Ernestine

I have a new story out! “Ernestine” is in the March/April issue of Asimov’s; it’s wonderful to have a story in there again. They’re one of my favourite markets.

I actually wrote an early draft of the story back in 2020, when I was an artist in residence at the Christchurch Arts Centre. They were kind enough to give me a place there because the Arts Centre houses a museum about Ernest Rutherford, one of my scientific heroes. The Centre actually used to be of the city university, until many decades ago it got too big for the site and moved. When Rutherford was there as a student, however, he commandeered a tiny subterranean cloakroom known as The Den for his experiments, on the grounds that it was one of the only available spaces with a concrete floor, and therefore less vulnerable to the vibrations of passing trams. That mean his delicate equipment was disturbed less, and so he was left to get on with it. It’s a tiny, dim little space, and I suspect he might have hit his head more than once on the overhead pipes, but nonetheless: I was riveted. More than once I took my laptop down to that cramped little room to write.

“Ernestine” is a standalone piece that’s part of a longer work (still in progress!). The title character is a little girl left alone in a post-apocalyptic environment. She takes refuge in The Den and starts communicating with the ghost of Ernest Rutherford, who is rather more concerned with the practicalities of survival than he is in recreating old experiments. Ernestine, however, needs more than potatoes to survive, and the Great Hall of the Arts Centre is converted, via string and office supplies, to a facsimile of Rutherford’s Gold Leaf Experiment. Science, she finds, can make you friends, and in a post-apocalyptic world, friends are nearly as important as food.

I’m hoping to finally finish the novel version this year, but I’m happy to have this little teaser piece out in the world.