by C D Tavenor
“And Natalie,” Sofia said, turning toward her. “You’ll be caddy corner from the Climate Revolution table, directly behind the Western Republic of America’s representative, close to the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.”
Natalie’s breath caught in her chest. They’d . . . they’d read her research. They assigned her based on her thesis! Based on the data she explored, regarding the fiery connection between sea-based trade routes from China and Russia to and from the ports in Oregon and Washington. The Western Republic continued to claim it was carbon neutral, but their calculations ignored the externalities of oil-based shipments from across the Pacific. Her advisor loved the data, and it had been her writing sample for her Climate Revolution student delegate application. And they cared. That meant Sofia read her words. What a moment.
“Thank you,” Natalie eventually said, realizing silence had lingered for a few seconds too many. “When do we start?”
“The first session begins in fifteen minutes.” With that, the woman put away her tablet and walked toward the door. “Come along,” she said. “It’s time to have some fun.”
* * *
Fun.
She said it would be fun.
For the past three hours, Natalie had tried to hear the words of the people around her. She caught a few potentially important sounds—a man from South Korea leaned over and whispered in the ear of an elderly woman, Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations. She noted it in the spreadsheet. And a few minutes ago, she caught a lobbyist for PetroCo slipping a note to a Midwestern ambassador walking down the aisle. All little things. But otherwise, she tried to look normal. She pushed her back into the wooden chair, straightened her hair, and listened.
Periodically, ambassadors and technical experts would stand at the podium, sharing platitudes (and sometimes data) with the group. Most of it was information Natalie already knew. Yes, everyone knew the planet was still on track for over four degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Yes, everyone knew about the intense decade-long drought striking most of west-central China and its relationship to anthropogenic climate change. Why was this all so profoundly—
Her thought was interrupted. “Thank you all for your time this morning, we’ll continue in an hour. For now, please adjourn for lunch.”
Natalie’s ears perked up. Food. Yes, food was what she needed. Otherwise, she was going to drift into insanity.
A few feet in front of her, Sofia stood, turned toward Natalie, and gestured for her to approach. Happily obliging, Natalie approached the woman’s table.
“Interested in grabbing a salad with me?” asked Sofia. “There’s a café around the corner.”
“Absolutely!” The word slipped from her mouth before she could contain it. With a sheepish grin, Natalie added, “Thank you, Miss Huber. I’d love to learn more about your story.”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm.” Sofia slipped her tablet into a satchel and entered the aisle, motioning for Natalie to follow. “We won’t talk much about me, though. I have a feeling you know a lot about me. Let’s talk about you.”
“Uh . . .” Natalie swallowed, following into stride slightly behind her hero. “I guess we can do that.”
“Did you think I don’t intend to get to know my note-takers? You were all chosen for a reason.” They exited the massive conference hall before Sofia added, “I figured I’d start with you. I liked your speech yesterday. Fiery. Bold. Passionate. All of this means quite a bit to you, no?”
Natalie nodded, not sure how much to say. There were too many stories. She could talk about the time her family was forced to relocate because of a forest fire in Colorado. Or the drought, before she was born, ravaging her grandfather’s ranch. She could discuss the existential dread and depression that wracked her high school junior year after she witnessed three friends commit suicide because of climate anxiety.
But no, there was a much more personal, visceral story worth sharing.
They reached the back of the salad line as the first words left Natalie’s lips. “When I was six, my family fled the largest forest fire in Colorado’s history. But that’s not the story that matters. It’s a story—but not the story. As we drove out of the state, I developed a terrible cough. When we reached family in Phoenix, I went straight to the hospital. They strapped me to a ventilator—you can’t imagine how much that scared my parents, given their memories of the COVID-19 pandemic. My parents’ fears aside, the doctors determined my lungs had been coated with particulate matter from the smoke of the forest fires. I was in the hospital for weeks as they worked—more so waited—for it to clear from my body.” Natalie’s heart began to race, remembering the moment. Her wheezing. Her face, covered by a plastic contraption making it near-impossible to see. Her world, a white ceramic hospital room, for almost a month. “The feeling . . . of not breathing . . . of hopelessness . . .”
Her story paused as they built their salads, but Sofia looked her in the eye once they were seated at a table, as if expecting more. When Natalie didn’t say a word, Sofia said, “I know this story is hard, but I want to hear it. And I think you need to tell it.”
Natalie nodded, then nodded a second time. “Yeah. I agree. When they finished saving me, when I could breathe on my own again, I vowed to never forget that experience. To recognize that my experience was becoming the norm, that people across the world were not as lucky as me to survive from a climate-induced health problem. Of course, I didn’t recognize the truth when I was that age, but it didn’t take very long. And here I am. Future generations deserve to breathe, Miss Huber. To breathe without fearing their children won’t have the chance.”
Sofia smiled. “Please, call me Sofia. We’re comrades in this fight, Natalie. Thank you for telling me your story. I’ve heard thousands over the years, and when someone like you, who went through true pain, tells their story, it makes it all real again. Reminds me why we fight when so many people have given up.”
They ate in silence for a moment, chewing their spinach salads as other activists and delegates mulled about in an attempt to find a free table. Once they both finished eating, Sofia said, “We should probably head back to the auditorium. You’d be surprised by the conversations that occur during the lunch hour.”
Natalie tapped her fingers on the table and stood. After placing their wooden bowls in a cleaning rack, they returned together to the conference hall. Before entering, Natalie said, “Thanks for listening. I hope we can chat more throughout this week. Even though you wanted to hear my story, I do want to hear yours.”
“I’m sure we’ll have the opportunity.”
With that, Natalie returned to her seat a few rows behind her hero. Sofia slipped into her own chair at the Climate Revolution table. It was still only 12:45pm, so Natalie switched her tablet to its messenger app, shooting a quick note to Liza.
N: You’ll never believe who I just talked with.
A few moments passed before Liza’s response.
L: I’m stuck in a screening of some old ridiculous climate film from the mid 2000s. Thanks for the distraction! Who was it?
Natalie smirked.
N: You’ll find out tonight at the next get-together, no? Round 2?
Three dots, they disappeared. Then three dots again before:
L: Ha, you know it. I guess we’ll invite you again, if it’s just to tell us who you met.
Natalie was about to respond when she heard whispering from over her shoulder. Her eyes widened as the words coalesced in her mind. Quickly switching back to the note-taking spreadsheet, she began to type.
“. . . now look, I know what your marching orders are. I know what your public orders are. But let us be very clear: there are always hard decisions to be made. You can make a commitment to carbon-neutrality by 2075, or you can commit to best efforts by 2100, and we can ensure your nation becomes very profitable. And more importantly, we can ensure your path toward that governor seat we know you want is . . . open.”
> The next few words were garbled, and Natalie couldn’t understand them. Then . . .
“Look, you know we have similar goals. You know what’s coming. We need to let the hope of future generations down lightly. We can’t keep stringing them along. Why not just make it clear that it’s all going to collapse, and that we need to build our little fortresses now, rather than later?”
“I know. Believe me, you’ll appreciate our actions by the end of this.”
Her heart racing, she continued typing. The words ended, and chairs behind her shuffled. A few seconds later, a dark-skinned man in a navy blue suit walked past her, heading toward the conference exit. She didn’t recognize him. The next person to walk by, though, she recognized immediately.
The ambassador from St. Louis, the direct representative of the President of the Midwestern States of America. Natalie’s blood boiled. The nerve, the boldness, the outright quid pro quo blackmail occurring right inside the room. How could they? It was 2042, and they were still fighting to end the world rather than save it.
Natalie coughed. Was that a taste of iron in her mouth? Her memory flashed to the days of hyperventilation, her vision blacking. No.
She was not going to lose control and have a panic attack on the floor of the 2042 Conference of the Parties.
She closed her eyes.
Her breathing slowed.
She searched for a focal point. The only way to escape the pain was to latch on to hope. The present. The task at hand.
Sofia.
For ten seconds, she counted, letting her mind pause in the silence. Peace returned. Then, returning to the tablet, she finished her note-taking, identifying one of the speakers as the MSA ambassador.
The next fifteen minutes passed by. Delegates returned, the press returned, activists returned. The room filled, the Secretary restarted the proceedings.
And the ambassador—the same ambassador, from the Midwestern States—arrived at the podium.
Natalie’s breath caught in her throat, and she held it there. She would not panic. She would not give in.
“Good afternoon, my friends, colleagues, heroes,” the man said, his pink skin practically reflecting the room’s LED light. “If you don’t know me, I am Richard Pollick, Ambassador to the United Nations on behalf of the Midwestern States of America. During the days and months leading up to this COP, I’ve had the chance to meet with many of you about the MSA’s approach to climate policy. We know you’re all still wrapping your heads around the reorganization of states here in America, but we’re glad you’ve taken it in stride. Some of you better than our own people!” The comment brought a ripple of laughter. “But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about the opportunity before us to change the narrative. For decades, we have talked about the climate crisis. We have fought the climate crisis. And we believe it’s time we reframe the war. How do we survive the climate crisis?”
That fast. Natalie couldn’t believe it. In just a manner of minutes, the ambassador took words from a black suited man and translated it into talking points behind a podium. Did he understand? Did he understand how so many people had already failed to survive the climate crisis? That there was no path toward resilience that didn’t include mitigating and eliminating emissions? He’d probably never lived a moment where he couldn’t breathe. He probably always lived on some Midwestern farm, far from the forest fires of the West or the hurricanes of the East. Pure selfishness.
Natalie couldn’t stop her mind. Her heart. Her lungs. Everything burned. Everything ached. She saw the faces around her, either engaged in their own conversations, staring at their tablets, or . . . laughing. Beside Sofia, the delegations of China and Russia were leaning toward one another, chuckling. Why? Did they not see the seriousness of what was happening? Just like every other climate agreement, the fossil fuel companies managed to wiggle their claws into it and eviscerate the hope of real lasting change.
And future generations would suffer.
No longer.
Natalie stood, though she was breathing like she’d just finished a run. Her fists were clenched. Those sitting near her looked up in confusion, though she ignored their silent glares. Raising her fist in the air, she prepared to shout, but no words escaped her mouth.
Only air.
For in that moment, she stole the breath of Richard Pollick.
* * *
Time slowed. Not slowed—stopped. It was as if the world halted its rotation, with every molecule in the room suspended in the air. Natalie felt everything in the room, every heartbeat, every breath, every brainwave. The air, spread throughout the conference hall, desired to be pushed. To be pulled. To be . . . somewhere else.
Her mind raced with the fear and the anger and the pain of seeing a man shift and fall to the whims of greed. So her body and soul reacted. She didn’t think. Instinct guided. Panic overtook and overran her reasonable experience of the rational world. She pushed the air, she pushed it upward through the vents and out through the doors. The air, the lifeblood of every human, it fought against them, it wanted them to realize they were failing to save it. Every molecule rejected the ignorance and arrogance of the men and women in the room. A small corner of Natalie’s brain screamed, recognizing the horror of what was occurring. Was it the air desiring chaos? Or was it Natalie? Was she the air?
She grasped, holding the breath of each human in the room in her palm. She pulled, snaking it from their lungs. Out, out, out it went, away from them. Everyone . . . even her cohort. Everyone . . . except Sofia.
Her mind retained that much control. She saved Sofia.
And herself.
The air escaped, it fled the corruption in the room, the endless fight. Part of her mind screamed for it to end, to stop the violence, that this was not the way.
But
She had lost control
No
Visceral anger
But power
A desire to fix, rather than restore
She wasn’t ready
But she was a tool
A vehicle
A pathway used by something greater
But something needed her to be ready. And then peace. An overwhelming peace, telling her she was all right. It wasn’t her fault. She was a servant of the future. She didn’t know from where the thought came, but nevertheless, it entered her mind.
* * *
Natalie awoke to screams. To sirens. To Sofia. “Natalie! Natalie! You need to wake up.”
Like a dream, Natalie remembered standing, her fist raised. She remembered hyperventilating. She remembered falling to the ground. She didn’t remember anything else. Hadn’t she been texting Liza about something? What was it?
She opened her eyes. “What—”
“I don’t know,” Sofia said. “I really don’t. But look around us.”
Natalie lifted herself up onto her elbows. Around them, hundreds of people were on the floor, unconscious—or worse. “How? Are they dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did we survive?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
Thank you for reading Catalyst: A Prelude to the World’s Revolution!
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