The Invitation-kindle (14 page)

“As you can see, the fashionable real estate of the Chesapeake peninsula, conveniently made millions of years ago by potent forces of geologic change, has been unmade by rising sea levels and the crushing immensity of the tsunami that pushed what was left of it aside in minutes.”

Temporarily changing direction our view turns northward, and comes upon the startling sight of what use to be the political capitol of western civilization. A wasteland of ruin that use to be the nerve center of American power is all that remains of the historic city. Though expected, the sobering visual impact of seeing the nation’s capital in ruins has a disconcerting and emotionally somber effect on all who see it. The sight of the toppled Washington Monument broken, and still lying in the direction the tsunami traveled decades earlier, looks like a strange surrealistic exclamation point to the general catastrophe, as the alien host of our guided tour comments.

“This place you know as your capitol city, Washington, the seat of your national government, and yet the power wielded from this place was as nothing compared to the ultimate power that unseated it. And so, in that great historical catalog of civilizations that have come, and gone, from your world, another entry is made.”

Continuing the grim journey down the eastern seaboard, the coast of Florida comes into view, and a shocking sight presents itself. Hundreds of miles of coastline are simply no longer there. The dramatic image of the state’s truncated shape instantly conveys without words the reality of rising sea levels. Zooming in on what use to be the western coast of South Florida, the images of homes and other concrete structures now beneath the expanded Gulf of Mexico gives the impression of a modern version of Atlantis. The cities of Naples, Venice, and Sarasota, long abandoned by humans, are now corroding relics waiting silently to sink beneath the waves. Spared the explosive impact of the tsunami, many buildings on Florida’s west coast have not yet succumbed to the water’s pull, and as the city of Tampa zooms into view, a peculiarly incongruous picture presents itself. Office buildings, some of them tens of stories high suddenly thrust upward from the surface of the water, still standing, seemingly going nowhere, absurd monuments to the impermanence of human effort await their turn to surrender to the water.

The silence of our Linesian guide makes the visual impact of what is being seen even more compelling. Moving up the west coast of Florida, or rather the “new” west coast of Florida, water and land often meet in strange ways and places. The shoreline might be a parking lot or a shopping center. Major highways, seemingly going straight into and coming out of the Gulf of Mexico, give new meaning to ‘a drive to the beach,’ but there are no beaches to drive to, only a shifting boundary where water ends and land begins. The images continue as the Linesian’s voice is heard again.

“As you can see, your once familiar sandy beaches are gone from the world. The stable conditions needed for their slow formation will not return for thousands of years. When they do, it will take hundreds of centuries more, before any human being, anywhere in your world will ever walk again on a sandy shoreline.”

Passing up the altered coast line and moving westward across the Gulf of Mexico, the scene repeats itself again and again. Panama City, Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi, have all been permanently inundated by the rising water. Another submerged urban wasteland eventually comes into view. New Orleans, one of the first great cities to be abandoned to the encroaching flood, is unrecognizable, as the alien voice comments.

“This is where the Mississippi delta once emptied into the sea. For thousands of years before your industrial age, it was the most productive estuary on the continent. It, along with the city of New Orleans, and one third of southern Louisiana is now the northern bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, whose northern boundary is now forty-seven miles further north from where it was a mere three hundred years ago. Permanently lying beneath thirty eight feet of sea water, and almost fifty miles from land, the storied history of colorful New Orleans has closed its final chapter.

“The surface of your world has been shaped, and reshaped by the potent force of water. For billions of years into the distant future it will remain the omnipotent agent of planetary change. Only the relentless expansion of your sun five billion years from now, when its incinerating temperatures boil away your oceans will the inexorable power of water on your planet be finally checked.”

We leave the watery, urban ruins of New Orleans and head northward. Our panoramic view skims across the water for mile after mile after mile, until we finally reach the new shoreline. We turn westward, and when we come to the Mississippi river it looks more like one of its minor tributaries than North America’s first river. A dwindled vestige of its former magnitude, its shrunken stature presents a curious comparison to the flooded excess of coastal areas. As the field of view widens, the image slowly zooms out, and we see a broader and broader swath of the continent. As we do, one dominant feature stands out unmistakably, its color. Our view widens even further as if pulling away from the Earth until we can see hundreds of miles in every direction. The reason for the anemic appearance of the Mississippi river becomes clear, as the view widens even more, zooming out until the entire continental United States is visible, and then stopping. A quiet ominous pause takes hold as the image, needing no interpretation, speaks forcefully with a silent, portentous eloquence. The once green and verdant expanses of the nation’s farm land, abundant with fertility, and growth are parched and barren. From the Rocky Mountains eastward to the Appalachian Mountains the color of the land clearly tells the story. The light brown shades of desert sand dominate the continent. From the Gulf of Mexico northward to the northern tier states, a continental desert has now established itself. Even the voice of our Linesian guide seems somber.

“As you can see your world has changed, and more than a little. Over a century ago global weather patterns became highly unstable, and a dangerous phase of climatic blinking from one extreme to the other began. Temperature swings of eighty degrees or more in one day occur regularly throughout the world, and last for nearly three decades. When conditions finally stabilize, your planet is a much warmer place, and you are now looking at the result. Deserts now dominate all of the continental land masses on your planet. Your once fecund great plains, rich with agricultural bounty, are now arid, and parched. For over a half century, rainfall averages have not exceeded more than two inches per year, and in some years are nonexistent. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has changed your world forever. This is the price you have foisted on the future inhabitants of your planet. As water became scarce, wars broke out for something once limitless in its abundance. Uncounted millions were killed. That, combined with deserts claiming all major land masses, eventually resulted in the depopulation of humans from the interior of all continents on Earth. When trillions of gallons of warm surface water slowed, and eventually stopped the deep, slow moving global ocean currents that keep your world temperate, a point of no return had been reached. One of Earth’s primary means of endothermic regulation had completely stopped. From that point nothing could change what was to come. The comprehensive climate changes that have so drastically changed your world will be nothing less than catastrophic for man. To understand the power, and eventual impact of these changes we must move forward in human history”

A captive global audience is awestruck with general astonishment as the unfolding spectacle continues. The silent dismay of seeing North America as dry as the Sahara desert leaves most observers in hushed bewilderment. Then the image changes, seemingly moving ahead in time becoming a rapid montage of North America’s future appearance. Suddenly, a huge white area begins forming in the north, seeming to come from nowhere, spreading southward. Simultaneously, the shore line surrounding the entire continent pulls back dramatically, as it becomes apparent the white colored areas advancing in tandem with retreating ocean waters is ice, lots and lots of ice. An incipient ice age is well underway, as our Linesian guide explains.

“The year is 6280, more than four thousand years from the present moment. Your planet is in the powerful grip of an advancing ice age. Deprived of the heat spreading effects of global ocean currents, certain areas began getting colder and colder, cold enough for ice to accumulate, and in a place you call Labrador, Canada, that’s exactly what it did. Warm, wet, tropical air became snow as it encountered cold polar air masses. Air currents continually delivered enormous amounts of humid, moisture laden air from the overheated tropics to much colder regions. Snow will relentlessly fall for centuries in Northeast Canada, and a massive ice sheet two miles thick at its highest point will cover the Earth for thousands of miles in every direction. As it covers more, and more land, increasing amounts of sun light with its heat is reflected away, creating an albedo effect, hastening the ice’s unstoppable march. Anything in its path is simply crushed or entombed”

The image changes and zooms in to the advancing line of ice for a closer view. An incredible sight is then seen. Blocks and blocks of ice, gigantic in size, a thousand feet high, groaning and cracking as if it were a living thing, form a picture that seems to defy explanation. Our guide continues.

“Encountering warm air at around fifty degrees northern latitude, the ice finally stops its advance. Both northern, and southern poles are capped with massive ice sheets covering hundreds of thousands of square miles. Gargantuan in size, together they will cover over twenty percent of the total surface area of your planet.  Extremes of heat and cold reach a point of temporary equilibrium. Though the poles are now ice-capped, in the middle of your planet extreme heat dominates with an average daily temperature of 125 degrees. In mountainous areas, sparse human populations escape the worst effects of the heat by living at higher altitudes, but have difficulty finding enough food. Others form cave colonies trying to adapt to a subterranean existence. The turbulent, perpetually churning atmosphere produces powerful storms of titanic force. Hurricanes rage with unprecedented fury, and rake the land with damaging winds. To the north and south of the equator, deserts now dominate all continental land masses, and where they stop, a white wall of glacial ice a thousand feet high claims everything beyond. There at the geographical interface of ice, and heat, in both the northern, and southern hemispheres, a narrow band of temperate weather no more than sixty miles wide, fluctuates unpredictably. It’s here that the exiguous, remaining populations of humanity cling tenuously to grim survival.

A creature who touched extreme places from the highest mountain peak to the deepest ocean trench, you claimed the Earth as yours. Your ventures were so bold; your footprints are on the moon. Your mastery of the world was in reality never anything more than a seductive, dangerous illusion. The abused Earth, that bred and nourished life now threatens and challenges its abuser, like a captive animal that remembers its tormentor. The world that man now inhabits is bleak, inhospitable, and dangerous. There is no law, and very little food. The water supply is provided by the melting ice, but when ice dams suddenly give way, floods can kill thousands. Migrant populations are constantly on the move, looking for better living conditions. So much ocean water being bound up in glacial ice has dramatically lowered sea levels. If you were inclined, you could walk to China over the Bering land bridge. If you did, you would see the largest desert since the Pangean wastelands of 300 million years ago. The teeming bulk of thronging humanity, once ten billion strong, no longer exists. The largest continental land mass on your planet now has an average population density of twelve human beings for every one hundred square miles. The magnificent array of animal life that a mere five thousand years ago abounded in your world has been lost forever. Tigers, elephants, primates, marine mammals, the great herds of grazing herbivores that roamed the African plains for millions of years, are all extinct. The most comprehensive global extinction since the K2 boundary event 65 million years ago has run its course. Global human population has fallen to no more than forty million, less than one percent of its former peak.”

The mammoth image occupying the night sky then slowly zooms out to show the entire Earth from pole to pole, and a strange picture comes into view. Unbelievably massive ice caps are prominent on the north, and south poles. Where the white glacial ice ends, the tan colored sands of endless desert begins with only occasional splotches of green in mountainous areas.

For those gathered in Olympic Stadium in Miami, the image evokes a varied response in people. Most are silent. Some are sobbing. Still others are talking as if they’re watching another double feature at the drive-in theater. Perhaps years of watching television has changed their perception of what constitutes reality. As the silent image hangs ominously in the night sky the picture fades from view, and the alien face of the creature called a Linesian once again appears, as incredibly bizarre, as before.

“This then is your future, or rather the future that your descendants must endure. We offer an alternative. To the nations, and people of Earth we offer an invitation, an invitation into your own future. For this night, we have shown you enough. We know you are beings with a nocturnal sleep cycle. Tomorrow night when darkness comes, we will appear again.”

As people continue watching, they see the broad image that has been dominating a full quarter of the night sky now shrink to form a narrow beam of light. A beam of energy now descends, and is reabsorbed by the alien craft, still silent, and motionless in Olympic Stadium, making it clear that it was the source of the images just seen projected across the sky for the past five hours. Now those images are gone, and will not appear again until tomorrow night. Most are silent, and crestfallen. Many stand dumbfounded, not knowing what to think or do. Some begin leaving. Others with blankets claim a space on the ground. Still others, for some unexplained reason are in a festive mood.