This is where our journey ends

on the Dust Road

Hi, I’m Claudia, and Story Voyager is my creative studio where I imagine possible futures through fiction. Here you’ll find There Is Hope my serialized climate fiction mosaic novel, cli-fi shorts that expand the world, and the builder log, where I share my creative process and inspirations.

Curios? Come along for the journey!

Today’s story is the final stop on the Dust Road, thus concluding the serialization of our climate fiction mosaic novel There Is Hope.

Wrapped like mummies in seaweed cloth we enter the belly of the beast. The concrete jungles of abandoned cities in Central Europe. I hope these records will stay as a testament of time. Of our suffering. If we ever make it alive, I hope future generations learn from us. Never repeat our mistakes.

The infernal heat is trapped in the concrete. Patches of melting asphalt mix with the cracked rugged soil. Our shoes are old, worn out, our feet painfully callused. We stagger through the heat like slow beasts, in a row, putting one foot in front of the other. Our overseers have biosuits, a luxury we’ll never be able to afford. They’re not here to torture us. Or to keep us from escaping. There’s nowhere to go. There’s no water. There’s no food in the Dust Bowl. We’re lucky to forage for human scraps. Our destroyers have left so much behind in these cities. They’ve been scavenged for centuries and they still give. They are our livelihood.

We crawl in through windows hollow like empty eye sockets, doorways without doors, like toothless mouths. We’re swallowed by the beast. Up and down ruined stairways. Breaking walls to extract the wiring. It’s hard work. The tools are heavy. Our bodies are dry, stringy. The dust clings to our clothes. It scratches our eyes like sandpaper. Our fingers bleed from pulling the wires out of the walls. From dismantling the nests of our destroyers piece by piece. There are so many buildings. Streets intersecting with each other. All caked in dust. We scavenge until sunset.

After work is the only time we drink and feed. Saline dripping in our veins. A seaweed broth reinforced with vitamins and minerals. At night, we unfold the thermal tents so that we can rest. This is how we survive. This is what our work is worth. We are the walking dead. We are the zombie children. There is no escape. No future.

🜃

Curator’s notes

This is where our journey on the Dust Road ends— with the echoes of their steps turning to dust, the whisper of their breathes fading in the wind, the thunder of their beating hearts. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Hear them in the water streams, feel them in the soil beneath your feet, experience their existence through the stories weaved from our archive. Ichi—go, ichi—e. One lifetime, one encounter.

Our mission at the Museum of Life is to preserve these moments and turn them into experiences for you, dear visitor. There Is Hope is the museum’s flagship collection and has a special place in our hearts, both for historical and personal reasons. It is a living testimonial of the suffering humanity endured in its darkest hour, as well as a cautionary tale for us and future generations: we must never repeat the mistakes of our ancestors. It is the only record left in our archive of our maker, Shia Santos, and the mythical origins of our civilization—when an otherworldly hand stretched across time and space to save life on Earth and give humanity a second chance. Our benefactors are long gone from this planet, but their legacy lives on. Last but not least, as daughters we treasure the precious memories of our mother as a courageous young woman.

You can continue to explore our living archive at your own leisure—each experience will be automatically deducted from your holochain.

We hope you’ll enjoy this curated collection of lives.

Your curators,
Deya & Sayuri Santos—The Museum of Life

🜃

Dear voyagers,

Thank you for traveling with me through today’s story. Behind the scenes, I’ve been preparing the book for print, and soon I’ll be able to share more details with you. It’s my first time publishing a book, and while the learning curve is steep, I’m excited every step of the way.

I’d love to hear how your journeys have been this past month—let me know in the comments! 💚

Until next time, keep voyaging.