They Only Play Minor Chords in Hell

by Matt Shadbolt

The Victorians were the first to connect the ideas of climate change with the proliferation of wormholes around the world. Small, organically occurring rectangular portals would appear in lush rainforests and remote wilderness, allowing humans to travel thousands of miles in a single step. Explorers deep in the jungles of Borneo would discover such windows and find themselves miles from anywhere, in the Australian outback. Lost in the darkest bamboo forests of Southern Japan, those brave enough to enter the portal would be transported to the outskirts of an Inuit tribe’s homestead. Mathematicians and physicists struggled to make sense of what was happening, but attempts to reproduce the phenomena could not account for the unknown destinations the travelers found themselves in, and research was foiled by the length of time it would take to get word of the next translocation.

Over time the portals revealed some predictability. Even though their destinations continued to be randomized, their occurrence could be mapped with precision and foresight. The deeply curious would find themselves camped out overnight in the depths of a remote rainforest hoping for a glimpse of the exceptional phenomena, which had only ever been recorded by deferred tales of those who had taken the trip through and lived. Humidity and temperature became supporting variables in being able to predict when the portals would appear, and as the planet warmed, the portals increased in frequency but also in volatility. They became more unstable, less predictable in where they would deposit those who entered—sometimes fatally placing them in the middle of the ocean, or inside the certain death of a collapsing volcano. Those who entered had always been risk takers, but once the planet had surpassed the one degree Celsius threshold of oceanic warming, the portals ceased to place humans on land.

The portals’ increasingly erratic behavior began to move off-world, depositing humans on the moon. In the few seconds of life, the portal travelers would find themselves gasping for air as the vacuum of space consumed them, and their tracking vitals fell silent. The planet warmed. However, humans would take advantage of the gruesome outcome to finally create a viable shortcut between earth and the moon. Humans were now able to begin the process of colonizing the lunar surface by using the portals to transport resources from earth to outer space with the minimum of time and effort. Over the next decade, the initial explorers transported to the moon became thousands of colonists now inhabiting it. Thousands grew to hundreds of thousands, and by the turn of the next century, the moon became a viable destination for human habitation, as the earth’s climate became increasingly unstable. Lunar communities looked upon the scorched earth below them from their gravity-controlled homes, and encouraged those left on the dying planet to take the one-way ticket to join them on the new frontier.

Except it wasn’t a one-way ticket. The portals had now begun to appear on the moon. But this time it wasn’t humans who arrived.

By day, Matt Shadbolt is Head of Core Product Experiences for NBC News Group, where he leads the digital teams responsible for the NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, Today Show, E! Entertainment, and Telemundo brands. He previously worked at The New York Times. By night, Matt is an undergraduate at The University of Pennsylvania, majoring in ancient religious cultures and globalization. With a passion for historical fiction, Matt also runs an emerging generative artificial intelligence creative lab and a growing creative writing practice. Originally from the U.K., Matt lives in New Jersey with his family, where he enjoys video games, sushi, collecting vinyl records, Mini Coopers, Star Wars, cheering on the Cleveland Browns, and hearing his daughter laugh. He can be found at www.matthewshadbolt.com.