A Greener And More Reasonable World

She was at Processing, adding the monthly recycling to the family account, when the officer grasped Rayn’s shoulder.

“Come with me son.”

“What? No, there’s some mistake.  We’re under our credit limit!  We grow our own food, we hardly use the transit system- wait!”  But, even as she protested, she saw the look in her son’s eyes, and understood.  Suddenly the last months – the mysterious class absences, the inexplicable weight gain – made sense.

Possibly – depending on how much meat he’d eaten and how hard he labored at the government farms – Rayn might see his mother again.  The Republic wasn’t unreasonable.

Powering A Greener World

The turbine blade arced high into the evening sky over Runsfeld.  Though it was over a hundred meters long and traveling at great speed, from the ground it looked just like a petal, carried soundlessly on a capricious summer updraft.

The Republic heavily regulated all pollutant energy sources, generally reserving them for government use, and without cheap fuel, it was too expensive to run the machines that could repair the wind farm, especially for rural Runsfeld.  Still, they needed the electricity the turbines provided.

When the errant blade finally collided with Runsfeld’s vegon cafeteria, it was nothing like a petal.