Buried Within

Just start, they told me.

     Somewhere.

     Anywhere.

     Don’t think. Write.

     Add words to a page. One word at a time. One sentence at a time.

     Don’t edit. Write.

     Keep writing until you’ve run out of words, until you’ve extracted every ounce of literary prose within you, until you have nothing left to say.

     Then go back to the start and do it all over again. Polish it. Perfect it. Make the words flow through the pages, connecting sentence to paragraph, paragraph to passage, passage to scene.

     You just have to start, they said.

     But where do I start?

     I could begin by telling you about the day the world’s last non-government owned bookstore closed its doors. The day I wept, alone in my room, scared for what it meant for me, for my writing community, for humanity.

     Or maybe the jumping off point should be the month when producing books not authorised by The Global Watch became a crime, punishable by two years’ imprisonment, off planet.

     But it was the year The Global Watch removed all trace of non-sanctioned books, and any reference to them, from the World Wide Web, that life as we knew it, the literary life I was desperately clinging to, ended.

     It began in 2024 with cancellations, of authors whose ideas we didn’t agree with, of books that contained elements that challenged our thinking, of booksellers who stocked books with messages we didn’t agree with, and of publishing companies who dared to produce books that angered and enraged sections of society.

     Writing became an illegal profession; the same year sex-work and the illicit drug trade became legal. Authors lost their homes; their friends and family deserted them. They went underground, hid from the world, taking their words, their wisdom, their literary gifts with them.

     Until now.

     Now we are creeping out of the shadows, searching for light, led by a group of rebels known as the Jacquerie. The Jacquerie believe the world is ready to hear our words again, to read our stories, to know our history.

     But I am afraid.

     I have nothing to say they will want to hear.

     I’ve forgotten how to form a sentence, to structure a paragraph, to create characters readers will connect with, will come to care about.

     My creative spark has been smothered for so long I fear there is no ember left to reignite.

     I can hear Xero in the room to my left, their pen scratches the paper’s surface as their words fill the page. On my right is Maude, the youngest of our house, though their exact age is unknown. Birthdays aren’t celebrated when you’re hiding from the world.

     There are twenty share houses, ten more are being prepared, each have been renovated to accommodate anywhere from five to ten writers. We are provided with a room containing a desk, a chair, a lamp, a bed and either a wardrobe or chest of drawers. Jacquerie supply us with a pen and a ream of paper, stolen from office supplies and government storerooms, in secret, in fear. We are given two meals a day and clean water to drink, and if we’re lucky, a glass of wine at the end of the week.

     I’m the greenback of my house, the last to arrive and I feel lost when I had expected to feel found. I arrived on the island two days ago. I’m told it was once known as Tasmania, but its name was lost years ago, when The Global Watch removed it from the world map.

     It was abandoned by the majority of its population when the seas rose, coastlines flooded, and land was reclaimed by its surrounding oceans. Thousands of homes and entire towns were washed away in a matter of days. Only a third of the island’s land mass remains, with Mount Ossa at its centre.

     We’ve come together, in secret, over a period of six months, directed here by coded messages, secret meetings, notes dropped in pockets, messages exchanged in blind spots known only by members of Jacquerie.

     Most have come from mainland Australia, others from neighbouring countries. There is one I met the day I arrived, Oxley, an OG Jacquerie born in France. They travel the globe, creating writer enclaves. They get us settled, get us creating, and then move on to start the process all over again.

     I’m yet to write anything of quality, anything worth sharing. I can feel a story brewing at the base of my knowing, waiting for me to find my way to it. It’s the same feeling I get when I can’t think of a word or someone’s name. I know I know it, but no matter how hard I try to bring it forth, the word remains out of my reach.

     My story is stuck, not on the tip of my tongue but in the deep recesses of my creative brain. Buried under layers of fear and grief, of doubt and mistrust, of self-loathing and anger.

     I remember what it was like to be an author, to be loved by my readers, to be lauded by the literary press. My writing was not for the masses, my books were never commercially successful, but they were considered literary masterpieces by those whose opinions mattered. I was heralded as the new “voice of my generation” and as a “modern day Virginia Woolf”.

     That was when writing was valued as an art form, was still considered a noble calling, when people looked at you with awe when you told them you were a writer.

     It is hard to write in this foreign environment, surrounded by forest, hidden in the foothills of a mountain, kept safe from The Global Watch’s reach. I used to dream of a day when I could write again, of living in a world surrounded by words and those who craft them.

     But Tasmania is not the utopia of my imaginings.

     I don’t feel free. I feel trapped. By the weight of expectations, of the need to make my journey here worth the sacrifice of others, because sacrifices were made. By those who died making the crossing from Australia, in a boat made for navigating calmer waters than found in Bass Strait. By those who risked their freedom, their lives to locate me, to pass on Jacquerie’s messages and then dig me out of the hole I was buried in.

     Two were captured and sent off-planet.

     One was badly injured when the truck they were transporting me and three other authors in crashed.

     One died in my arms. Shot by a member of The Global Watch’s security service as we raced across the shoreline to waiting motorboats.

     I’d never seen someone die before. I’ve seen dead people, but I’ve never been an observer to someone’s final moments, watched as the essence of a person’s existence left their body. I’ve never held someone’s hand as they took their last breath. Never whispered words of comfort into the ear of someone who could no longer hear them.

     It was as horrifying as it was beautiful and I want to honour them, to make sense of their suffering, to tell a story worthy of their sacrifice.

     But I am not worthy. I am not their saviour, their beacon of hope.

     My hand slip under the elastic waistband of my pants and inside my underwear. My fingers press into the soft flesh at the base of my pubis and locate the transponder, implanted over a year ago.

     Before Jacquerie made contact.

     Before I traded my own life for my child’s future.

     Before I brought The Global Watch to Jacquerie’s doorstep.