A Brief (Fictional) History of Communication (with Fratricide)
Written for Australian Writers’ Centre’s December 2019 Furious Fiction challenge
Also available in audio on the podcast Story Time with Darcie: Episode 11.
by Darcie T. Kelly
In a land covered by ice and snow (ok, only half the year, but my point is better made without that detail), isolation settles in the bones. The heart. The spirit. Communication, unrestricted by distance, is a necessity that mothered generations of inventions. (Though, I don’t think Mother expected all the fratricide.)
Before the land was called ‘Canada’, messages were sent across the tundra by Drumbeats and Smoke Signals. When Europeans moved in, they brought disease, genocide, and a new way of communicating. Notes were left at Trading Posts, an infant brother displacing his elders. You dropped in to trade your freeze-dried fish and beaver pelts for flour and thread, and picked up a note from Aunt Petunia (inviting you to her place for tea and a game of cards) and a flyer for caribou popsicles (the latest ‘invention’ by the local, procrastination-prone, spear-hunter).
It wasn’t long before Canada Post ascended, becoming the official mail carrier of a growing nation. Aunt Petunia went to a corner store, each home to a C.P. depot, to send Christmas letters and birthday cards (stuffed with a fiver) and pick up chain letters and advertisements. So many advertisements!
A new millennia birthed Electronic Communication, which promptly locked its brother, Canada Post, in its cross-hairs. Aunt Petunia would email pictures of her homely children daily, lamenting that she didn’t see you often enough (though, lord knows, you saw more than enough of those kids in ever-improved resolution). Eventually, even the life-sustaining advertisements went paperless, were renamed SPAM, and spawned the invention of Email Filters (the first societal attempt to escape communication).
Canada Post dodged the digital bullet, nuzzling in the security of online shopping. Malls took the slug instead. It sizzled through their exposed, capitalistic hearts while shoppers secreted their capitalistic impulses behind computers, clicking keyboards in the dead of night… But I digress.
With global warming, the trans-Canada-highway, central heating, and the latest (and largest) iteration of Communication’s sons reshaping Canadian lives, the ice and snow aren’t as isolating as they once were. In fact, Canadians are now so well connected that finding a moment to enjoy a bubble bath, an audio book, or to take a shit is a herculean feat.
Cell phones buzz while you’re on the toilet. (“It’s Aunt Petunia, dear. When are you coming for tea?”) Texters, trendsetters, and tastemakers bump into you, their eyes on a screen instead of their path. Advertisements scream from speakers, buildings, buses, billboards ... The noise is deafening and all I want is some goddamned peace and quiet!
I unplug the landline, silence the cell phone, turn off the TV, close the curtains, lock the doors, and burrow in bed. Fetal position. Buried in blankets. Hands over ears. Inhaling silence. Exploring my own thoughts. Reacquainting myself with the internal voice I haven’t heard in years.
The doorbell jingles. “It’s Aunt Petunia, dear. Are you OK? You didn’t answer my call. Or my text.” She knocks. Persistently.
Drumbeats. An undying brother.