Drown #8: reclamation day, part 2

December 2085. Justin Kim is 25, Stephanie Nova is 26, Willow is 3. 

* NSFW


So, just like that, the world wasn’t going to end.

Stephanie drank some carrot juice from her new juicer and lamented that while she might get to do a lot of things in her lifetime, she would never get to be an Olympic figure skater. It all seemed so silly and inconsequential, and normal.

Things she might get to do: see her daughter grow up, get divorced and married again, have a twenty-sixth birthday, see Europe and maybe Africa. Go to the moon. She would get to worry about the mundane kinds of things that people did, like what on earth would the holidays look like with two divorced couples and three sets of parents who didn’t get along?

Drown #8: reclamation day, part 1

October 5th, 2085 — Keri Riley is 24. Cabe Deppiesse is 44. Lampyridae Coleoptera, age unknown. 


Keri was alone on the observation deck for a short moment. Lately, people couldn't stay away from the observation deck. Everyone wanted to see home. Small, insignificant, Earth. It looked as little and helpless as it actually was from up here. Everyone Keri ever cared about was down there on that tiny blue rock, and they were all dying. She guessed that Justin wanted to believe she never cared about anyone but herself, but that wasn't true. She cared deeply about at least a half dozen people down there, probably more than they would ever know.

But how stupid and pointless it all seemed now, the fuss everyone made when she came out here. As it turned out, she was so much safer out here than they were down there. The little shits wanted nothing to do with the moon.

Drown #7.7: drown

August 2085—Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 25, Lily is 2, Willow is 3. Lucy Harris is 19. Welcome, baby Cassiopeia!



"Don’t be alarmed at her coloring," Violet warned them. "I can assure you that she’s perfectly healthy."

Cassiopeia Hope Deppiesse was born at 9:34 pm on August 9th, 2085.

Her skin was a pearly shade of blueish gray, but she had her mother’s warm caramel brown eyes.

"Thank you for keeping us safe," Lucy said. "You have no idea how much this means to us all."

Drown #7.6: origin stories

July 2085. Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 25, Jeremiah Day is 28. Lucy Harris is 19, Violet Deppiesse is 55.


In this full house, Stephanie's bedroom was one rare place where she and Justin could steal a moment of quiet together. Only a moment, probably, before one of the girls came bursting in or her parents came knocking. They had about an hour once he was home from work on Tuesdays and Thursdays before he had to leave again for guard duty at the road. Each family in the neighborhood took two six-hour shifts each week, and since Justin was the only member of their household that wasn't a child or elderly, pregnant or half-blind or minding a thousand children, it usually fell on him. He didn't mind, though. It was boring most of the time, but their neighborhood was one of the safest places in town because of it.

Then, just as they thought they might mess around for a few minutes before he had to go, Stephanie's phone rang. She didn’t answer it, but they both knew who it was. Since she lived with almost everyone she knew and all of her daycare kids had stopped being dropped off, she didn't get phone calls from that many people anymore.

"He’ll be mad," Justin said.

"Not as long as I call him back before he tries a second time," she said.

"Yeah, well, what is that? Like five minutes from now?"