Shoal Creek remembers.
Its memory is limestone-deep,
older than the city,
older than the word city.
But now, the city breathes different air.
Vines drape balconies.
Cypress knees rise through pavement cracks.
Bats roost in the eaves of old condos now thick with ivy.
And on the vertical skins of high-rises,
ecosystems hum with chlorophyll and chirp.
It was Riley’s world now.
Guano harvester.
Climber of walls.
Tender of the wild that once fled from buildings — now returned to them.
Each night, she ascended Austin’s reborn towers,
Echo at her shoulder —
a bat she once rescued, now her companion and guide.
He chirped not just to her,
but to something else.
Because Riley had begun to notice it:
certain nights, the air would ripple.
Echo would hover, still mid-flight,
and the garden-laced city would feel translucent —
as if another world pressed its face against ours
for just a breath.
The Bandwidth.
She learned the name from a whisper
beneath The Independent,
Austin’s tallest tower and latest harvest site.
A voice — not spoken, but felt —
inside the green-lit atrium where ferns grew out of escalator wells.
"Human civilization exists on a narrow band of perception,"
it said,
"but we are not alone here."
It wasn’t aliens.
Not in the way sci-fi imagined.
It was parallel presence —
sentient species sharing the same space,
but rarely the same frequency.
Sometimes, a garden brought you closer.
Sometimes, a bat’s chirp unlocked a window.
Echo was a key.
As Riley scaled the Jenga Tower’s outer mesh,
Echo let out a note
that refracted through glass
and struck a seam in the air.
And for a moment,
Riley saw them:
figures of mist and mycelium,
tending gardens that overlapped with hers,
harvesting not guano, but memory
from spores drifting through moonlight.
One of them turned.
Not surprised —
as if they'd been waiting.
“Shoal is a threshold,” it said.
Riley blinked.
The city snapped back into focus.
Echo zipped past her, unfazed.
The moment had passed —
but it had marked her.
She collected her samples,
fed the garden-compost array,
and sent readings back to ReLeaf HQ.
But her mind wandered to Orange,
the man who stayed when history forgot.
Perhaps he too had heard the bandwidth hum.
The limestone remembers.
The bats know the harmonics.
And now Riley, too, tunes in.
Not every night.
Just sometimes.
When the sunset hits just right,
and the green buildings sing.
Notes from the Bandwidth
- Shoal Creek is a frequency node — one of many.
- Echo is not just a bat, but a signal amplifier.
- Guano is not just fertilizer, but memory condensate.
- ReLeaf cooperatives unknowingly steward the tuning forks of planetary consciousness.
- Civilization is not a timeline.
It is a bandwidth.
And when it synchronizes with others — even for a heartbeat —
new worlds bloom.
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Bandwidth Bloom (0.00) | A sudden flowering of overlapping consciousness across timelines, where signal and self blur into radiant confusion. |
| Beekeepers (0.00) | Custodians of fragile bandwidth ecologies, tending to the hum of shared consciousness the way others tend hives, stabilizing swarm-signals before they collapse into noise. |
| Central (0.00) | The city’s neural hub where signals converge and disperse, a shifting nexus of memory and command that feels less like a place and more like a living pulse guiding Austin’s every turn. |
| Consciousness (0.00) | The shifting field of awareness where perception, memory, and meaning converge into the experience of being. |
| Creekback (0.00) | The soft push at your ankles when Shoal Creek sends ripples both upstream and downstream. People feel it as a quiet yes from the past. |
| Echo (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Echo Lanterns (0.00) | Paper moons that carry voices from past and future, glowing with unspoken memory. |
| Future Austin (0.00) | Future Austin invites you to explore a luminous vision of the city’s tomorrow—where imagination and reality intertwine to create a thriving, sustainable urban landscape. Here, grassroots ingenuity and cutting-edge technology power communities, transforming Austin into a place of boundless possibility. Through insightful articles and evocative Organic Fiction, you’ll glimpse futures shaped by innovators like ReLeaf, whose bold strategies—such as Vertical Garden Fairs in schools—seed green revolutions in unexpected places. From unconventional movements like Trash Magic reimagining music distribution, to fictional worlds alive with unseen energy and harmony, this collection offers both practical inspiration and immersive storytelling. Whether you’re drawn to actionable sustainability or simply wish to lose yourself in tales of a resilient, radiant future, Future Austin points toward the city we could create—and the one we must. |
| Guano (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Guano Bridge Books (0.00) | This Little Free Library is stocked and managed by Austin American-Statesman and Texas Book Festival staff. It needs some repairs to make the shelving better. |
| KudzuPorch (0.00) | A compostable hex-shelled dwelling that creeps block by block like a vine and insists on a porch as proof of humanity. |
| Life Story (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Mintstep (0.00) | The clean snap of scent released by the mint between the pavers along the creek. It signals steady footing and readiness to help. |
| Organic Media and Fiction (0.00) | The rapid pace of urbanization and its environmental impact has inspired various speculative genres in literature and media. Organic Media and Fiction, a recent addition, offers a refreshing counter-narrative to dystopian futures, focusing on optimistic, sustainable societies powered by renewable energies. ReLeaf, an Organic Media and Fiction-inspired platform, epitomizes this genre by blending reality with narratives that envision a world where humans coexist harmoniously with nature and technology. ReLeaf's ethos is rooted in the belief that a hopeful future of sustainable living is not just an ideal but a reality. It combines engaging storytelling, visual arts, and direct action to showcase the possibilities of an Organic Media and Fiction future. By merging immersive narratives with tangible solutions, ReLeaf serves as both a creative outlet and a catalyst for change. The narratives in ReLeaf are set in cities that integrate renewable energy and green technology into their architecture, infrastructure, and daily life. From urban gardens atop skyscrapers to solar-powered public transport, these stories offer a glimpse of future urban landscapes grounded in existing technologies and practices. They provide an encouraging perspective on how our cities could evolve by amplifying sustainable practices we are already exploring. ReLeaf's stories feature diverse, inclusive, and community-oriented societies, emphasizing social justice, community empowerment, and equitable resource distribution. These narratives reflect societal structures that could foster a balanced coexistence, highlighting the importance of these values in creating a sustainable future. Beyond storytelling, ReLeaf engages in direct action, promoting real-world initiatives that echo Organic Media and Fiction principles. By supporting community-led renewable energy projects and sustainable urban farming, ReLeaf bridges the gap between the Organic Media and Fiction vision and our present reality, making the dream of a sustainable future feel achievable. ReLeaf broadens the understanding of the Organic Media and Fiction genre by presenting a balanced blend of reality and narrative. It underscores that Organic Media and Fiction is not just a literary genre or aesthetic movement, but a lens through which we can view and shape our future. The Organic Media and Fiction vision put forth by ReLeaf invites us to imagine, innovate, and create a future where sustainability is the norm. By intertwining fiction with reality, it presents Organic Media and Fiction as a plausible future, offering a hopeful counterpoint to narratives of environmental doom. ReLeaf helps us believe in—and strive for—a future where humans live in harmony with nature and technology. |
| ReLeaf (0.00) | Welcome to the ReLeaf Cooperative, where we dive deep into an innovative and revolutionary model of sustainability and community building. ReLeaf is a pioneer in developing scalable engagement strategies that foster community participation and work towards addressing pressing social issues such as homelessness. In this category, you'll find articles and Organic Media detailing ReLeaf's groundbreaking initiatives and visions. From creating sustainable gardens in Austin elementary schools to providing transparency in a world often shrouded in deception, ReLeaf serves as a beacon of hope and innovation. ReLeaf's approach of intertwining real and fictional elements in their work—such as characters, materials, techniques, and labor—sets a new standard for cooperatives worldwide. Its business model, which compensates for labor and knowledge contributions, creates a lasting benefit and helps people who have historically been marginalized. By meeting people with compassion, as resources in need of support instead of liabilities, ReLeaf has shown that everyone has the potential to contribute to society meaningfully. Explore this section to discover how ReLeaf is redefining the way we approach social issues and sustainability, with stories of inspiration, innovation, and hope. |
| Riley (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Root-tone (0.00) | A low hum sensed rather than heard when the Air Canopy synchronizes with nearby living systems. Often mistaken for a heartbeat in the soil. |
| Seaholm (0.00) | The city’s old power station reborn as a threshold where electricity remembers its origins, its turbines now humming with archives and spectral frequencies that blur industry into memory. |
| Shoal Creek (0.00) | Shoal Creek is changing. At the Seaholm Intake, the water and stone hold a new role for the city. Engineers and naturalists are close to confirming a time-bending effect in the current. Short pulses move both downstream and upstream. Standing near the intake leaves people rested and clear, as if a long afternoon just ended. This site becomes a public time commons. The cooled chambers host sensors and quiet rooms. The walkway links to Central across the water. The mycelium network listens, then routes what the creek gives: steadier attention, better recall, and a calm pace for work and care. What to expect: Check-in stones that log a short visit and return a focus interval Benches that sync with the flow and guide five-minute rest cycles A simple light on the rail that signals when the current flips A small desk for field notes and shared observations Open data on pulse times so neighbors can plan repairs, study, and gatherings Invitation Come without hurry. Sit by the intake. Let the water set your pace. Then carry that steadiness back into the city. |
| Sky-taste (0.00) | A mineral sweetness in the air under the Air Canopy after it condenses and releases purified moisture. Many say it tastes of memory. |
| The Independent (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Threshold Breath (0.00) | The inhale that suspends time, opening the passage between selves. |
| Tradescantia pallida (0.00) | Tradescantia pallida is a species of spiderwort native to the Gulf Coast region of eastern Mexico. The cultivar T. pallida 'Purpurea' is commonly called purple secretia, purple-heart, or purple queen. Edward Palmer collected the type specimen near Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas in 1907. Tradescantia pallida is an evergreen perennial plant of scrambling stature. It is distinguished by elongated, pointed leaves - themselves glaucous green, sometimes fringed with red or purple - and bearing small, three-petaled flowers of white, pink or purple. Plants are top-killed by moderate frosts, but will often sprout back from roots. The cultivar T. pallida 'Purpurea' has purple leaves and pink flowers. Widely used as an ornamental plant in gardens and borders, as a ground cover, hanging plant, or - particularly in colder climates where it cannot survive the winter season - houseplant, it is propagated easily by cuttings (the stems are visibly segmented and roots will frequently grow from the joints). Numerous cultivars are available, of which 'Purpurea' with purple foliage has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Support this species by reading about it, sharing with others, and donating monthly or yearly to the ReLeaf Cooperative in honor of Tradescantia pallida. We deliver any quantity of these, for free, to any ReLeaf site (Free Little Library or other suggested location in the Shoal Creek, Waller Creek, and Fort Branch watersheds). We are currently seeking cooperative members in Austin and beyond to cultivate and provide Tradescantia pallida and other species for free to ReLeaf sites in their local watersheds. Inquire by email: bryceb@releaf.site. Thanks! |
| Twilight Accord (0.00) | The agreement struck across generations of the self, binding doubt to courage. |