Falling Water: A dystopian climate change novel

by Isa Marks

  There she stood, in front of his house. The roads here were confusing and the buildings were all the same white color. It had taken her a while to find the correct one with the white columns. Teagan was waiting for her on the porch. He had offered to pick her up, but she had declined. Walking with him through the guards area, and machine room tunnels seemed less romantic than walking through the rows of luxurious mansions, and brightly lit bustling streets of the Mall.

  Teagan walked towards her and took her hand, then he kissed her on her cheek. Her cheeks flushed and she looked away. It had been a long time since anyone kissed her.

  Teagan glanced at the man walking towards them, and sighed deep. “I’d like to introduce you to my father,” he said loud enough for the man to hear.

  She looked at him, surprised of the underlying annoyance she thought to hear in his voice, and then to the man who walked in their direction. He was a good looking man for his age, slim, well dressed, probably in his late forties, early fifties. Like his son he politely greeted her.

  “We must be on our way now, Sir,” Teagan rushed before they could even get a real conversation going. He pulled Cecilia’s hand in the opposite direction the man had come from.

  “It was an honor to meet you, ehm Sir,” she said to the man. The man smiled at her in a peculiar way. She didn’t know if he was being polite or whether he was laughing at her.

  “I hope I didn’t overdo it,” she said to Teagan when they were far enough away to have a private conversation.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t think he cares,” he answered. “Sorry, that sounded a bit harsher than I meant. I just mean most of the time he forgets anything that is not work related. He is usually at the office at this time, I didn’t expect him to come home this early. I hope he didn’t make you feel uncomfortable?”

  Early? she thought, her workday had ended several hours ago. They had agreed to meet at eight at night and she had been late. “No, not at all,” she said, not sure if she believed it herself.

  They walked between the white houses, that for such a luxurious looking area seemed to stand quite close together. She noticed his silence.

  Teagan’s mind was elsewhere. It drifted to a place he hadn’t thought about for a long time. They were sitting at the kitchen table in their old house. Him, his mom and his dad. He was still a kid back then, no older than five or six. They were laughing, really laughing, at the stupid faces his dad made while putting french fries in his nose.

  His mom kept saying, “Stop it, stop it, look at the example you are setting for him, what will become of our kid?”

  “He’ll become a french fry monster, just like his dad,” his dad said giving the fries to him. He followed the example and stuck one in his nose.

  Mom couldn’t stop laughing, she had her hands on her stomach saying, “Stop it, stop it the two of you, it hurts.”

  It was the last thing he remembered of her. He still wondered if the laughing had killed her, or the french fries, or something else. His father had never talked about it, and Teagan had given up hope that he ever would.

  Things were different after his mom died. His father was at the office everyday and buried himself in work. There were no more fries for dinner or crazy faces at the table, no laughing. His days existed of school and training. Dinner with his father was replaced with dinner with the nanny. His father stayed at work later and later, and when he got home he locked himself in the home office. Teagan locked himself in his bedroom with all he had left of his mother, her old typewriter. His father had removed everything else that reminded of her.

  He had tried to make his dad proud, following the training schedules his father wanted him to. He made it to the top of his class even though he was not interested in those subjects. But whatever he did it was never enough, his father didn’t even notice. He would sometimes give him this fake plastic smile, the one he wore to work, the one he had seen him practice in the mirror. But they had never laughed again, like that day in the kitchen. His life would have been so different if his mom was still alive.

  People started bumping into him from all sides now. Teagan shook his head, as if waking from a dream. He couldn’t even remember how he got here in the busy streets of the Mall. Cecilia was still beside him, holding his hand, gazing at the wonderful things around her. This all seemed so new to her, while he knew every inch of this place. He had spent most of his teenage years here in the Mall, watching the people around him, studying their behavior. He was fascinated by their need for entertainment, their need for social contact and the effect it had on their mood. He pulled Cecilia’s hand and made a turn to the right, into a smaller tunnel leading up to the Ocean Lounge, which at this hour had turned into a nightclub.

  They found themselves on the flat surface outside the mountain overlooking the water. Festival light bulbs surrounded the site with bright red, yellow, green, and blue lights. Above them they started to see the stars twinkle from the darkening sky. Ocean Lounge, she thought, this place was pretty amazing. She lay back in one of the Adirondack lounge chairs.

  “You like the Adirondack’s?” Teagan said smiling with two drinks in his hands. He gave her the pink one with a paper umbrella. He lay down in the lounge chair next to hers, sipping the blue liquid with ice.

  “I always thought it was Aridondack,” she said, “you know first the r and than the d?”

  “The chairs are named after the Adirondack Mountains,” Teagan explained. “I remember my professor said, that at one time it was a destination for those wishing to escape the evils of city life. I believe the name means ‘eaters of trees.’ I remember because it felt quite appropriate, since a lot of trees were cut down for the creation of these chairs.”

  “So they killed all these trees, just so they could sit in a chair like this one? People used to be really strange,” she said. If I had to choose between these chairs and a forest, I’d choose the forest, Cecilia thought. She stood up from the evil tree eater and walked to the edge of the flat surface, then sat down on the bare rocks. Teagan followed her. Her legs dangled over the edge, she had slid them through the opening below the railing, which had been installed for safely.

  He knew so much, she thought. It was one of the things she admired about him. They sat there, looking out over the sea. Time passed quickly and so did the drinks. She liked the pink stuff, it was sweet and it made her feel a bit woozy.

  Above them she could see lights coming from the mountain surface. People must still be working in the water management area. Below them all was dark besides a low red light, which hung like a fog over the far left of the mountain.

  “Did that guy scare you?” Teagan asked. The blue drink had made place for a green one. He too had become a bit tipsy.

  “Which guy?” Cecilia asked, honestly not knowing who he was referring to.

  “Murphy. The guy on the table in Doc’s lab.”

  It shocked her, hearing his name out loud like that. Her eyes were wide open, her pupils dilated.

  “I like that guy,” he said quickly, trying to make her feel better. “We’re trying to cure him, make him feel better. The other prisoners have to work really hard in the Field, or the Sea Farm, you know. At least he doesn’t have to work there.” He pointed to the light in the distance that flickered above the horizon. “Adrien said he was special, so he has him to thank for that, I guess. Just like he assigned you the desk job, that’s what Doctor Miller told me. Murphy is helping us to improve life. We are trying to make everyone feel better. Doctor Miller says these trials could save the human race. Murphy was in a bad place when I first saw him, you know. He is already doing a bit better. And I am working on a way to make him feel better for a longer period of time.”

  Prisoner he had said, that was all that had registered, unable to focus on the rest of the words that followed. So he was a prisoner and not a volunteer like Doc said.

  She stood up and walked away without saying anything, leaving Teagan confused. He ran after her, catching up with her
in the small street just outside the Ocean Lounge. He was used to the wooziness in his head, at least more than she was. He wrestled through the crowd and grabbed her arm.

  “What’s wrong, did I say something wrong?”

  She looked at him but she couldn’t find any words. She shook her head. Tears welled up in her eyes and began to flow down her cheeks.

  “Doc lied to me,” she sobbed through her tears.

  Teagan looked at her, not sure what she meant. He tried to wipe her tears with his sleeve. She would probably make more sense if she was sober again.

  “I’m sorry Teagan, I should have told you I know him from before,” she mumbled.

  “It don’t understand what you’re talking about, Cecilia. Let me just take you home. My home that is, you can sleep in the guest room. We’ll talk tomorrow.” He hoped he would be able to make more sense of the situation with a clear head.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE KEY

  The light in the back of the house burned brightly. Daryl watched from outside the window. The man in the grey suit smoked a cigarette in his leather office chair. The mahogany desk in front of him was empty aside from his computer and a bottle of whiskey. The rest of the room looked just as empty as the desk, like it was not being used often. The man sat in his office most of the night, staring at the almost bare walls.

  There was something about him that got under Daryl’s skin. He did not know why exactly, but he got a feeling this man had a very high status in this society. His office might provide clues, if he could only get in and take a peek. But the man had not moved from his spot in the past two hours, he might as well had fallen asleep in that chair. Cathy probably expected him back by now, he was worried about what she would do if he stayed away too long.

  The light disappeared, another one illuminated the hallway now. The hallway light went out gain, leaving the whole place in the dark. A bang sounded shortly after from the front side of the house. He left? Daryl had expected him to go to bed, but this was even better.

  He moved to the back door, it was locked as he expected. Men like that did not leave without locking their doors, nor would they leave a spare key under the mat. They did however leave a top window open when they had smoked inside. He dangled his belt through it and pulled up the window clamps of the side-hung window below.

  He climbed in and closed the curtains before turning on his flashlight. He didn’t want to make the neighbors suspicious. He continued his way to the heavy desk and pulled open the top drawer. Nothing more than a pile of brown files, color coded and labeled by date. This man was seriously organized. The bottom drawer was locked. He searched the desk for a key, but found nothing. There was no key taped underneath the desk or any of the drawer bottoms either. He sat down in the office chair and looked around the room, feeling the warm leather through his thin camo pants.

  “I must be missing something,” he sighed. Or maybe his hunch had just been wrong, maybe there was nothing here. The cabinets were empty, the desk only contained useless personnel files.

  He leaned back in the chair and put his feet on the desk. Where would he hide a key? He pointed his flashlight to the wall in front of him. His eyes focused on the picture, just to the right of the door. He walked up to it and stared at the woman in the picture. She looked happy, she was too old to be his daughter though, but too young to be his wife, unless . . . He looked more closely at the photo, the edges were damaged, it didn’t seem to have been taken recently. Maybe it was his wife after all.

  He looked at the books on the shelf below the picture. Who keeps children’s books in their office? he thought, and all written by the same writer? The candle next to it made him feel like it was some sort of memorial. That would be a good place to hide a key. If he was using one of the books as a hiding spot, the spine would show wear, but these books were all in pristine condition; as if they were never read. He shook out the books anyway, but as he expected, no key.

  This was a man that lived at work. Maybe he had taken the key with him? He looked around for something to pry the lock open with. It was something he had done many times before, he knew how to do it, but did he needed something strong and thin he could bend.

  “Why can’t anything go right for a change, why does it always have to be so damn hard,” he sighed.

  He dropped back into the office chair. He put his hands on the side of the seat, to put his feet up, when he felt something cold. The fingertips of his right hand glided along a rounded shape and continued to the sharp ridges below. He smiled and shook his head, how could he forget to look there.

  He grabbed the key, stuck it in the key hole and turned. The drawer slid open. It was just as organized as the other one, but this one was filled to the top with files in various shades of red and yellow. Daryl took them out, spreading them on the desk. Most were sorted by date, some by last name in alphabetical order. As they lay there on the desk something stood out, a big black ink stamp covered the front. If he was going to find anything it would be in these ‘Classified’ files. He flipped through them quickly, one by one. Then he suddenly stopped, his gaze on the page before him. The boy in the picture looked familiar, he flipped back to the first page and started reading:

  . . . . . . . . . .

  Agent: Adrien Wolf

  Current employment: Special Forces Officer and Consultant - Operation Drawdown

  Current Mission: Operation Falling Water

  . . . . . . . . . .

  The page was covered with stamps and notes in an unreadable handwriting. The fresh ink of the ‘completed’ stamp covered some of the words and had left a stain on the inside of the cardboard file cover.

  The boy in the photo was a younger version of the Adrien that he knew. According to this file he grew up here, in the Bunker, after he was taken here as a boy. Behind the first file were training certificates and many certificates of promotion, showing his progress, climbing the ranks. Behind that were a lot of handwritten pages, each stamped with either ‘request granted’ in green or ‘request denied’ in big red blobs of ink.

  ‘Proposal city supply runs’, ‘Request to participate in undercover mission’, ‘Suggestions for enemy attack’, ‘Better alternatives to reach target’. All titles were screaming from the paper in the same square capital letters. This guy had ambition.

  On the top of the next page it said: ‘Proposal Operation Falling Water’ in the now familiar capitals. This one was a copy in black toner instead of the blue ballpoint the rest had been written in. Most of the page was blank making the green ‘request granted’ stamp stand out. There was a harsh line under the title, and some light unreadable residue of the original text left almost invisible. Someone had copied it and covered the rest of the text with a blank page, before pressing the print button. Right in the middle something was scribbled with a fountain pen, it looked like a file number or something, it somehow felt familiar to him.

  Daryl checked the other files on the table again. There it was, the same numbers. He flipped the dark orange cover page. This file was much different than the personnel file. There were graphs of seawater levels, rotation schedules of guard duties, maps of the area . . . an area he knew well and recognized immediately. He used to walk these streets, climb these slopes and guard these areas. He even helped create some of these constructions marked on this map as ‘Observation post’. It was a map of his village. The Hospital. But most prominently featured was the dam. He took out a foldable map and looked at the big blue piece of paper in front of him. The white lines outlined the different features he had watched so often. It was the dam, their dam.

  Inside this file was the same page as in Adrien’s file only in blue ballpoint, which continued after the title. Daryl started reading.

  . . . . . . . . . .

  Proposal Operation Falling Water

  To prevent Co2 levels from rising further, a decrease in population is advised. Request to perform undercover mission to infiltrate population between the Bunker and dam area. Wh
en Co2 level hits target levels operation falling water can decrease the carbon emission by the percentages shown below in figure 1. Taking into account that the surviving population can vary.

  . . . . . . . . . .

  A list of explanatory charts followed. It had been planned a long time ago, according to the time stamps. The time stamps corresponded with the same time Adrian had shown up in their village. Darryl flipped forward.

  . . . . . . . . . .

  Simulation results:

  1. Full scale blast. Takes a lot of supplies and could generate unnecessary risk of early detection. Bringing in materials by glider is high risk. Full blast will alert guards and will cause a counterattack. Evacuation process will be top priority. Survival rates: high. CO2 profit: low.

  2. Medium scale blast. Process can be executed by a small crew. Blast will still alert guards and trigger full evacuation and counterattack. Survival rates: medium. CO2 profit: medium.

  3. Multiple small scale blasts. Small amounts of explosive material can be placed in existing cracks by one person to accelerate the natural process. After the first small blast evacuation will start. Extra blasts can be remotely triggered after each evacuation stage. One undercover guard can control the response team. Chance of detection is small. Survival rates: low. CO2 profit: high.