Wild Type

Power thrums through the headset. Every nerve sizzles with alien sensations: water flowing over speckled skin, the lingering taste of fish, a symphony of echoes lapping my mind’s protean shore. Phantom limbs unfurl into a broad tail…

My writing has undergone significant evolution in the past few years. I shifted from YA to adult fiction, fused my signature science-fiction elements with mystery, and developed a more economical prose style. It’s therefore appropriate that I just published a short story in Mason Jar Press’ literary journal–punnishly titled Jarnal–on the theme of Transitions.

The concept tumbled around in my head for nearly a decade. When climate change exposes new regions of the Arctic seabed, human pilots explore them in experimental vessels: narwhals, whose echolocation and sensitive tusks provide organic survey equipment.

Whales have lousy vision compared to humans. The image projected in my head shows blurry grey figures on a boat’s stern. But the tusk transmits the texture of my clothes, the heartbeat beneath, and the electrical field emanating from the headset that connects us. I touch my face to her freckled one, aligning the scars of our embedded neural chips.

Much as the idea enthralled me, I struggled to write it. Several unfinished drafts littered my hard drive. I just couldn’t capture the way it shimmered in my imagination. Maybe it needs to be a novella, I thought, or even an entire book (like I didn’t have enough of those to write already)! Jarnal’s call for submissions on a perfect theme spurred me to try again…but imposed a 2,000-word limit. How could I possibly fit this complex tale into eight pages?

It demanded yet another transition. I chiseled away ossified layers of characters and backstory. Freed of its pretentious husk, the narrative unfolded as light as an insect’s wings. What originated as a geopolitical forecast distilled into a meditation on the blurry boundary between humans and nature. This creative transformation mirrored the protagonist’s experience, moving from a damaged human body into the perceptual sphere of a whale. 

It used to be the sky that freed me. Now it’s the pressure of multiple atmospheres, compressing us into a binary being with awareness more fluid than the water around us. Echolocation clicks resonate through our skulls, a map that shimmers with movement.

I’m excited that this story finally took form, and even more so to share it in Jarnal. Having lived in Maryland for years, it’s gratifying to publish with a local imprint (especially since one of the editors is a fellow alum of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society’s fiction contest)! It feels like a conspiratorial wink from the universe that my writing is headed in the right direction.

Read my story “The Protean Shore” and other works when you purchase Jarnal direct through the press or on Amazon. Already expended your book budget this month? There’s something for you, too: I and other authors submitted audio content for our profiles, turning the contributor page into a free fiction podcast. You can listen to me reading my 2021 feature from Cicerone journal, “Rocket Man“, another vignette about adaptation in a climate-altered world.