The Arborists
by Lonnie Ray Atkinson
In a bleak future, decades from now, Richard answers his opportunity queue and finds himself interviewing for a job with an undisclosed unit in the government’s geo-engineering program.
Learning the unit has uncovered the physics for inter-dimensional travel, Richard is offered the opportunity to be part of a team tasked with creating alternative branches of reality and hunting for the technology that could save his world from looming climate collapse.
It is only when he is successful in finding this technology that Richard’s limited understanding of the program and the consequences of his “heroism” become glaring.
More than just an inter-dimensional travel adventure with a climate change backdrop, The Arborists is about what a hierarchical society does to individuals in power, the disconnect between the intentions and consequences of those who see themselves as saviors, and the type of imagination necessary for a better world to be realized.
Author
Lonnie Ray Atkinson:
A writer born in East Nashville (back when that shit meant something), Lonnie Ray Atkinson has learned one thing about the work. Assholes strive to be clever; writers strive to be authentic.
In addition to The Arborists, he is the author of A Good Kid and His Ghosts and Tough Guys, Bad Dudes, And Other Men My Father Knew.
Read
Buy at bookshop.org (because fuck Jeff Bezos)
Buy at alibris (in the UK and Europe)
Buy at booktopia (in Australia and New Zealand)
Download free PDF