Trafik (2021) by Rikki Ducornet - Fiction

A visually invigorating Surrealist Science-Fiction novella about a discordant couple escaping to a mysterious planet

In a way Trafik is a straightforward science fiction story. We know Earth was destroyed long ago by something called “The Noise” and we are currently in space at an undisclosed time far in future. A robot named Micoson (Mic for short) and an artificially-created human named Quiver travel intergalactically excavating raw materials on planets, moons, and asteroids. Their cargo is accidentally destroyed and instead of going back to face the consequences from their foul boss they decide to escape to a mysterious planet called Trafik. Along the way they have some interesting encounters and setbacks.

But this simple summary is just about the only thing straightforward in Rikki Ducornet’s 88 page novella Trafik. It is emblematic of Surrealist literature which is part of the larger Surrealism movement. According to the poet André Breton, Surrealism reflects the inner workings of our subconscious minds and moves in “violent reaction against the impoverishment and sterility of thought processes that resulted from centuries of rationalism” (moma.org). Surrealism shifted the focus from precision to abstraction in order to open our consciousness to new ways of understanding.

What does this actually look like in a book? Do an image web search of “Surrealism Art” and you’ll start to understand. Trafik includes inexplicable aliens: “their faces, feet, and hands made of fired clay...their felt bodies are stuffed with toxic seeds…[t]heir features are painted on! Their forking eyes are lifeless!...Their brains are made of snow” (60). The settings are just as enigmatic, like when Mic and Quiver “see the first cage...it is woven of abrasive grass...They see a doll holding a grass cage on its lap, a smaller doll within holding its own caged doll, who holds a cage. They are given a magnifying glass and, inevitably, the caged doll’s doll holds a cage on its lap...and so on (62). Puzzling and unnerving like a Frida Kahlo or Salvador Dalí painting, Rikki Ducornet has created a universe untethered from natural laws.

Just as mystifying as the supernatural people and places is the inventive language Ducornet utilizes. For example, there’s “toxic hard candy, it stuck to, abraded, and fractured the stoutest expirators, clotburs, and hanks” (25). And later “‘[h]e reconfigures the full array of rehabilitation paradigms. He has flooded the system with an instantaneous ice bath of field-induced saturable graphene” (31). The latter sentence sounds like something out of Star Trek, but the difference is that traditional sci-fi genres provide us with enough context to comprehend the futuristic gizmos, or at least permit us to skim over them because they’re not vital for grasping the bigger picture. But Trafik does not afford such contextual background. We’re thrown into a story that feels like it’s intended for an audience in the year 5,000 C.E. Even when Ducornet does explain a novel object she does so with Trafik-specifc language, “Stuck on a spar, they have no choice but to call upon the benzene escalator, a tricky vehicle salvaged from a disenfranchised Pico Cycle” (19). As the story unfolds entities like Swift Wheels, Lights, Wobbles, Cycles, and Plont Sideral Atlases do become more tangible, but more so in their thematic importance than their physical mechanics.

Like poetry, sometimes the best way to enjoy Trafik is to soak up its imagery. Float in it. Allow it to wash over you. Suspend your need to logicalize everything. Don’t even look for meaning in everything. Sometimes it’s just meant to be enjoyed for what it is–not the analysis you can squeeze out of it. Take the description of Quiver and Mic traveling through space:

“Sailing faster than light...and seemingly motionless, looking up into the eye of the Plont Sidereal Atlas in silence...in all directions bright things in the throes of darkest night, things made of shadow and light, things having succumbed to shadow, having surged from seas of helium ashes, having survived mournful wastelands of formaldehyde, perished in estuaries of psychoactive salts, slide past” (45).

It’s lines like these that epitomize the book’s epigraph: “A Novel in Warp Drive.”

Ducornet includes moments of moral, social, and ethical quandaries commonly seen in sci-fi. Robot Mic feels an innate desire to defend his sentience, “I move about!...I may not be ‘alive’–but I am as alive as I was intended to to be; I do my best” (52). Quiver ponders her place in the universe, “the senselessness of her destiny in an incomprehensible universe has her wondering, What is it all about? What am I all about?...My longing is for a home and a lover” (69). And she questions her humanity, “living in the Wobble is living in a robot’s world, not a human’s world. No wonder she feels so out of it, so unfit, so alone” (69). Added to this is the fact that prenatally she abided in a suspended sack attached to nutrient rich feeders–something else that displaces her sense of humanity.

As our two protagonists zoom towards Trafik, Mic digs into Earth’s history using his Swift Wheel–a visual encyclopedic device that stores information of all things Earth. He obsesses over pop-culture icons like Al Pacino and mashes together imaginative clothing styles. Quiver immerses herself into the ship’s holographic imaging room–deemed the Lights–where she’s free “to run in the woods, the mountain trails and country roads of vanished places” (7). Early on she “glimpses a girl with dazzling red hair who, as she runs past, gazes into her eyes with a crazy and unforeseen intensity” (2). This sibylline beauty haunts Quiver as she moves in and out of the “real world.” It’s an enchanting unfolding mystery.

Mic and Quiver are a peculiar pair and Mic once called their relationship “an entanglement” which at first frustrates Quiver, but later realizes he means well (12). Their connection propels most of the characterization elements of Trafik; however, the pure intergalactic and alien imagery are the dominant focal points. The plot does progress, but whether or not they reach Trafik is something worth discovering yourself.

There’s no denying that Trafik’s Surrealistic qualities are likely to turn some readers away. But, if you’re comfortable suspending your rationalistic intellect and able to wade in some uncertainty for a while you’ll be taken on an invigorating journey. For readers who dare to explore new realms of language and storytelling Trafik will be a feast for the senses.

Highest Score - 5 Trophies

Writing: 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆

Readability: 🏆🏆

Plot: 🏆🏆🏆

Characters: 🏆🏆🏆🏆

Overall: 🏆🏆🏆🏆

April 8, 2021