The Invitation(39)
As we look at the devastated wasteland that once was the most populous city in North America, the image zooms out and moves southward. The detailed clarity of the images, combined with the visual impact of seeing them across one quarter of the night sky is spellbinding. Coming down the coast of New Jersey, scenes of abandoned devastation repeatedly come in to view. Barrier islands no longer exist. The Chesapeake Bay, bloated and unfamiliar, looks more like a gulf, as the Linesian continues his narrative.
“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.”