The Henchmen

Thank you.

Hello, world.

I'm Tomasino.

This is Solar Punk Prompts,

a series for writers where we discuss solar punk,

a movement that imagines a world where technology is used

for the good of the planet.

In this series,

we spend each episode exploring a single solar punk story

prompt, adding some commentary, some inspirations,

and some considerations.

Most importantly,

we consider how that story might help us to better envision

a sustainable civilization.

If this is your first time here,

I'd recommend checking out our introduction episode first,

where we talk about what solar punk is,

why you should care, and why this series came into being.

Without further ado, our prompt today is The Henchmen.

A group of mercenaries, bodyguards,

and defense contractors are hired by a billionaire to

protect him in his remote stronghold after the great market

collapse.

Their boss eventually grew bored in order to them to harass

people from neighboring villages barely making ends meet.

He didn't expect the bodyguards to turn on him.

Now, after their boss has had an unfortunate accident,

these security personnel with no experience in community

building or even with the local language are trying to open

up the stronghold and join their distrusting neighbors.

Our prompt today is all about breaking expectations.

How would a post -apocalyptic stronghold work?

What sort of people work security for a loner billionaire?

How could a bunch of mercenaries turn into community

building?

In typical post -apocalyptic narratives,

we face the same challenge.

Things are terrible and made worse by people.

How do we get away or insulate ourselves?

from that awfulness.

The idea of humanity turning on itself is at its most

extreme in the guise of zombies,

where all has been reduced to mindless hordes of selfishly

hungry who want what you have,

even if it's just your flesh.

That is a powerful narrative and it's driven so much

cultural art that it's become second nature to envision our

future reality in that dim light.

But is it realistic?

Can we really expect the worst to come from our

communities?

When a disaster strikes,

like the flooding in Houston after Hurricane Harvey,

for example,

you see everyday people pouring out all this generosity and

solidarity, says Christian Parenti,

associate professor of economics at John Jay College in New

York City.

Suddenly,

the idea that everything should have a price on it and the

idea that selfishness and competition are good,

all that just gets parked.

Suddenly, Everyone is celebrating cooperation, solidarity,

bravery, sacrifice, and generosity.

And that's not a unique reaction in the face of hardship,

nor is it new.

Our shared history is filled with stories of calamity and

just as many stories of communities standing together and

facing it as a group.

If anything,

our methods have improved over the generations.

We're not simply picking up the pieces,

we're building new things, better things.

A clear illustration of how grassroots disaster relief can

lead to larger initiatives comes out of Puerto Rico post

Hurricane Maria, where what started in the town of Cagueus,

I'm sure I butchered that name,

as a volunteer -run community kitchen soon transformed into

an island -wide network of community centers known as

Mutual Aid Centers.

Today, these centers provide more than just meals,

they offer all sorts of services related to art, education,

and therapy, even acupuncture.

Stories like this about disaster collectivism are

plentiful.

If you'd like to hear many, many more,

check out The Response,

a documentary and podcast series exploring how communities

respond to crises both in their immediate aftermath and

over a period of months and years.

You'll find a link in the notes.

For our story,

the question becomes how do we buck these trends and write

something that captures this idea, disaster collectivism,

and makes it engaging and exciting,

while also reaffirming the notion that this is the

realistic future, not Mad Max.

Where do we start?

Well, just like the prompt itself,

I'd recommend we start with that false assumption.

Take our billionaire, for instance.

What was he planning?

How did he think this was going to work?

He hired armed men to protect him.

How was he expecting to stay in charge when money stopped

existing, when they were no longer being paid.

Now let's not get ourselves here,

he must have thought about it,

he must have had a plan of some sort because the

billionaires running around today planning their own

asylums and hideaway bunkers are thinking about it.

Oh yes,

that's a very real thing and it's a booming industry.

Prepper communities have bulk bunkers around the world and

many individual billionaires have plans within plans for

their final escapes.

When the humanist Douglas Rushkoff was whisked off to the

desert to meet a mysterious cabal of ultra -wealthy

stakeholders,

this was one of their talking points with him.

Some billionaires considered using special combination

locks on the food supply that only they knew,

or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in

return for their survival,

or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers if

that technology could be developed in time.

Our story billionaire surely had thoughts along the same

lines.

When he met his untimely end,

did that release the stockpiles to his henchmen,

or is it locked away behind an impenetrable door wasted?

For the start of the story,

we must think for a moment not as the solar punk futurist,

but as the power mad capitalist.

After his meeting with the billionaire preppers,

Raskov described them as,

taking their cue from Tesla founder Elon Musk colonizing

Mars, Palantir's Peter Thiel reversing the aging process,

or artificial intelligence developers Sam Altman and Ray

Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers.

They were preparing for a digital future that had less to

do with making the world a better place than it did with

transcending the human condition altogether.

To them,

winning means earning enough money to insulate themselves

from the damage they are creating by earning money in that

way.

Once we've spent an uncomfortable moment inside that

existential despair,

we can return again to our more probable future.

By setting up the story with that false premise,

we have sown expectation into the reader,

who now awaits the riots of the people,

or the betrayal of a minion who will then take the place of

a warlord.

Instead, the rug is pulled, and in that confusion,

anything is possible,

both for our henchmen and for our reader.

Here are people who didn't know how to communicate well,

let alone form communities.

They're in charge now, right?

The boss is gone.

They have the guns, but that's not right.

It's not what they want.

They see a community struggling and they want to help,

because that's what humans do in a crisis.

That's how we react, for real.

So now they have choices to make.

They're going to open their doors and share with these

people for a start,

and maybe in that process they'll slowly learned to trust

one another rather than be traumatized.

It's a story of two communities merging.

Violence is not the answer.

It won't bring them more food or water without taking it

from someone else.

It's through community and collaboration that they'll grow.

Now let's recall.

The prompt says the great market collapse,

not the great civilizational collapse.

The world is in chaos seeing the death of capitalism,

but the people are alive, just confused and afraid.

The villages around the stronghold may not want to venture

into big cities, fearing riots and political upheaval,

but farms still function.

People live their day to day lives.

Consider where this story might take place as well.

It's a spot on the map somewhere.

Is it somewhere in Southeast Asia perhaps where a lot of

billionaires have decided to build their bunkers?

Who lives in these villages?

Did the children tend to stay when they grow older?

or flee to the big city as soon as they can.

If so, have they come back since the market collapsed,

trying to find a new place in the world with skills

intended for a different time?

Each community has their own problems independent of the

stronghold.

The villages may not speak the henchmen's language,

but maybe their kids do.

Maybe one who returned home with more exposure to the

world, even.

Is there a de facto mediator or a group of them among the

children?

Tension is there from the start.

By the time the billionaire is out of the picture,

bodyguards may have already earned a bad reputation with

the locals.

How can the villagers, who are not stupid,

trust their new neighbors?

Character and community growth are the theme,

and growth stories are wonderful for their trials and

failures.

In a sense, even our opening bluff is one of these,

where the billionaire is faced with a trial and his failure

to grow is what empowers our henchmen.

It could be an interesting perspective choice as well.

A story could begin from the point of view of that wealthy

prepper,

and really sell the idea of what story this will be,

right up until his bitter end.

Oh, that didn't work,

is a wonderful thing to have your readers say as they move

into Chapter 2.

Maybe that trend could continue throughout.

Maybe our henchmen will need to fail a few times themselves

before they get the lesson.

Disaster collectivism is a noble pursuit,

and one which seems to come naturally to communities in

trouble, but it isn't a painless process,

and each step along the way may not go as planned.

The struggles and growth of your characters and community

are what makes it engaging and exciting,

and will reaffirm the notion that this, this right here,

is our realistic future.

And that's what Solar Punk is all about.

Until next time, I'm Tom Asino.

I hope you'll join me for the next Solar Punk prompt.

Music in this recording is Kail Higo by Yago Omoikane from

A Brighter Perspective.

A Brighter Perspective.