Joe Pearson is a British fiction writer living in Paris, France. He writes about crises – whether personal, social or environmental – and the humour, hope and empathy needed to overcome them. His work can most frequently be categorised as sci-fi, cli-fi or speculative fiction, and he uses these genres to explore the intersection between personhood and climate change. He also draws on his own experience emigrating to write about displacement and cultural identity.

He often returns to short stories and flash fiction, as he finds the act of distilling concepts into shorter forms helps him reflect on the writing process and reconnect with his reasons for storytelling. He finds this process brings particular clarity to high-concept science fiction, as it ensures world building always returns to the message at the heart of a piece. He firmly believes the act of creating other worlds helps us better understand our own. 

Joe has an academic background in environmental policy and ten years of experience as a writer in higher education and the environmental sector. The New2theScene Winter 2025 ShortStory competition is his first award win and first publication. He is currently seeking representation for his first novel.

Website: joepearsonwriter.com

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ALL EQUAL IN UTOPIA

Claude met Allie in Utopia. He'd been there, and been high, three weeks. She was standing on a balcony overlooking Nowhere, her green sequin dress distracting from the endless slums. He was attracted to her confident stance: her hands far apart on the polished chrome railing, her face upturned to the sun. He could not see her eyes but he suspected they were closed.

He blinked twice, to check she wasn't a mirage; he'd been hallucinating all day. He approached her with scepticism and asked if she was real. She laughed, and turned her back to the wasteland, then took his hand and led him to the dance floor.

She waltzed like someone who'd had time to practice, leading while still giving the impression of following, and all around them green lights danced, her mirror-ball dress casting joyous, shimmering patterns. Between symphonies, she kissed him — soft and fleeting, enticing him to imagine more. She tasted of wine and was the first woman Claude had ever been with who didn't smell human. "We're young," she said, pulling back. "We must make the most of it."

She moved with certainty, so sure that she wanted to take him home, that she wanted him to unzip her dress, to trail kisses slowly up her inner thigh and spend time, precious time, shaking her body with little fits of pleasure.

When he woke, she ordered breakfast from the Aether. He sampled bright cherries and good bread, slathered with real butter. With the bitter taste of coffee still in his mouth, he reached for a pill. She lay a hand gently on his arm and shook her head. "Try this instead," she said, taking his hand and guiding him through the city. They boarded a shuttle, the glass walls of which glinted in the city's fake dawn, and Claude saw the height of Utopia's spires clearly for the first time. They disembarked in a forest, and Claude put his hands on a towering redwood. Like cathedrals, the grand trees demanded reverence. The fibrous bark was surprisingly soft, like Allie's first kiss.

They swam naked in a pool beneath a purified waterfall. Claude examined his own body, which not long ago had been covered in scrapes and scars. His entry examination had left him as pristine and healthy as Allie herself, so perfect she too could have emerged from the Aether.

Claude floated in cool water as the drugs left his system, and green smells filled his nostrils. He closed his eyes in one slow blink — and when he emerged she was gone. A phantom, after all; a guardian angel to help him find enlightenment. He thought often of that calmness over his six months in Utopia, in the moments he wasn't mid-trip.

The second time he saw her was six years later. In the interim, he'd spent some time in Utopia — his ten-year allowance falling like grains of sand — but traded more of it away in Nowhere. A new woman, whose skin was blemished and who smelled of sweat, had broken his heart and stolen three months, and he intended to forget her with more drugs and dancing. But then there Allie was, sat outside a café, fanning herself — she needn't have done this, given Utopia's temperature regulation. Sometimes he thought she could see into his dreams.

"You won't remember me," he said, sitting across from her.

She sipped a martini and batted her eyelids in a way that cried performance. "Don't be so modest," she said. "I don't take everyone I meet skinny dipping."

He laughed, and asked the Aether for an old fashioned. "I've spent six years thinking the opposite."

"Then I see the kind of woman you think I am," she folded the fan curtly and put it on the table. "I was playing a role. The woman in the green dress if you will."

"I see," said Claude. "It was her who ran away then. Not you."

Allie refilled her martini. "You struck me as someone who wouldn't be staying."

He tried to remain nonchalant, swirling his old fashioned. He didn't sip it; he'd never liked them. "Then I see the kind of man you think I am."

"Drugs tend to mean one is here to forget — to indulge in temporary escape."

"Are we not all here to escape?" asked Claude, fingering the spot on his right arm where a burn scar used to be. "We each get ten years in here to forget what's out there. You know as well as I do the horrors of Nowhere."

"I certainly do not," she snapped. Anger was new. It suited her. "I've never been."

Claude studied her face and put her age at twenty-five. "How is that possible?"

"Those under twenty can share their parents time in paradise. I took ten with my mother, ten with my father — and now I take ten for myself."

The skies of Utopia tinged violet as an artificial sunset commenced. "Your parents used up their entire allowance?"

Allie gently spun the fan on the table between them. "My mother first entered Utopia when she went into labour. Ten years later, my father arrived. They overlapped for thirty-eight minutes."

Claude imagined Allie's parents, stuck out in Nowhere, forbidden from ever returning to the city. "They gave up a lot to keep you here."

"They thought it kindest to spare me that misery."

He thought of his own father, who spared him no misery, and his mother, who did not survive childbirth, for want of time in a Utopian hospital, spent, his father said, in wasted youth. Youth she had wasted on him. "I fear that makes you privileged," said Claude. "I thought we were all equal in Utopia?"

Allie's eyes flashed. "Anyone could've done what they did. We all have the same opportunities — still, we must choose to take them."

Sounds of a raucous carnival reached their ears from the plaza below. Allie drew a compact from the Aether and redid her makeup. "So," she said, pausing to blot her lipstick on a serviette. "You've spent six years thinking about me, have you?"

"I've spent six years in pain. Only some due to you."

Allie smoked a cigarette he had not seen her light. "Do tell me grizzly tales."

He had plenty of those: from bouts of diarrhoea from a tainted well, to the medicine stampede that had broken his hip. He knew the taste of rat and pigeon. He'd killed three men who'd entered his home to try to make it theirs. He'd found safety, for a while — if sanctuary can exist on irradiated ground. The people there convinced him to return to Utopia when his right arm discoloured. This time, his entry medical examination had cut out seven tumours.

Instead, he said: "There's nothing worth talking about out there. Anything valuable is put into this place."

"We share wealth out equally," said Allie. "Everyone can choose how and when they come to paradise."

"I choose to spend time with you," said Claude.

"Hard for us to do anything else here, my love."

The word caused Claude's chest to ache. "I can then?" he asked. "We can?"

"You've caught me at a good time," she said, waving her hand to send her fan back to the Aether. "I feel I might benefit from settling down. I've been meaning to see what that's all about." She paused, sunset framing her face like a halo. "How long are you staying this time?"

He'd promised himself six months at most. "Three years," he said, a tear in his eye.

"That's what you have left?"

He nodded, even though he was lying. "Too little?"

"It will do," she said, though she chewed her lip. "Now — shall we dance?"

Three years in Utopia passed quicker than three weeks out in the wasteland. Claude and Allie danced and kept on dancing. They ate and never felt too full, drank and never felt too drunk. They were married — several times, reliving the moment whenever fancy took them — and their honeymoon reached new heights of hedonism each time it was repeated. Their life was non-monogamous. Allie's lack of jealousy, at first intimidating, then enticing, opened their marriage to the skies. They sought pleasure and new experiences, all the while buoyed up by love.

At times Claude touched his arm, looking for the ghosts of scars. The memory of Nowhere stayed with him, though it dimmed in Utopia's lights. His five secret years weighed him down — especially when they passed the Records Chambers; he knew Allie could uncover his lie at any time, but he gambled that she would not waste time checking.

As her thirtieth birthday approached, he thought he could see her slow down, just a little. She smoked more phantom cigarettes, her temper shortening. When his liar's time was up, they took a last trip to the redwoods. They swam at the waterfall — kissed and yearned. He told her then, in either strength or weakness, that he'd time left to spend.

He expected staccato, piercing anger — the kind that suited Allie so well. "My dear Claude, stay with me!" she said, naked and smiling, throwing her wet hair back; he laughed as flying droplets formed an arc of moonlight pinpricks. "None of us know what we'll need when we're old! Pleasure is here before you now. I am here! Take me! Stay with me until my time runs out!"

"I'm tempted. I could even give you more time. We could share mine."

"I fear that would be selfish," said Allie. "The last thing I want is to take more than I am owed."

She conjured a shawl from the Aether, wrapping it around her shoulders. Claude looked for the confidence in her he loved, as he ran his fingers over his forearm. "My wounds may have healed, but the memories have not," he said. "Using more time here — it would make Nowhere feel like a death sentence."

There — more anger; she wore it less well, half-naked and in retreat. "Go, then," she said. "I banish you."

"Allie," he said, but her confidence was back. He knew in a blink she'd be gone.

Claude conjured his own clothes from the Aether, covered over his once-bruised body. "I'll wait for you, when your time is up. I'll be there at the gate. I'll keep you safe beyond these walls."

She pulled her legs to her chest and inhaled her knees. "I know you will."

Claude left Utopia three months shy of Allie's thirtieth birthday. He returned to the slums with newfound purpose. He found new sanctuary and built a new home, cobbled together from sticks and sheet-iron. He planted fresh seeds in half-poisoned Earth. He traded a week in Utopia for real, red meat — preparing a welcome feast for his wife. Using charcoal and brown paper, he drew redwoods and a waterfall, and hung the result over what was to be their marital bed.

The day came, and he made his way to the gates of Utopia. He fought through lines of people seeking to cash in their own time in the city to the much-shorter queue of pickups. He watched as dazed angels, coming down from their high, stepped out of paradise and into the wasteland. Health drained from their faces with every step. Their pristine clothes, gifts from the Aether, began to take on dust.

Allie never came. The knot in his stomach rotted, but he had long ago built walls. She was never going to prostrate herself to him. He and his hovel could never live up to three decades in heaven. He'd lost his chance by refusing to stay. She'd used another exit, and her confidence would make her queen of the wasteland, where she'd rule over better men.

He joined the wretched throng clamouring for Utopia. Once inside, he conjured pills from the Aether — then headed for the Records Chambers. He searched her name and blinked back another mirage — she had seven minutes left in paradise. Had he misremembered her departure date? He saw her walking through the door he had just abandoned, to be lost forever in Nowhere. Then through his drug-tinted haze, he saw the attachment — the twin-coiled serpents of the Euthanasia Centre.

A certificate of death: one day shy of thirty. No message left for next of kin.

Below hers were entries for both of her parents — twin-coiled serpents, now eating their own tails.

He felt Utopia's spires collapse in around him, leaving him standing in dust. I could have given you more, he thought. I could've split my time with you. You could've had someone with you when they took your life. Outside the Records Chambers, he blinked back artificial sunlight. Every gleaming white surface shone as if on fire. Five years without her would be five years in hell. She who had not wanted to spend a second with a no-one from Nowhere.

Thirty years of comfort or a long and painful life? Claude wanted neither. He had called the wasteland a death sentence, but he would have nursed her through famine and tumours and pain, and savoured every moment. Damn her if she thought that unfair.

He found himself at the city's exit, and marched through without regret. The smell of the wasteland permeated his skin as Utopia drained from him. He wanted to spite her, and honour her; to doom her decisions without dooming himself. Outside, an old man, covered in sores, begged for a few days' allowance in reparation for a younger man's mistakes. Claude took his unwanted gift to Allie — two and a half years in heaven — and laid a hand on the beggar's shoulders. The Aether did the rest.

"But I've had my time," said the beggar, eyes widening. "I don't deserve this much."

Claude murmured, as if to no-one: "It's no sin to go on living." Then he stepped out into Nowhere, with blood in his veins and dust in his lungs, wearing his anger like a tailored suit.