The Red Shard & The Pearl
Speculative fiction from a united Jerusalem, fifteen years after the seam was drawn in gold.
A note from Lawrence
This is a story from The Near Field, my series of speculative fiction that reaches a short way forward from what I’m thinking about now. It’s spring 2046 in a united Jerusalem. The schools let out early so the kids can half-watch an old man give a speech to two parliaments seated under one roof, and they find it about as thrilling as a recycling calendar. That boredom is the victory.
In the square, two rabbis and two imams argue, not about God, which they settled years ago, but about falafel. It’s a deliberately hopeful afternoon in a future that isn’t promised, offered not as a prediction but as a portrait of what we could still choose together.
