Defying Doomsday: Stories of Fear, Hope and Survival

by Tsana Dolichva

In this moment, I hate everything and everyone with pure, hundred-proof hatred. And I also know that I will go back, to the aliens, to another work compound. If nothing else, I will pretend to myself I am an infiltrator, seeking to bring down the heartless taskmaster aliens and the crude, brute-force humans alike. Winning with cunning, not overwhelming power. It doesn’t last—power fantasies never do. When I put the console into sleep mode, it’s always over. When did I last play a video game?

Micha and I still argue about politics sometimes, but not often. It’s a hollow game when your worst fears have been realised. But when we do, I never point out that we’re all living together on Keelan’s dad’s farm like hippy socialists. And she never mentions how I guard our precious stores with the puritanic zeal of a heartless economic rationalist.

We’re getting to the point where it doesn’t taste quite the way that it used to—we’re on the wrong side of the recommended use by date—but technically so is the whole planet, so the fact that I can have tea at all is still a nice, grounding thing at the end of the day.

We wanted to show that disabled and chronically ill characters have more to offer fiction than tales of their impairments.