Copyright ©2018
by Wes Boyd

Initial Notes

[Editor’s note: This is just notes on a SF story idea that could be interesting, though I don’t think it would work quite as well as Wes has envisioned it in his notes below.]

A good many years ago – no one knows how many anymore, and the event itself has become nearly mythical – a comet crashed into the earth. Billions died as a result of the impact, and more billions died in the aftermath. No one knows – nor cares – how many people remain, but it is not very many. Animals and plants survived the cosmic catastrophe somewhat better than humans since they didn’t need technology to survive. A researcher from a flying saucer – if indeed, any exist – might estimate that humanity on what was once the North American continent numbers, at the most, in the tens of thousands, scattered from one end of the continent to the other. Here and there one can find traces of the ancient civilization, but they are scattered and often incomprehensible.

Life for the remaining humans is not easy. The majority of them have been reduced to hunter-gatherers. As J.C. Hobbs once wrote, life for them is “nasty, brutish and short.” Most people have evolved into tribal beings, and small tribes at that, constantly at war with each other, seeking better hunting grounds, better resources, and especially, women, who are essential for the tribes to survive at all. There is no such thing as romance; mating has become a matter of intertribal theft and rape, usually with bloody consequences.

But not all.

There are a few scattered pockets of civilization remaining – not exactly modern civilization; the technology level in those outposts generally approximates the early Middle Ages, in some respects more modern than the 1500s, and in others even less so. It’s spotty; many of the resources that would help build a better life are no more, looted by the ancients – things like coal, for example.

One such community is called Wyvern (and I probably won’t stick with that name). It is a struggle for Wyvern to keep going. The residents of the town – perhaps a thousand or two people of all ages – are lucky. They have a good coal seam nearby, one that was somehow missed by the ancients. They also have access to iron, scrap metal left by the ancients, most of it coming from an incomprehensible hill at the gates to the community (the ancients would have called it a sanitary landfill.) Mining the hill gives them access to things like steel, aluminum, and other resources. What’s more, they have been able to preserve the knowledge of how to rework this amazing resource into usable tools. Their knowledge is not perfect – much has been lost – but enough has been retained to make Wyvern a regional superpower. They don’t have guns – the knowledge of how to make gunpowder has been lost – but they are not pushovers; their steel arrowheads are much feared by the surrounding hostile tribes, and they tend to keep their distance.

While the local barbarians (and I need a better word) have learned to not mess with Wyvern, that doesn’t keep wandering tribes from coming through, and, not understanding the dangers of attacking the place, try it on for size. Since these wandering groups of barbarians are usually pretty small, they rarely have much success, but the wandering nomads are hell on the local tribes, too.

One day one of the local tribes is ambushed by one of the wandering barbarian tribes. It is all but wiped out. The only survivors are a pair of women who happened to be out of the camp a little bit when the attack occurred, and they were able to survive, although barely. Both are wounded; the men are killed and the women are carried off to be new wives/slaves of the barbarians. The survivors are now in a really tough position; they have no hope of extended survival but want their revenge for their lost husbands/relatives. Their only hope is Wyvern; while the two women know little about it, they have no hope of extracting revenge, possibly they can get the people of Wyvern to do it – after all, the barbarians are a danger to the settlement, too. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Through much arduous travel they are able to make it to Wyvern, which is a walled city encompassing perhaps a quarter square mile, very much of the early medieval type – the same problems, separated by thousands of years, tend to generate the same solutions. The two women make it to the gates of Wyvern, and are rescued by the guards, nearly dead. They come to, days later, in beds in what for practical purposes is the infirmary – but they are chained to the beds. (After all, no matter how merciful the citizens of Wyvern are, they are also careful about their safety and they are not anxious to let the barbarians within the gates.)

Basically, the women tell their story to the leaders of Wyvern, who agree that something needs to be done about the warlike nomads – they need to be exterminated, or at least persuaded to move on to a safer area.

(OK, thinking about this a bit – perhaps instead of two women, it should only be one, who saw her sister or friend being carried off by the nomads and justifiably fears for her safety. This part of the story is a little in flux.)

Within days, one (or both) accompany a Wyvern war party, ambush the nomads and kick the crap out of them. The friend/sister is recovered, only after a long bout of being beaten and raped, and is taken back to Wyvern while the nomads move on. Revenge has been executed.

Only then do they discover that the men of Wyvern value their women highly, and are not willing to risk them being carried off by a random raiding party. Not only are the women kept entirely within the walls of the settlement, but once the women near the age of puberty, they are chained to a system of tracks that goes many places within the community – but not all. What’s happening is that the tracks are like square tubing, with a slot in the top of the tube. There is a slider in the slot that has a chain attached to it; the other chain is attached to a metal collar around the woman’s neck. The people of Wyvern value their women and do not intend to have them carried off! The women have the freedom of the community, so long as they are within reach of a woman-track, but the chains are not long. Realistically, the women of the community are happy with the fact that they will spend their lives chained to the woman-track – they have no desire to be carried off by barbarians, either. They can’t be carried off, unless the raiders bring a (non-existent by this time) cutting torch with them, or possibly a hacksaw, which no one but people in Wyvern know how to make (and then poorly.)

Anyway, the Wyvern leaders are grateful to the two tribal women for bringing a threat to the community to their attention and helping them deal with it. As a reward, they are offered a chance to stay in the community (they don’t need to go raiding for wives, women outnumber men in the community by perhaps two to one) – but to do so, they will have to agree to spend their lives chained to the woman-track.

Hell of a decision to make. The tribal women can have their freedom to go where they please outside Wyvern, no hard feelings – but they know from plenty of experience that life there is “nasty, brutish and short.” Or they can have food, clothing, shelter, and especially as much safety as is possible in this not very appealing world by allowing themselves to be chained to the woman-tracks for the rest of their lives. That is the price of their safety.

It’s not an instant decision. The two women are given the opportunity to check things out, interact with the women of the community, perhaps get interested in one of more men of Wyvern (who obviously have multiple wives.) But ultimately they each have to make their own decisions.

I don’t know how it comes out. Most likely, one stays, one goes. Both will have regrets, but both are stuck with the results of their decision.

The idea of this story is attractive, but it’s clear that it needs a hell of a lot of work, and is far out of my normal genre. I don’t know how hard I’m going to work at this but it sure is an idea that needs to be thought about. I don’t think it’s a novel but I think it can be a long short story.

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