic modeling across the globe but some genes needed to be activated by environmental factors including care and love maybe all humanx were raised under conditions that skewed to self extinction this one spoke in a raspy voice the earth has survived catastrophic events for hundreds of millions of years he said and it s still here and it s going to stay here we re just players in a short single cycle we must accept that unlike the rest of the natural world we are creatures bent on destroying our own environments the earth must be left to heal and start again there will be life just not ours or most of the living beings we evolved with to think that the future is should look like our short evolutionary past is absurd natural law must override human law there was a disheartening amount of applause from the audience as he sat down at least this guy understands what will happen when we re gone i said ahimsa finished her water one of many meteorists there they claim that earth has started from scratch before after the meteor extinction millions of years ago and will do it again if talos shuts down there won t be much left but slime mold and that s fine with them they hope that this time though the evolutionary result won t be humans we were both silent as she mopped up the crumbs on her plate with her fingers strong arguments i said although someone should tell them that talos still needs to genetically assist slime mold oh we did i talked to many of them even the ones with children couldn t be persuaded they claimed our only duty was to leave and let the planet get on with it we heard robin singing to himself i couldn t imagine leaving him a world that i had allowed to just end the good news is said ahimsa we did a great job when it was our turn she slashed at the hologram screen in front of us want to hear me you got to talk i said a lottery i was one of the last speakers we were all half crazed by then we d barely eaten and we were peeing in jars rather than leave the talk we all slept in our chairs if we slept at all when her image materialized she looked dead on her feet but as the light brightened she glowe...
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