502 The Flood, Ch. 16



Chapter Sixteen

Setting out for the Farmer's Market, Princess pulled as she normally would. And Dozer freaked out at his usual spot, the gate with the barking dog behind it. But today there is no barking dog, just the freak out. 

Why the farmer's market? Why not just use a delivery app? 

Better vegetables. Self-selection. More fun. A reason to get outside. People.


---

The concrete grid of the sidewalk is shaved in a cost saving attempt to keep it level. Weeds sprout up everywhere from cracks, around light posts, in the gutters.

A bicyclist passes, and I see a few fertive pedestrians skirting about, but by and large the city has come to a stand still. What are they expecting?

In the old days, when I still had real time information, the predictions for sea level rise were one meter by the year 2100.

One meter is not a flood. It's a whole lot of floods, many local floods and high tides eating away at a coastline year after a year.

Even if somehow climate change had gone exponential, resulting in all of the ice caps melting, I'm guessing it would take a few years. Decades even. We would have some warning.

A city truck drove near me, yellow lights blinking. 

"What's happening?" I called out to the driver. He just kept going.

---

The market was empty. Not empty, there is one picked over stall. The vendor was sitting back waiting for his next customer.

"Where did everybody go?" I asked.

"I don't believe it either," he said, "This whole thing is a crock of shit. It's conspiracy one-oh-one. This is how they take over."

"Yeah?" I said non-commitaly.

"There's no way a flood is going to come in and wipe us all out like some biblical Jonah bullshit. They're always talking about some disaster trying to scare us. All they want is to control the sheeple."

The flood story was about Noah, but whatever.

----

There wasn't much selection, but I managed to fill my backpack.

Okay so everyone thinks there's going to be a flood. 

There's probably going to be a flood. 

When?

And how bad?




















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