Megalopolis - Table of Contents

Jimmy crawled up to the open door. ‘Ha! She left it open! Now’s my chance,’ he thought. Pouncing out of the doorway, he banked to right, landing in front of a bush. He sensed an enemy, and growled under his breath. The other guy was sitting leisurely on the front porch of the house on the east. He stalked over to the fence. He moved to the side as his opponent, sensing danger, came to the gate. Then Jimmy ran up and lunged on him, clawing furiously. The other put up a good fight, and managed to scream his way out of the fight. Tom had injured his paw, and licked the wound. He walked back to the fence. ‘Oh well, I’ll get him next time,’ he pondered.
As one can guess, such behavior is extremely unnatural for human beings. But that’s not what Jimmy is. Meet Jimmy the cat. Jimmy is the average household cat with an extremely ardent grudge against ‘the other cat’.
As Jimmy sauntered back, he started to feel funny. Something wasn’t feeling very… he couldn’t find a word for it. It seemed like something was wrong, as if something was about to happen. He walked around the neighborhood, trying to clear his mind. But the thought came back. A voice in his mind said to run away, to go somewhere, but he didn’t know what. He went back to the house.
He did not like his owner. Every night, she would sit in the big chair, watching a box. The box had funny lights in it, flashing every so often. He once saw another cat in it. Maybe the cat lived inside it, he had thought. But his owner was more malevolent than benevolent. She would often, in the night, sit on the big chair, feet folded out, and would have many cylinders and clear-colored boxes. The clear-colored cylinders had dark-looking ‘stuff’ inside it. Jimmy didn’t know what it was. Jimmy had tasted it once. It made him feel dizzy. His owner often drank it. After drinking, she would often get angry and yell stuff at Jimmy. He would purr and draw away to another side of the room. She sometimes brought a dirty-looking man into the room. She would give the man food, something the stranger ate without question. The stranger would then, holding paws with her, disappear, leaving Jimmy alone. Speaking of food, Jimmy got very little of it. His owner gave him old leftovers and stale fish, mostly.
When he entered the house, he found it empty - but not for long. His owner entered, grumpy. She looked at the ‘box’ next to the wall. The lights were blinking again. It showed a person (who probably lived inside it – as Jimmy thought) and a picture of something tall and dark with white stuff on the top. In a few minutes, his owner’s face went from grumpy to appalled. She jumped, and screamed then went upstairs in a hurry. Then in two minutes, she came down with a huge bag, running down the stairs with not a care for anything else. Jimmy was confused. ‘What happened?’ thought the cat. When she opened the door, Jimmy thought he would be going with her, but she kicked him in, grumbling and saying something he didn’t understand. She pressed a button on the keypad below a sign. The sign had a triangle with two legs at the edges, a triangle split at the top, and only one straight leg at the right edge, and two circles, one on top of the other. She slammed the door and was gone. If Jimmy was human, he would have cried. At any rate, he walked back to the sofa, somber and saddened. Then he realized that before leaving, his owner left the window open. Without thinking twice, he leaped outside. In the distance, he saw his owner getting into a big box with a door, and then the box ran away, taking his owner with it.
Confused, Jimmy walked up to a small tree, surveying his surroundings. Again, he felt a voice in his head. It was telling him to run away. Jimmy held himself fast. When the voice came on again, he decided to obey.
‘But where will I go?’ he thought. At that moment, he saw squirrel. That mongrel had been driving him crazy since the last month. Now was his judgment day. Jimmy raced after the squirrel. The rodent was extremely fast. A nearby family was moving, and their moving truck was parked nearby, boxes being loaded. The back door was open, and the family had almost finished putting in the last items. The squirrel dashed into the vehicle. Jimmy followed. Jimmy tried to pounce on the squirrel, which was cornered at the edge of two large, brown boxes. But it managed to leap its way out of Jimmy’s grasp. And that’s when Jimmy realized that there was human there. A man was pulling down the door. As the man watched in awe, the squirrel sped swiftly out through the opening. Jimmy almost got to the door, but right then, the man closed it in his face.
Jimmy was completely locked in darkness. Everything was pitch-black. He clawed at the door, trying to make it open, but to no avail. After a while, he started to walk around, but walked into a box. In pain, he felt around for a corner, and after finding one, sat down. When an hour had passed, he began to sleep. It was going to be a long journey.
He was awakened some time later. Something felt weird. He realized that he was not standing up straight, and was disoriented. He looked around. Light was streaming in. Then it hit him. He was floating! But in what? Water, he realized, was all around him. Cats have a natural ability, like most animals to swim at least decently. So Jimmy swam out of the truck. Everywhere he could hear the sound of rushing water. He held on to piece of wood floating by. As he latched on to it, he paddled through the muddy water, then jumped onto the porch of an abandoned house. Again, he surveyed his surroundings. Everywhere, water was flowing through the streets. The top of a crossing light could be seen, the rest of it being submerged. A huge splash resounded to his right. The clock on the façade of a clock tower had fallen out, into the water. Only the top of the steeple of a nearby church could be seen, as the rest of it was underwater. In his head, a different voice came. You’re safe, you’re safe, it said.

A week later

A flame was slowly burning in the fireplace of the wide livingroom in the countryside mansion. There were more people in it than usual. Jacob Willemson had failed to convince his friend Charles Gareth of the catastrophe the earth was about to face, but he wouldn’t let it harm his family. At first, as usual, everyone thought he was insane. But at last, he managed to round up a few friends and his family and travel to his brother’s estate in North Carolina, far from any expected tsunami impact.
A week had passed, and the news was beyond imagination. As they listened to the radio three days after arrival, news streamed in from an alternate National Public Radio broadcast. The NPR’s main building in Washington D.C. was now nonexistent, as was the nation’s capital. So the news came from an alternate station in Louisville, Kentucky. The first thing they talked about is how the capital was gone.
The men listened in awe as reports from the Coast Guard came, shocking them beyond belief. The Capitol, White House, The Supreme Court, the FBI building, the Mall, The Lincoln Memorial was all gone. A helicopter flying over the devastated scene just two minutes after the last tsunami reported the scene: there was only blue and brown water and debris to be seen. The only thing out of the ordinary was pointed obelisk rising out of the water. It was the Washington Monument. The top was only twenty feet above the water. Only those who had left the city earlier survived. No one else survived. Luckily, the President was in Chicago for a meeting, so he was untouched. What fate.
But that’s only one city. The next afternoon came domestic news. New York City was a thing of the past. A sole video, filmed from helicopter, had chronicled the last moments: a wave taller than the Statue of Liberty hurling its way across the blue water. A wall of blue pounded through the city, bringing down skyscraper by skyscraper. The Chrysler Building did not topple. It was sliced in half, and then the top half was swung horizontally, floating across the Hudson like a giant concrete ship with many windows, before colliding with a factory on the New Jersey side. The Empire State building, in all its majesty, was gone, simply gone: it was there one moment, but when water drew away, there was nothing there. After much of the water had receded, another video from an aircraft showed the new picture. Most of buildings looked like their tops were chewed off by some large, hungry monster. Between two derelict structures, formerly skyscrapers, a large ship was sitting precariously, balanced on both sides by two destroyed buildings. The rest looked like a war scene.
The big apple wasn’t alone. The whole east coast was gone. Boston, Providence, Newark, Atlantic City, Dover, Myrtle Beach were all gone. Florida was no more. What was once a peninsula now resembled a few small islands, according to a picture taken from space. The coastline had receded overall by a few miles. Houston, Texas was also gone, and so was New Orleans. The whole government was almost destroyed, and officials were trying to piece it back together. Marital law had been declared, and the army was patrolling cities to keep law and order. The rest is self-implied. But this was just domestic news.
The next day came the worst part of all – International news. The tsunami had killed not just the east coast, but the West African and European coast as well. The internet was down because the main servers and control centers were now in the hands of various fish and algae. A third of Portugal was swallowed up by the wave. And tsunamis are weird. Once after hitting land, they lose power, but then reflect to another point. That’s why Copenhagen was in Poseidon’s territory now. The people of Amsterdam wouldn’t need canals any more. The North Sea defenses were like a toothpick against an avalanche. The whole nation was one large, muddy canal now. Amsterdam, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and Arnhem were things of the past. The story didn’t end there. African towns along the west coast were destroyed. Which means that towns as far Cape Town had been capitulated. And it didn’t end there, either. Rio de Janeiro had gone the way of the Romans. The only thing left standing, just like the Washington Monument, was the statue of Jesus Christ. Only His head could be seen, rising out of the water. After grinding Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires to the ground, the wave bounced off from Antarctica, and hit back the coasts of Africa and South America. Another reflection went towards the east. It grew as it traversed the ocean, and slammed into the southern Indian coast and Sri Lanka. Indonesia was next. Western Sumatra was washed away and most of Java, including Jakarta, was inundated. Yet another part of the reflection rammed into the remote West Australian coast. A small scroll of the wave had gone straight through the small strait of Gibraltar that separated Spain from Europe. It grew as it entered the Mediterranean. Gone were Rome, Barcelona, and Tripoli. The wave continued to travel until it barreled into Syria and Israel.
It was bone chilling. Jacob was tired. He could not take it anymore. Why did this have to happen, he asked himself. He wondered what would happen next, how the world would pick up the pieces, return to normal. He also wondered how many had died. It was impossible to tell. Communications between nations were shattered, and the western Antarctica reflection of tsunami hitting East Asia was the last straw. When Tokyo came down, so did South Korea, and in effect, the Philippines, and Taiwan. China was mostly spared, except for Shanghai, which took a direct hit from a small tsunami. The telecommunications were severed. The economy of the world was gone. The United Nations was gone. The World Bank was gone. The APEC, NAFTA, NATO, The United States Government, The Army, The Navy, The Air Force, most the world’s major corporations. All gone.
Jacob could see the future: civilization would digress; everything would have start form scratch. Ironically, a good thought came to his mind. The world now had a chance to repair itself. Gone were corruption, bribery, drug trade, and oil tensions. Gone was the chains of social class; people could start with a clean slate. He hit himself. Was he joking? Everything would be worse now. The evil would now have chance to have supremacy. The terrorists and the mafias would now rise to power in the confusion. The worse was yet to come. The scourge of humanity was knocking on the door.
“Where are you, God? Do something, oh Lord! What will we do now? What will we do? What will happen to us now?” he said aloud, sobbing. He glanced at the clock.
It was 7:02 AM. The family was sleeping. Only Bill, his friend was in the kitchen, preparing food. His brother was in the tool shed, fixing the farm equipment.
Jacob stepped outside. It was foggy. Something was strange on the southern morning. It was dark. Jacob exclaimed, “What?!”
He looked at his watch. It said 7:08. No mistake. He looked at the sky, and saw why. Dark clouds were everywhere. A wall of black was floating in from the east. The clouds were strange. It looked more like a wall of smoke, than merry little clouds. In fact, the cloud was very wide, and it was pitch black. The clouds blocked the sun as soon as they came across it. In an instant, the countryside was dark. It was like mid-evening. At 7:10 AM. Lightning struck in the distance. It looked like rain was falling in the distance. The rain was strangely dark.
“Nice. Perfect time for a storm. Salt on our wounds,” he said to himself.
The storm bypassed their area of the countryside. It was evening as Jacob watched clouds recede away. They had received no rain. He looked in the distance. Something caught his eye. The green landscape looked grayish. He rubbed his eyes.
“What the…?” he said, and looked again. Must be my eyes, he told himself. Hills and fields in the distance looked bluish and grayish. Oh well. Who cares.
Before going to sleep he noticed some new clouds, darker still coming in from the east again. He assured himself it was just another bothersome storm, and went to sleep. It was a deep, long sleep. He just had one nightmare, which woke him up early. He saw himself in a resort town, and then saw the tsunami coming at him. He ran for cover, along with the other tourists. He ran into a resort, where he saw a fellow co-worker joking around. He yelled at him to run for cover. The man just sat there. Jacob didn’t wait. He ran out through the door and towards a high hill where everyone was running to. The wave was just behind him. He was running as fast as he could. He climbed up the ledge, but felt the cool, murky water grabbing him. A voice was echoing in his head. It was the voice of Charles Gareth. Like a jammed tape, “Relax, Jacob, I’m sure nothing will happen, Relax, Jacob, Relax, Jacob, Relax, Jacob…” echoed in his head. He was sucked into the water’s vortex, as the voices continued to reverberate in his head. He woke up, terrified. The words echoed for a while until finally dying away. The digital clock announced 8:09 AM in red digits. Jacob got out of bed and opened the window. It was evening.
Jacob nearly jumped. “What the heck is going on?” The clock said 8:10 AM. He looked outside. Dark clouds were covering the entire sky. The window was flaked with a black, grimy, soot-like substance. He ran downstairs and went outside. The dark grayish substance covered the sidewalk. He looked at the crops. The corn was covered in the substance. The roof of the estate was covered in the substance. The sun was obscured by the dark clouds, and a ghastly darkness covered the landscape. In an instant it hit him. Volcanic ash.
He was right all along. The tsunamis were definitely because of some gigantic upheaval beneath the Atlantic. Volcanoes would probably, and mysteriously, bring up land from beneath the sea. The ash from the volcanic explosions was now circling the globe. It would kill corps, kill livestock, and humans would starve. He had guessed correctly. A report on a prehistoric climate change disaster proved to be a worthy scenario. It was like seeing The Day After Tomorrow, starring: the world.
He was soon joined by his brother, the farmer. “Oh…my…god…,” exclaimed Andrew Willemson. He kicked the black dust, and threw the shovel on the ground. “All my crops! Gone! All my harvest income! Gone in a flash! Why? Why?! WHY?!?! And I saved all the extras for the discount seeds!”
Jacob could not bear to see his brother fall on his knees, and bury his head in his hands, crying like a baby. Some ash was still falling, and Jacob could feel sticky, black flakes on his hair, which he brushed off immediately.
“Let’s go inside, Andrew,” he said.
“I…I…I can’t…” continued Andrew.
“Let’s go inside,” repeated Jacob.
It was not salt on their wounds. Acid on their wounds was a more correct term.