by Paul Briggs
As it melted, it collapsed. Hundreds of new sinkholes appeared in Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada. A satellite captured the moment when a stretch of ground northwest of the Great Slave Lake caved in and turned into a vast, muddy depression the size of two football fields side by side, which a herd of astonished caribou had to scramble to escape.
* * *
Isabel had promised herself that at this party, she wouldn’t end up standing in the corner holding a drink and trying to look like she was part of the scene without talking to anybody. She had been here fifteen minutes and was already breaking that promise.
She had already chatted with the one or two people she knew here, had gone into the little kitchen of the basement apartment to get a hard cider, and had returned to find that everyone in sight had clustered into impenetrable little circles of personal acquaintances. Whichever way Isabel looked, she saw solid, curving walls of other people’s backs and shoulders.
Maybe this was to be expected. Not too sociable by nature, Isabel had developed only a small circle of friends in three years at College Park, and she’d stepped outside it to come here tonight. Hanging out with her friends was a lot more awkward these days. Laurie was sure to be among them.
It would take another whole novel, or at least a novella, to do justice to the story of Isabel’s love life. Suffice it to say that although she swung both ways, since high school she had mostly dated other women… which unfortunately had for the past year meant Laurie. Laurie, the guilt-tripper. Laurie, who got upset if you sat with her for more than fifteen seconds without saying anything even when you’d already explained you weren’t much of a conversationalist. Laurie, the rich girl who always paid for dinner and never let you forget it. Laurie, the suburban chick who called your family “white trash” and was offended when you told her there might be people who were entitled to use those words, but she wasn’t one of them. Laurie, the guilt-tripper (it bears repeating—she did it a lot). Laurie, the… person about whom enough has been said, because at this point she was out of Isabel’s life and good riddance.
She thought about going into the other room, but the music was too loud in there. Was it not already painful enough to make small talk without having to shout out every casual remark like an order on a battlefield? For people who seemed like they wanted to spend most of their lives partying, extroverts were amazingly bad at it.
I could stand around some more, she thought. Hope somebody else I know shows up. Hope I don’t get hit on by somebody I can’t stand. Hope I don’t look too pathetic. Or I could give up and go back to my dorm and feel like a social failure.
Or maybe there’s a third option here. I can’t be the only one in this position. I could find somebody else who looks kind of alone and go talk to them.
She looked around for a moment. Ignoring the girl who hadn’t stopped texting since she got here and the guy who was obviously waiting to use the bathroom, the only one who looked like he needed someone to talk with was the big guy by the stairs, the one with the long dark hair and a narrow, precisely trimmed fringe of beard that was trying to impose a jawline on his round face.
Isabel considered him for a moment. He wasn’t bad-looking. He was wearing a black Fear of the Onyx T-shirt. Good band. Since he was on the heavy side himself, he might not be inclined to make an issue about her weight. Then again, he might.
He noticed her looking at him. They made eye contact. He smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was a smile. Isabel smiled back. Nothing had gone wrong yet, so she took a few steps in his direction and made a little ‘come here’ movement with her eyes. Slowly, carefully, he approached.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
So far, so good.
“I’m Isabel.”
“I’m Sophomore. I’m a hunter. Aw shit, no, sorry, my name’s Hunter, and I’m a sophomore.” Hunter the sophomore and not the other way around turned aside and started biting his lip.
“I’m a junior.” Think of something to talk about. Think of something to talk about. “What kind of music do you listen to?”
In addition to Fear of the Onyx, Hunter was into Rodomontade, Dark Incentive, Jared Behr, and Laura Bronzino, more or less in that order. Nothing objectionable there. Isabel’s faves were Rodomontade, Epifania, The Kattle, Laura Bronzino and Yvain Alexander. This gave them something to talk about for another minute or so.
“Laura Bronzino’s touring this summer,” said Hunter. “I’m going to try to get a ticket to a show in August.” He looked at her as if to say I could get more than one ticket.
“Unfortunately,” said Isabel, “I already have plans for August, and you’re not going to believe what they are.” She began describing the planned expedition to the Arctic Ocean to learn what was happening up there. The little voices in her head started screaming Look out! You’re boring him! You really think he wants to hear about salinity and phytoplankton growth? But Hunter looked like he was paying attention.
It was only after about five minutes of this she realized he’d hardly said anything about himself. To Isabel, the art of conversation was mostly the art of getting the other person to do most of the talking and providing just enough feedback to keep them going. Here, the opposite had happened. Apparently, Hunter’s conversational jujitsu was stronger than hers.
“So what do you do for fun?” she said.
“I’m a gamer. Mostly Enginquest.”
“I’ve heard of Enginquest, but I’ve never played it. What’s it about?”
If she’d wanted to get him talking, that was the right question. Enginquest was an MMORPG with a steampunk/fantasy theme. Hunter was chief engineer on an airship belonging to a mercenary fleet, hired by the frontier republic of Albemarla to defend them from centaur and wildkin raids while launching privateer attacks on the shipping of rival states. He’d only started playing this year, and already he’d taken seventeen levels in Engineering and eleven in Combat, killed eight snallygasters, captured two jackalopes, fought a sasquatch to a draw, and helped recover treasure from the Lost Temple of Huazoatl. So he had that going for him.
When considering a possible romantic partner, Isabel had always trusted her instincts, and so far they had failed her every time. She was about ready to start going out with whoever she was least attracted to, male or female. Unfortunately, her instincts seemed to have caught on to this plan and weren’t telling her anything about Hunter one way or another.
Isabel heard a noise and looked down. From the looks of things, the host’s dog was quite convinced that Hunter, or at least his ankle, was one sexy beast.
“I can’t stand those things,” said Hunter.
“Hmm?”
Hunter waved at the pug. “They’re supposed to be all cute and adorable, but they freak me out. It’s the giant bulging eyeballs that do it.”
Isabel nodded. This was not a subject on which she had strong opinions. “I like retrievers,” she said. “Border collies, German shepherds… basically any working breed. Only you gotta have something for them to do. They can’t just sit around.”
“Do you have a dog?”
“No. Pop had a chocolate Lab named Major. Died last year.”
“Sorry to hear that. What happened?”
“Just age. He was twelve and a half. You have a dog?”
“Nope.” They looked into each other’s eyes for a second or so. Then, as one, they both started laughing at the sheer pointlessness of the conversation. Hunter had a very strange laugh—almost silent, with only a slight hiss of escaping air. That by itself was almost enough to make Isabel start edging away. Then she thought Seriously? You’re that shallow? You’re judging him by the way he laughs?
At that moment, whoever was in charge of the music decided—God only knew why—to put on a Charr Sutherland song.
“Let’s move further away,” said Isabel as she recognized the opening bars.
“Out of the blast radius,” said Hunter.
* * *
This felt weird
ly like a conflict of interest.
It wasn’t, because the Cambergs had sold all their property on the Chesapeake waterfront years ago. Her brother Mike still owned property there, but he hadn’t been inclined to listen to IPCC warnings before and wasn’t likely to start just because they had been made by bigger computers. The house where Carrie and her brothers had grown up, where Mom and Drew still lived, was on what passed for high ground in the area. There wasn’t really any way she could profit personally from this.
It was just that although every governor of a coastal state was or should have been getting a briefing on the latest IPCC projections of sea level rise, she was the only one getting it from her husband. Dr. Roger Camberg had helped the International Panel on Climate Change model future ice losses. Now he was here, talking Carrie and a handful of key legislators through their findings.
“We’re pretty sure about the projections for the first twenty years,” he said. The screen behind him showed a map of eastern Virginia. He moved a few controls, and it zoomed in until individual houses were visible as postage-stamp-sized blocks.
“Different shades of blue indicate the size of the storm surge you’d need to flood this area,” he said. There were five shades, indicating surges of 1.5, 3, 6, 9 and 12 meters. Roger clicked something, and the colors moved a little as it switched to 5, 10, 20, 30 or 45 feet. “You’ll notice we’re not talking about 100-year or 500-year events. That’s because we no longer believe we can make that kind of prediction.
“Purple indicates land that would be subject to flooding in the event of a perigean spring tide or heavy rains. Technically habitable, but we don’t actually recommend anybody try to live there.” Carrie nodded. Norfolk had been dealing with that sort of thing for years now. “Black indicates land that just isn’t land any more. It’s either right in the regular tidal zone or permanently underwater.”
As Roger ran the simulation, black and purple expanded very slowly, nibbling at the edges of the land—a dock here, part of a street there. The varying shades of blue, on the other hand, engulfed Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, and Virginia Beach.
“So we’re looking at… what?” said Carrie.
“Between eleven and twelve inches in twenty years,” said Roger.
“That’s a good deal worse than any of us were told before,” said Woodson, the leading Republican in the House of Delegates.
“We’re seeing heavier precipitation in the Greenland area—rain and mist. Glaciers can’t survive that sort of thing. It would be faster, if not for the fact that central Antarctica is seeing a slight increase in snow.
“We can’t be as precise about the next segment—the twenty-to-fifty-year projections. Here, blue indicates a twenty-foot storm surge. The uncertainty isn’t the odds of the surge happening, it’s the odds of this area being in the zone.” He brought up a new map, in which the blue, purple, and black had a misty-edged quality, blending smoothly into one another. At the end, looking at the projection for fifty years in the future, he said, “The area in black is between seventeen and twenty inches above the twenty-year mark. The area in purple is forty to forty-eight inches above that.” The black still wasn’t much, but whole neighborhoods were now covered in purple.
“And what happens after that?” said Carrie.
“Sea level rise continues to accelerate, but the exact rate becomes harder to predict,” said Roger. “You understand, the next fifty years—they’re not just predictable, they’re pretty much locked in at this point. If we bring down the CO2 and methane levels in the next ten years, sixty years from now is when we’ll start to see the benefit.”
* * *
After the presentation was over, Carrie looked at the various legislators. “So,” she said, “how do we want to do this?”
“You understand I can’t admit any of this in public.” Woodson pretended to be a “skeptic” in public, but was willing to admit reality in private. Or possibly he was pretending to go along with the Great Big Conspiracy in private, but said what he really thought in public. Either way, Carrie didn’t trust him.
“Pratt doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.” At the mention of his party’s leading candidate, Woodson made a face.
“Pratt’s a RINO. He doesn’t speak for a majority, and if the majority could have just settled on one candidate, we’d have a real Republican running.”
“He’s the only one who doesn’t remind everybody of Trump,” put in Sedgwick, one of Carrie’s allies.
“We’re getting sidetracked,” said Carrie. “The question is, how do we prepare the commonwealth for this?”
“Do we even need to?” said Woodson. “Storm surges don’t happen every year. As for the tide problem, people down there have been elevating their houses for years. It seems to work.”
“Yeah, if you have a hundred fifty thousand dollars you don’t need,” said Sedgwick.
“And if you’re in one of those houses, and you’re hurt, and the ambulance can’t get there because the streets are flooded?” said Carrie. “Or if the house is on fire, and the fire truck can’t get through? You really want to wait for the tide to go out?”
“What do you suggest?” said Woodson. “Do we buy every property that these people say is doomed? There isn’t money enough in the budget for that.”
“You’re right about that, at least,” said Carrie. “We can’t buy everything. We need a real plan.”
All through the summer, the Arctic lands would be plagued by mosquitoes.
This was not directly caused by climate change. A plague of mosquitoes was normal for the Arctic summer. For a few weeks of every year, they would emerge by the billions in vast sky-darkening clouds, feeding off everything warm-blooded. Weaker animals and birds would be drained literally to the point of death. The rest would be forced onto the few patches of snow and ice that remained, too cold for mosquitoes to fly over.
This year, roused by the early warmth and heavy rains, they came early and stayed much longer. They were no more numerous than in any other year, but remaining active for so long meant that they needed to feed far more—and with the snow and ice melted, there was nowhere for the animals to run. Wolves, foxes, and caribou all suffered heavy losses, especially among their young.
In places where humans lived, the governments of Canada and Russia shipped in mosquito netting in bulk, along with huge quantities of mosquito repellent. Sometimes it was enough. Sometimes not. Where there were no humans, Russia carpet-bombed the swamps with insecticides. This killed more of the mosquitoes’ predators than it did the mosquitoes themselves. Canada released male and female dragonflies into the far north against the mosquito clouds, which for them were an immeasurable feast. One day their descendants would bring down the numbers of mosquitoes, but not this year.
The last of the Arctic sea ice disappeared on July 9, nearly three weeks earlier than the previous year. The North Pole had been ice-free for the past month.
* * *
The sky was iron-gray and overcast, the Lincoln Sea a much darker gray. Even here, twenty miles north of the Greenland coast, the katabatic winds that blew from the ice sheet scoured the surface of the ocean. As the cold, dry air whipped over the warmer water, it cooled the moisture in the air into tendrils of mist that blew due north in hundreds of ruler-straight lines. On the horizon, the lines of fog blurred into a gray haze that melted the edges of sea and sky.
It was an alien, monochrome seascape. The only assurances that Isabel hadn’t gone color-blind were the absurdly bright yellow of the weather buoy she was perched on and the light brown of her own hair, a few strands of which had escaped the O-ring and were being whipped into her own face by the wind. Even her wetsuit was black and gray. It could not be said that she was blissfully unaware of the danger she was in, unless repairing a broken salinometer while crouched down on a violently swaying platform is your idea of bliss, but it had been a while since she’d looked behind her.
The weather buoy was about six feet wide, with a tripod fra
me above it that held the transmitter. The legs of the frame were connected by crossbars. Isabel was down on her hands and knees, with her shoulders pressed against one of the crossbars to help hold her in place.
Between ten and fifteen yards away, the S.S. Kotick floated. Before Isabel had joined this mission, the only boat she’d ever operated was the Mary Lynn, her father’s old skipjack. The Kotick was as different from the Mary Lynn as it could possibly be and still float. It was over one hundred feet long, visibly brand new and—apart from the solar panels—gleaming white. Its hull was wide, but tapered to a narrow wedge just before it reached the water. Its cockpit stuck out above a broad, flat expanse of solar panels like the deck of a miniature aircraft carrier. Its engines were housed in wing-like nacelles under the lip of the hull on either side. Overall, the Kotick looked more like a spaceship than anything intended for sea travel… which was appropriate, considering how much Isabel’s surroundings looked like an ocean on some other planet.
Over three hundred weather buoys, both moored and drifting, had been deployed in the Arctic Ocean over the past two years. The buoys themselves were all still in excellent condition—and well they might be, since they had originally been built to withstand almost anything the ocean could throw at them. But the salinometers hadn’t been part of the original structure. They were mounted on the buoys for this particular job, and in any kind of rough weather they tended to break or fall off. In addition to just trying to figure out what the hell was going on in the Arctic, part of the Kotick’s mission was to repair or replace these where necessary.
Strictly speaking, three different rules were being broken here. Isabel should not have been out here by herself, the Kotick should not have been out of arm’s reach, and someone on deck should have been keeping an eye on her—or an eye on them, if the first rule were being followed. But two days ago her coworker, Brad, had gotten his hand in between the side of the buoy and one of the Kotick’s nacelles, and three of his fingers had been badly broken. They’d had to send in a helicopter to fly him to the nearest hospital… which luckily for him was only fifty miles away, in a town called “Alert,” as in “What You Should Have Been, Brad.”