The Deep

The North Polar Ice Cap melted on a sunny Friday in the middle of July. It’s fair to say this had been going on for some time – every year it would melt and reform with the changing seasons, losing just a fraction of itself every time to its brother, the ocean. But there’s only so much loss that one thing can take, and after decades spent in nearly constant mourning the North Polar Ice Cap simply laid down, and chose to melt. It wasn’t just the changing climate of course, but a lifetime of the burden of gravity, the constant erosion of tides, and the ever changing seasons. The burden of existence, that tragic fight against entropy and the heat death of the universe, is sometimes too much to bear.

So it was that in an instant, the North Polar Ice Cap relaxed, and gave up. Scientists predicted that this change might occur over several decades under the tax of a slowly warming planet, but they failed to figure in overwhelming grief to their models. Beyond that, they fundamentally lacked the differential equations to properly incorporate it anyways. As it sank into its brother’s welcoming waves, as it was added to that great collective mass of an ocean and its grief spread to a cooling indifference, the levels of tides rose dramatically across the world.

It wasn’t vengeance then that swallowed low lying areas. It wasn’t climate karma that buried places with names like Florida, Texas, or Venice – The North Polar Ice Cap had honestly never heard of them. Nor had it really considered the people who populated these places, who it turned out could not breathe water very well and much preferred dry land. But then again, for many years they hadn’t considered it much either. So it goes.

***

“Delayed indefinitely? The hell does that mean?”

“Sir, the tide has risen over the runway. We need to wait for the water to recede again before your flight can take off. We’re still assessing the situation.”

Charles watched the back of the man’s head in front of him. The many folds of his neck line piled up to a pristinely bald head. As his rage built, it went from a soft pink to a deep scarlet. It reminded Charles of a cherry on top of whipped cream. And now that he thought of it, ice cream actually sounded quite good.

“Sir, can I help you?” 

Charles refocused back on the present situation. He’s waiting in line, apparently now he’s at the front of it. Apparently, the angry, cherry man had moved on, and now the woman behind the counter had directed her exasperated attention to him. Her curled, brown hair bounced when she spoke with an energy that seemed completely at odds with the bags under her eyes.

In your professional opinion, do you think they’ll delay the funeral I’m supposed to be at because my flight was delayed? There’s no body anyways. This is what Charles wanted to say, but never would.

“I was going to ask the same thing as him, but in a nicer, friendlier way. No need to answer it twice,” Charles said, and tipped his hat. That was a thing you did when you got old, he realized, and winced. The woman smiled appreciatively and nodded, turning back to her computer. Charles left to try and find a bar that wasn’t crowded.

Being in an airport when all flights are canceled is a strange thing. In the few hours since the water started to rise, he’d watched hordes of people descend on anywhere carrying alcohol, and seen families swarm through shops and pick their snack supplies clean. Now, he saw long lines waiting to argue with customer service representatives. A heavy mix of anger and animal fear rose from them.

A glowing, red neon sign down a low-lit alley caught his eye. It flashed Wine Not in a steady rhythm. Charles rolled his eyes and walked towards it, careful to avoid the heaps of people sleeping against the walls on either side. He was surprised to find the shop nearly empty, with only one scraggly, bearded man hunched over a glass of red at the bar, his full fist wrapped around the stem. Charles seated himself in a booth on the opposite side of the room, careful not to make eye contact with the man in the mirror behind the bar.

A short man with slicked, black hair, a pencil mustache, and a tuxedo came out from a door behind the bar.

“Hello sir, welcome.”

“Yes, hello. Just a glass of your house red, please.”

“An excellent choice, sir.”

The glass came with a small plate of cheese and bread. After this, the bartender faded back through the door behind the bar.

“Tide’s not right.” 

Charles realized after the words had been said that the other man was talking to him.

“I’m sorry?”

“Wrong time of day for it, water shouldn’t be rising.”

He noticed the fisherman’s hat and thick overcoat then, and considered that the man might be a reliable source for this information. He also wasn’t overly interested, his thoughts were still on the delayed flight.

“Oh?” Charles responded, sipping from his wine glass.

The man’s bleary, red eyes turned to find his. Underneath the beard, his face was ruddy with the burn of alcohol.

“Way I figure it, we best all get comfortable. Lived here all my life, ain’t never seen the water rise when it should be going out. Tide’s been here ‘for us, be here after us too. I escaped bein’ swallowed once, always knew the ocean would come find me to finish the job.” 

At this, the man gulped down the rest of his wine, and stumbled out from the bar into the airport alley.

***

On Charles' second glass, the bartender brought out a bottle for him and a large plate of caprese. He was back a moment later with a blanket and pillow. Charles looked up at him questioningly.

“I’m going to close the shop while we see how the situation develops. You’re welcome to sleep in the booth here.”

“The situation?”

The man raised an eyebrow, and then motioned Charles to follow him. Back behind the bar, in the man’s office, was a full apartment. Several identical tuxedos hung in a dark, oaken wardrobe that stood next to a meticulously made bed. The man directed his attention away from all this to a TV set. It showed a helicopter image of an expansive building being submerged in water.

Charles stared at the image in confusion until he saw the tail fin of an airplane sticking from the water like a giant, metallic shark. Then he gasped and reeled backwards.

“That’s this airport?”

“Seems that way.”

He followed the man back out of the office numbly. He watched, stupefied, as the man swung the metal gate closed on the shop, and turned most of the lights off. The man turned and looked into his eyes, all of his humanity, his fear, confusion, love, hate, reduced into a single stare in a single instant. Then he nodded and went back into his apartment. The door shut with a soft click, leaving Charles alone.

Charles stared through the metal grate down the alley, drinking first his new glass of wine, and then the bottle. The people sleeping there had all cleared out, leaving it full of fast food packaging and protein bar wrappers. Beyond the alley, he thought he heard different voices, like ghosts carried on the wind. A yell. A scream. Someone crying. The easy laughter of children. They drifted by like faint impressions.

The light in the terminal changed slowly, like it came through a filter. On the wall at the end of the alley, Charles watched a crescent of sunlight dance, like it refracted off a wave.

***

Charles woke abruptly to a dry, skeleton rattle, and raised himself up from his converted booth bed. Although the lights in the shop were turned out, the ever-light from the terminal shown down the alley, and illuminated a person that was shaking the grate. The artificial rays splashed across their body, deepening eye sockets and casting a shadow to their mouth so it looked like it yawned open at an impossible angle.

“The king demands a tithe from his kingdom.” The young man at the grate called across the dark to Charles. He wore soft travel sweats, his hair was disheveled, and large headphones encircled his neck.

“I’m… what? The king?” 

“Yes, his reign started last night. May it last forever.” The speaker sounded overly bored delivering this news, as if it was common knowledge.

Charles closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “And what sort of tithe does this king expect?”

“Offerings of food and drinks are accepted. If you’re unable to offer anything, you may enter the king’s service. You must deliver your offering by midnight, or you will be considered at war with the king.” After delivering this ultimatum, the man yawned.

“Wonderful.”

The messenger bowed deeply in the half light, turned, and walked away. 

Behind Charles, the door to the shopkeep’s apartment swung open, shooting another sliver of light across the dark shop.

“Did you hear all that nonsense?” Charles asked into the open door.

The shop owner emerged, dressed in beautiful silk nightwear, his hair still perfectly slicked. 

“Yes, probably best that we don’t open the grate and let the whole thing blow over. Want to come see the news?”

Charles nodded, extricated himself from the booth, and followed the man into his apartment. It had the humid, human smell that small spaces always got when they were lived in. The flickering light from the TV painted the room in a surreal array of colors.

On the screen, a reporter was interviewing someone identified as a climate scientist.

“We don’t know how it happened, the polar ice cap just suddenly melted. It defies our system models certainly, hell I think it defies our understanding of thermodynamics.”

“United States swallowed by 120 feet of water” scrolled across the banner at the bottom of the broadcast in bright, red letters.

“And can we expect this water to recede again? Do you have any thoughts on this?”

“Ma’am, with all due respect to you and your viewers, we don’t have a damn clue what happens next.”

The shopkeep muted the set then and shook his head.

“Over a hundred feet down, we’re basically at the bottom of the sea. Even if you found a way outside, you might drown before you swam to the surface.”

Something flashed across Charles’s face, ruffling his affable smile for a moment.

“Like swimming out of a shipwreck.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Say, why’d you let me stay here, anyways?”

The shopkeep shrugged at this. “You were here already, didn’t seem right to kick you out.”

“From the sounds of things out in the terminal, I might be very thankful.”

“Do you think we should open up the grate and join them?”

For a moment, Charles thought about what his brother would have done. This was his beacon, his lighthouse. His brother, who had saved Charles from a house fire when they were young. Who had gone to war, and come back with a medal. Who had sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic on a Coast Guard training mission last week.

“Fuck ‘em, I’d say.”

***

Charles woke to a band procession. Dischordent guitars played along with a tuba, a flute carried on the undercurrents. In the constant light from the terminal, he saw a procession coming down the alley. There were musicians and flag bearers, which on closer inspection looked to be plastic bags, there were people who carried menacing metal poles, the same that used to form lines and keep order, and they all wore the same uniform pilfered from airport security. Or maybe they had been airport security, before all this. In the front was someone who carried their chin higher than the rest. On their head, was a crown from a local fast-food restaurant.

At the noise, the shopkeep came out of his apartment, fully dressed in a rumpled tuxedo. He must have slept in it last night.  

A man came forward from the procession, and the overlapping chaos of music faded.

“You have failed to offer a tithe to the king, and are now considered at war with the kingdom.”

“Which kingdom is this, exactly? TSA Atlantis?” Charles asked. His default response under stress had always been humor.

“This is the hallowed kingdom of Terminal B, knave.”

“Imaginative.”

At this slight, the king stepped forward. As the half light hit his face, Charles saw it was the same angry man from the flight counter earlier.

“You had a chance to join us, and now you’ll suffer the consequences.”

From behind him, the troop set down their flags, musical instruments, and metal clubs, and all moved up to the grate. With a great heave, they strained against it, and overcame the gears that held it in place. It lifted just up to their knees, but that was enough for several of them to scurry under.

The shopkeep was ready. In the darkness, he’d assembled a row of wine bottles on the counter. As the invaders crossed the gate, he let them loose. Bottles crashed against them, and exploded on the ground, until one of them rushed forward, metal club in hand, and struck the shopkeep. He crumpled to the ground. Charles held up his hands, and they were roughly forced behind him and tied with an airplane seatbelt.

He and the shopkeep were dragged out into the alley. Charles watched from the alley as the store was pilfered.

***

Prison life was decidedly fine. He and the shopkeep, who had a nasty cut above his eyebrow and an obvious concussion, were tied to chairs at a gate still slated for departure to Wichita. No one really wants to travel to Kansas, so this made sense to Charles. Next to them was the fisherman from earlier, passed out, reeking of alcohol, and tied similarly.

The terminal was in disarray. As they traveled through it, he saw that stores were dismantled, vending machines smashed in, and trash strewn everywhere. Behind airline counters, he occasionally saw feet protruding from still forms. The leftover signs of an uprising, or a riot.

He was quickly distracted by the bay windows. Outside was a foreign world of blue. Fish swam past in the debris from a civilization quickly swallowed. In the distance he saw the great shadows of bigger, more dangerous things. Light filtered down from above, faintly. Everywhere, the glinting of waves refracted inside the terminal, making it seem like it was already full of water.

His attention refocused on the tribunal proceedings before him.

“These prisoners have been found guilty of a failed uprising against the king. What is your judgment, your majesty?”

Charles sighed audibly and rolled his eyes. A few faces turned to him in horror. He saw the same red shade of anger rise in the man that played king. Like a cherry on top of whipped cream.

“For their insolence, they must walk the plank!” The man bellowed, his face flushed.

There was a lot of murmuring at this, and uncertainty.

“The plank! What’s the plank again, your majesty?”

“The damn, you know, airplane walkway thing!”

“Right, the jet bridge! The prisoners must walk into the deep!”

“The deep! The deep!” A chorus went up from the assembled crowd. 

Charles turned to look behind him. Through the large windows, he saw the jet bridge curving downward from the door. It must have collapsed under the sudden onslaught of water. Internally, he sighed.

Two uniformed men came forward and pulled them both to their feet. Behind them, the chant grew.

“The deep! The deep!”

Thankfully, mercifully, their bonds were removed, and then they were pushed towards the door with prods from metal clubs. Another one came forward to open the door, and on the other side they saw a pool of water. The collapsed jet bridge had formed a semi airlock. They were both pushed towards the water, and with the prods of metal poles, into it.

The temperature was a violence Charles hadn’t expected, and he immediately wanted to run from it. But he breathed, and calmed, and began to hurriedly remove his clothing. The shopkeep looked at him strangely, his eyes unfocused from the concussion, but followed his lead. Their naked bodies shook violently.

Charles thought of his brother when he took a massive breath in. He thought of him when he summoned his courage and dove into the water. He thought of him as he swam for the light of a sun that seemed so far distant. He thought of him as he decided to not die afraid.

***

“Two men were rescued from Miami International Airport when they swam to the surface underneath a passing news helicopter.” An abandoned TV set, sunk 120 feet under the ocean in an apartment that adjoined a wine bar, said to an empty room. On it, a woman in a smart, blue suit gave somber updates. Her image reflected across the broken glass strewn across the floor.

“They were both barely conscious and suffering from hypothermia, but are expected to make a full recovery.”

“According to a reporter on the scene, the men were both hallucinating that they’d come from a place they called Terminal B Atlantis, and had been forced out after opposing a despotic king.”

“So far, few survivors have been found from the sudden flash flooding in the region.”