Rimechapel
Duke
Inner Sanctum Nobility
♔ Champion ♔
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It began with an Autumn breeze... just a faint, friendly flutter, at first. But once the cheering started, and the crying, and the thankful prayers... we knew we'd won.
As it turned out, there never had been any ancient evil that awakened, or some ridiculous zombie apocalypse, or a meteor, or aliens. Instead, the task of destroying the world had been the prerogative of our fathers. How do you stop someone like that? Someone that you love, who claims they're just doing what they think is best for you, and refuses to listen to anything you have to say? How do you convince someone like that, that if our way of life doesn't drastically change within an impossibly short period of time, we're literally all going to die?
... As it turned out?
You don't.
I can't remember if it was the polar bears, or the ocean sunfish that were the first to go. The sargassum blooms just kept getting bigger, and the ice caps just kept getting smaller. The temperature was somehow hotter, and yet also colder, than it had ever been before - at least in our lifetime. When Mexico, North Africa, and South Asia burned up, suddenly Russia became a pretty nice place to live... if you didn't mind the politics. I had to leave Texas in order to finish my education in Canada, because it finally became too hot to sustain life there, as we knew it. I regretted not having gone to swim with the sea turtles in Hawaii with my wife, when I had the opportunity. It's ironic, really, that the place that was the most sacred to the indigenous folks there wound up being what saved them when the water levels rose. I guess it was a good thing they never built that telescope there, after all.
Finally the ocean currents broke down. Not completely, not really like it said in that article that I read when I was in high school. The jet streams got really crazy, too. In some places, the winds just... didn't blow, anymore. A lot of people died.
I never graduated. Society started deteriorating. I'm glad that I had decided that I wanted to be a marine biologist from an early age, because that was one of the reasons I was selected by what remained of the Canadian government to be part of the team urgently trying to find a solution to what was happening to our planet. We all knew we were dying. The Earth - all of it, from the birds, to the trees, to the coral - was dying. What we didn't know is, how do we stop it?
The problem with carbon capture, utilization, and storage was the power needed to actually run the machines. We could have used wind power, I guess, if there had been sufficient wind. We could have used hydroelectric power if a lot of the natural rivers and inland waterways hadn't all but evaporated. We had some success with solar... but it was tough to get enough parts to make everything to keep up a sustainable grid.
With the ocean levels rising, we decided to plant mangrove trees everywhere that we could. They, and certain coconut trees, were the only things we knew of that would both grow in salt water and perform natural carbon recapture. Most of the time, what I did was just dig trenches. We tried to find some way to make a reverse river, and direct it over the limestone deposits in Ottawa. It was a lot of work, to dig everything out, but eventually we made a huge, natural water filter, which turned sea water into potable water. We started growing things again. I had thought dandelions went extinct, but I was overjoyed to see one again... just about fifty years later.
The crabapple trees never died, though. It was funny to think that something like that, abandoned by American orchard keepers, would wind up being that hardy, stubborn, bountiful plant that refused to stop producing largely edible fruits which kept us alive. I don't know how or where they got their water... we gave up trying to dig deep enough to make a well long before it seemed like the soil could have possibly been damp.
It was a real shame, what we had let happen to the Amazon jungle, but now most of the coastline was green again. I heard that the mayor of Seattle got lynched when he announced plans to cut down some of the mangrove trees in order to open up the waterways for international trade again. I guess there's something to be said for swinging too far back the other direction....
It all started with an Autumn breeze, that one night after my shovel finally broke. The wind hadn't really blown like that in a long, long time. Later that evening, it started raining, too. It wasn't much - just half an inch - but it made the history books. I called my son, and told him to come home, to stop living like there wasn't going to be a tomorrow. That I'd help him find the right kind of help to stop drinking, and using drugs, and cutting himself. I told him that I was finally seeing all this work pay off. I told him that I was sorry for always being absent, having gotten so focused on my work that I forgot about what remained of my family.
I told him that I loved him.
And the next morning, he came home.
He had a common-law wife, now, and she was pregnant. It turned out that my phone call was fairly well timed for them, too. Just like that, they blew into my little house on that Autumn wind, and I suddenly had a family again.
I'm so excited to see what winter will wind up bringing.
As it turned out, there never had been any ancient evil that awakened, or some ridiculous zombie apocalypse, or a meteor, or aliens. Instead, the task of destroying the world had been the prerogative of our fathers. How do you stop someone like that? Someone that you love, who claims they're just doing what they think is best for you, and refuses to listen to anything you have to say? How do you convince someone like that, that if our way of life doesn't drastically change within an impossibly short period of time, we're literally all going to die?
... As it turned out?
You don't.
I can't remember if it was the polar bears, or the ocean sunfish that were the first to go. The sargassum blooms just kept getting bigger, and the ice caps just kept getting smaller. The temperature was somehow hotter, and yet also colder, than it had ever been before - at least in our lifetime. When Mexico, North Africa, and South Asia burned up, suddenly Russia became a pretty nice place to live... if you didn't mind the politics. I had to leave Texas in order to finish my education in Canada, because it finally became too hot to sustain life there, as we knew it. I regretted not having gone to swim with the sea turtles in Hawaii with my wife, when I had the opportunity. It's ironic, really, that the place that was the most sacred to the indigenous folks there wound up being what saved them when the water levels rose. I guess it was a good thing they never built that telescope there, after all.
Finally the ocean currents broke down. Not completely, not really like it said in that article that I read when I was in high school. The jet streams got really crazy, too. In some places, the winds just... didn't blow, anymore. A lot of people died.
I never graduated. Society started deteriorating. I'm glad that I had decided that I wanted to be a marine biologist from an early age, because that was one of the reasons I was selected by what remained of the Canadian government to be part of the team urgently trying to find a solution to what was happening to our planet. We all knew we were dying. The Earth - all of it, from the birds, to the trees, to the coral - was dying. What we didn't know is, how do we stop it?
The problem with carbon capture, utilization, and storage was the power needed to actually run the machines. We could have used wind power, I guess, if there had been sufficient wind. We could have used hydroelectric power if a lot of the natural rivers and inland waterways hadn't all but evaporated. We had some success with solar... but it was tough to get enough parts to make everything to keep up a sustainable grid.
With the ocean levels rising, we decided to plant mangrove trees everywhere that we could. They, and certain coconut trees, were the only things we knew of that would both grow in salt water and perform natural carbon recapture. Most of the time, what I did was just dig trenches. We tried to find some way to make a reverse river, and direct it over the limestone deposits in Ottawa. It was a lot of work, to dig everything out, but eventually we made a huge, natural water filter, which turned sea water into potable water. We started growing things again. I had thought dandelions went extinct, but I was overjoyed to see one again... just about fifty years later.
The crabapple trees never died, though. It was funny to think that something like that, abandoned by American orchard keepers, would wind up being that hardy, stubborn, bountiful plant that refused to stop producing largely edible fruits which kept us alive. I don't know how or where they got their water... we gave up trying to dig deep enough to make a well long before it seemed like the soil could have possibly been damp.
It was a real shame, what we had let happen to the Amazon jungle, but now most of the coastline was green again. I heard that the mayor of Seattle got lynched when he announced plans to cut down some of the mangrove trees in order to open up the waterways for international trade again. I guess there's something to be said for swinging too far back the other direction....
It all started with an Autumn breeze, that one night after my shovel finally broke. The wind hadn't really blown like that in a long, long time. Later that evening, it started raining, too. It wasn't much - just half an inch - but it made the history books. I called my son, and told him to come home, to stop living like there wasn't going to be a tomorrow. That I'd help him find the right kind of help to stop drinking, and using drugs, and cutting himself. I told him that I was finally seeing all this work pay off. I told him that I was sorry for always being absent, having gotten so focused on my work that I forgot about what remained of my family.
I told him that I loved him.
And the next morning, he came home.
He had a common-law wife, now, and she was pregnant. It turned out that my phone call was fairly well timed for them, too. Just like that, they blew into my little house on that Autumn wind, and I suddenly had a family again.
I'm so excited to see what winter will wind up bringing.