Laguna
Short story for the 5th-birthday Zine of Ciocia Wienia2025
Ciocia Wienia is an informal group of feminist activists who support people from Poland and other countries, in which access to abortion is difficult or impossible, in organizing a safe procedure in Vienna. Ciocia Wienia provide information about reproductive rights and available forms of abortion in Austria, help in the organization of travel, accommodation, abortion procedure, and translation. You can financially support them here.
Laguna
Whatever I thought traveling to another quantum dimension was going to be like, somehow I didn’t think that the lack of traffic lights would be my biggest challenge. As I followed my contact, Yara, through overgrown pathways, I kept looking around, clinging to my outdated tablet. There were still a few topics to cover for my special feature on Laguna.
“How about abortion then?” I asked. A strange hissing noise had accompanied us for some time and I found it difficult to focus. “It's not in the criminal code here, right?”
Yara smiled. “We don’t have a punitive legal system, remember?” they said. “We have agreements for our shared lives. Respecting and supporting each other’s bodily autonomy is one of them.”
I was panting and hardly listening, relying instead on the tablet's speech-to-text AI.
“If someone wishes to have an abortion,” Yara continued. “The abortion care fleet comes to them.”
“The abortion care fleet?”
“They’re inspired by the mobile menstruation spa,” Yara said, pointing towards a vehicle that looked like a cargo bike with a whirlpool attached to one side and a fluffy nest to the other. “Much like all the other care bikes. Once we are called, we ride out.”
“Wow, ok, so you’re on call every day and night?” I had heard about the horrible work ethics of their dimension, where everyone had multiple jobs and no self-fulfillment whatsoever. “That sounds so exhausting!”
Yara tilted their head. “It’s not, though. We are so many, so I have about two 5-hour shifts a week, different tasks from cleaning public toilets to riding the care bikes! Whenever I hear the call of Troba, I’ll see if I can help, even when I’m not on call.”
I frowned briefly, but was prepared to ignore the strange word, which even the AI couldn't identify. Maybe Yara had just choked. But then they repeated it. “Troba is coming.”
The hissing had grown more intense, enriched by a light plinking and plonking. I grimaced when suddenly the smells of acid, iron and disinfectant stung in my nose.
“Troba?” I looked around. “Who is Troba?”
Yara pointed behind us.
“What in the name of AI is that,” I gasped.
Soft rubber tubes were coiling in all directions in between roots, branches and thorns. Deformed coat hangers and bicycle spokes twinkled among cotton balls, peppered with quills and knitting needles. Among the pungent odors emanating from the enormous creature that slowly glided past us, I also detected chamomile, wormwood and juniper. The air was filled by eerie whispering sounds.
“Some worship Troba as The Holy Abortus,” Yara winked. “Troba is many things. A reminder of how relieved we are to have diverted from your dimension’s path. All that death. And loneliness.”
“We are civilization at its height!” I spat out, to my own surprise. Like I believed that shit. I pressed my thumb onto the tablet’s microphone. “The mortality rate due to unsafe abortions and neglected assistance has skyrocketed since the worldwide total abortion ban,” I whispered, my hushed voice tuning into Troba’s rustling movements. “But at least we don’t have strange, reeking creatures roaming the streets.”
“Troba isn’t native to our dimension, you know,” Yara said. “Troba is a ghost from yours.”
I swallowed. “I’ve never heard Troba’s call before. Never seen Troba, either.”
“Well, here, we don’t ban and hide Troba. We look at everything Troba is and was. All the pain and grief as much as endless resilience and solidarity. You have all that in your dimension, too. Use it.”
“But how?”
“Abort, and rebuild.”