by Ginger Booth
He only had the one. Fighting to stay awake, we earnestly discussed this for several minutes, how to make the best use of one hand warmer. Eventually our sluggish brains worked around to the obvious. We needed our clothes off to warm up. So we’d warm our hands to take off our clothes, then warm ourselves with whatever heat was left. We only managed to get our shirts off, then huddled together with the hand-warmer between us until it cooled. I left my bra on, out of respect for Cam’s comfort, I suppose.
It was good enough. The 60-degree February day, with dappled sun, was a whole lot warmer than our soaked shirts and jackets, despite the ever-present ocean breeze. Our minds slowly thawed as we sunbathed in our oak. After a while I was even able to peel off our pants. Cam’s leg and foot were in too much pain for him to finish getting his own pants off. I hung things to dry on lesser branches around us. That seemed overly optimistic. But our clothes certainly wouldn’t dry if we left them piled in a wad.
The second monster wave was higher than the first, frothing over the bough below. But our higher bough stayed dry, and our oak held strong. Occasionally a drowned animal or corpse flowed by beneath us, at first south out to sea, then back north to assault poor Long Island again.
Cam sported some truly spectacular bruises, that ripened and bloomed as circulation returned. So did I, but looking at my own wounds required effort. Our legs took the brunt of the battering, especially Cam’s. Taller than me, and wrapped around me in the water while he clutched me around the waist, he’d bashed into things the most. Cam kept his woolen socks on, the only foot protection left to him, even when I yanked off his wet pants. One of the toes was sodden crimson with blood. Maybe he was afraid of what would come off with the sock if he removed it. Maybe he didn’t want to risk his last shred of foot protection.
“Break time over,” Cam rallied with a groan. “Duty calls.” He rummaged in his clothes to retrieve two phones in cases.
“You made brilliant use of that breather,” I told him in admiration. “Water, hand warmer, and phones!”
He smiled tentatively, boyishly pleased at the compliment, then broke into a laughing jag. We both laughed until we cried, and then cried until we were spent, huddled in each other’s arms for warmth. Good thing Cam is gay. After this kind of life-and-death intimacy, we could end up married, and to hell with Emmett and Dwayne. But that was how both of us found our current spouses. To each our own perfect foul-weather friend, of the gender we found pretty. Cam and I were free to just be friends.
At last he sighed himself back into composure. He unwrapped the satellite phone from its truly, magnificently, impressively waterproof and shockproof nest. Cam called into Hudson Army HQ and asked properly for his commanding officer, Colonel Tony Nasser.
They must have built that case for Navy SEAL use or something. I never would have believed any phone case proof against the water tumbling we’d just endured. I couldn’t help but reach for the other phone. The miracle of dryness hadn’t extended to that one. I tucked it gently back in its case. Salvaging cell phones was a major industry for LI and the Apple Cities. Manufacturers in the Northeast didn’t have the capacity to create new ones.
Cam put the call on speaker, as the original flunky routed the call. “Cam! Are you alright?” In surprise, I recognized the voice of our Governor-General Sean Cullen, Commander in Chief of the fledgling nation of Hudson.
Cam didn’t appear to care why he’d caught Sean instead of Tony. “More or less,” he replied, gazing down at his knees and feet, still seeping blood. “Dee Baker is here with me, sir. Have you heard from Dwayne?”
“Thank God on Dee. Yes, your husband is fine. Where are you?” asked Sean.
Cam pushed a button and rattled off some GPS coordinates.
“Thank you,” Sean said evenly. “Status?”
“Currently sitting in an oak tree. Waves washing beneath. Maybe a few miles north of the intersection of Wantagh Parkway and Jones Beach. Ditched the car. The tsunami caught us on foot. Couple broken bones. Not ambulatory.”
“Dear God,” Sean said. “Well, stick with your tree. I’ll send a chopper to fetch you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Cam said. “They’ll take me home to Dwayne?”
“No. They’ll bring you to Dee’s house, in Brooklyn Prospect. We’ll coordinate emergency response from there.”
Cam was still pretty loopy from the pain. We both were. He complained, “Sir, all due respect. I belong on LI with my people. I belong in ELI, with my husband.” In fairness, he added, “Dee might like the chopper home.”
“I would!” I sang out toward the sat phone.
“I hear you, Lieutenant Colonel,” Sean said firmly. “And I gave you an order. Sit tight. Wait for chopper. I’ll see you in a few hours. Both of you.”
Cam looked mulish, and objected again, “Sir –!”
“Cam!” Sean cut him off. “Do you have transportation? In your tree? Solid communications?”
“No, sir,” Cam admitted sourly. “Can’t even get down from the tree.” He glowered at the murky waters slurping beneath us.
“Then you will await my chopper. Yes?”
“Yes, sir,” Cam bit out.
“I can’t tell you how much it means to find you safe. Both of you,” Sean said soothingly. “I’ll notify everyone for you. Just hang in a little longer. Cullen out.”
Cam stabbed the satellite phone off, and sat back against the tree trunk to regard the view. Our slight elevation did offer a view, on what passed for a hill amid the marshy, southern sandbar shores of LI. We’d selected a southwest-reaching bough for our ringside seats on the catastrophe. To the south, sometimes we could see the next wave if it was tall enough, sometimes two if a short one came next. Slow and inexorable, the cycle from cresting in-crash, to sucking back-draw, back to in-crash, seemed to last 30 minutes or so. When the water drew back to sea, as it did now, stronger trees and roof lines gradually reappeared. Cam gazed to his left, off into the low winter sun.
He’d been on Long Island for 18 months now. He’d taken its survivors from desperate desolation back to a new civilization. I imagined he saw all he’d accomplished here washing back out to sea. Back to square one.
My heart ached to have the other Cam back. Can-do. Electrified and alive, meeting the emergency with a fey grin. ‘Bring it, tsunami. Make my day!’ Time to pull my own weight, I thought, and stop expecting Cam to supply all the courage. He was in too much pain to manage it.
“The March rains should wash out most of the salt,” I offered. “Ready for spring planting. Casualties…” Would be near-total for people caught in the wave as we were. Even we weren’t safe yet, until the chopper came to bail us out. But, we’d started on Jones Beach, evacuated for winter aside from us. “We’re used to casualties,” I concluded lamely.
Cam kept his fixed stare out to sea, face expressionless, bruises shocking purple, split lip an angry red, against his winter-pale complexion and icy gray eyes. I think soldiers call it the thousand-yard stare – shell-shocked, for the moment.
I tried harder to rouse him. “Any idea what caused this, Cam? I didn’t feel an earthquake. Didn’t see a flash.” Those were the only possibilities I could think of. A rare mid-Atlantic earthquake, or an off-shore nuclear strike.
After a few seconds, Cam frowned slightly, slow to mentally shift gears. “Earthquake. Nuclear strike. Landslide. Meteor strike. Glacier collapse,” he suggested. “Anything that displaces water. A lot of water. We expected sea level rise and glacier collapse.” He frowned harder. “Tsunami seems unlikely in that case, though.”
I blinked. “I expected sea level rise to be gradual. Like it’s always been.”
Cam shook his head slightly. “Mostly,” he agreed. “We expected at some point to see a sudden big jump. Sudden like all in one month or something. Not one day, or one hour. Six to ten feet. Never got to that part of my climate briefing last month, did we.”
No. We’d gotten distracted by petty people stuff. Funny how that always upstaged t
he big important stuff, with climate change. Too bad the big problems don’t obligingly disappear while you’re distracted with the little stuff.
3
Interesting fact: If all the land-based glaciers were to melt, sea level would rise 200-260 feet above 20th century levels. Most of this ice sits on Greenland and Antarctica. Melting all other glaciers combined would amount to less than 2 feet. This is not the maximum possible sea level rise, however. About half of the accelerating sea level rise in the early 21st century was due to thermal expansion. Warm water takes up more volume, and most planetary warming was stored in the oceans.
“Bottom line,” Cam summarized a month ago, during our January Resco summit meeting. “We excel on climate change target compliance. Penn is good. New England fails. That’s hugely unfair. New England fails because Maine was admitted as a Canadian province. New England’s carbon balance only changed on paper.”
Cam looked deeply vexed by this. He glowered at the summary numbers he was presenting on the big screen.
I’d assisted Cam that morning with updating the arcane spreadsheets that spit out these verdicts, in preparation for this climate session in my office after lunch. Well, my partner Emmett’s office really, but most days I had it to myself while Emmett was off trying to tame urban North Jersey. On that bitter January afternoon, only a few months into Emmett’s Sisyphean task, it felt like I’d have the office to myself in perpetuity, except for these Resco summit meetings.
“What about Virginia?” Colonel Pete Hoffman prompted.
Senior-most and in overall command of the Hudson Resco Corps, Pete’s turf was South Jersey. Which held the distinction of being much worse than any part of Upstate Hudson, yet better off than the Apple Zone, especially North Jersey. More to the point, his region neighbored Virginia–Delaware–Maryland, a super-state still lacking a decent official name. Pete’s corner of Hudson faced old Delaware across the Delaware River and Bay. We called it Virginia for short.
Cam highlighted Virginia’s score, significantly worse than New England’s, with his laser pointer. “Epic fail,” he said. “Virginia didn’t even try.”
“Yet,” Governor Sean Cullen suggested generously. As head of state, any diplomacy with Virginia would fall to him. Admiral Sondi O’Hara, Virginia’s martial law ruler, gave Sean trouble enough without him discovering more points of disagreement. He shrugged. “March will be the first climate target compliance deadline since the U.S. disbanded. Nearly the one year anniversary. We chose to be proactive.” Sean held up a hand to forestall comment. “It was the right choice. But I could see Sondi O’Hara deciding to wait and see. Who’s going to enforce the targets, what the penalties might be, and so forth.”
Pete scratched his jaw. “Who is supposed to enforce the targets?”
Sean smiled back wanly. “Not you. Not today. Hudson… We’ll see.”
“War?” my beloved Emmett asked skeptically. “Hard to muster public support behind that. ‘Virginia has big feet on a carbon footprint metric.’”
Sean chuckled. Ash Margolis, first in line for the Hudson succession, chimed in, “War is one of the later stages of diplomacy, Emmett.”
“Hope so,” Emmett agreed. Aside from the Hudson succession, he and Ash were close peers, lieutenant colonels senior to Cam. Unfortunately for me, Emmett was a combat leader, Ash better at administration. Emmett went off to tame the wilds of Jersey while Ash and I stayed in the Apple Core. The pair of them had come a long way, but their rivalry endured.
Emmett continued, “Virginia has navy. We have army. That would suck.”
“That would suck,” Sean agreed. “Cam, help me understand these numbers. Why does Hudson ‘excel’ at carbon footprint?”
“Several reasons,” Cam supplied. “One, at the base we’ve got highly productive ecosystems. Plenty of rain. Vast forests, big marshes. Marshes are even better than forest for primary productivity. Carbon draw-down and storage, oxygen production. Our agriculture is unusually good, with orchards and vineyards besides the annual crops. Annual crops are close to zero sum on carbon draw-down. They pull carbon down, but then they die the same year and release the carbon again, especially when the soil is tilled. Plus we use energy growing and distributing the harvest. But close enough to net zero. Whereas our orchards sequester carbon, like the forests.
“Two, we lost a lot of population in the Apple Zone to the epidemics. Not as many as we were intended to lose.” The intent with the Apple epidemic zone was to wipe out the dense populations of New York City, its northern suburbs, plus North Jersey and Long Island, twenty or thirty million people. With Project Reunion we’d saved several million.
“But enough,” Cam continued. “Of course, a lot of the people we saved went to New England.” And thus Hudson survivors helped to depress New England’s carbon footprint score.
Sean nodded acceptance of the point, and gestured for Cam to continue.
“Three, we’ve made major strides in efficiency and renewable power. Our power czar is relentless.” Cam bowed to his commanding officer, Army Corps of Engineers Colonel Tony Nasser, who bowed his head in return with a grin. From Upstate, Tony controlled and rationed the power grid for both Hudson and New England. He was steadily decreasing the power and fuel rations. “Plus we’ve kept the nuclear power plants, which have no carbon impact. They have other risk factors.”
Cam couldn’t resist adding, “Though, of course our best region for power is LI. We have moderately high population density, but we’re completely carbon-negative.” Long Island was Cam’s turf.
“Bunch of ecotopian beach-bums,” Tony the power czar returned cheerfully. “Fruit-eaters.”
“We don’t heat our homes,” Cam said pointedly. “Upstate still uses a lot of heat on single-family dwellings. And we don’t eat much,” he conceded sadly. Rations in Long Island were still painfully low, only 1600 calories a day in winter for a man. “But, LI is carbon-negative.”
“Cam, I can’t stop people burning wood,” Tony countered. “They live in a forest, and it’s cold. A hell of a lot colder than LI.”
“Well done, Cam,” Sean assured him, cutting off the incipient acrimony over heating homes in the bitterly cold Upstate. “And as I understand, a real point of pride on LI.”
“Yes, sir,” Cam agreed gratefully. “My people do have an ecotopian ideal.”
“Encouraged and nurtured by their leader, no doubt,” Sean said with a smile. Cam nodded gratefully.
“Sean?” I interjected.
“Yes, Dee?”
“Cam and I ran the numbers on a suggestion,” I said. “If Connecticut transferred from New England to Hudson, both nation states would pass this carbon footprint test.”
Sean blinked, and gazed at both of us in deep misgiving. “It’s a metric. Just a metric. If New England plus Hudson pass the test, and we’re jointly running a single power grid, and we are,” he gestured at Tony, “then we jointly pass the test. That’s nice. Thank you for the option. But it seems extreme.”
“Yes, sir,” Cam acknowledged. I nodded acquiescence.
Sean added, “But I note you didn’t suggest we offer to take Delaware.”
“Delaware is mismanaged,” Cam judged. “If Virginia–Del–Mar has made any effort to cut their carbon footprint, I don’t see it. Besides, we have a relationship with Connecticut.”
Indeed, three of us in the room began the Calm in Connecticut. Cam and Emmett were Rescos there, and Cam and I were born there. We’d moved to Hudson – still New York then – to carry out Project Reunion and help rebuild the devastated Apple Zone. But Hudson’s relationship with Connecticut wasn’t just us. The whole state had put maximum effort toward Project Reunion. Most people in Connecticut were tied more closely to New York than New England, especially in the populous southwest quadrant. LI was visible on the southern horizon along the whole coastline, sharing Long Island Sound. Boston-Providence had been cut off behind epidemic borders, too, less desperate but in deep trouble. But Connecticut rallied to sav
e New York first, not Boston.
Sean was nodding perfunctorily, then seemed taken by another thought. “Dee, could you run another number for me? If Connecticut were part of Hudson instead of New England – without Maine – would we have a longer coastline than New England?”
Maine wasn’t part of New England anymore. It was a Canadian province now.
“Ah,” I asked, “fractal length of coastline?” And why would he care?
Sean frowned his lack of comprehension.
Emmett volunteered, “Just simple curved lines, Dee. Go into big inlets like Narragansett Bay or Newark or Montauk. Not much fractal detail. The question is travel length from a naval perspective. Might count Coast Guard stations and ports as well.”
“Got it,” I said with a smile. I shot off a quick email to Reza, my assistant on GIS – Geographical Information Systems. She could find those numbers quicker than I could.
“Thank you, Dee,” Sean said. “Alright, Cam, metrics are nice. We have complied with red tape. But what’s the reality behind the numbers? Where are we on climate change? Is the world getting better?”
I nearly held my breath at this, hoping no one would evict me from the room. The truth was, what with Project Reunion to save New York City – the whole Apple Zone – and launching the new country of Hudson, plus Emmett’s failing campaign to uplift North Jersey, I’d often forgotten about climate change. The army censors encouraged our forgetfulness. That topic was still off limits for news broadcasts, and even the Amenac chat forums.
To great grinding of teeth among my mutinous team back home in Connecticut, Amenac used a clone of the old Google Calumet plugin now, that auto-censored chat posts as per martial law requirements. Our users had a nice little interface to tweak their profanity filter preferences. They could tune out ‘subjects like this’ that they didn’t want to see any more of, or (my personal favorite) set a maximum percent of their news feed by subject matter. But the only way to discuss forbidden topics was membership in a private forum granted that authority. About the only forums authorized to discuss climate progress data were sanctioned researchers and the martial law government’s own resource coordinators – the Rescos. Even meteorologists couldn’t get that data access.
