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Did We Break the End of the World? single work   short story   science fiction  
Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 Did We Break the End of the World?
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

After the 'Pulse' destroys most things electronic and electric, Jin and Aisha are two teenagers scavenging together. Jin specialises in batteries, Aisha in pharmaceuticals; Aisha's mutism relieves Jin of having to keep his hearing aids on.

While preparing for the next market to trade for food, they meet a third boy, Billy, who Jin starts crushing on. After a misunderstanding at the market, Billy and Aisha - who can speak and simply chose not to - reveal they knew each other, and moreover, knew the origins of the apocalypse.

Billy and Aisha questioned their world before the Pulse - the android-like plastic foster mothers, the lack of humans besides teenagers, and the city no one has ever left. They discovered it was an experiment, and the researchers ended it with the Pulse. Reunited, the trio plan on going to the laboratory and restarting the city.

Affiliation Notes

  • Writing Disability in Australia:

    Type of disability Deafness, mutism.
    Type of character Primary.
    Point of view Third person.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Defying Doomsday Tsana Dolichva (editor), Holly Kench (editor), Yokine : Twelfth Planet Press , 2016 9322595 2016 anthology short story

    'Teens form an all-girl band in the face of an impending comet.

 A woman faces giant spiders to collect silk and protect her family.

 New friends take their radio show on the road in search of plague survivors. 

A man seeks love in a fading world. 

How would you survive the apocalypse?

    Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the “fittest” who survive - it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost' (publication blurb).

    Yokine : Twelfth Planet Press , 2016
    pg. 101-138
Last amended 30 Apr 2018 10:01:56
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