The Collapse

I never dreamt of opening it. I’ve worn this heart for seventeen years, without troubling the secret shut inside it. “Open it alone,” mama said “and only when there’s absolutely no way out. You’ll know when it’s time.” The locket had belonged to my grandmother — your great-grandmother — and once would have held portraits of treasured loved ones ensconced in its tiny golden folds. Perhaps it still does. It was our last meeting, our last embrace before they took her. Mama clasped the chain around my neck and held me tight, whispering “Keep it on and keep fighting til the end. I’m always with you”. I wish that were true. I’ve yearned for mama’s calm wisdom every day of these seventeen years. Then I was separated from you, my darling, and I thought I would die of the heart ache. It’s amazing what the human heart can bear. The past eight years without you have been gruelling, torturous at times. The hope that you have survived, that we will find each other again, has kept me alive, more than anything, more than water … until now. Now I think — I know — it’s time. I’m finally going to find out what gives this little locket such surprising weight.

We knew they were coming. Mama’s friends had contacted her by radio to warn her. They were gathering up the scientists in military trucks, marching them through their neighbourhoods cuffed and blindfolded with the word ‘blasphemer’ hung around their necks. The Blasphemy Act was one of the first to be passed after the coup, outlawing any form of scientific research or teaching. Academics through to primary school teachers were prosecuted; anyone who had ever studied one of the sciences. (Did you know there were many branches of science? Marine biology, electrodynamics, molecular chemistry, celestial mechanics — oh my darling, science was a rich and fascinating universe of discovery.) By the end of 2026 there were no scientists left. Laboratories and research facilities had been gutted and families were ordered to destroy photographs, digital records, any material evidence that science had ever existed. It became dangerous to say their names. All I had left of mama was her locket.

Once they took the scientists, dad went underground. ‘Underground’ was a metaphor back then, meaning secret, covert, hidden. It was before the collapse, before the actual move into the bunker cities. You must wonder why I didn’t go with him, why we didn’t join the resistance against the True Faith State? You must know I wanted to. We had always been climate activists, as had everybody we knew, and we believed it was a matter of when, not if, science and reason would prevail. We thought the coup was a blip, a set back on the way to the only logical future, one of clean energy, progressive social relations and regenerative agriculture. Even when they took grandma, we thought it was temporary. The State would fall, we would get grandma back and we would continue our work of planetary healing. We agonised over the ethics of taking a twelve-month-old baby on the run. Would there be enough food, water, shelter, could we keep you safe in the offline world? So we made the difficult decision that you and I would stay online. Dad packed a kit and walked to the edge of town, took a scalpel and cut the chip from his wrist. You and I watched on the radar as his marker stopped blinking and disappeared.

The True Faith coup had taken us by surprise. All through the teens the Soldiers of Faith had been quietly infiltrating political and military institutions. They had major economic backers in the billionaire media and fossil fuel moguls who were determined not to relinquish profits or power. By the early twenties they had achieved dominance in the armed services and were making serious plans. We knew the far right was gaining traction, but their narrative of sin and wrath and judgement was so antiquated it was ridiculous. Nobody I knew thought they were a serious threat — except mama. “Coups come fast and hard” she said. “Never underestimate a fanatic”. We did just that, drastically. By the mid-twenties the majority of Australians were in favour of complete de-carbonisation and we had just elected our first genuinely pro-planet government, so the anachronistic rantings of a handful of generals just didn’t merit our attention. The new government was in power all of twelve hours. There were a few explosions overnight and by daylight the True Faith State announced itself as our rulers. An 'ecoterrorist attack' had assassinated the government and destroyed the houses of parliament, they said. Now they would restore god’s order.

It was too late to de-carbonise anyway. By the time you were born, in 2025, our climate fate was sealed. Science had warned us about ‘tipping points’ and ‘feedback loops’ but the reality of the collapse was beyond imagining. The floods of ’28 were the start of it, of what the True Faithers call ‘the judgement days’ and what we call the collapse. We had had no real rain for five years. Water rationing was policed by weaponised drones, water tanks were surrounded with True Faith tanks and soldiers who were high on petrol and delirious with power. Then it rained. Days into weeks into months of rain, everywhere. The whole world was raining. Melbourne flooded, then London, Shanghai, Nairobi, New York, Sydney, Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Rio, Buenos Aires … The evacuation of hundreds of millions of people brought the climate breakdown out of the realm of the possible and into the realm of being.

The flood waters did not recede. The cities were gone. In the summer of ’29 millions of us were unhoused, living in sprawling refugee camps on the outskirts of regional towns, when the fires hit. I know you will remember the fire times, when we crawled for days on end under the asphyxiating black smoke, when we lost and then found each other on the banks of the burning Murray river, when the log fell between us and you burnt your knees trying to get back to me. You were only four years old and you were so courageous. Such stamina and determination, so resourceful and clear-headed even when surrounded by those horrendous flames. That’s why I can still hope, believe, that you have survived.

Then the crops failed, and they came for the ‘dispensables’. Anyone too old, too sick, too unfit or otherwise unable to work in the central processor was being picked up, truck after truck after truck load of people were taken — somewhere. We never speak about what happened to those people. We think, we know, it was unspeakable. I did not wait to find out if you and I were ‘dispensable’. We ran.

The four years we spent in our little self-made mountain hideout seem like paradise now. Watching you become a skilled archer, making nets, digging wells, joining the community discussions with all the confidence and maturity of a responsible adult, cooking and singing like a bird … My darling girl, do you remember birds? You loved birds. Each night you would invent a story for me about the birds you had seen that day, what they had said to each other, what business they were about and why their colours and feathers and feet and eyes were just so. You were the most delightful companion through the mountain years and made me so proud. As the years turned, there were less birds, there was less water and the day-time heat became impossible. We became nocturnal and I marvelled at how you adapted, learning the movements and signs of the night creatures, discovering new ways to extract water and introducing us to edible sap, foliage and flowers. You have your grandmother’s innate curiosity and it served our mountain family well.

What I wouldn’t give for a carrot! You won’t remember vegetables, they died with the first floods of the collapse. Vegetables were amazing. Crunchy, colourful, edible plants that you just picked from the ground and munched up, you didn’t even need to grind them or cook them. They made your whole body feel alive and they were delicious. Carrots were a rather prosaic vegetable, a ‘basic’ vegetable that you always had in your kitchen. They were a ‘root vegetable’, in that the edible part was the root of the plant and grew underground, a tapered cylinder, bright orange, crisp, great for your eyesight. It’s hard to believe that we had such a wealth of foods — fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes — such an abundance of everything, and that we let it all die. You will never know the pleasure of sitting in a forest by a waterfall, of swimming over a coral reef, of eating a strawberry. My grief about the world you will never know is almost equal to my sorrow that I will never see you or hold you again, my darling. This is my last day on earth.

It's nearly dusk. The others are stirring, getting ready to move. Last night they collected up enough bugs to last a few days, drying some in the sun and grinding others into meal, enough, we hope, for the journey. I can’t go. My bones no longer support my weight. I will stay here, in the caves we have lived in for the last while, waiting for them to come. They sent a drone two suns ago, so it will be soon. I have a mouthful of water and I have mum’s locket. I’m ready. We built these caves and we can bring them tumbling down.

After the bombing, when I lost you, this group found me. We have survived together and grown to love each other as family. We have learnt how to extract water from rock and how to extract nutrients from soil. It’s not like a strawberry but it has kept us alive! We fantasise that in some other countries, people have handled the collapse more humanely. In the Swiss alps, or the south of Aotearoa, or up in the Andes, perhaps there are communities who can still farm, experience daylight, bathe! I hope, with everything I have, that you are with your father in a community just like that right now.

The others have left now, darling. It’s just me here, me and your memory, me and mama’s locket. You’ll never hear these words of mine. Their engines are close, I can feel the hum through the rocks. My fingers are on the locket, and I’m holding the trip wire with my toes. As soon as I hear their boots enter the cave, I will bring the walls crashing down around them. They will be crushed and I will be trapped in here with them. I just hope that mama, with her incredible prescience, knew what to put in this locket.

They’re coming. It’s now. I’m unclasping the golden locket and pulling the trip wire. The thunder of the rocks crashing is a dull distant sound. The sweet and bitter gas rising from my tiny heart is filling my eyes and sending me …