To check out all the great entries this week, check out the link above, curated by Bradley Ramsey & Leeron Heywood
Welcome to the Atlas, Friends.
We have reached Day 7. The prompt was a heavy one: A character inherits a weapon from their father and is told they must kill to save the world.
I’ll be honest, I’m not a fan of the chosen one trope where the only solution to a problem is violence. It feels lazy.
So, I wanted to write a story about Lateral Thinking. What if the curse isn’t a mandate for murder, but just a lack of imagination? What if you don’t have to pull the weed... you just have to prune the branch?
The Gardener
The shears that I picked up from where my father had collapsed were heavy. Memories flooded back, of days spent in the garden watching him prune back the bushes. I brought them close and smelt something weird, underneath the tang of old iron and rust... Was that blood? When I opened my eyes again, the world had changed forever.
***
The hospital room where my dad was being kept was sterile, and melancholy. The palliative care ward had been painted in an awful canary yellow colour in an attempt to brighten it up. It did not work.
“You see it don’t you!?” He croaked hoarsely. I was looking out of the hospital window at a delivery driver. From his chest protruded a mighty red vine that floated ephemerally through the air like a ghost, leading off somewhere into the distance.
“I’m so sorry, my child, I would not have wished this on you. This curse.”
I turned to him, he was fading gray like a dried leaf himself. His body was broken from the fall. There was only the faintest of vines coming from his chest, barely visible.
“Is it magic?” I ask. He looks down gloomily and shakes his head.
“I don’t know what it is, all I know is the role of the Gardener is passed down from person to person.” He looked at me desperately, his eyes wide despite the energy it cost him. The fear was palpable.
“Just remember, it’s not murder... It’s just... It’s just weeding. You don’t hate the bindweed, but you don’t let it take over the whole garden. You have to prune... Them.”
Turning back to the delivery driver I looked at the vine. Within its structure there were memories, or so I had thought. Now I knew them for what they were. Premonitions. He was unloading bouquets of flowers for the hospital florist. It struck me in a flash of awareness.
He delivers the flowers.
He runs a red light because he is running behind, and it’s his daughter’s play at the school tonight.
He slams into the side of a car carrying a future UN diplomat.
Peace talks fail.
Tactical nukes destroy nearly all life on earth by 2074.
I knew my dad was staring at me from behind, his eyes were boring into my neck.
“Tell me?” He rasped.
“Tactical nukes, the end of the world in just under 50 years.”
He closed his eyes and a tear rolled down his cheek.
“I’m so sorry, but you have to see, it is the only way...” He started crying. Do you think God could forgive me?” Reaching for his shoulder to comfort him, he suddenly strengthened.
“You have to do it. You are the Gardener now.” He took my outstretched hands and placed them back on the shears that were hidden beneath my belt.
“Cut the roots out before he gets back in the van.”
***
I walked out of the hospital, my inner monologue running frantic. The delivery driver worked in the distance. A family man, he delivers flowers. He is not a bad person, he doesn’t deserve this. He was checking his phone, maybe it was a text from his wife. A picture of his daughter in her costume.
My dad’s words floated back to the surface of my mind.
“I tried once, to do it differently, I nearly let an entire country descend into war. You think you are smarter than the maths? You aren’t. Soft hands bury civilizations.”
I started running towards the driver. The air was cold as it whipped through my hair. He was walking back to his van with that grotesque red vine protruding from his chest, as thick as a python. Gripping the shears from my belt, I pulled them out. The man turned and saw me, shock and fear in his eyes at the sight of my madness, I plunged forward with these sharp pieces of rusted metal. He froze.
I lunged, and the tips of the gardening shears passed right through the layers of tissue, probing deep. Air gushed out, as the tyre deflated almost instantly.
“What the hell, what are you doing! My Van!!” He cried. I ran around to the next tyre and the next, slashing them into ribbons.
Eventually, I turned to him. “Your tyres were bald, friend, you would have caused an accident.”
The driver just looked at me incredulous before he started dialing for the police. The red vine from his chest had withered and nearly disappeared, a dull harmless gray that the sunlight shone through. The diplomat will live. The driver won’t make it to his daughters play, but no one will die due to his carelessness.
***
Back in the hospital room, I drop the shears on the bedside table. My dad’s breathing is laboured. He looked forlorn, desperate.
“Is... He... Gone?”
“Rest now Dad, everything is fine,” I reply. “I was always a better gardener than you anyway. Honestly, the way you guys used weedkiller on everything, it’s like you had never heard of permaculture.” He snorted derisively.
“By the way, how did you stay out of custody?”
“His eyes turned to me, and his lips moved slowly.”
“You can see the future now my child, it’s quite easy to stay out of jail when you can see all the eventualities.” And with that he closed his eyes again to sleep. Touching the shears I close my eyes too and focus on the various vines that swam in the air around me. I saw my own. Following it down its course, it became clear to me just how easy it would be to prune the eventualities that led to my imprisonment.
Yes, this was a responsibility I had never asked for. But I had not been raised to be a bad person. I would do my best to keep the world turning without harming anyone. But all that said, I could see this becoming rather a fun hobby. Being a gardener was not such a bad career path after all.
From the Cartographer’s Desk
I enjoyed writing this one because it reclaims the prophecy from the grimdark fantasy genre and puts it in the hands of a pragmatist.
A Question for the Comments: If you had the shears, if you could see the catastrophic result of a stranger’s bad day, would you intervene? And where is your line? Tires? A broken arm? Or would you just let the timeline play out?
Next Step: If you enjoyed this twist on the prompt, please Save this post. It helps the algorithm know that we prefer our apocalypses cancelled.
Until the next coordinate,
Graeme
YAAAY! Hopepunk triumphs here! I love the twist on this traditionally tragic story concept. Well done!
I loved that! Creative problem solving for the win!