‘Balance’ by Cindy Tomamichel is one of the stories in It Takes A Village, an optimistic anthology speculating about the meaning of care.
The domes glowed pearly white and pristine in the distance. From the wasteland outside the domes they looked like paradise. Inside people lived clean, ate clean. For a price. I could hear my Grandpa saying. He had a lot to say about the domes and the people who lived in them. More than I wanted to hear. I squinted through the brown haze. It looked like they were building an extension. Swarms of bots roved the surface, placing globs of the solar energy plastic roof in a mosaic that set hard and protective.
I grubbed up another twisted carrot and checked on my little sister. She had rickets, so we let her be in the sun as long as we could, between the cyborg surveys, but the air brought on her asthma. I’d had a few years when we still had respirators, but the tech had broken down. I hacked and spat, noticing more blood this time.
“Come on, sweetheart.” Ruthie raised her arms to be picked up, and I swung her onto my back. It was nearly noon and would take till dinnertime to get home. We walked through the sparse forest, the trees sick and dying. But there were still a few butterflies, so I made up a silly song to make her laugh. The path twisted in amongst the trees, in under a few wire arrangements that my grandfather thought protected us from surveillance. I didn’t have the heart to tell him they probably knew where we were, they just didn’t care.
I had been a baby when the internet started. It’s hard to think about how much people used it. I grew up with a smart phone in my hand, always online, chatting with friends. Playing games… Lord that seems a long time ago. I shifted Ruthie on my shoulders and gave her the carrot to gnaw on. Games. I’d heard someone say the phones had more computing power than the computers they used to send a rocket to the moon. We played games when we could have travelled the stars.
It was getting dark by the time I reached the shack, and Ruthie drooped on my shoulders. I put her down near the stream, and she squeaked when I put her dirty feet into the cold water. Not for drinking, but washing was probably ok still. I glanced up the hill. The shack blended into the hillside, the timbers built into the stone wall rotting with the damp.
“Watcha thinking about, Moses?” Ruthie asked.
“The before time, when I was your age.”
“Bet it was better. I could have had a calculator instead of doing my sums with a stick in the dirt.” She coughed and wiped a drop of blood off her lips.
I bent down, grabbing her hand. “You been bleeding when you cough?”
“Yeah. But maths keeps my mind off it.” She gazed at me, her light blue eyes bright in a scrawny face. “I worked out the circumference of the earth today.”
“Don’t tell Dad.”
“I know.” She sighed a very grownup sigh for such a little girl, and I had to hide a smile. “But even Galileo knew the Earth was round.”
A chat with Cindy Tomamichel
(1) What do you feel is the key message of your story and why is that an important thing to consider?
The key message in my story ‘Balance’ is that the things you fear may not be what they seem. Is a fear of AI realistic? Yes. Is it therefore a true fear? You won’t know until you put aside your fear and find out. Doing so may risk everything you care about – your family, even your life. But it may also be the best thing you’ve ever done.
The world is full of conspiracy theories, fear mongering and online hatred. I wanted to investigate one such fear – that of AI. It also thinks about what it is to be human- in all our failures and triumphs.
So that was the idea, but it also has a strong theme of family. Moses, the teenage boy main character, cares and works hard for his family and will do anything to protect them – even face his fears.
(2) Why did you want to contribute to this anthology in particular?
The theme is a great one and reverses a lot of what has been the common perception of who does the caretaking for a family. The unacknowledged burden of housework and family does not have to remain a burden based on gender. That care and compassion can wear many faces.
I had been struggling to write for a while, and I found inspiration for this anthology, developing a story that took some unexpected turns. It started from a prompt about AI from my local writing group, so it is fitting that a story about caring is a result of brainstorming with friends.
(3) What role do you see fiction serving in changing attitudes in society?
I have heard of a book described as a way to see that you share the same thoughts with the author, even if the author is far distant in time and space. That sense of connection can work in many ways. It can help someone not feel so alone, or it might change an opinion by living another’s experiences. Humans are at heart storytellers. To share experiences is to realise that not everyone is the same, and that can be a powerful thing.
About the author:
Cindy Tomamichel is a multi-genre writer. Escape the everyday with the time travel action adventure series Druid’s Portal, science fiction / fantasy and romance short story collections. Discover worlds where the heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way. You can find her on her website and sign up for her newsletter.
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