Some thoughts on flash fiction, followed by the opening piece of flash fiction from Aeterna, an experimental work in progress

If the short story is a depiction of a world in fragments, then flash fiction operates on a atomic level. To write flash fiction is to distil a narrative down to its core components, concentrating on a single incident or even a line of thought.

My introduction to what can be called flash fiction is in the parables of Franz Kafka, and in what are referred to as ‘The Shorter Stories’ in The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka. Works such as ‘Before the Law’, ‘The Sudden Walk’, ‘Children on a Country Road’, and ‘The Street Window’.

Such works revolutionised for me the way in which I could tell stories and explore the human condition. As a writer whose stories are synonymous with alienation, Kafka’s shorter pieces, fleeting as they are, somehow encroach upon the condition more viscerally than longer, more well-known stories such as The Metamorphosis. Because of their brevity, stories such as ‘The Sudden Walk’ have no beginning or end, existing only in a vacuum in the life of some unknown, unnamed narrator. And we will never know this narrator, we will never know where or when they took place in Kafka’s mind. In this sense, they are similar to the awareness of being amongst strangers in a busy city street, passing the innumerable faces of people you don’t know and never will - that state of total detachment from others that busy city streets serve as confirmation of.

Stories like these are a total encapsulation of human loneliness and the fleeting nature of existence. They are a reminder of all the momentary experiences we have had and have forgotten - experiences from a time before, when we were someone else in some other place, physically and mentally.

As a form, flash fiction encourages the writer to think on that atomic level, both narratively speaking and in the context of a life itself - a life in moments.

…

‘On the Road to Aeterna: An Account for Those Who Will Never See’

After receiving the call that my ride was on its way I stood for a moment and looked out towards Aeterna. Snow had drifted in overnight and settled on the ground and the residue of snowfall lingered in the air – opaque misty white – and the horizon on which Aeterna stood was lost within it. Snow hadn’t been seen in those parts for some time, and I had, it seemed, in some part of me, missed it. By the time the car pulled up outside I was feeling that sense of happy melancholy that window gazing, if the scene was right, sometimes placed me in.

Inside the car I was given the option, because of the conditions, to drive, but I was in no mood now; I had become reflective, naturally, I suppose, considering the scene, the change I was embarking on, and the journey before me. And besides, the new road to Aeterna was a short drive away – five minutes or so – and nobody drove on the new road.

Into the white, I took in the evanescent difference of the familiar, the faded familiar, fading from me in the way I was fading from it, a fading imprint, going now, my presence waning, before extinguishing entirely, and I could only imagine this vision of the world as being one of the dead, of how the dead must see the world when passing through or peering in from some beyond. But I knew, of course, it was just the way that an act of nature had swayed my mood. The paradoxical happy melancholy brought about by snow, mist, white sky, and the knowledge I was leaving, leaving the old world for the new one, for one of the new cities - Aeterna.

Aeterna had been protested at every stage of its development. Its existence today is a testament to the will of those who imagined, then planned, and who then acted when the easiest thing would have been to scrap the entire project. The construction of the new road itself was not without intense, and violent, protest. From the outset, protestors had made makeshift blockades to prevent workers and equipment reaching the site of construction. Bear in mind that the length of the new road is some 12.3 miles. For many weeks, until the deployment of UK and US armed forces, in support of Aeterna’s own security personnel and systems, designed specifically to deal with infringements upon private property, protestors were in place all along the route.

Today, no protestors dare go near. Such is the sophistication, and effectiveness, of Aeterna’s security systems, increasingly being adopted by nation states (as you will know) in their own towns and cities, the checkpoint onto the new road requires very little human presence, operating, at a glance, like a tollbooth. Situated down an old farm track, entry to the new road requires the checking of facial and fingerprint recognition and the entry of a unique code given in the ride upon arrival. The houses on either side of the track, purchased by Stasis – the corporation behind the Civitas Nova project of which Aeterna is the first – function as a command centre, or hub. You’ll likely have up to 10 people in these two houses at any one time, designated as overseers and additional security. To my knowledge, they haven’t been needed since the opening of the new road some 14 months ago.

On the other side of the entry point, I felt the ground smoothen out for the ride. Before me lay a typical looking road, albeit with one lane, running through the farmland. As the mist lifted a bit and the white subsided, I began to see better on either side of the parameter, where not too far away, across the fields patched with snow, tall steel walls that prevented people getting close to the road also prevented, I discovered, any possibility for a decent view.

Ahead of me, because of the road’s underground heating, activated, I can only assume, for myself, the road was clear. Feeling the speeding up of my vehicle, I watched the speedometer jump from twenty, to thirty, forty, fifty, before landing on sixty miles an hour. I would arrive at Aeterna’s entry point in a mere eleven minutes. With a sense of relief and excitement, I tilted my head back against the headrest, trying to suppress my restlessness – like a child, I imagine, getting nearer to whatever theme park would excite them.

But I wasn’t going to a theme park. My wait was over and I was going to Aeterna, to be of them, where I have always belonged, away from the scum and the degenerates and the degeneracy that they, and I - no, we, it is now we - those of us who have been waiting for an Aeterna to come are not immune from. That is why Aeterna came to be, why Aeterna is. Aeterna is for us. It is not, nor will it ever be, for everyone.