The story concerns a woman working for the RFS, or Regional Fire Service in South Australia's desiccated, ravaged mid-north, maybe half a century from now. Climate Change has happened. Past tense. It's not a question of stopping it ... now, survival is all about preventing fires, and this story examines ways and means of doing that, utilizing the cutting-edge Ai and robotics of the 2070s...
All of which falls apart somewhat when you've lost your husband to this job, and your teenage son is going so far wrong, you're haunted by the worst of all intuitions about him and his friends, some of whom are already incarcerated, others at liberty by a thread.
Firegrounds is a story that's very close to my heart. Somewhere far, far down the track, I think there's a full novel to be derived from the foundations built by this little piece. In this incarnation, it's only about 4,000 words, but a lot of world building went into it, and one day ... one day ... So I took out half an hour and lashed up a cover to illustrate the story, and help to celebrate the sweet process of the contract signing.
Watch this space, and when the issue is published, I'll blog about Firegrounds again.
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