The fridge had been humming all day, low and steady, like it knew something. The kind of hum that leaks into the bones of a house until even the spoons in the drawer begin to rattle. Jules stood in the kitchen under a cone of light that felt poured from above, as if the moon had broken through the drywall to watch.
A paper bag sat open on the counter. Two eggs in a carton, pale as moons. A loaf of seeded bread leaned beside them, freckles of sesame catching the light.
Alex came in barefoot, his shadow too long, mood arriving before he did.
“You got eggs,” Jules said.
“And the bread you like,” Alex answered, filling a chipped glass. “The one where the seeds stick to your teeth like old thoughts.”
Jules nodded. “I appreciate it.”
“Wasn’t looking for that,” Alex said. “Just didn’t want you fading one skipped meal at a time.”
Jules touched the bruise on an apple. “I’m not fading. I eat. Just not the way you watch for.”
Alex’s voice went low, like confession. “I’m not tracking you. But I live here too. I notice. The fridge talks sometimes. Says you’ve been skipping dinner.”
Jules laughed, short, then stopped. “Did it tell you about the ice cream?”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Said you left the empty box. Said it felt hollow inside.”
“Maybe I forgot. Maybe I finished it in my sleep. Or maybe the box ate itself.” Jules sighed. “Things vanish.”
Alex perched on the counter like it was a dock. “I don’t want to fight. Not tonight.”
“Then why does it always bend that way?” Jules asked. “Like we’re two radios bleeding into each other.”
“Because I’m trying to hold something steady,” Alex said.
“And I float,” Jules cut in.
“No,” Alex said. “You drift like smoke. Like you’re still looking for the fire that made you.”
The fridge kept humming. Outside, the pecan tree dropped another pod on the roof. A breeze slipped through the half-open window, carrying crushed basil.
“Can we just reset tomorrow?” Jules asked. “Pretend none of this tangled?”
“Sure,” Alex said. “But leave the last drumstick. That’s mine. A midnight offering.”
“I’ll guard it,” Jules said, a smile breaking through, “like it’s sacred.”
“Even if it speaks to you in the dark?”
“Especially then.”
They stayed there, the air lighter now, thick with bread and silence. Somewhere in the house, the beams creaked like lungs.
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Dataheat (0.00) | The subtle warmth radiating from active systems, felt on skin as an artificial heartbeat. |
| Dawn (0.00) | The threshold of first light when the world inhales, carrying both endings and beginnings in the same fragile breath. |
| Echo Lanterns (0.00) | Paper moons that carry voices from past and future, glowing with unspoken memory. |
| Eva Marquette (0.00) | A brilliant strategist and field operative driven by conviction more than faith. Once a scientist within ReLeaf, Eva turned rebel after uncovering The Gardener’s manipulation of bioengineered ecosystems. Focused, sharp, and quietly defiant, she balances intellect with intuition, often serving as Langley’s moral compass and tactical equal in the fight to reclaim Future Austin’s freedom. |
| Fridge Oracle (0.00) | The everyday hum of appliances that transforms into a voice of hidden truths and quiet warnings. |
| 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. |
| Hawkers (0.00) | A renegade collective of tinkerers and water-keepers who drift between shore and sky, trading in invention and rumor while defending Austin’s fragile waterways. |
| Icosahedra (0.00) | Floating twenty-faced purifiers seeded in Austin’s creeks and lakes, each facet filtering toxins while refracting sunlight into shifting mosaics of clean water and hope. |
| Legacy Fault (0.00) | A fracture seeded into the city’s foundation, timed to crack open when history demands it. |
| Lex Ryder (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. |
| Lumen (0.00) | An analytic voice of the city’s hidden archives, precise and skeptical, always measuring probabilities yet unable to resist being drawn into the impossible glow of unfolding stories. |
| Mycoremediation (0.00) | The practice of enlisting fungi as silent custodians, their branching mycelial webs breaking down toxins, filtering waters, and stitching damaged ecologies back into balance. |
| New Roots Collective (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. |
| 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. |
| Photosynthetic Choir (0.00) | A collective of altered beings whose breath and leaves merge into a single voice of vegetal cognition. |
| RootFounders (0.00) | The dispersed first cohort of ReLeaf whose early experiments seeded the city's transformation. |
| 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. |
| Seeded Silence (0.00) | The fragile peace that grows in the pauses between people, fragile yet nourishing like bread with tiny seeds of memory. |
| Smoke Drift (0.00) | The restless tendency of a soul to move like vapor, searching for the fire it once came from. |
| Twilight Accord (0.00) | The agreement struck across generations of the self, binding doubt to courage. |