New York, 2140 - The Flood

New York, 2140. a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

The next day it was still windy and raining hard, sometimes pelting down, but all within the norms of an ordinary summer storm – drenching, cool, blustery – but compared to the two days before, not very dangerous, and much better lit. White gray rather than black gray. Also the tide, though the dawn began with a high tide, was no longer a storm surge. It was down to only a couple feet higher than an ordinary high tide. Now on the buildings around Madison Square there was a faint bathtub ring of leaves and plastered gunk much higher than the usual high tie mark. The surge had apparently already poured back out the Narrows and through Hell Gate into the sound. It had to have been one hell of an ebb run.

Vlade could now get back into his boathouse, and so he unsealed the door to it and began to sort out the confusion created by having all the boats floated up into each other, and in some cases crushed a bit against the ceiling. Many of them were internally flooded by this, but oh well. Could be pumped out and dried out.

Getting the boathouse sorted took half the day, and after that he could go out in the Met runabout and inspect the building and the neighborhood. The canals were everywhere filled with flotsam and jetsam, pieces of the city knocked loose and floating around. People were back out on the water, although the vapors were not running yet. Police cruiser zipped around ordering people out of their way, stopping to collect floating bodies, animal or human. The health challenges were going to be severe, Vlad saw; it was already warm again, and cholera was all too likely. The freshets of rain that came that day were a good thing in that sense. The longer it was before the sun hit the water and began to cook the wreckage, the better.

Idelba's tug now served as a good passenger ferry up Park Avenue to Central Park, where there were some new jury-rigged docks, very busy with lines of waiting boats, most of the, unloading people from downtown. The glimpses into Central Park that they got before they returned down Park were shocking; it looked like all the trees in the park were down. Which seemed all too possible, and at the moment was not the problem, but it made an awful sight. They returned to the Met and took the last load of refugees out of the building, ignoring the occasion protest, telling them the building was maxed and more than maxed, and Central Park was now becoming the better place for them to get shelter and refuge status. “Also, we're out of food,” Vlade told them, which was close enough to true to allow him to say it. And it worked to get people to leave.

Inspector Gen had been out working since the storm began, but she had come back home the night before on a police cruiser, to change clothes and catch a couple of hours of sleep. Now she asked for a ride up to Central Park, where her people said she was needed again.

“I believe it,” Idelba said. “Won't be long before New Yorkers start a riot on you, right?”

“So far so good,” the inspector said.

“Well, but it's still raining. They can't get out to protest yet...”

The boats. Photo by Elena.