522 The Flood, Ch. 35
Chapter Thirty-five
Fixing up the sailboat did two things. It allowed me to sail to the mainland and reunite with Sunny, and I used it as a base for diving.
The mainland was a mess. With big portions of Los Angeles and the Bay Area underwater, as well as the state capital and the Central Valley, people who had survived the original flood were now in a panic. Agricultural areas around the world were now underwater. Crops were gone. While there was plenty of food for now, the fear of shortages was causing real issues. And the east coast was underwater, the nation's capital, our most populated areas, all of our national media was down. Nothing was working right, and nobody knew exactly what to do.
And then there were the real catastrophes. Nuclear power plants melting down, underwater. Chemical plants, leaching. Things that will affect not only humans, but all life on the planet, for millenia.
Even knowing this was all a simulation didn't make this calamity easier to take. My emotions, firmly sealed away from shock, came to the surface when I saw Sunny.
"Five is blocked from Redding south, so I had to cut over to one-oh-one, but that's washed out in places too, so we took forest roads through the mountains to get here," she said by way of greeting, before we kissed, and then hugged, and then sobbed together for an embarrassing number of minutes.
Finally, "I'm glad you came down the coast rather than making me sail all the way to gold country."
"It's safer," she said. "Have you heard of the Nevada Nationalists?"
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