The Oracle Trilogy Book One Ohm's Node

Part 1 Everything on the table / Alligator Crossing

part one  

chapter one

A dark orange smudge of sun poked out from a chain of pitch-black clouds. After an early morning of thunderous microbursts and rapid formations of vertical and horizontal wind shears that had pushed the turbid Gulf relentlessly inland, it began draining off the road of a piece of land that had once been a part of a land mass that was now Africa. She had begun to envision her state disappearing back into the ocean, purged of mankind, buried for some intrepid alien archeological mission to discover.

Once heralded as Shangri la, welcoming the retired with their life savings, it was now a diminishing refuge of last bastion climate deniers, survivalists hunkered down with what they called a front row seat to Armageddon and a few very rich who could afford sea walls, buttressing from the inevitable.

Life had been in retreat from the uninhabitable zones for years now, away from the blunt force and impact of what was now considered to be the number one killer, weather or the human, depending on what or who you wanted to blame. Its relentless pace had quickened in the past year, the now designated Year of Counting Blessings

Since the great scientific revolt and march across countries, the Artists had rendered Meltdown with their own unique mediums. Their work was everywhere; on billboards, sculptures placed randomly, murals on buildings, mobile theater groups and dynamic memes that became mantras for the preppers and enders.

For some there was beauty in the apocalypse. It was the intensity of storms, the sheer sensual feel of destruction with its deafening, piercing, percussive sounds and heavy, constricted, suffocating, blistering heat and phantasmagoric visual display of a planet in retrograde. They gave Gaia attitude. She spoke through a thousand brushes, tons of Plaster of Paris and biodegradable spray paint. She screamed at mankind, asking him to examine his brain to find the faulty wiring and work with her to lessen his impact. Most of her best friends were artists who had all risked their lives during the great walks across countries by scientists, artists and millions joining in. Some called it the second trail of tears. Despite the trillionaire husband, she'd been one, providing water and energy bar drops, the same as the poor refugees fleeing from unlivable heat. Her husband grumbled but fuck it. Time to do something.

From atop the raised platform, in her bullet proof bubble on her EV Humvee with huge monster tires and an actual damn ladder, she looked out at the coastal flood plains with the lattice work of aqueducts and holding ponds siphoning off any rain. Just in the last year, the military had ceased control over the roads leaving it up to the traveler to decide, the DMV gone with no road repair and no license/no fault driving. Despite all the work she had brought, a definite perk of the driverless vehicle, she was zoning. Florida was by the day becoming less habitable, less land and more water, too hot, less people, more aquatic species. Floating communities were popping up as fast as the sunshine state was losing dry ground.

She was one of the scientists who stoically weathered out the change, watching the increasingly destructive weather while desperately trying to prolong her life. Globally the weird stuff once considered interesting anomalies had become common place and deadly. There was thunder snow, Firenado's, Gustnados, Bomb Cyclones, Derecho's and Haboobs.

Despite the never-ending diaspora of climate refugees leaving the state, some humans were determined to live out their lives here, better than anywhere, home being where the heart is and who could argue with that, by God! Others were passionate about remaining behind, oft times repeating a common mantra of living on the edge of oblivion. Some were genuinely in awe of the apocalyptic changes around them, caught up in childlike wonder, watching and recording it with whatever measurement devices they had together with their own senses.