SHARED WORLDS 2018 Shared Worlds 2018 By the teens at the Shared Worlds Camp 2018 Wofford College Spartanburg, North Carolina Cheeky Frawg Books Tallahassee, Florida Shared Worlds Summer Writing Camp Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina With thanks to Cheeky Frawg Books and VanderMeer Creative, Inc., for making the printing of this anthology possible. The Shared Worlds Student Writing Book Copyright ©2018, Shared Worlds and Wofford College All stories and bestiary text copyright © 2018 to the individual students Introduction copyright © 2018 Jeremy LC Jones Cover & Art Design © 2018 by Jeremy Zerfoss Compiled by Jackie Gitlin Edited by Kari J. Wolfe Direct all queries to: Wofford College Shared Worlds c/o Tim Schmitz 429 North Church Street, Spartanburg, SC 29303-3663 The Shared Worlds concept is a creation of Jeremy L.C. Jones with Jeff VanderMeer and sponsored by Wofford College. The stories included in this anthology are works of collected fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental, All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and publisher. For registration and donation information, visit our website: http://www.sharedworldscamp.com ISBN: 978-0-9863177-7-4 CONTENTS 6 Introduction 9 Ollidamra 10 Isabel Astwood 12 Mextli Garcia 14 Christina Grier 16 Britney Jean 19 Avner (Lauren) Lyons 21 Sarah Crosby McKay 24 King Snider 27 Bryton Tanner 31 Michelle Taylor 34 Pen Zuleger 37 Aigyptos System 38 Georgia Bailey 41 Samuel Conteras 43 Sophia Harlow 46 Murphy Kalil 49 Felix M. Killingsworth 52 Devin Lewis 54 Olivia Russo 56 Mia R. Torres 58 Jamey Whisnant 60 Sarah Wulf 63 Tibidi System 65 Katie Barnett 68 Dylan Boswell 70 Genevieve Cook 73 Marcus Huellstrunk 75 Brianna Kale 78 Brooklyn Long 81 Catherine Low 84 Rebekah Maguire 88 Zoe Phillips 91 Luke Taylor 95 Aquari 96 Renata Bourin 98 Maia Chapin 101 Ricky Dillard 103 Allen Hank 105 Molly Jones 107 Aubrie McFarland 109 Daniela Morales 112 Sadie Netzer 115 Elizabeth Scott 118 Victor Wall 120 Ociciae 121 Kate Brunton 124 Teagan Crane 126 Alex Duffy 128 Sam Evins 130 Ryan Healy 133 Sara Madani 137 Jack Miller 139 Anjali Nath 142 Sandy Ortiz 144 Ellie Pratt 147 Lia Zhao 149 Nyltiac 150 David Alexander 152 Winter Appleton 155 Mikaela Ashton 158 Lucy Brunelli 160 Ana Chavez 162 A.J. Davidson 165 Mercedes Dubberly 167 Dani Horne 170 Jacob Rawson 172 Isabel Townsend 174 Bestiaries Introduction By Jeremy LC Jones, founder and co-director of Shared Worlds Shared Worlds at Wofford College is a two-week long, residential creative writing summer camp for rising 8th through 12th graders. Students design science fiction and fantasy worlds in groups the first week and then write individual stories set in those worlds the second. This inter-disciplinary program provides students with a variety of fun, energizing, and informative presentations by historians, biologists, game designers, New York Times best-selling authors, and more. It’s a very busy, very exciting two weeks. The basic strategy behind Shared Worlds is to provide young writers and artists with the resources, time, and space they need to create something big and wonderful. We give them the reins and get out of their way. They do the difficult part. In July 2017, we celebrated the tenth year of Shared Worlds, but I started working on the concept that would become the Shared Worlds camp back in 2003. I was a high school English teacher with a freshly-printed MFA degree. My wife and I had just welcomed our daughter into the world. And I had a handful of students who reintroduced me to the joys of science fiction and fantasy literature. It was an exciting time filled with creativity and happiness. I stayed up long hours with our new child, reading, writing, singing to and just simply being with her. This wondrous creature had blessed our lives. Our daughter changed everything for the better. I found myself re-imagining my own childhood through her eyes. Everything was magical—in ways that it never had been before. Around this time, I became interested in worldbuilding and shared universes. I was familiar with both concepts as a reader and a writer, but now I was thinking of how to apply them as a teacher. How could I tap into the enthusiasm and energy that my students and I had for science fiction and fantasy, in the classroom? 6 In 2006, my family moved to my wife's hometown so that she could begin teaching at Wofford College. One day in the faculty dining room, the Dean of the College mentioned that Wofford needed summer programs for teenagers. Without planning or forethought, I pitched Shared Worlds: How about a science fiction and fantasy writing camp? The students build worlds and write stories and live on campus for two weeks. Bring in a bunch professors and writers. Game designers and artists. Give the students the time and space to work together and build something amazing. Let 'em loose! Two years later, we launched Shared Worlds with 17 students and two world-building groups. We’ve grown since then. This past summer we had over 60 students in six groups. We’ve reached a nice balance between “small enough” that students can get to know each other and “big enough” to provide the students with a larger experience. Give a roomful of teenagers the space and freedom to create, and they will do astonishing things. There's nothing quite so thrilling as a group of teenagers working independently, exceeding expectations, taking ordinary objects and ideas and shaping them into something extraordinary, into something that wasn't there before. Those of us who work at Shared Worlds are lucky. The students bring their vast talents, expansive dreams, and open hearts. They bring themselves. They make Shared Worlds work. They make Shared Worlds. We provide a safe place for teens to experiment with ideas and develop their imaginations, in ways that are fun and useful. Shared Worlds also offers students an opportunity to get together with other teens who love to read and write speculative fiction. Students at Shared Worlds are bright, creative, and enthusiastic young people who want to make stuff up, to tell stories, to dream big. And to support each other while they do it! At Shared Worlds, students don’t just build an imaginary world. They solve the problems of a complex system and negotiate the perils and pleasures of collaboration. Every decision has consequences and leads to more decisions. Every solution ripples throughout all aspects of the world. 7 Shared Worlds is about interconnectedness and relationships. It’s about order and chaos. About balance. Everything goes into the stew of an imaginary world. Students draw on what they've learned in school, in books, and in everyday life. They draw on their unique talents and interests. They draw on each other. It's all blended together, mixed up and stirred. The following pages are a rare treat. If you are a student, then some of these pages will seem familiar. Other pages will be quite surprising. If you are a parent of one of these writers, these pages will serve as a sort of Thank You note from the young person you supported. Either way, this book serves as an entry way into worlds of OLLIDAMRA, AIGYPTOS, TIBIDI, AQUARI, OCICIAE, and NYLTIAC. Worlds that wouldn’t have existed if, in July 2018, these writers hadn’t convened at Shared Worlds and worked so tirelessly to build and share worlds of their own imagining. 8 Ollidamra Ollidamra is a mechanical armadillo big enough to house several different species, sentient and otherwise. The gods created the armadillo-shaped planet after the original planet was destroyed as a new home for the inhabitants. The elves and the Nepetis (cat/human hybrids) moved to Ollidamra. At that time, the gods created two new sentient species, the Namrata (crystal people) and the elementals (six- armed beings created out of the remnants of the destroyed planet). The Namrata were created to keep Ollidamra functioning, and the elementals were created as a peace-keeping race. Ollidamra has two crystal moons, one for livestock and the other to provide nutrients and energy to the planet through a giant column of water stretching from the planet to the moon. The world contains many species of life, including corkscrew-trunked trees, pest dragons, and terrifying corpsejacks. 9 Isabel Astwood Object #8 When the gods created the Namrata to keep the BMA (Big Mechanical Armadillo) running they also gave them a gift. They didn’t want to force us to do work with no reimbursement, so they created six figurines distributing them to the six families. These figurines would come alive when the right person obtained them. Passed down through generations of Namrata, none of them had ever been activated. My family is the blue family and we are the second largest family in Namrata. Our figurine is a brown animal. It has three horns on its head, a collar and wings. The figurines eyes also are heterochromatic, blue and green. I had already accepted that I wouldn’t be the one to activate our figurine. Whenever someone is born, the family’s figurine is placed beside them. No one knows quite what would happen if it was activated, since it’s never happened, but we’ll know it’s happened. It had been 14 years since I had been born and no figurines had been activated.